Feel-Good Marketing

I went to an email marketing class several years ago, put on by Constant Contact (an email marketing company). SWON had changed much of its staff and was offering new programs, and we knew we needed help telling people about these changes.

What I learned is that there’s really no way to make people pay attention to your emails. People quickly scan their email, typically, rather than reading it in depth.

To get people to read your emails, reward them for reading. Give them something, in the email, that makes opening it worthwhile. Teach them something, give them a tip, or point them to a resource. This gift should fit the audience of the email and should definitely not be a nicely worded sales pitch. Concentrate on how you want to help them, and then leave some room to ask people to take action. This is called content marketing.

Writing content marketing emails can feel strange because they contain a lot less marketing than other methods. And the job of coming up with ideas and resources to give away is pretty different from writing a quick pitch for an upcoming event. But the response we’ve gotten to our emails has been positive, people still learn about our programs through the emails, and it feels good to set out to help people each week, too.

You can learn more about content marketing from MailChimp, which has posted a variety of guides about email marketing (no doubt as part of their own content marketing strategy).

• Nathan Swartzendruber, SWON Technology Educator

Level-Up Lab: Content Marketing for Libraries

Here’s the tie-in. On July 22nd, Nathan will be leading a Level-Up Lab on Content Marketing. We’ll be using MailChimp’s materials as a starting point to talk about marketing audiences and content. Then we’ll put the content marketing idea into practice. We’ll take your programs or program ideas and brainstorm for related content. Register today!

Can’t make it to the July 22nd Lab? Invite Nathan out to your library; he’d be glad to help answer your specific questions.