CMWorld 2018 was all about creating moments that matter: to live in the moment, to share beautiful stories that are relevant and full of meaning and to enjoy the experiences we have been given. I trekked to Cleveland, Ohio once again to learn first hand from my Content Marketing heroes—the author’s who inspire me as I listen on my drive into work each day and those I read in my spare time.

Once again Ann Handley, Jay Acunzo, Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose, Andy Crestodina and Jay Baer did not disappoint. This year, however, a few others had my attention tightly. DeWitt Jones specifically. His message on how to find beauty in our surroundings and how to give life a second look gave me peace and hope for a better tomorrow.

Here are a few highlights of my key takeaways in a collection of tweets.

To stay on top of today’s market, you not only have to meet customer expectations—you have to exceed them. It all starts with a company culture designed to take service to the next level. Our client, Lexington Podiatry has mastered both internal and external culture, using surveys to gauge customer response and then measuring progress with a visual dashboard via Klipfolio.

You can read about the entire journey in our guest blog on Klipfolio.

via Klipfolio

Sometimes it’s hard to tell how we enjoy helping our clients the most— the email content, the design, the development, the audience journey or the metrics and KPI’s of an email campaign. It’s a bonus when you get the tell the story of how it all comes together and even better when you get to share that story as a guest blogger!

Klipfolio, our visual dashboarding software, invited us to tell the intriguing story of how A&W is using a visual dashboard to make realistic and smart decisions about their email marketing program. Although A&W Restaurants will turn 100 in 2019, the history of their email program since 2013 unfolds on a visual dashboard that is shared internally with stakeholders as well as externally with their internal customer—their franchise owners.

via Klipfolio

The internal customer is sometimes overlooked, but in reality should be our most important asset in providing the positive experience our external customer expects. Keeping your employees in the loop, understanding what they need to be successful in their job and listening to their feedback gives you a wealth of insight to build a strong culture, informed employees and happy internal and external customers.

Form an Internal Communications Strategy

Many years ago I worked for Chrysler in Auburn Hills, Michigan. My job was to promote new design technology (IBM CATIA) to the designers and engineers for the Body and White division. The company recognized that by investing in their internal customer they would save time, improve efficiency, reduce errors and build a superior product. Using qualitative and quantitative primary research—mainly listening behind the scenes to evaluate data of current product usage and talking to the internal customer directly—an internal communication strategy was formed. Using traditional marketing mediums and communication channels—unique branding, video, intranet, email, lunch and learns, trinkets and contests—we were able to see the movement of new functionality usage within a short amount of time and even bring a little excitement to the design floor.

Build a Strong Culture

Another opportunity to see the impact of keeping your internal customer informed and engaged was when I worked with the Bluegrass Hospitality Group in Lexington, Kentucky to develop and launch their loyalty program. A huge aspect of our tremendous growth and success was because we spent so much time listening to our internal customer to figure out what they needed to do their job, provide the right training through their internal Culture of Excellence to provide exceptional customer service and meet the requirements to register new BHG Rewards members at the same time. 

Elise Menold, former Marketing Director, recalls “there was a group of team members that would collaborate and write funny/short skits that we would then film and edit and piece together into a little show that resembled the SNL weekend update skits. We introduced loyalty program updates, specials, new rules/protocols, seasonal information, uniform guidelines, everything.” The videos were distributed through their internal email newsletter using Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget at the time).

Achieve Long-Term Results

A&W Restaurants will be celebrating their 100th anniversary in 2019. Liz Bazner and Spencer Barrett, their digital marketing team, distribute the NewsBearer bi-weekly, their internal email newsletter, keeping their internal audience, franchise owners and employees informed of upcoming events, operational changes and anything else ‘delicious.’ They publish a blog titled Franchise News directed to their internal audience and they connect in person with franchise owners on a regular basis. Impressively, four days a year each employee at the A&W Restaurant Support Center has to tie on an apron, swap their dress shoes for something slip-resistant and pull a shift in one of our restaurants. We know that as a franchisee-owned brand, it’s vital for everyone in our organization to understand what it’s like to work day-to-day in an A&W.*

A&W is reaching new levels of growth with store openings across the US as well as longevity of franchise ownership. Again – they will be 100 years old!

*source: https://awfranchising.com/research/what-makes-our-restaurant-franchise-different/

Close the Gaps

Lexington Podiatry, a small company with 23 employees, uses an ongoing customer experience survey created in SurveyGizmo and triggered after each patient appointment by their email marketing platform, CampaignMonitor.

Originally the survey was a way to organically and ethically collect Google Reviews; now it is the force that drives their strong internal culture and propels their customer service efforts.

