Content Marketing is a strategy focused on the creation and distribution of relevant content, such as articles, ebooks and posts on social networks. With Content Marketing, the company helps its target audience to solve their problems and becomes an authority on the matter.
To get straight to the point, Content Marketing (or Content Marketing) is all content made to educate, inform, or entertain a prospective customer. It is the fuel of Inbound Marketing.
The idea is to inform people so that, in the future, they not only respect your brand and have it as a reference, but also so that they also become customers of your company.
We can say that the meaning of Content Marketing is relatively new. It was only in this new century that this concept was forged and studies, analyzes and experiments began to be carried out.
However, its applications were already a reality even before the digital age. Yes, offline Content Marketing exists. And for a long time!
But how? Content Marketing is not part of Inbound Marketing? How could it exist before the rise of the internet?
Let’s contextualize historically with a classic example.
In 1895, John Deere, a leading company in the agricultural machinery segment, published the first edition of “The Furrow” magazine. The publication is still in circulation to this day and is focused on issues related to agriculture.
With that magazine, John Deere took a risk and chose to share content with the public interested in agriculture instead of simply creating ads “pushing” the products that are manufactured by the company.
It is true that not all of the magazine’s readers owned John Deere tractors, but by consuming the brand’s information, they might uncover evils they thought were non-existent until then. And when feeling the need to make a purchase, they would opt for a trusted brand.
In other words, the magazine fulfills exactly the purpose of the concept: educate the public, gain authority on the subject and influence the purchase decision. It is one of the first records of Content Marketing and, since then, several brands have made use of the practice.
In short: Content Marketing is talking about your niche market. Different from an advertising note made by a press office or traditional marketing.
What is Content Marketing for?
Ok, now that we have talked about the concept of Content Marketing, you may be wondering: why should I produce content if I can create ads showing my product?
If you still haven’t understood what the great advantages of a Content Marketing strategy are compared to a traditional marketing strategy, keep reading the next topics. After all, Content Marketing managed to achieve what conventional marketing was not capable of.
Just look at the companies that are using Content Marketing today. Here at RD Station, for example, the focus is on content. Through educational materials and with our Digital Marketing blog with which we attract clients, we teach our methodology and continue a post-sale relationship so that they continue with us.
The blog, by the way, was where it all started here at RD Station. Even before launching our Digital Marketing software, RD Station Marketing, we were already producing content on the subject in that channel. It always was and always will be essential to the success of the company.
But we do not limit ourselves only to our own examples. Analyze large companies in the market, regardless of segment, and see how they are using that to their advantage.
Red Bull, GoPro, McDonald’s, Movistar, Samsung, Walmart, SalesForce, General Electric and other market giants already do Content Marketing.
How has Content Marketing helped the market?
Content Marketing has gained its space in the Latin market in recent years. However, despite the growth, the percentage of companies that use the methodology is still low.
If we go deeper and analyze how many companies document the strategy, the value is even lower. In other words, it’s not too late for your company to start working on a Content Marketing strategy right now.
Have you ever wondered about content trends? We interviewed Alicia Rodriguez Content Strategist from Semrush to talk about what you need to know about these trends.
How to get leadership support in a content marketing strategy
As with social media, content marketing has left the charm stage behind and moved to a different time where you need to prove your ROI (return on investment). This test is without a doubt one of the biggest challenges for any marketer: how much revenue can content marketing generate?
For many, being able to measure the commercial success of Content Marketing is still very difficult, which makes many marketers base themselves on results that are sometimes easier to justify, such as engagement (likes, shares, retweets). However, companies are businesses and companies need to make a profit, speaking only of commitment does not guarantee that the manager believes in the proposal.
Even if every marketing professional understands that when you write with quality about your field of activity, it is possible to transmit relevant information to visitors, win new business opportunities, be referenced as an authority on the subject and, of course, create and narrow the In relation to your contact base, this is not always clear to company leadership. Although there are plenty of reasons to face Content Marketing as one of the pillars of success in Digital Marketing, it is still necessary to justify its value.
