You can save yourself a lot of time and frustration if you opt not to create completely fresh material for your email newsletters. Instead, you can reuse blog posts or articles from your website for the content of your newsletters, filling them out with high quality, interesting and engaging material without needing to come up with new topics.

Reusing previous content for email marketing newsletters

Now I certainly suggest that you do more than just copy and paste a random blog post into an email. You certainly won’t be showing much effort, originality or enthusiasm on your end. Instead, you can do any number of things that helps to make your newsletter engaging:

Showcase your latest material: If you frequently update your blog or your website then you already produce a great deal of content. Just because someone is on your email list, it does not mean that they religiously check out your website. Additionally, even if they do, they may not read each and every article or post.

Therefore, a great and simple idea for an email marketing newsletter is to include all of the posts from the last week or two. Include an introduction that talks about some of the important issues you’ve been covering, and then provide an intro blurb to each article, linking back to the article on your website for full reading.

Highlight older classics: We all have some of that content somewhere on our website that we are especially proud of. Maybe when it first was released it made a huge splash in your industry or niche and you received a ton of positive feedback. Or maybe it helped you create a good deal of fresh new customers and sales.

If you haven’t done anything with those gems from yesteryear, bring them back up into the mix. If they had a big impact then, they will still have a big impact now. If the information in the content was extremely time sensitive, just update it to reflect the latest news, information or trends.

Include an introduction with your newsletter about why these articles were so important when they were first released, and why they still apply today. You can even do a “lessons learned” update about something that was once accurate or successful and has since proven out to be flawed.

Make a theme: When you have a lot of content build up on your website or blog you can easily sort them into specific themes. If I was a guy writing about high school football coaching strategy, I could make a theme around unique defensive zone schemes or motivation techniques. If I was a home improvement expert, one newsletter could have a theme of upgrading your kitchen and another could be on cheap landscaping tips.

When you create a theme for one of your email marketing newsletters, you are showcasing each individual piece of content as well as showcasing your entire collection. They all will receive more attention and feed off the attention and interest that each one of them creates.

Additionally, the benefit of themed newsletters is that you can then create a series of newsletters separate themes, and you’ll be set on your content for quite some time. You can even turn the newsletters into pieces of a larger, all encompassing guide or tutorial program.

So for this email marketing tip of the week, I want you to stop worrying about how to fill out your newsletters with fresh content. Turn to the content you already have on your blog or your website, and fit it into one of the above strategies for easy and effective email marketing newsletters.

Instead, you can take a peek at these 6 quick fire insider secrets to email marketing. You’ll immediately be able to improve your campaigns, or begin a brand new campaign without having to struggle or stumble.

Quick Fire Insider Secrets to Email Marketing

1. Personality is better than a sales pitch: We all deal with sales pitches all day long. The commercials we see and hear, the advertisements we read, the pushy salespeople at stores we visit and of course the emails we receive. It’s hard to differentiate yourself from the crowd when all you’re doing is offering a sales pitch. Instead, inject some honest personality into your email campaigns. Your list members will be more engaged, you’ll build up more trust with them and you’ll stand out from the pack.

2. Too much of a good thing is bad: This is coming from a person who normally doesn’t agree with this statement. If we’re talking too much of a good thing, like pizza, or Italian sandwiches, then I don’t think that’s possible. But if we’re talking about the frequency of your email newsletters and communications, then it certainly is.

I don’t care if I’m the founder of the company in question, if I’m receiving an email once a day and I thought I was going to be getting a once per week newsletter, I’m deleting your email, skimming past it or unsubscribing. Set up expectations for your email frequency and don’t push the boundary towards excessive communication.

3. 20% of emails don’t get delivered: I’m not talking about bounces here, I’m talking about 20% of emails that you thought were delivered. It’s a startling number, and it speaks to the importance of not making any assumptions about the success of your campaign. Always find concrete evidence to the effectiveness of your campaigns and always work on improving your list quality. Not blindly trusting the stats you receive or hear about is one of the huge insider secrets to email marketing that you should know.