The collected survey data is transformed into a visual dashboard using Klipfolio (below) to monitor the service received while in the waiting room and the treatment room by both physicians and office staff. Elise Hinchman, Marketing Director, uses this dashboard to communicate strengths, weaknesses, growth, trends, and opportunities for the administrative staff every Tuesday during their internal meeting. Being able to monitor patient feedback consistently, over time, validates necessary changes to be executed that are best for the customer. The LexPod squad makes taking care of feet fun for both the internal customer and the external customer!

Email Marketing Makes Things Happen

In all of these examples, email has been the consistent channel used to improve the customer experience. Take advantage of your ESP capabilities and communicate on a regular basis to your internal customer. Send surveys for feedback about what they are seeing and hearing from customers, share company news, employee-related stories, marketing trends, successes and even failures. The content you share will keep them present with your company culture, long-term efforts and lead to independence in answering customer questions and provide exceptional service when you need it most.

Recommended Read

The size of your company should not matter in how you take care of your external customer, but your internal customer—your team member, employee, volunteer, and even freelance vendor, does. An excellent book to read is, “The Mission, the Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander” by Pete Blaber.

Pete is a former Delta Force Commander but also a former corporate director at Amgen. The comparison of his experience in the military searching for known terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, to leading a team of sales managers at Amgen is fascinating. In essence, it does not matter what your task is; To progress, it’s essential to listen to and support those in the trenches every day.

The fact is, content marketing takes time—it doesn’t work overnight.

Two years ago, we began an earnest effort to step up our social media game for RootedElm. We started creating memes featuring design and content tips, like the ones below, using Canva and posting them on multiple social channels. At first, we noticed an uptick in audience engagement that inspired us to stay the course. Later, however, that engagement fell flat and we had to experiment with different types of social posts, incorporating links to our blog and reposting content from other experts.

One tool we employed that helped significantly was creating a content calendar. We made it a priority to pre-schedule at least one social media post per day using Buffer, with the option to add in an additional social post if we created something new, or if something relevant came up. If we notice an increase in a specific post’s engagement, we repost it a little more frequently. Our goal is to make sure our social media posts are authentic, make sense and relevant to our audience and when applicable, personal. For example, thanking a vendor for an amazing customer experience we received.

The payoff has taken time, but it’s starting to happen.

This effort to repost what RootedElm has already put out there, along with creating new content for posting has, over time and with consistency, gained more feedback on our posts. It also helps that each of us take time to share the post by RootedElm to expand our audience.

Website engagement is up.

Over the past 28 days, our multi-session users are up 50.3% and our organic traffic is up 2.17% on our website. More importantly, our goal completions increased by a minimum of 10% and as shown below, our social acquisition is growing, with the greatest amount coming from Twitter and LinkedIn.

Of course, a successful social media plan doesn’t happen without a little work and a little help.

And of course, the most important thing is perseverance. Remember: just keep swimming!

So, what’s your social goal? Share on @rootedelm your plans to turn the social tide in your favor and how you stay motivated to just keep posting.

To dive deeper into the big blue sea of social media, here’s a blog post from Buffer: Social Media Engagement is the New Social Media Marketing: How To Do It Well

Your subject line and preheader text are the first thing your audience sees and the deciding factor on whether your email is opened or deleted. So, how do you write subject lines and preheader text that make your subscriber want to open?

The Subject Line

Your subject line is the last thing you write and the first thing they see. Only once you’ve crafted your email message and identified a strong call-to-action, should you begin thinking about your subject line. Think of the subject line as a catchy headline that summarizes the main idea of your email. Start by writing down the key points from your email, and use that list to brainstorm.

When crafting subject lines be sure to:

• Include the most important information first
• Use no more than 50 characters
• Consider personalizing with a first name
• Use action words
• Test your ideas

Tip: test out your subject line and preheader in a social media post. If you obtain engagement there, you know you have a winner.  

The Preheader

Even if you’ve written the most compelling subject line in the world, you’re not finished yet. The Preheader is the text your subscribers see as a preview to opening the email. If you don’t provide an original preheader, it will default to the first line of your email—which works fine in some instances.  But usually, you want to use the preheader as another opportunity to hone your message. It’s essentially an extension of the subject line. Think of it as a “to be continued” on the story you’ve just introduced, or like the book jacket description to a great novel.

When writing your preheader text, here are a few tips:

• Offer a sneak peek at how the email benefits your subscriber
• Give a short summary of the contents
• Give context
• Ensure the first 50 characters make sense as a stand-alone, in case the reader is opening in mobile
• Include a call-to-action
• Provide an incentive to open

What do you think “WFH” means? At first glance, I thought they were cussing at me!  Work From Home. Clever don’t you think?

