Spend too much time in the echo chamber that is social media, and you’d think email marketing is dying – nipped in the bud by sexier, more “realtime” media.
Don’t believe it.
Even in the grips of the recession, email marketing is enjoying a renaissance. And yes, “Twitter gets the press, email gets the order” is a phrase uttered by plenty of email marketers.
I’d suggest it’s true.
The ROI of email remains higher than other media channels – a reality every marketer ignores at their own peril.
And small businesses – who typically must retain customers at a higher rate than their larger competitors – find email programs indispensable.
After all, email programs still represent the single best way to keep in touch with most customers – who aren’t going to visit a blog or site every day.
I can see a day when the combined might of RSS and social media channels (like Twitter) will dent or damage email, but email remains a staple media channel among my students and client businesses.
Why? And how do I get less-than-technically-savvy clients to embrace email?
More importantly, how can you add value to your copywriting services – providing a complete “content cycle” for you small biz clients?
Enter WordPress
I know. One minute I’m talking about email, the next I’m suggesting blog software as a solution.
It makes perfect sense. Really.
Simply put, email marketing integrates beautifully with a blog – to the point that several of my non-blogging clients have installed a WordPress CMS.
Why? Because it’s a powerful, email-friendly publishing platform.
Publishing content remains a huge barrier to small businesses, who often rely on static Web sites – and sometimes-expensive, often-hard-to-reach Webmasters to update those sites.
Publishing via the simple WordPress editor is something most small business users can grasp – a process that is far faster, easier, and cheaper than paying a Webmaster.
The key is this: Each blog post offers its own unique URL, so each article can serve as its own landing page.
That’s useful.
Today’s business-oriented emails work best when they tease several articles, giving the reader a choice of content and allowing them to jump when they wish.
By contrast, publishing complete articles in a newsletter is a bad idea; if the first story isn’t of interest to the recipient, they may not make it all the way through to the second.
Using a WordPress CMS as an article bank makes perfect sense – and it also helps my clients derive an SEO benefit from their newsletter content (which doesn’t happen when you simply send a newsletter).
A WordPress CMS also easily integrates other social media channels (like Twitter).
That’s important too.
One of my key tenants of online marketing for small businesses is this: Leveraging the same (or similar) content across multiple channels makes perfect sense for those who have better things to do than sit and “generate content” all day long.
(And yes, most small businesspeople have better things to do.)
A Caveat
If a small business installs WordPress solely for the purpose of intermittently publishing articles, then don’t call the installation a blog.
Instead, give it a name that isn’t weighted down by expectations of daily posts. It’s not a blog, it’s a “builder’s journal.” Or a “What’s New” page. Or a “Fresh Ideas” page.
In other words, don’t create expectations your client’s not going to meet.
Next week, I’ll offer up another of my dirty little email marketing secrets for small business – resources that make it possible for less-savvy, time-constrained small businesses to succeed with email marketing.
Keep writing (and now, consulting), Tom Chandler.
The Online Marketing Map (or, Why Teaching is Just Learning in Disguise)
Teaching – done right – is really just learning in disguise. And what you learn when you teach is often what you already knew, though perhaps not as deeply as you should have.
I recently finished teaching the last local session of my Online Marketing Boot Camp. Aimed directly at small businesses, it was a reminder there’s life outside the twitter/facebook/blog echo chamber occupied by most freelance marketers.
My students were little interested in spending an hour a day generating “content,” and the challenge was to chart a path through the online marketing thicket that was appropriate (and realistic) for my micro-entrepreneurs.
Because my students needed more than an overview of all the possibilities, we found ourselves constructing an Online Marketing Map – a document outlining each businesses’ online marketing activities and the channels they’d use.
It’s hardly revolutionary. But it is grounding, especially in an era where a marketer has literally hundreds of options.
More importantly, I’ve discovered small businesspeople market best when marketing becomes a process – same as accounting or ordering supplies.
Too often – especially when overworked entrepreneurs are involved – marketing is the last job to get done, and yes, that realization also comes from grim personal experience.
Outlines? Or Graphics?
People learn differently, and in fact, that’s the source of my biggest struggle as a teacher. I’m an experiential learner, which is to say I dive into things and learn them by doing.
It’s not always the most effective technique (sometimes reading the directions actually works), and worse, my first response to students who want simple, basic, step-by-step directions is to just tell them to dive in and do it. What could be easier?
Turns out, a lot of things.
A sample graphic marketing map.
These differences played out even across the Online Marketing Map. I’m all about outlines, largely because I’m a writer (so I’m used to the format), and perhaps indecisive (I can change them easily). You can also easily add detail to an outline (just indent), and I like detail.
Some students did a lot better with graphic representations, so I pondered that for a while before constructing one in OpenOffice’s Drawing module (which was damned easy).
It lacked a certain level of detail, but the students were happier (especially the artists), and who am I to argue with success?
I liked the Online Marketing Map idea because I’m involved in one of my periodic reviews of my own marketing, both professionally and on my fly fishing blog, which I’ve decided needs to pay its own way.
And it’s never a bad idea to break out of your rut, asking yourself questions like:
These are all good questions for freelance writers, especially when the economy is tough, and the number of media choices multiplies daily.
In the case of my trying-to-become-a-sustainable-media-property fly fishing blog, the Online Marketing Map exercise proved particularly useful, especially since advertisers are bound to ask them too.
I’m not done yet, but I’m already making decisions. Is it time you built an Online Marketing Map?