4. 94% of email is spam: Not like any of us needed a statistic to be reminded of this fact, but we all are inundated with spam messages in our inbox. That means that if you want your emails to be read by your list members you really have to work hard on following established best practices. That means short, concise and accurate subject lines, displayed “from” information, qualified, permission based list members and more.

5. Cheap email marketing exists: Yes, there is such a thing as cheap email marketing and it’s one of the best insider secrets to email marketing that you can be given. In fact, many of the best email marketing providers are extremely affordable for any sized business or operation. Even better, they all allow for free trials so you can make the final call based on experience. For example, you can sign up for an iContact free trial with plans starting at $9.95 per month, a Constant Contact free trial with plans starting at $15 per month, a Stream Send free trial with plans starting at $20 per month or an AWeber free trial with plans starting at $19 per month.

6. You’re not done with tests when you’re finished with college: But don’t worry, these tests are certainly a good thing. You should be segmenting your list and sending out emails with slight variations. Compare the results and track which variables perform better so that you can optimize your campaigns to the best of your ability. One-size-fits-all email newsletters and campaigns simply don’t cut it anymore. You’ll be missing out on a wealth of valuable data. Start segmenting, testing and optimizing immediately.

If you didn’t know… now you do. Use these insider secrets to email marketing wisely.

Ahem, if you’re still reading this far and you haven’t caught on, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck. There will be no free list of email addresses for marketing given away here today. But since I have your attention and you’re here on the site, I might as well offer you something else, something far better.

Instead of giving you a list filled with thousands of worthless addresses and watching you flush your campaign down the drain, I’ll teach you how to create and manage your own natural email list growth. As the saying goes:

Give a man free spam lunch, and he’ll run an email campaign for a day. But teach him to circumvent spam altogether and he’ll be an email marketer for life. Or something like that.

Creating Natural Email List Growth

In this past I’ve offered up some tips for acquiring more email marketing leads, so be sure to check those at as well before your done here. Right now I wanted to take a fresh approach towards creating your own natural email list growth.

One of the best approaches towards SEO for your website is natural link building, which now has the far snazzier name of link baiting. Link baiting is just the process of creating valuable, interesting and worthwhile content that people naturally want to link to. In other words, your content is so interesting or informative that people just have to share the wealth and post a link up on their own website or blog.

When you’re looking to create natural email list growth for your campaigns, apply the concept of link baiting towards acquiring new email marketing leads. Basically, give people such a great reason to join your list that they’ll do so genuinely – and in large numbers – rather than being pressured, scammed or trickling in on their own.

How can you apply link building to natural email list growth? Here are some ways you can go “email baiting” to build up your list to be bigger and stronger than ever before.

• Contests
• Tip/Guide Newsletters
• eBook & Mini Report Giveaways
• Members Only Website Access
• Discounts & Deals
• Exclusive News or Information
• Limited Event Registrations

Instead of clicking on the next search result for that free list of email addresses for marketing, consider dropping the bulk email campaign and opting for natural email list growth. And please, put down the spam sandwiches.

More important than that is understanding the answer to the question “what is email marketing?” in the real world. We all receive plenty of email marketing messages each and every day, most of them we lump into the SPAM category. They are wastes of time and space, they slow down and infect our computers, they try to sell us enhancement creams or steal our bank account information and of course they give the rest of us a bad name.

Therefore email marketing in the real world has fast taken on the definition of SPAM.  Again from Wikipedia, SPAM is, “The abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.”

In other words, email marketing for consumers is fast becoming aligned with fraudulent garbage. For sketchy, illicit or downright illegal business operations, email marketing has taken on the definition of the cheapest way to exploit loads of money from the unsuspecting public at large by poking and prodding repeatedly ad nauseam until somebody purposely or inadvertently caves in.

