by Tom Ruwitch
Here’s the most common objection I hear from small-business people who are hesitant to launch or expand an email marketing program:
I don’t have enough content, and I don’t have the time or money to produce more.
Here’s my response:
You’re sitting on a content gold mine, and you don’t even know it.
Even if you’re already producing email marketing content, you may be sitting on an untapped content gold mine that will make your job easier. Skeptical? Please answer two simple questions:
- Do your customers and prospects ever ask you questions? (Of course they do.)
- Do you ever answer those questions by firing off emails? (I’m betting you do).
If you answered yes to both of those questions, you should rename your “Sent” folder. Call it your “Content Gold Mine” folder.
You’ve already written most of the content you’ll put in your email marketing pieces. You just need to retrieve the content from your Sent folder, clean it up a bit and press send. You can mine your Sent folder for content to include in your blog and social media posts too.
To plan your content marketing program, begin by outlining the questions your customers and prospects frequently ask – or should ask. Those are the topics you should cover.
Then scour the content you’ve already created – the one-to-one emails in your Sent folder, the user guides and how-to pages you’ve printed or published online, and any other content you’ve created that answers the questions.
My company’s marketing tips blog is loaded with posts that began as one-to-one exchanges between our staff and prospects and customers.
A few months ago a client asked about the proper length for a subject line. Our support team answered the question via email. A few days later I used that email as the foundation for a blog post (the answer: subject lines with six to 10 words have the best open rates) and a message in our email newsletter.
One-to-one emails also evolved into newsletter items about how to avoid spam filters, the pros and cons of image-only emails, how to embed videos in emails, and countless other topics.
Because we understand the marketing value of those one-to-one emails, we have become proactive about saving them. Now when I write an email that might be relevant to our readers, I set it aside as a rough draft for a future post or newsletter item.
If you write emails to your clients and prospects, you’re closer than you think to generating more quality email marketing content with far less effort.
Tom Ruwitch is founder and president of MarketVolt, a St. Louis-based interactive marketing firm and email service provider. For additional tips on how to use interactive surveys to grow your business, go to MarketVolt.com/Survey-Tips.
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