email marketing best practices current content

Keep Your Content Current

As an email marketer, you know how important relevance is to your email marketing campaign strategy. But relevance doesn’t always equal current. Content relevance can refer to anything from information of specific interest to your subscribers, to regional specificity to, of course, specific and relevant information about the product, services, or information you are providing. Current content takes your relevant content to the next level.

How?

Because current content is the difference between connecting with your subscribers’ interests in the NOW. Whether it’s the upcoming elections, or the unseasonably early cold blast freezing the whole country or even the extra hour we’ve all gained by “Falling Back” to standard time (and early darkness) this past weekend, whatever is “current” is whatever your subscribers are probably talking about or otherwise impacted by.

By focusing on whatever your subscribers are focused on right now shows that you’re connecting with them, on a very immediate level. The solution you’re offering in your email marketing campaign is right for their needs, because you understand – you’re right there with them, experiencing whatever these times hold.

A recent post on AWeber’s blog displays specific examples from actual email marketing campaigns that integrated current events successfully into their content strategies.

Some of the effective examples highlighted include:

  • Using events in the news as a launching pad for a related promotion or opportunity to provide relevant and connected information.
  • Hosting an event that is similar in theme to a nationally-occurring event: e.g., “Vote on your favorite product!” mini-election to coincide with Election Day.
  • Weather-related promotions. There’s a reason we all fall back on talking about the weather when conversation stalls: we all experience it. We’re all affected by it. And it’s always changing. Taking a cue from water-cooler small talk, some very successful email marketing campaigns have been launched entirely around major weather events that have affected significant population centers in the U.S. And if you’ve successfully segmented your list by region or location, even better: you could set specific weather-related email marketing campaigns to target only those in affected areas.
  • Holidays. Well, of course. This is the one “current event” that every email marketer falls back on. But when considering how to construct your next Holiday-themed email marketing campaign, think about what makes THIS year’s holidays special or different.

Not only can you be current with your email marketing strategy, being current by definition requires being creative. And creative content is always a good thing. Make sure to add this “Keep It Current” strategy to your email marketing best practices toolbox and let us know your results!

About the Author: Sharon

Sharon Ernst from BetterFasterWriter.com is on a mission to improve the business and marketing writing skills of today’s workforce with her blog, newsletter and online classes. Her newest class on intermediate email copywriting covers 19 tips and techniques non-copywriters can put to use right away for better results. The class has real-life examples and before/after comparisons to make the lessons stick. Find her class at www.betterfasterwriter.com/intermediate-email-copywriting-class. When she’s not busy helping employees, managers and marketers master their writing skills, she and her husband are busy raising pigs, cows, chickens and vegetables on their 20-acre farm.

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