Inbox reputation, scheduling, resend strategies, audition sectionalization, subject line and preview text optimization...the list of what makes an email marketing strategy worth the endeavour is lengthy.

Information technology'south no secret, however, that these other factors are ultimately at the mercy of the content itself. If you're sick of hearing it, we're sorry—simply content truly is king.

Merely put, a skilful content strategy is frequently incomplete without a good email marketing strategy to become manus-in-hand. When new users sign up for your mailing list, information technology'll be the quality of your content that keeps them from striking the unsubscribe button. Similarly, the quality of your content tin can also be what brings new viewers into the fold and there to stay.

As an agency that handles both content and email marketing, we've identified three types of email content as particularly valuable for hitting those important fundamental goals: kick-starting a well-rounded email strategy and winning the attention of new subscribers.

iii Email Content Types to Grow Your List & Keep Your Audition Engaged

When you're thinking about how you tin grow your mailing list and continue your existing audience members excited when they see your proper noun in their inbox, you lot'll demand to make certain they can count on your content to exist engaging, actionable, and relevant.

As y'all build your content programme to meet this challenge, consider working with these iii types of email content.

Evergreen Content

Evergreen (or timelessly valuable) content ensures that visitors to your website, social media channels, or other digital platform tin get their hands on something helpful, informative, or meaningful to them, regardless of when the slice was originally published.

Balancing your content between more timely, topical pieces and evergreen content will bring you as close to guaranteeing your relevancy as an information source as you lot can get.

By definition, "evergreen" content brings value to users for an indeterminate corporeality of time—and combining your content with your email strategy tin can link these efforts together towards that important goal. Evergreen content and a mailing listing substantially have similar reasons for existing: to keep audience members, both new and existing, engaged and coming dorsum for more than.

As well being an effective content marketing strategy, investing in your evergreen content collection means yous'll also have a hefty armory of material to pull from for emails whenever you might want to send them.

Need to fill a gap in your email schedule? Pull a few evergreen pieces off of your blog and repackage them in ways you haven't before. Here are a couple of strategies to get your brainstorm session underway:

The E-mail Assimilate

Cull content with similar topics or messaging and include them in an email digest or newsletter.

The ICYMI

Requite a recently published blog an extra push and re-share it with your audience in example they missed information technology the offset fourth dimension around.

The Popularity Contest Winner

Notice that some of your email topics get more dearest than others? Take some related insights from your evergreen content, create an email, and see if that particular topic actually does resonate improve with your mailing listing.

No matter how busy or behind schedule you might get with your marketing efforts, evergreen content volition be at that place for you when quick ideas & execution is what you need.

Gated Content

At this bespeak, suggesting gated content every bit a strategy for mailing list growth is a marketing cliche...but it's a cliche that works. In that location'due south a reason why we're not the only marketers that recommend tossing in some gated content here and there to bring new audience members into the fold.

"Gating" a piece of content is pretty much what it sounds like: it's the human action of putting your content behind a sort of digital wall that users will need a "key" to access. That key is nigh unremarkably a set of contact information: name, occupation, company...and most importantly, email address. Y'all're making your audience work for your content instead of giving it all abroad for gratis.

Piece of cake, right? Why not merely hide all your content behind a gate if you lot actually desire to grow your mailing list?

Glad you asked: don't forget that we live in an historic period where internet users are pretty wary most giving out their contact information left and correct. We can presume that most internet literate people also empathize that, when they give out their email, they're rarely always signing upwards merely to acquire 1 piece of content. Their already crowded inboxes will remind them that they'll have to be in it for more one message.

At that place's also this fact of life to consider: people tin can exist lazy, or at least easily discouraged, when information technology comes to gated content. While some users might exist compelled enough to click on a link to your website, non all of them are going to be compelled enough to give away their data. They'll meet the submission form, think "Aye, right" and exit the page as quickly as they entered it.

Before you outset hiding your content behind e-mail-locked walls, keep this in mind:

Don't gate all of your content. In fact, don't even gate 50% of your content.

You need to have easily accessible content to entice visitors earlier yous inquire them to give away their information. Give them a taste of it kickoff. If they enjoyed information technology, they'll be hungry for more and more willing to opt into your mailing list.

Consider locking upward simply the most worthy content.

Your weblog postal service that mayhap took yous a couple of days to publish? Permit that roam gratuitous. Only your carefully researched eBook that y'all and your team worked on for weeks? That case study that required multiple customer interviews and rounds of review? Or that blog that has ever attracted a lot of traffic? Lock it upwardly. Make your audience work for those particularly special pieces.

If the results don't immediately reach your expectations, don't fret.

Like we mentioned earlier, non every web visitor volition be interested enough to manus over their email in exchange for your gated content. If your high hopes for growing your mailing list don't come to fruition off the bat, don't consider it a failure. Certain, you may not have gotten as many new addresses equally you lot'd like. Withal, you lot're probable to have attracted more qualified users—the ones that were willing to do a fiddling something extra for your content, and might practice more in the future in order to convert. Quality over quantity, right?

Referral Content

Retrieve nigh how content goes viral. A couple of different actions contribute to a single mail service going from obscurity to common noesis.

An Instagram user sees a post. They like the postal service and share information technology in a bulletin to their friends. Their friends also similar it and share it with their other friends. Instagram responds to this beliefs by rewarding the post with a coveted spot on the Discover tab. The algorithm interpreted the likes and shares to mean that this particular mail service was loftier-quality, and therefore brought it to other users' feeds.

...and then on and so on.

Internet virality depends a lot on shares and suggestions—on part of users and the algorithms that control the content we meet. In other words, referrals hold a lot of social media power.

Why non attempt tapping into that same power for your e-mail marketing goals?

I'1000 not maxim your side by side corking e-mail message is going to go viral. But a solid referral strategy, like whatever one of these three, could definitely assist you lot attract more than users for your mailing listing:

Call back nearly your content in terms of shareability.

It's one thing to exist interested in an e-mail yous saw pop up in your inbox. Information technology'due south another affair to become such a kick out of it that you lot have the urge to forwards it to your friends, family, or co-workers. Your electronic mail content on its ain might exist enough to encourage people to share it, but it might be helpful to occasionally slip in some CTAs geared toward that goal, like this holiday-themed email from Harry's.

Harry's email example

Invite new users to bring together your community directly in each message.

When your content does go forwarded to those outside your mailing list, allow them feel seen. Include a CTA forth the lines of what the New York Times has washed with it'southward Coronavirus Briefing, with a link to help them get a subscriber.

New York Times - email signup

Provide a referral incentive.

Await to popular newsletters from The Hustle and The Skimm for inspiration on this strategy. Both include at the bottom of their daily emails a personal referral link that users are encouraged to forward to others and a note about what tin happen when they've successfully attracted new subscribers.

The Hustle email example

Skimm email example

Your (New) Audience Awaits

Treat your email marketing strategy every bit an extension of your content marketing efforts. Ultimately, the two should help y'all reach a similar goals: to engage existing viewers and reach new ones by way of providing valuable content that piques their involvement.

From here, yous have a few options:

  1. Go cracking on your fancy new email marketing strategy.
  2. Gather more than email marketing resources over at the Altos Weblog.
  3. Start your email marketing with an email—send united states of america a message here if you lot'd like to chat before getting that new strategy upwards and running.

Megan O'Keefe

  • Megan O'Keefe
  • Social Media & Content Specalist
  • megan@altosagency.com