Be Mindful & Informed 

Below is an example of the need to be sensitive and aware of your external environment before you send an email. “Because the death of the First Lady Barbara Bush occurred on the same day I received this email, I was confused and a little bit annoyed when I first read the subject line and preheader,” said Lisa Wester. “Once opened, the subject line made sense, but my first impression was not a good one!”

Resources:

8 Embarrassing Preview Text Mistakes + 4 Tips on How to Avoid Them — Litmus Blog

Outstanding Email Marketing Examples of Subject Lines — Email Marketing Rules

18 Hacks for Improving Your Email Subject Lines — Campaign Monitor

I am an email marketing strategist.

I conceive, build and dissect email marketing programs for our clients to evaluate their health, including our own at RootedElm. Being able to work with a client intimately, look at the resources and data they have available, set a vision and goals, and then turn those goals into a successful reality is motivating and rewarding at the same time. For some of our clients, it’s getting started and finding the appropriate email service provider and for others, it’s moving into advanced customer segments, journeys, integrations and robust email campaigns. For all, it’s educating them on how to facilitate the 1:1 relationship they have built with their subscriber.

Email marketing is not a one-size-fits-all blasting medium. It’s personal, and respect must be shown to build trust and keep that relationship intact.

It takes a team.

When it comes to the specifics on how to design or how to code that email to render correctly, my team member Jason Meeker steps in to provide expertise. One of my favorite parts of a project is when Christina Noll, content developer, and I brainstorm and construct the content together for a customer journey. We all take the information we’ve collected — guidelines and insight from the client, email reports, Litmus analytics, survey results, and a visual dashboard we’ve built to take command of our data and formulate the content. We begin to tell a story.

So much behind the scenes goes into creating a dynamic email program that is unknown or often misunderstood by others that have not experienced the entire process.

Expectations.

As an email marketing strategist it is my job to guide our clients to understand the significant role they play, and that it’s not just sending an email, but the message they send must offer value. Often as email marketers, we are placed in a predicament as the expectations of the client is much different than what is best for the subscriber.

Everyone has expectations — especially the subscribers we are tasked to reach actively. They expect the emails they signed up for will be of benefit and not displeasure.

Email marketing is a practice — much like yoga.

I’m an avid practitioner of yoga. When I started yoga years ago, I could barely touch my toes. It took time to become familiar with the poses, how to move my body correctly, strengthen my core and settle my mind. Yoga is the practice of breath. Everyone can breathe, but not everyone can do a headstand (neither can I, but someday)!

It takes practice, knowledge, experience and time to advance to the next level. We evolve.

The same for email marketing. As the data matures our subscribers tell us more and more through the insight we capture. Our customer journey begins to extend down new paths. We admire the work of our peers and learn from their case studies, presentations, books, and blogs then return the favor by sharing our own. As email marketers, we interpret the need to send the right email — at the right time— to the right person. Blasting an email without all the behind the scenes legwork is like falling on top of your head while you’re trying a headstand without building a strong core first!

ABOUT LISA

Lisa Wester is the founder of RootedElm and Chief Engagement Officer that works with our client relationships but most importantly, Lisa has been an email marketing strategist since 2007 and a marketer for a very long time! You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter.

As a marketer, you know that you can’t just throw up some amazing graphics and expect people to understand your message. You need words. But which words? How many words? In what order? The answer can be found by asking a professional content writer.

I’m a content writer, but what does that really mean?

To start, it means I have a background specifically focused on honing the craft of writing well. My education and degree are in writing. My experience includes years of writing creative messages in every form–essays, billboards, radio and television commercials, print advertisements, blogs, brochures, websites, magazines, email marketing….and on and on.

It means that I approach every potential message with the goal to first learn everything I can about the subject matter. Sometimes the subject is root beer floats, sometimes it’s neurosurgery and sometimes it’s an inspiring young person who’s changing the world. After I learn everything I can about the subject, I turn it around and around in my brain and then it comes pouring back out through my fingertips, hopefully in a way that is more engaging and more understandable to the reader.

Sometimes the process is effortless–the creativity pours out on the page and the headline or email or blog post seems to write itself. And sometimes it’s more painful. My colleagues and I have mapped out the goals of the message, but the right words elude me. Or I have the right words but they aren’t coming together cohesively. That’s when I have to exercise my writing muscle; or follow my own advice to walk away and return to the process later, more refreshed. Either way, easy or difficult, in the end, the only thing that matters is creating a message that resonates.