Now, what should email marketing be? I.M.P.O.R.T.A.N.T.

Now that we know what email marketing really is, by the literal definition and by the interpretations of both consumers and spammers, we should take a look at what email marketing should be. Email marketing should be I.M.P.O.R.T.A.N.T.

• Insightful
• Marketing
• (that’s)
• Personalized
• Optimized
• Relevant
• Targeted
• And
• Never
• Tired

Let’s break this down piece by piece so we have as clear a definition as we can. Email marketing should be insightful marketing. In other words, we should be using all of our judgment, knowledge, expertise and experience to deliver quality, handcrafted messages that not only will produce results, but also speak to the desires of our audience.

Email marketing should be personalized. First, that means building a permission based list of people who really want to hear from you. From there, it means using your name and showing pictures of yourself so your audience knows who you are. It means segmenting your list so that different people receive messages containing what they are most interested in, rather than a generic message of no real value.

Email marketing should be optimized. You should be testing every aspect of your email campaigns to see what works the best. Try different subject lines, content, layouts, color schemes, delivery times and more.

Email marketing should be relevant and targeted. Once again, segment your list into groups and learn what your audience is really interested in. Make your messages timely and full of valuable information that people can really use. Don’t just send what you feel like talking about; send what people want to hear.

Finally, email marketing should never be tired. This means that you shouldn’t keep sending out the same retread emails over and over again and you shouldn’t keep using that same template you had from your first email campaign in 2002.

Refresh your campaigns…bring in guests from other websites or companies to write on special topics…change your layouts so that they are more visually appealing and convert better in the process…think of new, fresh ideas for every email and always be trying new things… stay ahead of the curve and integrate new technology, services and methods instead of playing catch-up down the road.

So how can I answer the question, “what is email marketing”? How about, I.M.P.O.R.T.A.N.T.

In this email marketing tip the point I’d like to drive home is that you can take this on from two approaches.

Starting with social media – If used correctly, your social media platform can serve as a great tool for producing email marketing leads, and drawing people into your overall campaign efforts.

Starting with email campaigns – For the email marketing lead you already have, you can effectively work on converting them into paying customers by including them in some of your more personal outreach efforts.

Let’s start with the second half of this equation, taking an email marketing lead and converting him or her with your more personalized approach on social networking sites. You have to remember that signing up for an account and creating a uniform, empty page doesn’t give you any “street cred”. If you are trying to send your prospects to your social media sites, you have to make it worth their time.

In other words, don’t make the mistake of saying the same things in the same ways on all of your different outlets. I like taking the approach of keeping email marketing campaigns personal, but focused on the task at hand, whether that’s selling a product or promoting an event. Then, I think it’s great to use social media sites for a softer approach, focusing on core values and missions.

I’d like you all to meet Bob from Bob’s Chicken Shack, he’s a small business owner and he’s delving into the world of email marketing and social media. Here’s how Bob can effectively tie together his email marketing campaigns with his social media platforms.

• Bob can focus his email messages on promoting next Friday’s buy one bucket, get one bucket free promotion.
• His Facebook page however can talk about how Bob always loved animals and therefore thinks they deserve proper treatment, which is why he only uses organic products and local produce and yadda yadda.
• His Twitter page can include quick blasts like, just talked with a customer about her stance on using eggs from caged chickens. I don’t do it, but what do you all think?

Throughout all of this he tied his business together and additionally, all of the outlets served a purpose rather than being repetitious, wasted rehashes. Well done, Bob.

Making the Connections

Now you’ve seen how you can differentiate your different strategies while still keeping them related and worthwhile, but how can you actually translate this into an effective strategy for cross-promotion?

Let’s go back to the two ways we looked at this in the beginning.

Starting with social media to find email marketing leads - On Bob’s Facebook page, instead of saying “Sign up for my email list,” Bob could talk about how if people in the local area are looking for a healthy food establishment that treats animals correctly, they should look you up and they can receive discounts if they receive your email updates.

