You have a great idea for a blog. You’ve been planning on writing about travel and leisure for years. But, after months of researching and taking notes, you finally start putting down words on paper and — BAM — you discover that you have a knack for writing! Blogging quickly becomes a passion, and you find yourself wanting to write about everything from fashion to food to lifestyle. You even decide to try your hand at some fiction, and BOOM — you have a book that makes the top of the bestseller lists!
This is pretty incredible, right? All because you decided to finally dive into email marketing.
If you’re interested in becoming an effective email marketer, then you need to consider all the aspects that go into creating engaging content that will bring readers back for more. Thanks to the power of automation and a little bit of creativity, you can set yourself up with a digital marketing workflow that will make you an incredibly productive email marketer. Let’s get into it.
Set Up Your Campaign
When you set up your campaign on AWeber, you have the option of selecting either [WordPress](https://wordpress.com) or [Shopify](https://www.shopify.com/) as your publishing platform. Let’s use WordPress for this example, but you can use any of the major platforms — Apple, Google, or Microsoft — to host your blog. (FYI, Shopify offers a free version that you can use to try out their platform without any restrictions. If you like what you see, you can always upgrade later on.)
Once you’ve chosen your platform, it’s time to pick a domain name and get to work setting up your blog. As you might imagine, you have plenty of options here. In addition to the.com and.org TLDs, you can use.biz,.info, and.net extensions.
Join The Conversation
No, we don’t mean the convo about the newest Game of Thrones episode or anything… We mean the [conversational marketing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversational_marketing) kind of conversation consumers have with brands or businesses. (For the record, GoT was amazing this week.)
Conversational marketing is an important element to consider if you want to make your emails successful. Thanks to the many different tools available to marketers today, including [Hootsuite](https://hootsuite.com/), [Buffer](https://buffer.com/), [Keeblet](https://keeblet.com/), and [Bluejeans](https://bluejeans.com/), it’s easy enough to find and engage with your audience via social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram).
However, you can’t just broadcast your product or service to a massive audience and expect them to come back time and time again. This is where your [email list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_marketing) comes in handy. With your email list, you can be more selective about who you reach out to and what you say in your email. You can also use specific [tags](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagging) to target your email audience based on what they are interested in.
Now, it’s important to note here that not all emails are created equal. Some emails are more effective than others, depending on the industry and the product or service being promoted. For example, when I’m promoting an affiliate marketplace for fashion brands (e.g., Nordstrom and Sephora), I usually end up using a combination of:
- An email list,
- Social media,
- And, if necessary,
- Offline marketing (e.g., billboards, posters, and magazine covers)
Why? It’s simple — my audience is already there, so I don’t need to reach out to them repeatedly with my brand. I know they’ll come back for more when new content is released or when I send out special offers or discounts.
Therefore, it’s important to consider what type of content you’ll be creating and using to drive engagement. You don’t want to send out generic emails filled with links to your social media accounts. That’s a sure way to lose subscribers. Instead, you want to send out emails with helpful tips or information your audience would find valuable. Additionally, it’s important to consider the size of your email list. If you have more than 500 subscribers, you can use [AWeber](https://www.aawber.com/)’s [Powerful Engagement](https://www.aawber.com/pricing/) tool to score a free custom email template.
Create Thumbnail Outlines And Hooks
You don’t need to have a perfect creative writing background to be able to write an engaging email. There are plenty of [easy-to-use tools](https://wordpress.com/tools/) out there that can help you transform words into a creative, compelling email pitch. (AWeber is one of them.)
However, even if you don’t have a background in writing, you can still create exceptional emails with a little bit of imagination and a lot of copyediting. (You know what they say — if it’s not safe to take a picture of, it’s not safe to leave it out! I mean, who knows what might happen between now and then?)
When you’re editing your content, you want to make sure that you’re not missing out on any important details. When you create a [thumbnail outline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline#Outlining_a_text_to_speeches) for your email, you want to consider everything from the [opening sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook#Hook_phrases) to the [closing
. (You can also use these outlines to create a [to-do list](https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=15699) for yourself. If you find it helpful, you can even refer back to your outline whenever you need to – as long as you have original, unmarked text, you can find the section you need and start working.
Choose The Right Content For The Outline
Once you have your content in a polished state, it’s time to start considering the type of content you’ll be using for the email. Thanks to the power of the internet and social media, your audience is now located all around the world. This means you have access to a global audience that you can reach with your content. (Unless of course, you’re living in a restricted-access country.)
As I mentioned above, not all emails are created equal, and this sentiment applies specifically to content you’ll be creating for use in email marketing. In this case, you want to make sure that your content is of the highest quality.
Ideally, you’ll want to use a combination of [online tools](https://jeffwaller.com/5-google-analytics-tools-every-marketing-marketer-should-know/) and [offline tools](https://marketingcharts.com/digital-marketing-tips/) to gather data and see what content is working and which is not. With this data, you can then refine your writing strategy and choose the right content for your email.
Create The Email
Once you’ve collected all your necessary info from the previous step and have everything laid out in a polished email pitch, it’s time to create the email. Thanks to the above-mentioned tools, along with [Microsoft Word](https://word.microsoft.com/), you can create an engaging, compelling message that will keep your subscribers coming back for more.
Of course, this is just a general guide. Depending on your product or service and the type of content you’re using, you might need to adjust this strategy a bit. (If you don’t have a background in writing, you might need to take some time to study the craft and become more familiar with the tools available to you.) However, the above should get you started.