Say "email marketing," and many people think of coupons, specials and - let's be honest - spam sent to their inbox. Email marketing for blogs isn't as common, but it does exist. And, when done right, it can be an extremely effective way to drive traffic to your blog. However, email marketing might not be for every blog. Explore the pros and cons below.
The Pros
- Reach a different audience. Social media is a great way to share and promote your content, but not everyone uses Twitter and Facebook to keep up with blogs. A newsletter-style email that contains your latest posts can help you reach a different type of audience, and allows you to repurpose your content with a different layout and delivery. Readers will click through to your blog and stick around to read more.
- Keep readers updated. Bloggers don't often have products or services to promote; rather, you probably have a dedicated readership, and these readers are the ones subscribing to your emails. You've already got their interest - now you just want them coming back for more. This allows you to keep your emails more informative, instead of trying to push something on them.
- Promote events, giveaways or products. But what if you do have something to promote? With emails, you can alert your readers of events such as workshops or readings, giveaways on the blog, and more. This is especially effective if you write a company blog. If your company manufactures flame retardant clothing, email your blog readers current sales on FR garments. If you blog for custom plastic molding companies, send emails that educate on and promote any new technology.
- Great for bloggers with big sites. If you maintain a blog with multiple posts per day in various categories, email marketing can help your readers keep up with the content. Email a collection of the week's most popular posts, comments and conversations from the blog for ongoing engagement. By segmenting emails by interest, you can let readers select exactly what kinds of updates they get. For example, readers of a home design blog could get emails about only remodels or only product reviews.
The Cons
- Know your audience. In order to determine if your emails are actually reaching a different audience, you have to know your audience. This isn't necessarily a con, but if you don't understand who you're targeting, you could potentially waste a lot of time and money on an email marketing campaign.
- All that heavy lifting. An effective email takes work. You'll need a strong design and bold, appealing graphics and images. You'll need to determine what content to send out, and repurpose it to match the style and layout of the email. You'll need to compile and manage your readers' email addresses, which includes constantly updating, adding and removing subscribers. You'll need to track email data to measure its success. Do you have time and resources for this kind of work?
- Email marketing is spam. People like to keep their inboxes free of junk. So even if your emails aren't junk, many of your readers may not be likely to sign up, or might delete without even reading them.
- Not so great for bloggers with small sites. If you maintain a small blog with just a few posts per week, it may not make sense to send out a weekly digest or newsletter - your readers have already seen all of your recent posts. Just with any marketing campaign, be sure you have a clear objective and strategy in place before going forward.
Email Marketing Tips
Here are some tips to keep in mind if you do decide to take the plunge into email marketing for your blog:
- Strong subject line. Your email subject line is what draws readers in and gets them to open the email in the first place. Make your subject interesting and exciting, yet brief and to-the-point. Let your readers know exactly what they're opening.
- Attention-grabbing headlines. Your readers probably aren't going to read all of the content in your email. They're scanning the text to find something interesting enough to click through to your blog. Make sure your headlines catch their eye.
- Graphics and images. With the rise of Pinterest, your blog's images are more important than ever. Share your best images and graphics in your emails, giving your readers a reason to click through, read the post and even share the content.
- Include an unsubscribe option. Make sure you let your readers jump ship at any point. You don't want people on your email list who aren't interested.
Ultimately, an email marketing campaign should result in action from the reader, whether it is signing up for an event or downloading a PDF. For bloggers, this action is usually simple: a click back to the blog itself.
What are your thoughts on email marketing for bloggers?