Starting with email campaigns and converting an email marketing lead – Instead of just including a link on the bottom of his email saying “Visit Bob’s Chicken Shack on Facebook”, Bob could place a blurb at the top of the sidebar in his email inviting people to learn more about Bob’s passion for organic products and animal welfare on his Facebook page.

Hey, take the analogy for what it’s worth. The point I’m making with this email marketing tip of the week is that you can effectively tie together your different online promotional strategies, including email marketing and social media.

When you do it the right way, you’ll be successful at producing more email marketing leads while also more effectively converting the email marketing lead you already have in your pocket.

I call this the “Hey what’s up? Buy this!” style of marketing, and it’s just not going to get the job done. Now, you don’t need to try to get all philosophical about trying to deliver exceptionally thought provoking messages. That wouldn’t be time or cost productive, and it still wouldn’t move your bottom line.

Giving Messages a Purpose

So how can you give each message you send out a purpose? As mentioned, you don’t need to do anything extraordinary in order to see results. If you’re trying to sell somebody a product directly, or get them to buy anything from your website, you need to entice them to do it. Don’t just say “Hey what’s up? Buy this!”, opt instead to try any of these tactics:

• Provide a detailed review
• Share a story about creating the product/service
• Share a story about someone else using the product/service
• Share any kind of story!
• Provide incentive to buy – Did you know that 80% of people on your list buy from a sale or from a free shipping offer?

Of course not all of your messages are targeted at creating sales. Some are targeted towards just sending people to your website, getting somebody to take another kind of action or just staying at the forefront of a person’s consciousness. The same rule applies, every message needs a purpose.

The only thing that’s as bad as “Hey what’s up? Buy this!” is the “Hey what’s up?” email that doesn’t seem to want to get anything done and isn’t even trying to sell me anything. Sure, what you sent out is claiming to be a newsletter, but did I receive any kind of news? Anything that is going to keep my attention, inform me, educate me, entertain me or be of any kind of use for me whatsoever?

If the answer to that was no, then why should I care? Listen, unless I work for your company or am prominently involved in it somehow, I don’t care that you hired a new VP of marketing.

Now, if Mr. or Ms. New VP of Marketing sends out a message with a nice little picture of himself or herself so I can see whose doing the talking and a nice little blurb explaining to me their excitement about the position, the changes I can expect to see, what else they bring to the table and so forth, I’m bound to be much more interested. The same message with a new perspective can change everything.

Don’t make one of the biggest mistakes in email marketing by not giving your messages a purpose. Even if your purpose is as simple as a sale on a new product or a free shipping offer, you’re still doing something more besides just saying “Hey, what’s up?!” Put this week’s email marketing tip to week regardless of what industry or sector you’re in and you’ll start to see improved results.

Don’t forget about our Race to 50 New RSS Subscribers with a chance to win a free email marketing consultation package.

The overlooked element that many individuals, small businesses and nonprofits miss is that you need to optimize your website as well if you want to turn those list members into customers, clients and supporters. This means using specific landing pages for different emails, offers and programs so that when somebody does click through to your site, you are much more likely to reach out to them effectively.

Utilizing Landing Pages to Maximize Conversions

Creating a perfect email message is only part of the battle. Let’s think about an entire list of goals you might have with one of your email campaigns. You want people to:

1. Sign up for your list

2. Open and read your messages

3. Click through to your site

4. Buy a product or service, or take another action

All too often, we all are guilty of focusing on the first three steps and then completely forgetting about the fourth. Sure, it’s great to see that people read your emails and click through to your website. But if they don’t take any other kind of action – signing up for your next webinar, buying a monthly subscription, registering for your forum… – then what was the point of it all?

Creating Targeted Email Landing Pages

So hopefully you can see the importance of targeted landing pages for your email campaigns, so how do you go about creating them?

