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Tag: email

  • Three ways to auto-promote your blog posts via email

    Write-Emails-Your-Users-Would-Actually-Read

    There are many ways to share the content that you’ve created on your blog; however, the most reliable method of promoting your blog to your intended audience is through email. Most people check their social networks regularly, but everyone reads – or at least checks – their email at least several times each day.

    There are three very simple methods of sharing each blog post you create via email, and you don’t ever have to worry about spamming anyone because all three methods are opt-in. The tools to share your blog posts via email are WordPress, Feedburner, and Mailchimp, all probably already familiar names.

    WordPress

    Using JetPack by AutoMattic (the people who operate WordPress), it’s very simple to activate the “Subscriptions” functionality of Jetpack, and then let WordPress.com handle all the rest. You’ll add a widget to your WordPress blog, and the software does the rest. Every time you post, everyone who has opted in to receive your blog via email will get a nicely formatted email containing the full text to your blog and a link to read the blog on your site.

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    To implement Jetpack Subscriptions, follow the following steps.

    1. Install the Jetpack plugin.
    2. Go to “Settings” under the Jetpack menu.
    3. Scroll near the bottom and find “Subscriptions” and activate the service.
    4. Click “Configure,” which will take you to a new page to configure all email options for WordPress. At the bottom of this configuration page are two check boxes to allow you to choose whether Your visitors follow your blog, or your blog’s comments, or both. We recommend choosing the blog only.
    5. Activate the Subscriptions widget, by going to Appearance → Widgets.
    6. Drag the widget labeled “Blog Subscriptions (Jetpack)” into one of your sidebars.

    That’s it, and it really is that simple.

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    Feedburner

    Feedburner is a service from Google that creates an RSS feed for any web site. When you create a Feedburner RSS feed, you have a lot of other options, but one of the most basic is to allow people to subscribe to your blog via email.

    Follow these steps to create your Feedburner RSS feed and offer email subscriptions through Feedburner.

    1. Login to http://feedburner.google.com/ with your Google account. If you don’t have a Google account, you’ll need to create one.
    2. Just below the words “Burn a feed right this instant. Type your blog or feed address here:” enter your blog’s url, e.g., kevinsandlin.com, and click “next.”
    3. If Feedburner finds more than one valid feed on your blog (there may be a separate feed for comments), choose the RSS feed for posts.
    4. Give the feed a title, something simple like “My blog feed” or the name of your blog.blogpost3
    5. Click next and you’ll have your RSS feed URL, which will look something like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/kevinsandlin.
    6. At the bottom of that page, click on “Skip directly to feed management.”
    7. Click on the “Publicize” tab at the top of the page.
    8. Scroll down to Email Subscriptions and click on that link.
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    9. Click “Activate” at the bottom of that screen.
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    1. Then you’ll see this success message at the top of the page:
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    2. Copy and paste the snippet of code on the resulting page into a widget on your blog, and anyone can now opt-in to get an email every time you post to your blog.
    Mailchimp

    Mailchimp offers simple forms and code for widgets to add to any blog. Mailchimp’s documentation and instructions are simple, thorough, and very friendly to the new user. The concept is the same as using the WordPress plugin or Feedburner:

    1. Setup an email list at Mailchimp.com.
    2. Configure the widget code.
    3. Copy/paste the widget code into a widget on your blog.

    The complete instructions from start to finish for using Mailchimp to create an email subscription service for your blog are on Mailchimp’s website tutorial called “Mailchimp for Bloggers.”

    Each of these service options is very simple to setup, and each is popular and reliable, so it’s a personal choice. The best part about enabling your readers to subscribe to your blog posts via email is that you are also creating a very powerful marketing tool: an opt-in email list.

  • How To Start Your Email Newsletter

    Email-Marketing-Optimization

    There are many parts to a content marketing strategy. One of the most important parts is an email newsletter. Despite many cries to the contrary, email is not dead as a marketing tool. In fact, email remains the most effective digital marketing tool, in spite of the meteoric rise of the most popular social media platforms. Your customers may or may not check their social media accounts during the day, but business email remains the go-to choice for communication.

    Knowing and understanding that fact, you may be considering producing a regular email newsletter for your customers, users, sales channel, or other audience segments. Before you get anywhere, you must remember that an email newsletter is an integral part of your content marketing strategy, so the goals of the newsletter should support the goals of the content marketing strategy.

    Here is a straightforward 8-point plan to beginning your email newsletter.

    1. Choose an email service provider (ESP).

    Please, do not try to operate an email newsletter with GMail. There are hundreds of email service providers to choose from. However, since you are just starting off, my advice is to find one that has a freemium option, meaning you don’t pay for a certain limited number of subscribers. Mailchimp is one such provider: emailing even daily to up to 2,000 subscribers is free. I use Mailchimp to manage all aspects of the Atlanta Tech Blogs daily digest email.

    2. Ask the hard questions before you ever begin to create your first newsletter.
    • who is your target audience?
    • what content will you share in the newsletter?
    • where will you promote your newsletter?
    • when will you send each issue out?
    • why are you creating a newsletter (what are your goals)?
    3. Gather content.

    Gather content from all of your available sources— including your blog, social media channels, company news, customer and employee testimonials, video training, customer support, and product/service documentation. Remember, you’re creating a vehicle to share content, so you need to make sure you have a lot of content to tap into for each newsletter issue.

    4. Prepare & Plan your content strategy.

    For this piece, I mean to put it on paper with a plan for each of the following:

    • frequency
    • format (template)
    • types of content
    • amount of content
    • calls to action
    • opt-in tactics
    5. Promote the newsletter.

    Promote your newsletter on every page of your website, email signatures, social media channels, your blog, and every other digital marketing channel you employ. Most of all, to promote your newsletter, offer something of value to your would-be subscribers.

    6. Use best practices for maintaining your email subscriber list:
    • double opt-in – when a subscriber enters their email address, they should receive an email confirmation that they must click on to confirm that they did opt-in to subscribe.
    • easy opt out – make it very simple if someone no longer wants to subscribe to your newsletter. Don’t take it personally, just let them out.
    • “you’re receiving this email because” – include the simple reminder in the footer of your email newsletter template that reminds the subscriber why they’re receiving the email.
    • datavalidation offers a free service to check your email list against spam reports.
    • offer an alternate contact method such as a phone number or your social media account
    • respond to email inquiries from your newsletter
    7. Measure performance against your goals.

    All ESPs offer measurement and analytics tools, so you can easily track your most common metrics:

    • Open & read
    • Click rate
    • Subscriber growth
    • Unsubscribes
    • Spam reports
    8. Iterate what’s working or not working.

    Just like you should do with your blog or any other aspect of your content marketing strategy, you should constantly measure the results of your email newsletter against your goals, and change what’s not working. 

    If you walk through these eight steps in the creation of your email newsletter, you’ll be starting off on the right foot. Content is king, and email is still the killer app of content marketing.

    Kevin is a serial entrepreneur and veteran of 7 tech startups. He runs Atlanta Tech Blogs, Pitch Practice, mentors startups and entrepreneurs at ATDC, and teaches Digital Marketing courses at GA.