This is because many CEOs and entrepreneurs do not understand how content marketing works, many are even unaware of the terminology. Therefore, it is essential that Digital Marketing professionals find a new and easier way to explain its value and operation. As decision makers in the company, it is essential that they understand and support.
Based on this, we share some tips for you to overcome this challenge:
Prepare the Ground
Having the support of your leader is easier when you can clearly present how content marketing is useful to achieve real results. Before presenting your strategy, prepare yourself:
- Benchmarking: Analyze if your market is already using the strategy. Can practices be followed and replicated to make your business run better? Identify how your competitors propose the information and the editorial policy they follow;
- Surround yourself with tangible metrics: Show how content marketing is an efficient channel to generate more leads, lower customer acquisition costs, and increase sales. By writing about your segment, spread useful information that will be used to empower your potential customers and prepare them for the moment of purchase.
- Override objections: In the business world, you need to be prepared to face adversity. You have to be prepared for objections like cost and time.
- Use strategic data: Since content marketing generates organic traffic to the website, the company can spend less on advertising purchases. This is even one of the great advantages of Content Marketing: the ability to generate Leads. Most of the time, the result will be proportional, the more authority you have on a topic, the greater the number of leads generated.
- Plan the actions: organize a publication schedule and involve the team in the execution. In addition to saving, there is nothing better than a team that knows the particularities of the product and the market better to speak very well about topics that are attractive to your target audience. So you can also dilute the costs of hiring an exclusive professional to write content. Look at our example, here at RD Station a large part of the team is involved in content creation, each area has a person responsible for delivering a monthly post respecting the schedule determined by Marketing.
These tips are very useful but do not be caught off guard by throwing information on the table. Personalize your arguments and adopt the vocabulary your leader uses to convince them. Put yourself in their shoes by choosing arguments that make sense. Match the objectives that the company wants to achieve with the content that will be addressed in the content production.
At RD Station we always emphasize several important points to our clients, but what is used most frequently is: Content Marketing is a permanent asset, it explains to company managers that by producing and publishing content the benefit it brings, or more well the ROI, it’s lasting.
If you need to exemplify, show how it becomes easier to be recognized as an authority on a topic when you produce quality in-house content, present cases of great references who came there to produce content.
We have a success story with one of our clients in Mexico who, through the production of content, increased his traffic on his website and generated 4,000 leads. You can read the full content of that story here.
Content ROI: Highly Measurable
To know your ROI, the first step is to know how to estimate the costs and income derived from the production of Content Marketing in your company. These values can include different estimates such as: team salary, hours of an employee allocated to create content, platforms used for sharing, outsourced labor for content production, leads generated from content that later closed a sale, and there it goes. Knowing exactly these numbers makes it easy to quantify your performance. We could separate these results into two types of metrics.
Editorial metrics
They are metrics that present more figures in relation to the effects that the content provokes in its consumers. This includes: shares, comments, unique visitors, page views, length of stay on the page, return links, etc.
Business metrics
Business metrics are more related to conversions as a result of engaging with content. This metric can include demo and test orders, quote orders, lead generation, and sales.
With a good estimate in hand we can now proceed to the calculations, a possible formula to arrive at the ROI of the content would be something like:
(Revenue Generated – Content Marketing Cost) / Content Marketing Cost = ROI
In order to calculate the Cost of Content Marketing, you need some data that we list below:
Content marketing costs:
- Manpower (Content Manager, Analyst, etc.)
- Production cost of ebooks, publications, infographics and webinars (video design and editing, copywriter, etc.)
- Tools: blog and website software and hosting
Content Marketing Planning (Costs)
Content marketing revenue:
1. Sales closed with Leads generated by the organic channel (posts) (excludes Leads generated by CPC) and;
2. Sales closed with Leads generated directly that offer some other type of content (ebooks, Webinars, emails, Landing Pages).
Content Marketing Planning (Revenue)
In our example, if you make $12,000 in revenue from content marketing and the total cost of the business with content marketing is $6,000, you will find a “return on investment” as 1x of the total cost or 100%. Of course, these values will vary according to the size of the company, the size of the team, the structure and, consequently, with the type of business, the value of the ticket, etc.
