30 Email Marketing Influencers to Follow
There are some really great people on this list. Go pick a few to stalk on social media.
How Much Content Should You Share Before A Prospect Buys?
Jason McBride says don’t hold anything back. In this article he makes the case for content marketing as a way for potential bad-fit buyers to disqualify themselves (and for ideal customers to move deeper into the buyer’s journey).
Do Email Subscription Pop-Ups work?
People tend to have some really strong opinions about pop-ups, but there’s a reason they exist. In this article, Really Good Emails Co-Founder Mike Nelson unpacks the results of some pop-up testing their team conducted. This is a great read if you’re hoping your pop-ups help people feel nudged instead of nagged.
Also, because I feel like the more email experts we engage with the more we hear that list size is less important than engagement:
“... we at RGE don’t really care about list size. We often say: ‘Build relationships. Not lists.’ We are okay with people leaving our lists because we’d rather talk to the people who want to hear from us than try to get the attention of those who could hear from us. The importance of list size is based on vanity metrics and billables. Most ESPs and bosses put an emphasis on how many people are on your list, not who is on your list. If anything, this little test reinforced this position that your most engaged readers are the ones you should be serving.”
Ready to Improve Your LinkedIn Marketing Game?
Hint: Stopping by the platform to drop a link or two isn’t going to have much reach or help you network. These tips will get you started.
How Interviews can Become Your Marketing Super Power
A good interview can go a really long way in content marketing.
“Your primary purpose when conducting an interview is to gather interesting, engaging, surprising or humorous content which will attract the attention of your online customer audience.”
In this article, you’ll learn six ways to hone your interview skills.
How to be More Without Doing More
Content Marketing Institute General Manager Stephanie Stahl cites experts from Content Marketing World to provide snippets of content marketing advice. The general consensus is that we should focus on creating powerful, purposeful, and memorable messaging. Check out their expert inspiration.
Image: Content Marketing Institute
Why Content Marketers Should Act Like Netflix Writers
I’m guessing Mae Rice and Ahmad Daher both tuned in for Carlijn Postma’s session, Binge Marketing: A Practical Guide to Building Your Brand with Serial Content, at Content Marketing World because they each posted articles encouraging Carlijn’s strategies last week.
(See either Can Content Marketing Hook People The Way Netflix Does? by Mae or Your Content Marketing Should Look More Like Netflix, Not Webster’s by Ahmad.)
Both inspired today’s Opt In Weekly Prologue.
Mae’s take nails it with this statement:
“Once you’re into a show, it can keep you up at night.
Marketing campaigns, on the other hand, don’t really keep anyone up at night. Besides marketers.”
Then she clearly explains how content marketing can follow a more dramatic narrative structure so that prospects and customers never run out of relevant content. In other words, use the allure of the unfinished story.
Click through for some actionable steps to start framing your content in this way, and to bring those lessons learned into your email newsletter.
🎥 How the Hell Do You Get (and Keep) Email Subscribers
In this video, Jason Rodriguez of Litmus presents a variety of ways to get email subscribers.
My favorites?
“Your subscribers are your team. Make them feel like it.”
“Write something worth reading.”
Read the blog transcript here.
Related: Check out How I Got 100,000 Visitors and 5,000 Email Subscribers in 6 Weeks.
Narrative Design > Product Positioning
Are you a Mad Men fan?
One of the most memorable lines of that show (for me) was when Don Draper said “If you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation.”
Those Madison Avenue theories still ring true today.
Hubspot’s Marcus Andrews explains why narrative framework is so important for companies and how the most successful stories depict a new reality in which their product is the only solution.
In other words, don’t be another option in a crowded category. Be the only product that solves the problem you’ve helped to frame.
It’s different than product positioning.
It’s creating a chance for your prospective customers to advance in the next reality.
It’s CHANGING THE CONVERSATION.
Don’t feel like reading? 🎙️ Here’s a podcast interview of Marcus discussing the same topic.
If You’re Worried About List Size, You’re Worried About the Wrong Thing
I get it, marketers. You’re measured on number of leads. So you do the things that worked 5-10 years ago to get them: gated ebooks, pdfs, and webinars. You craft some teaser copy that promises quality content, a slew of people download it, and you celebrate until...
...Cue the sales team: “These leads aren’t any good. We can’t close them.”
In An Unconventional Approach to Email List Building, Andre Chaperon of Tiny Little Businesses argues that using the status quo approach (above) is bound to yield lackluster results. He explains that switching from bribery (give me your email and I’ll give you a solution to your problem) to value (here’s how to solve your problem, sign up for my newsletter if you want more like this) will ensure that only quality prospects opt in.
“You see, I prefer email lists (an audience, or pocket of people) that are ultra-targeted and hyper-responsive (where I can really matter to some, as opposed to trying to matter to everyone)...”
“Email lists that have been *built through attraction instead of bribery,** where I have earned prospects’ trust and attention.”*
When the value exchange is different, you’ll begin to attract only the people you want to do business with, he writes, and stop wasting the sales team’s time chasing down bad fit prospects.
Andre’s article is worth reading all the way through and bookmarking. He gives clear examples and shows how adding in steps to filter prospects (it reverses the traditional lead capture process) can make a small, hyper-target email list perform better than a mega list of people who don’t want what you’re selling.
It’s time to start focusing on the value of a small, engaged list. And, of course, convince your boss that measuring lead quality is more important than quantity.
Image: TinyLittleBusinesses.com
