4 Ways to Re-Purpose Blog Content for Email Marketing Success
Email marketing is alive and well. While most companies have shifted their focus to social media, many still believe that email is still the way to go. In a 2015 study released by the Direct Marketing Association, it saw email marketing generate $38 ROI for every dollar spent. However, email marketing has its own set of challenges.
One issue had been generating content for email campaigns. Another study, this time by Marketing Sherpa, states that people actually like receiving promotional emails, especially from ones they currently do business with — about 91% of Americans to be more precise. And while 61% of those who were surveyed thought one email a month was enough, 15% said they wouldn’t mind receiving emails daily.
Sending emails frequently doesn’t bother as many people as we once thought. But with that comes another issue: where to find great content to share. Sending emails frequently might leave you dry as far as content is concerned. If this seems like a concern to you, then you might want to look into repurposing your old blog content.
Why blog posts?
As pointed out by the folks over at Campaign Monitor, content isn’t all about attracting and retaining subscribers. You need content to bring authenticity and credibility to your brand. Blog posts can do that.
Your typical email copy aims to make that sale which is a good thing. But blog posts offers another route. They are a great way to humanize your brand and make it more relatable. This leads to building trust and potentially lead to conversions down the line.
Reusing old blog content
There are different ways to utilize previously published posts to bring life to your email campaigns. The easiest would probably be linking the post directly to your email. But there are better creative solutions to doing so.
Change the format
Turning old blog posts into infographics or videos is a good start. Not having any experience working with Adobe software shouldn’t be a hindrance. Technology has come a long way. There are sites built for this purpose. One such site is Lumen5. The site only requires the link to your post and its AI will create a video for you with its library of stock footage and music. They have both paid and free versions.
If you’d prefer doing infographics, Canva is a great starting point. They have a free infographic makes which includes stock photos and other assets you could use.
Create lists
Extensive articles can be broken down into one single list revolving a topic that’s relevant to your audience. Creating lists and including them in your emails adds much-needed meat and value to every email sent. As Brian Clark of CopyBlogger puts it, “Any headline that lists a number of reasons, secrets, types, or ways will work because, once again, it makes a very specific promise of what’s in store for the reader.”
Compile posts into ebooks
Statista sees ebook revenue increasing from 2.31 billion in 2011 to 8.69 billion in 2018. Clearly, there is a demand for this sort of resource. Providing your readers with information will help keep them engaged. But more than that, it establishes you as a thought leader in your respective field. That can only do wonders for your brand.
Make Use Of has a great list of programs you can use to start your ebook. WordPress users, for example, can install Anthologize, a plugin that transforms blog content into an ebook. If you prefer to do everything manually, you can refer to this starter guide by HubSpot.
Send roundups
You can also send blog roundups of relevant topics to your users. But before promoting old posts, you should take a minute to check if your old posts need to be updated. Neil Patel has a post on how to go about updating blog posts.
He points out that not all previously published content is equal. You have to filter through your content and select posts with the most potential based on key metrics like conversion rate, bounce rate, and backlinks. If you have Google Analytics, the job would be that much easier.
You may also want to take this opportunity to revise your blog titles to be more catchy and SEO-friendly. However, you want to avoid making changes to the URL structure to avoid running into issues with your inbound links.
Final thoughts
When running an email marketing campaign, turn to old blog posts for additional content. Be sure to continuously offer your customers new content to sift through. Updating your old posts will not only give you additional email content, you can also use them on social media and other platforms. It’s a good idea to always look back on previously published content to see if they’re worth reusing.
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