But whatever the account, the math is clear, content marketing has to be profitable, that is, generate more sales, revenue and profits. In order for the account to close so you can better assess the impacts and measure your marketing efforts, an initial step is to understand the current state of your sales funnel.
How to do Content Marketing
Content Marketing without a well-architected strategy is not enough to generate maximum results. The method has proven results, but it is necessary to make time available for planning and strategy.
There are several ways to apply and execute a good Content Marketing strategy. Some ways can be:
- Blog;
- Rich Contents;
- Videos;
- Social media;
- EmailMarketing.
As you can see, Content Marketing is not just writing a text on a blog or creating a post on Facebook and expecting the results to magically appear on your table.
You need to think about what to write, when to publish, in which channel to promote, what format to use, which person to reach and what result you intend to obtain.
Only by having the objectives mapped and the goals defined can you begin to expect good results when working with Content Marketing.
Blog
Creating a blog for your business is an essential action for an effective Content Marketing strategy.
Many people may think that, with the popularization of social networks, the blog is a thing of the past. However, not only in the case of RD Station but also with the example of hundreds of clients that we have, the blog has proven to be a spectacular channel.
This happens because only with a blog on your own domain, you get full control of all Content Marketing actions.
A blog is the most common form of attraction on the internet. With good content and proper SEO optimization, the blog is the best way for you to get traffic. A profitable relationship via Email Marketing and social networks also helps in generating traffic for your business.
Many times the blog is the gateway for future customers. Therefore, it is important that your company blog is relevant and captures the user’s attention. Only then, that user will become a Lead and, in the future, a client.
Maintain a frequency in the posts
To discover the ideal frequency for your company, take into account its size, your competition and the team available to produce content (it is important that the frequency of publication of posts does not affect the quality of the material).
Another important factor is to maintain a pattern and a calendar of posts. Being regular helps keep visitors coming back to your website. If you add those returns to new daily visits, you will see that it is worth maintaining that regularity.
One of the ways to maintain a loyal audience is, precisely, to make it understand the periodicity of posts on the blog. Your visitors will find it strange if you post twice in one week, ten times the following week, once the third week, and again ten times the next week.
It’s true that studies show that the more new posts, the more chances your blog has to stand out from the competition. However, it only happens if the increase in quantity is not going to affect the quality. Here, the qualitative index always comes before the quantitative.
Therefore, the most important thing is to be regular. Whether with daily, weekly or fortnightly publications, the most recommended thing is to maintain that frequency so that your audience knows how your company’s blog works and perceives that everything is being done in an organized manner.
Guidelines Planning
To have maximum effectiveness in your Content Marketing strategy, the topics that will be addressed in the blog cannot be random. One of the secrets for a successful blog is, precisely, not to run away from the central theme.
Forecast how many posts per month or week you can produce for your blog without becoming repetitive or disorganized. If your blog is extremely niche, for example, it may be more difficult to find daily topics.
The main advice is to create a guideline planning in advance, based on the problems that you face and the different stages of the Buying Process. In this way, you can anticipate what the next topics will be, better organize the content of your blog and, at the same time, maintain the editorial focus and the diversity of topics.
Also take into consideration Google searches according to the topic you want to write about. It is important to give priority to those that have searches, so that your blog is found more easily.
Rich Content
The production of blog posts is very important to attract visitors to your website and make your company a reference in the market, but for a complete Content Marketing strategy, it is necessary to have an intermediate conversion to hook those who have not yet It is at the correct time of purchase.
That is the function of rich content: an educational material that adds value for your visitors. By offering this type of content, your company can continue to educate your potential customers, prepare them over time and, at the right moment, make the sales approach.
But it is not enough to create these materials to help educate prospects and make your company a reference in the market: it is necessary to spread them correctly and efficiently to get Leads and, from there, start a relationship with those Leads.
The most effective way to offer them is through Landing Pages, which are pages aimed at conversion. Through them, you can make the content available and, in exchange, request some contact information from potential customers such as name, email, telephone, etc.
And the production of this material does not necessarily have to be something laborious: you can start offering content that you already have and use in your company, such as spreadsheets, templates, market research/analysis, technical articles, checklists, glossaries, etc.
