It’s 2024…and email marketing efforts continue to evolve in an effort to maintain relevancy and value amidst a challenging and fast-evolving landscape.
We wanted to know how marketers truly viewed the topic of emailing blog posts in the modern marketing era so we spent over a month interviewing more than 20 marketing experts to find out what they thought about the importance of leveraging your blog post content as part of your email marketing strategy.
So let’s dig in.
From engagement to nurturing opportunities, email marketing campaigns are highly effective for reaching your audience. Here are a few reasons why marketers still recommend emailing your blog posts in 2024:
Never underestimate the value of a convenient, blog-focused email marketing campaign that sends out your new blog posts to subscribers.
With nearly a decade of experience in email marketing, Maria Myre, Head of Marketing at FeedOtter, says,
“If you’re already creating great, un-gated content on your blog, a simple opt-in form that appears on every blog page can give you an incredible boost in qualified lead numbers. Unlike lead magnets, free blog article opt-ins are an opportunity to enhance the value of your content in a convenient manner for your audience.”
Emailing blog posts is a guaranteed way to increase traffic to your blog. Using email marketing analytics can help track and increase website traffic. Ideally, those leads you attract also click around your site for more information about your brand, so emailing blog posts should increase traffic to your entire site, not just your blog.
Dorde Milivevic of Stable WP gets around 1,500 views of his brand’s blog every time he emails out a new post. He uses his blog to nurture leads, keep subscribers informed, and engage with current clients. Dorde says that emailing these posts consistently helps him hit goals in every stage of the sales funnel.
Jay Baer from Convince and Convert gets a few thousand visitors to his blog per week, and he values emailing blog posts because “it’s a big part of our ongoing relationship building.” Insights from an email marketing blog can help maintain relationships with subscribers by providing valuable tips and resources.
Doug Morneau shared his advice on why his strategy for emailing blog posts is so successful.
“Figure out where your audience is, what their pain points are, and then develop a content strategy that will allow you to be a welcome visitor into their inbox every week. Don’t just send buy my stuff emails, that adds no value to your subscribers.”
Arguably, lead nurturing is the biggest benefit of emailing blog posts. Using an email marketing platform can help nurture leads effectively by automating sequences and managing responses. Distributing this content establishes thought leadership, and gives your brand an excuse to email these leads and stay familiar with them.
Alexander Onaindia of Distinction Agency says, “Our blog posts are intended to nurture leads by showcasing our team’s knowledge of various areas of marketing.”
Tamas Torok from Coding Sans uses blog posts as an effective way to nurture leads and says,
“After someone signs up for our newsletter we send our new subscriber a series of emails containing our best blog posts and gated guides. We segment subscribers based on their biggest challenges (they answer this question when subscribing) so our emails are well-targeted and relevant.”
Tabitha Oneill from BNC Systems explains how valuable emailing blog posts can be when it comes to getting their brand in front of the right leads at the right time.
“Blog and email are two very low-cost tools we use to bring in new deals. Sometimes they help with staying in contact with leads that have gone cold. Sometimes they reach people who previously refused to answer our phone calls. By demonstrating our knowledge, expertise, and value, we turn really cold leads into warm leads.”
Gregory Bullock from TheraSpecs relies on emailing blog posts for a number of reasons, saying,
“I would highly recommend it to others who have or seek to develop a catalog of great content. Using an email marketing platform can help create meaningful interactions with subscribers. We have increased quality traffic to the TheraSpecs website, developed meaningful interactions with our subscribers, turned our top customers into our biggest fans and content promoters, and even driven additional bottom-line revenue.”
Marketing strategist Alexa Kurtz from Webtek capitalizes on her blog emails by featuring other offers.
“While the blog is the shining star of the email blasts, we also call in some ‘supporting roles’. For example, when we send an email promoting the blog, the article is front and center of the e-blast. However, we will often include a special offer, featured project, or highlighted product to give readers even more of a reason to click-through to the website.”
One of the most crucial things to keep in mind is that you need to give these subscribers and leads something of value with every email. Following effective email marketing tips can help generate additional revenue.
Okay, so you’re emailing out those blog posts…now it’s time to fine-tune your efforts so you can scale and prove the ROI to your company.
Most ESPs offer helpful data dashboards that let you know what’s working when it comes to your email marketing efforts. Analytics such as open and click-through rates can help you monitor which subject lines, topics and copy are resonating with your audience.
Lauren Morley, the CMO of Techvera, uses data to power her strategy when it comes to these email campaigns:
“Looking at our analytics to figure out what the most popular content from each email is and designing more content around that has been the most helpful. It drives my strategies for future posts so that I’m writing on what our readers care about.”
As marketers, we’re always trying to walk a fine line of sending out enough emailing blog posts while not bombarding our contacts with too many emails. Email marketing platforms can help manage the frequency of emailing blog posts by automating the process and ensuring consistency.
Based on the brands we talked to, we find about 75% are emailing blog posts every time they publish one regardless of post frequency, and about 25% send a monthly round-up newsletter of all of their blog posts for the month.
Katrina Niemisto from Marketo allows subscribers to choose how often they receive blog posts in their inbox since they publish 15-20 blog posts per month. She says,
“By curating different cadences, we have the opportunity to provide readers with the experience they’re looking for. We have some loyal readers who digest every single blog post and some folks who are reading our blog for the first time when they sign up for our blog digest emails.”