The first step in the process is really thinking about what you are asking somebody to do. You need to have a clear picture of what kind of action you want a person to take and what it takes for them to do that. If you want them to sign up for a service, you should be linking directly to the signup form to cut out additional steps.

Brand a separate landing page including that signup form mentioning the email and your subscribers and you’re doing even better. Be sure you mention clearly whatever special offer or promotion you mentioned in the email right on the page. Be sure you are speaking about the same benefits, the same pricing and everything else as you did within your messages.

The two keys are 1) consistency and 2) eliminating unnecessary steps. Don’t send somebody to your home page if you want them to read a product review they have to then go find elsewhere. Don’t mention a free trial offer in your email and then send them to a page where credit card information is required and there’s no mention of a free trial.

If you effectively build targeted landing pages for your email campaigns, staying consistent with your message and eliminating as many unnecessary steps as possible, you’ll be much more likely to achieve that fourth goal mentioned above and convert your list members.

Here are some factors that may be leading to the messages from your email marketing program being tagged as SPAM along with what you can do to prevent that from happening. Wouldn’t it be great to reside amongst the very happy 6% of messages that are positively received by their intended audiences?

Your messages aren’t reaching your list members. The problem could be that your email marketing ASP isn’t reliable enough. Do some research into which email service providers have the highest deliverability rates, which have good reputations and so forth. Problems could arise for many reasons including if you get assigned a recycled IP address or if the servers of your email marketing ASP are overstuffed.

Your messages aren’t being identified. Your list members may be having a hard time distinguishing your messages from the saturated, nearly all encompassing SPAM pile (Remember, 94 percent!). To remedy the situation you need to be sure to have a recognizable name in the “From” field. Your subject line needs to be short, to the point and grammatically correct. Read more on this issue in a former email marketing tip of the week.

Your messages aren’t being read. You may not be compelling enough with the subject lines your email marketing program utilizes. Additionally, it may be time to scrub your list clean of list members who are uninterested in your messages. From here on out, get some information on your list members when they signup. Find out what kinds of messages they want to receive from you so you can segment them accordingly. Don’t forget to set the ground rules either. Inform your new list members when they can expect to receive your messages and how frequently you’ll be in their inbox.

Your messages aren’t being displayed properly. What kind of template or design are you using within your emails? Excessive images can leave the monitors of your list members filled with open spaces and X marks. Complicated HTML or other coding languages could load improperly. Keep your templates simple and clean, and consider offering a text only option for subscribers. Check out another post to learn more about choosing an email marketing template.

Starting from sheer deliverability and ending with your emails being displayed properly, there are lots of landmines and pitfalls that your email marketing program can run into. Find a quality email marketing ASP, identify yourself, compel and target your list members and design your messages effectively and your email marketing program will hopefully find a home in that 6% sliver of opportunity.

So instead I’ll be focusing on the strengths of marketing by email even if there is a slumping economy. Alternatively and in other times, your business may be going through its own downward sloping cycle as the economy is doing fine, making marketing by email all the more important.

Emailing Your Way out of a Recession

Whether the entire economy is sputtering or your business is the only one falling off the cliff, you need to turn to marketing by email to pull you out of the scrap head and ahead of your competitors. You can email yourself right out of a recession or downturn if you have the right tools in place.

What’s the most important thing you have to do when your business is struggling or the economy is suffering and money is tight? You need to find a way to control costs, while still finding new customers. This can seem tricky at best, but the truth is that there’s no more cost effective way of marketing than email marketing. This holds true for businesses and nonprofit organizations alike.

A 2005 study by the Winterberry Group found that for every dollar spent on email marketing, $15.50 was earned. This is higher than direct mail, and vastly superior to telemarketing. Many other studies turn up the same thing – marketing by email is more cost effective than other marketing mediums.

There are no large upfront costs associated with marketing by email. Many companies now offer free trials for checking out their services, and monthly plans start as low as $10.