Later, you can produce materials designed specifically to answer questions and curiosities or heal the pain of your potential clients.
eBooks
The production of eBooks is a great alternative for longer content that could be too long for a blog post. They convey an image of authority in the matter, conveying reliability to your target audience.
That’s because writing an eBook and organizing it requires a lot of research and knowledge of the subject. Furthermore, organizing a certain topic in a logical learning sequence can be useful for someone who is studying a particular topic.
That type of format also has the benefit of being “high viral”, as with a social media post with images and a catchy headline your readers will likely share it (if the material actually creates value for them).
Another advantage is that it is a relatively cheap format to develop, since, unlike other content, it requires little infrastructure: it is enough to carry out research, write and diagram. We teach you how to produce an eBook like we do in the RD Station team every month.
All these peculiar characteristics of eBooks make them one of the great Content Marketing tactics.
Webinars
Just like eBooks, webinars are a fairly widespread format for content production. They end up having a more personal touch, which brings the company’s potential client closer together, and they are an excellent opportunity to establish contact with reference people in your market.
They also do not have a very high cost: you can record a webinar just with an amateur or cell phone camera, a microphone and a computer to edit videos and, of course, the better the production, the better the image you will pass on your company.
You can offer it both live and recorded. The live versions have the benefit of greater proximity with the interested parties, since you can answer the questions on the spot. But nothing prevents you from making that webinar available later in a recorded version, so that it continues to generate Leads over time.
Beyond that, you can still use what was said in the webinar to create other content formats, such as new posts, eBooks, infographics, etc.
Tools
The tools help your prospects with practical problems, which many times could not be solved just by reading an eBook or watching a webinar. They have a good lead generation potential because, if they are able to facilitate the work of your target audience, they will probably generate a lot of commitment.
They can be part of your product/service as well as something totally new. In the event that they are part of your product/service, they can move the Lead forward in the purchase process, since they give a “spark” of how the complete solution works.
One example is our Website Analytics tool that we made in collaboration with Hostgator. A tool to explore the performance of web pages and the SEO strategy of potential clients.
Generally, creating tools requires a bit more infrastructure, since you will need the help of a professional who knows programming. On the other hand, it will be difficult for someone to copy your tool, since it is more complicated to reproduce this type of content than a post, for example. That makes the tools a beautiful form of differentiation.
Kits
Kits are a rich content format that brings together two or more materials on the same topic, or intended for a specific audience.
A great benefit of kits is that, if you work with rich content production, they can simply be the assembly of materials you already have, optimizing the efforts of the content team.
That is why they usually have a low production cost, since you only need to adapt them for a new launch, creating new Landing Pages, Thank you Pages, emails, images, etc.
But even if you decide to create a completely new material, the kit can be very attractive to those interested and have a good cost benefit, since it draws attention to the amount of content offered for free.
Beyond that, they also help those who are learning about a certain subject, since they usually gather what you offer that is most interesting on the subject.
Infographics
Infographics are the union of information in visual and written formats, with graphics and outstanding data to facilitate the understanding of a message.
The infographic as a Content Marketing strategy can be as efficient as rich material because it facilitates reading through visual information, mainly when there is a lot of numerical data or it is necessary to explain a process step by step.
On the other hand, they can attract more Leads because they tend to require less time than reading an eBook or watching a webinar, for example.
Despite seeming complicated, developing an infographic can be simple even for those who are not very familiar with image editing and creation software, since there are various tools, many of them online and free, that can help you with this task, such as Canva.com.
Templates
The templates are, basically, models of forms, presentations, lists and other materials ready to be used that, as well as with the tools, facilitate the execution of some task of your prospects. At RD Station, for example, we have:
The Editable Template for Content Management
Monthly Digital Marketing Report
Marketing Automation Worksheet
As they have a very practical application, the templates are very good to attract qualified Leads. Therefore, remember to create self-explanatory templates or have support material to be well used.
In addition, they are easier to be created than you imagine. In the end, many companies already use templates in their internal processes, and can offer them without having to change practically anything.
Videos
Video is another format that, when applied within a Content Marketing strategy, can be valuable for your company.