Matt Diggity, who runs his own marketing agency says,
“I email every single post. As long as you’re publishing quality content, your email list won’t be annoyed by the intrusion. They’ll be grateful.”
On the days he emails out his blog posts, he sees about 3 times more traffic to his site than on other days.
Blog posts are a compelling way to keep all of your contacts engaged with the brand. Using an email marketing tool can help increase engagement with blog emails by providing features that enhance personalization and tracking. It’s a smart tactic to keep your brand top-of-mind without sending out “salesy” emails. Your blog posts should position your brand as a thought leader in your industry every time a new post hits their inbox.
Nate Fuller from Launch gets higher than average engagement when he uses this strategy, saying
“…emailing blog posts typically revives relationships with contacts in our database and helps bring new deals to the table. It reminds past prospects and customers that we are still knowledgeable in our field and that we are still around to meet their needs.”
Eric Dahl from Revmarka shares that “…it normally takes 3-5 pieces of solid content before a customer is willing to engage in a sales conversation. If I’m sending out regular blog posts, I’m speeding up the law of averages while creating opportunity and top-of-mind awareness.”
Marine Klein of Commusoft has great advice when it comes to keeping the whole company involved with their blog.
“We work very close with sales and produce content according to what they know will be of interest to leads. It’s an effective tactic if you can find the right balance between keeping them engaged without veering into the type of pushy hard-sell that people dislike.”
Many brands email their blog posts out to all of their leads, not just subscribers. However, when a lead subscribes to your blog, it can help gauge their interest in your brand. Using email marketing tools can help manage and segment the audience for blog post emails.
If you do a weekly or month digest of your blog posts, readers may choose to receive each and every blog post as it is published. This is great news for your brand, as it signifies they like your content enough to opt in to receiving all your posts.
You should be cautious when emailing both subscribers and leads. Make sure they don’t receive your blog post emails twice for being a lead and being a subscriber. Your marketing automation platform should have a way to make sure this doesn’t occur if they exist in multiple lists.
Robert Katai of Banner Snack uses a landing page that contains 3 simple reasons why people should subscribe to his blog posts. He also emails his blog posts before he shares on social, creating some exclusivity to being part of his email list, and gets a 45% open rate.
Logan Allec from Money Done Right, adds,
“I think the most important thing to remember is that you can’t ask for the sale in every email. You have to start with building trust with each new subscriber and then gradually build up to asking for the sale. Also, remember that each and every one of those subscribers is a real person sitting behind a computer or on a phone! And they subscribed to your email list for a reason. Don’t take that for granted.”
This is just a reminder to stay critical of the capabilities of your email marketing provider. The more you can leverage email automation, the higher the ROI for your efforts.
The email that accompanies each blog post is just as important as the blog post itself. The email should intro the post without giving too much away—it’s all about striking that right balance that leaves readers excited on clicking through to read your post.
What makes a great blog email? This is a question that you’ll want to test with your own audience, but here are a few ways other marketers have found success:
Dolores Hirschmann from Masters in Clarity recommends
“…having short emails that link to the blog, short teaser videos, and teaser copy” to engage and intrigue readers, and ultimately entice them to click-through to the blog posts.
Drew DuBoff, Growth Strategist, emails out all of his blog posts and is full of insight. He says,
“My emails establish trust with the readers as I try and prime them for my coaching program. I think this tactic is highly effective when done properly and disastrous when done improperly. If you approach your emails with respect and a genuine desire to get to know your readers more, then you will succeed. If you take the used car salesman approach, you’ll get a lot of unsubscribes.”
Jenni Lachner, the Content Marketing Manager for Portent, has some things to keep in mind when it comes to crafting successful emails that introduce blog posts:
Nathan Piccini from Data Science Dojo has great advice about sticking to the point and creating engaging content when emailing blog posts.
“Have an obvious title and a catchy image. People don’t want to try and decipher something in their email inbox. Make sure the title is going to make them understand what the post is about at a glance and the image reinforces it and grabs the reader’s attention. An image can speak 1000 words.”
Brandon Amoroso from electrIQ Marketing speaks to the value of experimenting with different types of emails such as plain text emails versus templates. “Make them super personal. An email with no pictures and a simple ‘Hey, new post from electrIQ today about XYZ…let me know if you have any questions!’ has been way more effective.”
The subject line is crucial and must stand out amidst the hundreds of emails that your contacts get every day.
Jonathan Branney, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Banc, speaks to how important the subject line is when emailing blog posts.
“The hard work starts here when it comes to capturing the reader’s attention. We find that posing questions, being personal or making the subject actionable all boost the likelihood of click-through.”
Johnny Bolden with Off Road has experimented with subject lines and has some great insights.
“We have used A/B testing with subject lines using Emojis! We found that adding Emojis to subject lines that are sent to a mostly mobile open segment can drive 37% higher open rates! That’s huge! This is driven by the fact that someone opening a mobile email has less characters that they see in the subject line and an emoji will stand out heavily.”
Jacqueline Tihanyi from Fisher Unitech also has applicable advice when it comes to subject lines for blog post emails.
“We use a subject line grader to make sure our subject line is spam-free to allow for high deliverability rate.”
We threw a lot of strategies and advice at you, so let’s pare it down to a checklist of things to consider when it comes to emailing blog posts:
