Fact: compelling content must be both strategic and creative. Sometimes, okay rarely, one person can deliver both. More often, it takes two or more people working together to make great content come alive. Synchronicity.
The best creative content in the world means nothing if it’s not presented in a way that the reader will read it–that’s why content strategy is vital.
Content strategy means the following:
- identifying goals to meet the needs of your audience
- bringing people on your team together to brainstorm and achieve these goals
- keeping a place to store ideas for future content (we use a system called Flow)
- listening to your audience through behavior metrics and simply asking
- determining where, when and how your audience will consume the content
- ensuring your audience can easily access the content
- portraying a consistent brand and voice – don’t confuse your audience
- giving action to take the next step
- reassessing your strategy by evaluating results with your entire team
However, you can have the best strategy in the world and lead the reader right to your content, but if the creative isn’t good, they won’t stay. That’s why creative content is essential.
Creative content draws the reader in and captivates them. It bonds them to your message and delivers your brand voice consistently, on target. It delivers an enticing CTA, so your customers want to take that next step.
A company we refer to often and see doing this well is Litmus. They offer relevant content that can be consumed in a variety of ways – blogs, videos, infographics, podcasts, webinars and conferences. For email marketers, Litmus makes it easy to search for content for ideas, grow your talents and troubleshoot common issues.
So how can you incorporate a creative content strategy to improve your email marketing program?
Bring a team of people together who are involved with the following:
- any form of content
- sales
- management
- valued customer
Look at your most recent email campaigns
- tracking
- engagement
- goals of email campaign
- conversion
- all marketing material – supporting or other
and talk.
- what percentage reached your goal for the campaign?
- is the email design clean and consistent with your brand?
- is it engaging?
- what about the content?
- could you have done something different to get the message out in a better way?
- what do you want your audience to do next?
It’s work, but it’s important work.
RootedELM can help identify and provide many of the resources and metrics mentioned to get your team talking. For example, by using Flow we’re able to manage tasks, collaborate and keep the lines of communication open. Below is a snapshot of Flow and an example of our team sharing ideas to keep the content flowing.