It is a format that is becoming increasingly popular, largely due to the ease with which it is possible, today, to create a video. Some companies do not even have professional cameras, and use webcams or cell phones for recordings.
In 2016, 50% of all mobile internet traffic is already video. There is more: having a video on a product page increases the purchase intention by up to 85%, by reinforcing the reliability of the product for the customer.
Use of videos in the Blog
The blog is the main medium in which the content produced by your company will be disclosed and, when we think of it, the first content format that comes to mind is usually the text.
In fact, that format is the most common, but we must not forget the possibilities that videos present.
There are several ways to use videos as blog content. One way is to create a series of short videos that cover a certain topic, but aren’t long enough to become a webinar.
Use of videos in social networks
Another good practice is to use videos on social networks. There are proprietary social networks for video, such as YouTube, Vine, and Periscope, and multi-content social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which also offer video as a post format.
There are several ways your business can create video content on social media. You can create teasers that direct the user to a page, mini explanatory videos on a certain topic, product demonstrations, case studies, live broadcasts and more.
Videos work great on social media. Within Facebook, for example, it is the publication format that generates the greatest reach.
Video channel and media center
Thinking in the larger context of Digital Marketing, it is possible to go further and do something focused on conversion. For that, having a video repository of your company is an excellent way to position yourself and generate results.
When thinking of making a video channel as a Content Marketing strategy, it is very common for a channel on free platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion to come to mind. Taking advantage of the audience that these channels have is, in fact, very attractive, especially when we are aiming to attract visitors to the website.
But it happens that this is not always the best option: it is possible to take a step forward and turn that video channel, or media center, into a channel of your company, just like the website itself. That is something much more interesting to position yourself as a reference and avoid some classic problems that free platforms entail, such as loss of attention and third-party advertising.
There are national and international tools that help you increase the chances of conversion through videos.
Prices vary as does the delivery of value. The important thing is to choose the one that can generate the most business for your company, that meets the technological need of your moment and, obviously, that is worth the cost-benefit.
Social media
Social networks are optimal channels for your company to do Content Marketing. They are multifunctional channels within Digital Marketing, that is because they can work both for attraction and for relationships and, in some cases, even for sales.
There are many reasons for your company to be present on social networks. For example:
- For many people, it is the main channel used to consume content, information and entertainment;
- It is a cheap channel that can yield results even for those who do not promote their publications with paid ads;
- It has high content dissemination and viralization power;
- It is a channel to interact with customers and fans, both through private messages (inbox) as well as in the publications themselves (public messages);
- It is a powerful source of traffic and lead generation for your company’s website.
Certainly there are still more advantages. Therefore, maintaining a presence on social networks is essential.
Now, when we talk about content, an interesting alternative is to use social networks not only to promote what your company produces for the blog or website, but also to use them to produce content directly on the platform, in formats other than what is posted on the blog.
The largest social networks today are multimedia, which allows your company to produce texts, infographics, images, videos, live broadcasts, contests, photographs, gifs and everything that your creativity allows you.
Social Networks is not just Facebook
It is true that Facebook is the largest social network on the planet. In 2016, it reached the incredible mark of 1.65 billion active users worldwide.
At first it may seem that, according to this data, being only on Facebook is enough for your company to be successful on social networks.
However, it is exactly the opposite. Being on Facebook is not a differential, it is the basics. And to stand out from so many other companies and content producers, you have to work quite strategically and creatively.
An interesting way is, precisely, to be open to other opportunities and produce content on other social networks as well.
Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, SlideShare, Snapchat, Tumblr, Google Plus, Periscope, Pinterest – all of these networks can work for your business. All you need is a lot of dedication, quality content, and frequent posting.
To begin the process of choosing the social networks in which your company should be present, it is important to identify where your ideal target audience is and how your company can share relevant content with them. Talking to a few current and potential customers can be a good way to find out what they’re wearing on a day-to-day basis.
In addition, even if your company is not going to act actively in all of them, it is important to create profiles on the networks to reserve the name, avoiding pages or profiles with the name of your business appearing.
Don’t be an annoying seller
Most of the time social media is not an environment where people are wanting to be approached by corporate posts and vendors.