My typical writing spot—weather permitting

But everyone writes….right?

What’s the value in hiring a professional content writer if I can just write it myself?

Every time you google something, every time you read an email from a company, every time you see a billboard on your drive home, someone put those words together on purpose. Of course, you can write your own content–we certainly encourage it and that’s why we continue to share writing tips on our blog. But when you hire a content writer, you are hiring an expert at putting words together “on purpose.”

Here are 3 more reasons it pays to hire a professional:

Experience: A professional content writer has years of experience in bringing together the right words, in the right way, to ensure a message is on target. Plus, we are also unusually creative!

It saves time: Whether you need to focus on other aspects of a project, or simply need to get something finished quickly in a crunch, an experienced content writer can execute creative, on-target messaging quickly.

Background: A content writer is immersed in content all day, every day. We read blogs about developing the best content and we have our finger on the pulse of what other companies and industries are putting out there, content-wise. So when you hire a professional content writer, you not only get writing expertise, you get all the hours and hours of background knowledge on content marketing that the average professional does not have time–or let’s face it, the desire– to track.

ABOUT CHRISTINA

Christina Noll is a content marketing specialist with 20 years experience telling stories about brands, products, companies—and most importantly, people—through creative and engaging email marketing, content marketing and strategic content planning. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Want to ensure your content is engaging and relevant this year? Here are 5 quick tips to help make your email content easy to write and stand out in the inbox:

Draft a Keyword Bank

The first step is to do your research to identify your main message. What content will your audience find useful? What are the key phrases you want to share with the reader? Write them down. These don’t have to be complete thoughts—think of it more as a word and phrase “bank” to work from.

A blank space can be intimidating and creating a word bank gives you a solid start. Ultimately, you’ll hone your final content from these ideas.

“We all need to make sure that our content meets one or more of these three criteria”

1. The reader can DO something
2. The reader LEARNS something
3. The reader FEELS something

Paraphrased, and although Andy Crestodina is talking about blog posts here, we can directly apply this criteria to email content. Check out pages 113 – 115 in his book Content Chemistry.*

Use a Thesaurus

Even the best ideas may not impart your message the way you imagined. Sometimes you just need a different word.  I frequently pull out my trusty thesaurus (okay, thesaurus.com) to identify other ways to impart the same message in a more fresh or relevant way.

Look back at your word bank and use the thesaurus to find stronger words, action words or friction-free words for each of your key messages.

Draft and Then Walk Away

My number one tip for generating the best possible content involves taking a big step back. Create a very rough draft of what you want to say, and then step away. When you come back to it later, you’ll be looking at it with fresh eyes, and undoubtedly, fresh ideas.

When it comes to voice and tone, think about your email as a person-to-person conversation you are having with the reader. It doesn’t need to be perfect the first time. It needs to be genuine.

Another huge part of this equation: Collaboration is key.  Ask for input from another colleague—they may be able to point out where your intentions are unclear. Lisa and I frequently find that our best work is a result of direct collaboration during the refining process. Revise until the content clearly meets your original goals.

Change Mediums

Another way to get fresh eyes on email content is to print it out. We live in a digital world but printing out an email or template forces you to process it differently. You’ll be surprised with the quickness you can catch errors and edits just by changing the medium you’re using.

Jason Meeker,
RootedELM Strategic Partner

Write Your Subject Line Last

The last thing you should write is the first thing your audience will see—the subject line. Think of it as a catchy headline that summarizes your email. Write down the key points from your email, then brainstorm ideas based on that list.

Subject lines can be fun—this is where you can use puns, rhyming and play on words. Using emoji’s in subject lines is another trend that can increase open rates and provide a captivating visual when used correctly.

Remember to include the most important information first in your subject line and keep it to no more than 50 characters. It also must be meaningful to the email content. Finally, run your subject line by a few peers to be sure any wordplay is instantly recognizable and not too corny.

CUE-DIVE Method

Subject line and preview text content can be Contextual, Urgent, Emotional, Detailed, Intriguing, Visual and Earned.

Email Marketing Rules
by Chad S. White — pg. 374*

Call in Reinforcements 

Finally, if you’re still struggling to create content that hits the mark, consider using a ghostwriter. Content development is not always easy—you may be short on time or creativity. A professional content developer (like me!) can help or even just provide a much needed second set of eyes.

Stuck and need a little inspiration? We frequently read books, blogs and listen to podcasts for ideas on producing better (and easier!) content.

A few of our favorites:

• Content Marketing Institute Blog
• Everybody Writes by Ann Handley*
• Unthinkable (podcast) by Jay Acunzo
• Litmus Blog

And from our own blog:

• Learn How to Curate Content for Your Email Campaigns. 
• For long form content that goes beyond an email—such as a newsletter, blog or website text-—follow these 5 Steps to Developing Longer Content

*We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Plan.

