{"id":5783,"date":"2016-04-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/blog\/how-to-promote-your-content\/"},"modified":"2023-07-12T18:02:59","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T22:02:59","slug":"how-to-promote-your-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/blog\/how-to-promote-your-content","title":{"rendered":"How to Successfully Promote Your Content Through Email featuring Joe Pulizzi"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most brands, a person\u2019s email address is as good as any currency. Not just because it\u2019s how they communicate with and, advertise, promote, sell, and even deliver their products to customers, but more importantly, because it signals the subscriber’s willingness to listen.<\/p>\n

Yet for many brands, the email creation process is an afterthought. In general, marketers focus way too much on acquisition and not enough on retention. They optimize for search engines to get found, social media for clicks, and on-page elements to generate conversions.<\/p>\n

But after the conversion, optimization tends to fall off both in strategy and<\/em> execution when it comes to email delivery. This lack of focus tends to lead to the \u201cspray and pray\u201d method of email marketing, and lame personalization tactics like \u201cDear [first_name]<\/a>\u201d in an attempt to make up for it.<\/p>\n

Joe Pulizzi and his team at Content Marketing Institute<\/a> have a much different approach.<\/p>\n

Pulizzi, founder at CMI, is an author, speaker, and evangelist on all things content marketing. His latest book, Content Inc.<\/a><\/em>, details how entrepreneurs are leveraging content to build massive audiences, even before they have anything to sell.<\/p>\n

His views on developing a content marketing mission statement not only apply to the content we produce on blogs and other publications, but also in the content we send via email, too.<\/p>\n

That was the focus of our conversation for the latest installment of The Email Copywriting Series.<\/p>\n

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Q: The digital marketing landscape is centered around email. Marketers base their interactions around collecting emails for leads and customers, so how do marketers create a mission that ties everything together?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Email is the most important channel, because it\u2019s the one we have the most control over.<\/p>\n

What we’ve got to remember is that we\u2019re hopefully talking to one specific audience. And if we\u2019re to look at what the content marketing mission is, and where we start\u2014why do we even look at that?<\/p>\n

Well, look at the greatest media and publishing launches of all time, or any media company that launches a product\u2014it always starts with an editorial mission to keep them on track and use that as a litmus test to measure any content created around the overall mission statement.<\/p>\n

The content marketing mission statement is made up of three things:<\/p>\n

Who is the particular audience?<\/strong><\/em> You want to be very specific with that one<\/em> particular audience. Let\u2019s say you\u2019re targeting engineers\u2014you\u2019ve got to make sure you\u2019re not sending your email to plant managers, chief financial officers, etc.\u2014you\u2019re just talking to engineers, and hopefully even more specific than that.<\/p>\n

What are you going to deliver?<\/strong><\/em> Is it simple tips? Something hyper-specific that\u2019s going to help them with their job in some way? Is it more complex answers? Is it audio content? Visual? Textual?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the outcome?<\/strong><\/em> This is the most important. Nobody looks at their editorial calendar when their sending emails and adds \u201coutcome.\u201d And I think this is the most important thing. Let\u2019s say you\u2019re looking at your editorial calendar, you\u2019ve got:<\/p>\n