Additionally, just as you are trying to find a way to make a better use of your money in a recession, so are your potential customers, whether you’re selling to households or to other businesses. That means you have an opportunity to see some fantastic conversion rates when you offer special deals and discounts to your mailing list. Free shipping is a go to offer if you’re selling physical products, but general discounts also work well.

Try hitting two birds with one stone by offering incentives to your email list for finding you new list members. Tell them for every 3 new list members they refer, they’ll receive a 10% or 20% discount on their next order, or will receive a special free gift with their next order. You’ll acquire new prospects and make more sales.

The importance of email marketing is also growing due to the prevalence of email itself. Email is the preferred means of communication not just for younger generations, but for professionals and executives as well. With mobile devices becoming more capable and accessible as well, people can now view and respond to their emails from anywhere.

You have to be able to reach out to consumers where they prefer to conduct their own communication. It’s not hard to see that people don’t run out to their mailboxes 20 times a day looking for letters from friends and acquaintances from around the world. No, it’s the email inboxes they check all day long, where they spend a lot of time and where they are receptive to communication. Meet a consumer on his or her own domain, and you’ll have a greater chance of success.

Maybe all of this helps to explain that while 60% of marketers surveyed by the Aberdeen Group in January 2009 said they will be decreasing their traditional marketing spending, 47% will be increasing their budgets for marketing by email.

Not juicy enough for you? Well, Forrester has projected that total spending on email marketing is going to increase to more than $2 billion by 2014, from $1.2 billion in 2009.

So let’s see… lower your costs, increase your ROI, take advantage of the preferred means of communication to make easier connections with your customer base and on down the line we go. No matter how bad a recession is or how badly your own business is suffering, some clever marketing by email can pull you right out of the red.

1. Be Polite – As in, participate in permission email marketing rather than harvesting addresses from the Internet or buying an email list for sale. Throw signup forms on your website, collect addresses from your physical store and generally find prospects and list members in any way that you can as long as you have the person’s permission to contact them.

2. Identify Yourself – All of your B2B email marketing messages have to be easily identifiable as coming from you. That means the “From” field should have the most recognizable name your business has. For some people that might be your personal name, but for most businesses it will be the name of the company itself, or the shortened version of the name that the company commonly goes by.

3. Be Descriptive – An overlooked piece of FTC CAN-SPAM compliance is the subject lines of your emails. You should be accurate, descriptive and concise so your recipients clearly understand what the email is about. Use proper punctuation and grammar and avoid all things SPAMMY: “Buy now!!! Free, free, free!!!”

4. Stay in Touch – Even prospects that were at one point highly interested in your business and your messages will forget about you or lose interest if you don’t stay in touch with them. That means you can’t be infrequent and random with your B2B email marketing messages. Send out your newsletters or other emails at regular intervals and inform your list members upon signup how often they can expect to hear from you.

5. Ask WWIDWTE? – When in doubt, ask yourself WWIDWTE? Or, what would I do with this email? Take an honest, objective view of your emails or have someone else do it for you. Does it look like SPAM? Can you clearly see who it’s from and what the message is about? If you can spot a problem with your messages, you can be sure that your list members will, which means you’re one step closer to the SPAM filter and trash bin.

6. Time for a Wash – As in, actively clean your list from time to time to keep it up to date and as targeted as possible. Remove email addresses that don’t exist or routinely show up as bounces for other reasons. This will help improve your deliverability rate and will leave you with a list that has much more quality, even if it’s smaller.

7. Rinse and Repeat – You just cleaned up but you aren’t done yet, it’s time to rinse and repeat. That means that FTC CAN-SPAM compliance is an ongoing process. You can’t ever stop. You always have to be following B2B email marketing best practices that will leave you and your company in compliance with both written legislation and unwritten rules.

Follow these 7 steps to FTC CAN-SPAM compliance and you and your company will be that much closer to B2B email marketing success.