The Simple Way to Improve Emails with Re-purposed Content

In the world of email marketing, good subject lines may get your emails opened, but it’s the content of the emails that will cause customers to act. But creating all that content takes a lot of time.

Luckily, you can easily re-purpose content for your emails using what you’ve already created for your blog, site and social in order to make them more interesting, more engaging, and more successful in the long run.

Similar to any other aspect of your online marketing efforts, it’s the content of the emails themselves that will cause customers to click through or click delete.

Podcasts

Quality content comes in many shapes, sizes, and formats – not just the written word. Many people find quality content in podcasts. A podcast, in essence, is an audio recording of one or more persons discussing a topic that is distributed over the internet. People can listen to podcasts live, stream them on their computer, or download them to their music player.

Podcasts can be thought of as the next generation of traditional news-radio stations like NPR, which feature interviews and lectures on a variety of topics. You or your employees can easily record a podcast based on content you have already created. You can read the text of a blog post, expand on the ideas found therein, or host a discussion between two or more persons about what they thought of it.

Example of repurposing a Podcast
Your blog post received a lot of hits, comments, and social shares. Record a podcast in which you go over the main points of the original post – taking care to sound natural and not to read it word-for-word – and address some of the comments left by visitors. You can easily produce 5 to 10 minutes of audio content by reproducing the written content in your own words.

When emailing your customers about a new blog post, include a link to the podcast to give them a wider range of content to access on that topic. Converging more media into email and making it a more rich experience.

Videos

Video is now the 6th most popular content marketing tactic. 46% of people say they’d be more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video. You can link to videos in your email messaging, as well as on your social profiles.
Just as you might base a podcast discussion off of a blog post, you can do the same with video. Video enables viewers to see the speakers in action and add a visual element to the presentation.

Example of repurposing a Video
You have a client testimonial posted on your website. You can repurpose the content into a video by interviewing the client about their experience with your business that led them to write the review.

• Regularly (once a month, for example) send your customers a video email with links to your three most popular videos. Describe their impact and reception, and invite customers to view them and comment.

Infographics

Has your business recently blogged about a new research study? Have you released a whitepaper or study of your own? You can take the information in one or more studies and create an infographic. Infographics present mathematical, statistical, or other kinds of data in a visual manner – including graphs, charts, and images –to make it possible for the viewer to comprehend it quickly and easily.

Infographics are easy to understand, contain valuable information, and are highly shareable not only on email, but on social media as well.

Example of repurposing an infographic
Your pet store’s website contains information on choosing the right pet. Create an infographic with an image of each animal available at your store. Order them according to commitment level (dogs highest, fish lowest). Next to each image, list the average cost, time commitment, space needs, and lifespan of each pet type. Voila! Your infographic is ready.

• Send an email that provides customers a link to the original study, blog post, or article, and, “For a quick look at this information, check out our infographic!”

Quick Bites

In order to add fresh content to your email messages, you don’t have to copy and paste the entirety of your blog posts or webpage content into the message. Instead, you can include important textual “sound bites” that can stand alone and provide a valuable point outside of their full context.

Example of repurposing Quick Bites
Use block quotes directly from your blog that link back to your original post. Make a bulleted list of the main points of your original content for the quick email consumption of your readers.
• You can make Fridays the day you send a “quick bites rundown of the week.” Use the quick bites to give customers a small sample of the content you posted over the course of the week. They can view the longer content if they wish, or simply read the quick rundown you’ve provided for them. Quick bites also work great when using (email marketing) quotes.

When repurposing content for your emails, remember to stay organized and keep track of what content you used, how you used it, and when you used it. You don’t need to repost the same five blog articles over and over in order to make sure your emails contain valuable, quality content. If you repurpose each piece of content 5 different ways – be it through a video, podcast, graphic, or quote – you can quickly produce 25 fresh, unique pieces of content that you can include in your emails to add value, interest, and engagement.

This was a guestpost by Megan Webb-Morgan, a business blogger writing on a variety of topics including ecommerce software.