And since we are talking about Content Marketing, the ideal is for your company to use social networks to, first, create a relationship with your audience; then, work on your offers in an organized and subtle way.
Remember that the fan who is following your company on social networks may even be a customer or consumer of your product or service, but they will not always be consuming your solution. I mean, to keep him engaged with your company, create content for him and make offers at the right time!
Measure the results
Whenever possible, analyze your work performance on social media. That will go to help you identify opportunities and improve what you are not delivering correctly.
But how to measure the results? What are the really important social media metrics?
It is quite normal to find companies focusing the success of a Content Marketing strategy on the number of “I like it”, times in which the content is shared and comments on the publications, but forgetting that the commitment is useless if there is no commitment. generation of business opportunities.
It is important to make it clear that, in no way, are we saying that these metrics should not be followed. Yes, they must be monitored since, indirectly, they help in the reach that your publication will have.
Publications with more “likes”, comments and times in which it is shared are understood by social networks as quality content, and for this reason social networks highlight them.
However, the focus should be on metrics that we can call direct, that is, that show the audience’s interest in continuing to interact with your company.
Visualizations:
The first stage of the social media funnel represents the number of times your post was viewed. Always try to optimize your publications so that they are seen more and more times by your audience. Some controllable variables can increase your page views and consequently increase volume at the top of your funnel, such as post timing and format;
Clicks:
That is a very important metric to measure the performance of your posts. After all, the sole objective of a company’s social media management is to generate traffic for other specific lead generation channels. You must optimize your publications to the maximum so that your audience clicks on them more times and, later, is converted into Leads;
Conversions:
The number of conversions of visitors into business opportunities should be your main metric to be followed in this process. Although the conversion does not depend solely and exclusively on the work done on social networks, it is a metric that shows the effectiveness of the channel, that is, the number of Leads that were generated by social networks.
Take advantage of the opportunity to interact with your audience
Social networks are places where you can and should establish a more personal communication with your target audience.
Make the most of that opportunity, since that can be a differential of your strategy.
Respond to the comments your fans make so they feel privileged. It is an easy and fast way to retain the followers you already have, including transforming them into advocates for your brand.
In addition, interaction with the public generally generates good insights for new Content Marketing actions. Take advantage of what your fans have to say and make them feel like they are engaging with your posts.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing has been the flagship of many companies that know how to use it. Today, the channel goes far beyond sending messages or notifications: it is a good way to distribute content, attract new visitors and deepen relationships with the contact base.
Because it is an agile and low-cost channel, it is useful for various types of businesses and company sizes that want to apply Content Marketing and other marketing strategies.
By separating your contacts by areas of interest (content accessed or downloaded on your website, indicating what type of product or service your contact may be needing), it is possible to deliver messages with certain offers for the potential client, considerably increasing the rate Of conversation.
This brings important results at the level of commitment, as well as being essential to guide your prospects in the direction of the sale.
In addition to sending newsletters and disseminating new materials through promotional emails, your company can invest in a lead nurturing strategy. Use each email to educate and motivate your potential customers or inform about your offers (of content, services or products).
Don’t buy email lists
Buying email lists may seem advantageous, but there are many reasons not to invest in this practice.
First, because the people on the list do not know your company and will not show interest in it, then they will have no idea how you got the email. This makes a pretty bad impression upon receiving the message.
The second reason is that we have seen the explosion of social networks, which gave voice and power to the consumer. Today, the company is frowned upon not only by those who received spam, but also by all the friends of that person, in case they use their own profile to claim.
Third, email services are getting smarter. There is a good chance that many users will mark your messages as spam and by doing so, the reputation of the company is greatly damaged.
In this way, the next shipments will have a great chance of falling directly into the spam box, and even the people who would like to receive something from your company will not see your email.
In addition, these lists generally have many emails that do not exist or have been deactivated. The quality is also poor in terms of target audience, since to “fatten” the list and try to make it worth more, all kinds of emails are included.
Thus, profiles that have no relationship with the service or product offered by your company enter.