Stop emailing off the cuff and map out what messages would be essential for your subscriber to receive. With email marketing, along with most forms of content, consistency and value are key. There are many ways to keep on schedule but a content calendar that can be shared with your entire team is the perfect place to start. Writing it down puts it into action. Some of our clients utilize a Google spreadsheet. Our team uses Flow, a project management and collaboration system.

Start with your lifecycle campaigns. Pinpoint when it would add value for your subscriber to hear from you. A welcome series is the first place to start but after that would a birthday or anniversary campaign show the subscriber you are thinking of them? What about a reminder of an upcoming appointment or a survey after a purchase, completion of a project or a recent visit? Incorporating a reoccurring re-engagement campaign to your plan will make a huge difference and keep your subscriber list clean.

Tis the season — or is it? Add in seasonal email messages that fit your values and would be pertinent to your audience—not just trends because that’s what you do.

Timing is everything. Be as consistent as promised with your audience when it comes to email newsletters and promotional campaigns. If they expect to receive an email the third Tuesday of the month, don’t disappoint them.

Leave space for ad-hoc campaigns. These messages include latest promotions, company news, local events or an amazing blog post beneficial to your audience.

Conduct an Email Audit.

Audit your own email campaigns and audit others. We flag and share amongst ourselves email campaigns that resonate with us all the time, taking note of something that worked or in many cases something that could be so much better, mainly with email rendering. It’s not critiquing — it’s a learning process — a mental note for us to remember how an email was received and what to do or not to do.

Most likely your inbox is packed full of campaigns as well. Flag what you like then start a google spreadsheet or document with space for notes and a screenshot of the email. Share the link with others to add their input and do the same. Even just hitting print and making notes the old-fashioned way, storing the printed documents in a community folder, works.

Check out our Emails We Love series for ideas and evaluation on email campaigns we’ve received. If you would like feedback on a recent email campaign, please reach out and we will give you honest and validated feedback using our email analytic tool Litmus.

Develop a Remarkably Good Email Template.

Make it easy for yourself and your team to stay on top of your plan. With at least one good email template, your primary task will be writing the relevant content and sourcing supporting images. Almost every email service provider has templates that you can customize to meet your needs.

A template can be a pre-built, drag & drop style template as shown below from the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

A template can be a custom HTML built to fit your ESP guidelines as shown below using Campaign Monitor.

Our final example is our newsletter, “From Your Email Horticulturists” that we adapt each month using Litmus Builder then sync directly to our ESP.

Most of the assets and code remain the same for each issue. We edit the text and images within the HTML to differentiate one newsletter from the next as shown in this holiday email.

Get Cozy With Your Metrics.

There is so much you can learn if you just take the time to dive in and develop an ongoing visual document of your campaign trends, subscriber behavior, and gaps. A visual dashboard can be created using an excel spreadsheet or an online dashboard software like Klipfolio. Simply being able to quickly see in graphic form the health of your email marketing program will pay off greatly in the long run. Think of all the decisive and validated planning you’ll be able to do.

In addition to trends with your click to open rate, your unique open rate an unique click-through rate, a specific metric to pay attention to is the life of your subscriber; the time from subscription to when they unsubscribe and how they unsubscribe.

In the visual dashboard below, it’s easy to validate that we need to build more trust through our welcome series and increase the email campaigns from one to several. By adding these additional emails, the high unsubscribe rate and spam complaints will reduce within the first 90 days. This visual also tells us that a reengagement series should be applied before the subscriber hits their one year anniversary for sure and possibly sooner after the new welcome campaigns come to fruition.

Listen.

Remember you are sending to people, not just an email address. My opinion: this is the essential piece of the puzzle. Whether it be in a group setting or individually, sit down with members of your team, management, frontline staff, and sales and ponder: what is the reason we are creating this content? What action do we want our subscribers to take? What value do we offer our subscribers?

Talk to your audience individually or through an online survey to find out why they care about your company, your services, the products you offer, and the experience you give them. An A/B split test is a form of listening and so is purchase behavior. Combine your dashboard with the knowledge you’ve received and ask the hard questions, and you’ll be able to plan for a stronger email program in 2019.

Cultivating your email marketing program is ongoing.

Take on one task at a time and perfect it as best as you can, then work on another tomorrow. Be methodical and meticulous. Each day your program will get stronger and you’ll be smarter and your subscribers and your management team will thank you.

Not to mention — we’re also here to help.