Who Wants 28% Higher Open Rates and Twice the Traffic? By Abbie Drew Mar 8, 2012

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The secret to super charge your email marketing open rates
is to use social media. Then combine your social media
with blogging and you've got the 1, 2 set-up that allows
email to deliver the knock out blow!

Two recent studies' findings reveal the amazing effects
that engaging in social media and blogging have on email
response.

Vertical Response found small business who use social
media in combination with email marketing get 28%
higher open rates than those email marketers who neglect
social media.

HubSpot learned that companies who blog get twice as
much traffic from their emails than those who do not blog.

If you're looking to boost your email marketing results -
it's pretty clear adding a blog and setting up a social
media presence can make a big impact.

Now before you run off to set-up your blog and post to
your social media outlets - think with me for a minute.

Why would these 2 factors, blogging and social media
make such a difference in email results?

Good Content is the reason!

Marketers who blog and send out social media updates in
addition to email are getting better response because
they're focused on content. These marketers deliver content
regularly on their blogs. They also share interesting
content and engage their followers and fans with social
media.

All too often email marketers expect email to perform and
drive sales even though they only send out ads and
promotions to their lists.

Constantly bombarding your subscribers with messages
to buy this and buy that simply does not work.

It is far to easy for people to unsubscribe, delete, ignore
or delegate your email to the black hole spam folder.

You work hard to acquire subscribers and if you fail to
engage your readers with interesting content you'll first
lose their attention and then you'll lose them. A typical
promotional email marketer's list expire at a rate of about
25% a year.

Don't be typical!

Instead become an exceptional email marketer by focusing
on delivery outstanding content to your subscribers.

How do you create quality content?

Here's a quick 5 step action plan to get you on your way to
creating content you can share in your emails, on your blog
and with your social media outlets.

1) Select a Topic.

What are you promoting? What interests does your target
market have? What topics do they want to learn more about?

Make a list of these topics and choose those topics you are
most interested in discussing.

Now you have the subject matter for the content of your
blog, emails and social posts.

As an example consider our sites and what we sell?

* SendFree offers email list hosting, email broadcasting
and email autoresponder services.
* DEMC sells advertising in the email newsletter.
* CustomLead sells email leads for your list

As a result of what we sell, the newsletter you're reading
now - DEMC - focuses on email marketing. Based upon
what we sell, you can see, the subject matter is very
applicable.

2) Do your research.

Once you've selected the topic about which you'll create
content, now you need to regularly find information about
that topic.

Google provides two outstanding tools to make your
research fast and easy.

a. Google Alerts

Using Google Alerts you type in keywords for your subject
matter. Google will then email you regularly as new
stories on that subject matter come online.

As an example, I use the keyword - email marketing - and
everyday I'm sent 10 or more stories, articles and press
releases all about email marketing.

b. Google Reader

I've used Google Reader to subscribe via RSS to all my
favorite email marketing blogs. The reader pulls the blog
posts all into one spot for easy scanning.

3) Create Great Content.

While you find I'm old fashioned and write articles for
DEMC, you do not need to be limited to only writing.

Content can be delivered in any of these formats:

* Videos
* Online Webinars (Replays of Webinars)
* Slide Shows
* Photos
* Podcasts
* Infographics
* Games
* Currated Content (When you organize and share links you've found.)
* Subscriber / User generate content.

Be creative and create content that you enjoy.

4) Evaluate your content for value.

How do you know if your content is any good?

Judge it for yourself. Put your content through this
simple 3 question test.

- Is it funny?
- Did it teach you?
- Do you like it?

If you could not answer yes to at least one of the above
your content needs more work.

Make an effort to deliver valuable content and the results
from your email marketing, blog and social media efforts
will improve.

5) Share your content.

Once you've gone through the effort of crafting your
content get it published.

Post your content to your blog. Share your content on
social media and email your list with your latest insight.

Be sure to cross promote your content.

* Include social media sharing links in your email and on
your blog post.

* Encourage your followers and fans to join your email list.

* Inform new email sign-ups that they can stay in touch
with you via Facebook and Twitter.

Email, blogs and social media are tremendous sources of
traffic for marketers. When you use these tools together to
deliver valuable content to your followers you see a major
and measurable improvement in your returns.

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