1. Strategy

Email marketing and content creation are part of your business strategy. What do you want your customers to know about you? Is there a new product you want to launch? A new blog? An event? What are your goals for these campaigns? In any case, you want to create interaction with your customer and build a relationship. This way you build trust and you can boost sales.

Have a meeting with your team and make a list of all the things you would like to bring up. Also, don't be afraid to question yourself: "If I were a customer, ...

• What would I like to receive?
• What do I want to know more about?
• What information do I need to make a decision / to make a purchase?
• Can I help my customer with the first use of my product?
• Based on what information am I going to compare with competitors?
• What kind of emails do I receive from other companies in other sectors, and why would they be sending that?

Why should you definitely email?

Thinking about content is not only a very effective way to increase interaction with your customers, but it also ensures that you can have a nice report about who has read what. This way you can adjust the communication on all your channels to what your customers and prospects want to see. If you deal with this in a smart and strategic way, it can quickly produce the desired results.

Another, and certainly not to be forgotten, reason is emailing to get prospects and customers to your website. Making a website beautiful is good for your image, but why invest all this time and work if it is not visited. Along with your campaigns, you can get more visitors through links to landing pages or articles on your website.

Seeing the number of visitors and sales grow is one of the reasons that your company has a website. So make that beautiful website an actively visited platform that everyone can be a part of and enjoy.

2. Subjects and goals

Where do you actually want to go? Not only do you need to know your target audience. But also yourself. Now don't say you have nothing to talk about. Why are you actually communicating? Below you will find obvious goals for a number of sectors. That immediately makes it a lot more concrete.

Possible goals:

• Retailer: sell more by promoting products. They communicate about new products, discounts, theme mails about specific product groups
• Restaurant: get tables sold. They share theme nights, new menus, promotions, recipes.
• News site: generate more traffic to the website so that advertisements yield more. Strong rhythm of communication with the most popular articles, theme updates, ...
• Charity: lives on donations. So, they want to inform donors about current projects, touch them, collect donations. They also do this by sharing feel-good stories.
• Events: sell tickets. They probably provide information about speakers, share speaker articles, programs, tips, ...

As you can see in the examples above, it is much more interesting to get clear in advance what you actually want to achieve with your communication. This way you can determine afterwards who you are sending to and what those people actually want to read. Or need. With that information you have to make a puzzle. Only in this way can you create emails with focus, which perform well, and which therefore help you to achieve your goals.

3. 90% Educational – 10% Promo

It’s important to remember that your campaigns should not only contain sales offers or promos. Also remember that many of your readers sign up because they like to learn something and don't just do it for the promotions. Make sure to send emails that contain value and wanted accurate information that will link to the promotion you are currently sending. You can do this in different ways in every sector or company.

Some possibilities of valuable information with a promo:

• Retailer: promoting new product? First share a styling tip for the new season, a how to video or useful fact about industry / products and then promote the corresponding new product. Or more info on what makes you different.
• Restaurants: want to get tables filled? If there is a theme night, share a visual image of they can expect from this theme and why you chose this theme. Or share a recipe around seasonal products.
• Good cause: receive donations? Share a story about the charity in the spotlight, share a video with one of your volunteers about why they support this project or a before and after project. People like to read that their donation has ended up well. That makes them feel good and creates goodwill to help again in the future.

There are endless ways to link valuable information and promotions together. What is your goal and what would you like to know and discover? This will ensure a more personal approach and communication to your readers and will make them feel better, instead of just another promotional email. This way you can also share small insights or behind the scenes of the company, product or special event. “Things you didn’t know” are always a good way to educate your reader and get to know your company better and gain their trust.

Let’s wrap things up, so you can start creating more content that brings value to your readers.

There comes a time when we think there is nothing left to communicate about. Well, think again, there are so many topics you can communicate about with your clients. This is why it is always important to follow the strategy and look at your target group and goals. Brainstorm on all the topics and information you can share on a regular basis. When you see it all line up it will go smoother every time and you won’t have the same issue again. Go get your readers excited to be part of your company!