5 Reliable Ways to Plan High-quality Content That Grows Your Email List

So you want to create content for your email campaign, but you feel like you’re not quite ready yet. It’s not that you don’t have great content; you just don’t quite know where to start. Well in that case, what you need to look at is the meta side of email marketing campaigns: how to plan content as opposed to what content to write. The first step in that journey is to examine how people read content.

How do People read online Content?

Believe it or not, it’s become something of an art form to write internet content. It’s no longer enough to just write content, even if it has inherent value. You also need to think about how to make the content visually appealing. In fact, sometimes that visual appeal is more important than the actual substance of the content. There used to be a time when there were more readers than writers; not anymore.

“There is content all over the internet. Writers are always facing pressure to come up with new content and have to brainstorm almost every second,” says Abe Jonas of ResumesPlanet.

You’ll hear the phrase “content is king” all over. However, with the kind of future forming before our very eyes, the formatting of your text is just as important as what the text actually says.

“Maybe one day the new phrase will be ‘formatting is king,’” says Alisha Thornton of Careers Booster.  

If you take y the time to find out what content does well on the internet, you’ll find out that most exceptional content marketing pieces have these characteristics in common:

• The content is short
• The content is well divided into labeled intuitive sections
• The content has plenty of graphics
• The content is written in bold font
• The content has a healthy amount of bullet points

While lengthy and bulky texts may contain good information, they tend to be so visually unattractive that most people quit on them before they get to read the awesome content. There are very few modern internet users with the patience to read paragraphs that are 1000 words at a time.

More Scanning

Another thing that has become more prevalent in the modern world is the practice of scanning content. Most people don’t read the content they find online cover to cover like they would a book.  There are so many articles at our finger tips, and we consume them on a daily basis. it Make it easier on your readers by organizing your thoughts into bullet points, titles, paragraphs, and graphs.

You have a few seconds at most to capture the attention of your reader and convince them to stay with your content. Your window is even smaller when you’re trying to capture the attention of someone reading your email marketing content.

Here are 5 ways to catch your reader’s eye:

1. Focus on the title – You want to have an intriguing title to your piece. The title is the single greatest factor in whether or not your email is opened or a link in it is clicked.
2. Nail your thesis and supporting argument – You need to start your piece off with some kind of thesis, followed by a chain of supporting arguments. The first paragraph is a lead into the rest of the article. It, therefore, needs to be captivating enough to make the reader want to know more.
3. Provide titles for sections – These titles should be attractive to the reader without losing their substance and relevance to the content. For the best effect, let them contain conclusions from the section they describe.
4. Use graphics to support your content – Not just any graphics but graphics that are related to your content. When your readers get tired of reading, the illustrations will be a welcome reprieve.
5. Incorporate bold text, emphasis, and bullet points – These elements make text look more valuable, so use them strategically to make sure the most important text stands out.

According to A Writer knowledge, anything you can use to raise the interest of the reader should be used. However, do not do too much or your article will begin to look like you gave priority to form over substance. The readers will be attracted to the piece and then realize later that it’s not as good as it looked in the beginning.

Content is Still Important

While web writing, in general, can benefit from the tips given above, there are still important rules that should be followed for an email marketer.

Tom Davil, a project manager at Essay Writing Land explains, “Email marketing mainly concerns itself with content marketing, where content is the main thing used to promote you and your business. You don’t focus on offers, prices, or empty slogans. What you do is focus on delivering content that is useful and interesting to your audience so that they learn to trust your business as an authority in its field”.

When you follow this kind of strategy, you should realize that your market will be specialized. You can’t sell everything to everyone. You need to have a target audience which will respect your knowledge and expertise. You should also focus on building a long lasting relationship with that audience by supplying them with content regularly.

Here are some great places to start your content marketing:

• How to’s
• Tutorials
• Video guides
• Success stories
• Infographics
• Courses
• Books
• Printed magazines
• Conferences

According to Brill Assignment  research, any of these types of content can be a good place to start. It all depends on the kind of industry your business operates in and the kind of content you want to share with your audience. The trick is to just get started already.

Conclusion

Before you start your email campaign:

1. Figure out whether you have valuable content or not. If you do not have anything to offer, then take some time to think critically about what you would like to communicate to your audience; that should be the source of your content.
2. If you have lots of content and content ideas, then you are right where you need to be. Next, work on the formatting of your text so that it grabs your audience’s attention.

Ultimately, the success of your email campaign is based first on your content and then on your marketing strategy. By planning your content well, you make it possible for the rest of your marketing strategy to be effective.

There are actually two kings on the internet: content and formatting. Pay homage to each in equal amounts, and you’re bound to win the game.