5 Ways to Influence Your Email Subscribers With Relevant Content

How to influence email subscribers with relevant content

An annoying email marketing campaign will only generate opt-outs and message deletions. In contrast, an effective email campaign presents high-quality content that can ultimately improve your engagement rate and boost sales. Consider the following five best practices for engaging subscribers with relevant content.

1. Invest in emotion-based customer engagement.

Creating an emotional connection with your email subscribers goes beyond promotional messaging — it’s about building relationships that foster long-term loyalty and advocacy. When subscribers feel connected to your brand, they’re more likely to open your emails, engage with your content and ultimately make purchasing decisions based on trust rather than price alone.

• Tell your brand’s story. Zac Hunter, public relations manager at Vladimir Jones agency, emphasized that emotions are critical to brand awareness, which is the foundation of customer engagement. “The goal is to build an emotional connection with your audience, making your brand feel familiar and trustworthy,” Hunter said. Storytelling can be central to emotionally appealing email marketing content. “For brand awareness, focus on storytelling that aligns with your brand’s values and mission,” Hunter advised. “This might be educational content, behind-the-scenes insights or customer success stories.”
• Share values-based content. Tim Peters, CMO of Enghouse Systems, advised sharing social impact initiatives and thought leadership pieces that highlight your brand’s mission to connect with subscribers. “Research by Nielsen shows that 75 percent of consumers say they are more likely to trust a brand when it shares personalized content that aligns with their values,” Peters shared.
• Personalize email messages. Email personalization can increase emotion-based customer engagement. It can also boost the likelihood of subscribers opening and reading your messages and clicking on embedded links. Personalized messages go beyond adding a subscriber’s name to the subject line. They can include relevant offers related to past purchases and helpful suggestions about complementary items or services.

Think strategically when outlining marketing strategies to emotionally connect with customers in your email content. For example, ask yourself the following questions:

• What’s important to each customer?
• How do you want them to engage with each piece of content you send them?
• How can you give them the value that makes them want to engage further with your brand?

By analyzing how subscribers engage with various marketing messages, you can personalize their journey through the sales funnel and deepen emotional connections.

2. Segment your email lists to tailor content to your subscribers.

Market segmentation is one of the best tactics for ensuring relevant content is sent to subscribers. Email list segmentation involves grouping subscribers by criteria like geography, age, gender, transactional history and customer journey status. It can help you simplify and segment multiple lists. It can also tailor content based on specific conditions and customer personas.

Consider the following best practices for list segmentation that can help you deliver relevant content to specific subscribers.

• Create targeted subscriber list segments. Say your company wants to promote a cosmetics sale with an email marketing campaign. You can use list segmentation to focus on recent active buyers. If your sale includes anti-aging skin cream, you can also create a list segment of active customers over 30. To get even more granular, direct a campaign for a moisturizing anti-aging cream for frequent buyers over 30 who live in northern states during the winter. In each of these cases, you’re serving highly relevant content to subscribers.
• Nurture prospects with educational content. If you want to encourage longtime subscribers to become qualified leads, Peters recommended sending educational content that solves customer pain points. “Offering subscribers exclusive access to white papers, webinars or e-books that address specific industry challenges can position your brand as an authority while nudging prospects further down the funnel,” Peters explained. “This content must be tailored — generic messages will get ignored.”
• Create campaigns to encourage purchasing. Hunter advised focusing on conversion-driven content when the goal is to encourage purchasing. “For sales, it’s all about conversion-driven content,” Hunter noted. “Think personalized offers, product recommendations and limited-time discounts.” This content approach doesn’t mean going for a hard sell. “Tailor your message to address your subscribers’ needs and gently push them toward making that purchase,” Hunter explained. “Highlight the benefits in a way that feels relevant and timely, making it easy for them to say yes.”
• Leverage interactive content for segments close to purchasing. Sterling Beck, vice president of demand generation for Customer.io, said dynamic content is an excellent strategy for list segments close to purchasing. “Interactive and dynamic content, such as interactive demos, surveys and ROI calculators, can greatly enhance user engagement by allowing visitors to visualize the benefits and impact of your product in a personalized manner,” Beck said. “This type of content is particularly effective for converting leads into sales, as it offers immediate, relevant insights that help potential customers make informed purchasing decisions.”

The best email marketing services make list segmentation seamless and effortless. Look for platforms that offer AI-powered capabilities, which can automatically identify and create segments based on patterns in subscriber behavior that humans might miss.

4. Consider timing to ensure subscribers engage with your content.

You may be sending thoughtful, relevant content. However, if it isn’t reaching your subscribers at the right time, your efforts may be in vain. This is particularly crucial when it comes to following up with leads. For example, experts advise following up with inbound online leads within 10 minutes. You should also follow up quickly via email after a prospect engages in relevant on-site searches.

Time of day is also a critical parameter in email campaign engagement rates. Consider geolocation when segmenting your list to ensure you deliver emails when the recipient is most likely to see them. Some email marketing platforms allow you to be more specific and send emails based on individual recipients’ past engagement metrics.

5. Use reporting and analytics to improve and adjust your subscriber content.

Email marketing software streamlines the process of tracking email analytics and determining how subscribers interact with content and data. Understanding campaign performance helps you develop new strategies and create more centralized audience targeting and relevant content.

Email marketing platform analytics and tools like Google Analytics help marketers make critical decisions about stagnant promotions and campaigns. Users aren’t responding to your emails as they have in the past? Then collecting data can help you figure out why. Now you can adjust your content and digital marketing strategy and improve your email marketing campaigns.

Personalized, relevant content engages your target audience

If you’re trying to capitalize on your content, there is no better way to reach your audience and increase brand awareness than by delivering personalized, relevant content to their inbox. Companies pay millions of dollars annually to reach their target consumers and capture their attention. Thankfully, it’s easy to use email marketing to grow your business with the help of exceptional marketing software, personalization techniques and a thoughtful content strategy.

Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.