Spend efforts on segmentation
Sending the correct email to the correct person brings maximum use of your contact base. For this, the first step is to have information, which can come from many places (for those who work with Digital Marketing, the most common is that it comes from the Landing Pages).
In this way, it is very important that, when creating a Landing Page, the questions that you are going to ask are defined, that is, the most relevant information that will help your company to carry out a better segmentation.
With the information in hand, the next step is to think about the process as a whole (not only to create campaigns, but also to launch the materials itself).
It is common for companies to define the offer before the public. There is nothing wrong with that, but nevertheless, when the information is based on the Lead base, it is easier to make an offer specifically for a well-segmented audience.
To help in the process, you can make a good integration between the services that your company uses and keep it always updated, or use a more complete Digital Marketing platform, which has most of the necessary tools already integrated with each other.
Do not send an “image email”
Another practice that causes negative results in your Email Marketing campaign is to place all the content of the message in a single image. That’s because most of the main email services – like Hotmail, Yahoo and Outlook – have a standard security block for the display of any image format that is in an email.
Many email servers block images in emails, which can only be viewed if the user gives permission. With the Internet becoming increasingly abundant with information, it is rare that users have the time and interest available to the point of authorizing the display only to find out what the email is about.
For this reason, it is necessary that the email shows at first glance what it came for. By using just one image, many recipients will ignore the email, or even delete it or mark it as spam.
The best way to certify that the email message will be transmitted to the recipient, even if the recipient does not authorize the display of images, is to use an HTML email template with a good distribution between text and images with alt tags, always placing a text describing the image.
Worry often
Determining the ideal email frequency is very important when using Email Marketing, since it is one of the elements responsible for the long-term results of your campaigns.
A high volume of emails can have a greater reach and even generate more sales in the moment, but it also tends to annoy readers and cause a gradual drop in list subscribers.
On the other hand, sending few emails can “cool the relationship” and under-utilize the potential of the channel, in addition to causing surprise in the reader when the email arrives.
To help find the sweet spot, think about the goal of the email. If you want to report the events of the week, for example, the frequency is weekly. For cases in which the idea is to maintain a relationship or promote something timeless, however, it is necessary to have more information and you must start for the next step.
Talk to subscribers. This “investigative” work is essential in defining the frequency, also because, as the consequences of this arrive in the long term, it is much more difficult to carry out tests to discover the best frequency, than to discover the best time.
Also keep an eye on the number of people who unsubscribe. If you perceive that the rate of people unsubscribing from your list is high, it’s time to stop and review your sending policy.
Do not define an ideal frequency, even if it has been chosen by your clients, if it does not allow enough time for you to select or produce relevant content. If the content sent is not relevant, it will be much easier for people to get tired and unsubscribe from your list.
Measure the results
After sending the emails, it is important to measure the results to see what needs to be altered, tested and improved. For that, some metrics such as list growth rates, open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates need to be looked at.
The growth rate of the subscriber list is the percentage of new emails registered in relation to the total of the list. This metric allows us to observe how the construction of a relevant base as a Digital Marketing asset is progressing. A bad rate may mean that your company needs to invest more in offers to obtain new emails.
The open rate (OR) is the number of people who opened the message divided by the number of people who received it. Despite not being very precise (there are some technical distortions), the open rate is a very important metric to indicate the quality of the subject chosen for the email and the best delivery time.
The click-through rate (CTR) is one of the most important items and, for this reason, many companies only care about it. But analyzing it exclusively and separately does not show where the problem is. An email with a low open rate obviously tends to have fewer clicks.
When we also measure the click-to-open rate (CTOR), we are able to identify the problem more clearly: we see if there have been no clicks because the content is bad (after the email was opened) or if the open rate is that is wrong (and the problem is in the subject, shipping time and history with the brand).
The unsubscribe rate indicates how many people will opt out of your list and reflects issues with content quality and/or delivery frequency. A high rate of cancellations is a great alert for your company and indicates the need to reformulate the Email Marketing policy.
It is also worth analyzing what the impact of the actions on your website is (how many visits the email generated and, mainly, how many conversions are made by this traffic source). In this way, it is possible to understand a little more of the business value provided by that type of action.
