With the advent of modern technology came the rise of various marketing channels such as online ads and social media. What is little known about these channels is how decidedly intertwined they are. They play the same game and aim for the same goal: better return on investment (ROI). Two of these platforms, email marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), are more connected than you think. This guide will enlighten you about the important relationship between these two.
Email Marketing: The Most Tested Form of Customer Engagement
On the off chance that you don’t know your marketing channels, email marketing is a strategy that aims to reach, engage, acquire, and retain customers through emails that contain different kinds of promotions. Email marketing is possibly one of the oldest methods of touching base with customers in the Internet era, yet it is still widely used today by marketing professionals.
Like all digital campaigns, marketing through email has evolved over the years to accommodate the changes warranted by modern technology. More thought is put to it now than ever. In fact, a 2015 National Client email report by DMA in the UK revealed that almost one-fifth of client businesses have an ROI of more than £70 for every £1 spent.
SEO: The Key to Better Brand Exposure
Now that you have basic and sufficient knowledge about email marketing, it’s time to probe SEO. A good SEO campaign results in a Webpage that ranks higher than competition in search engine results pages (SERP). SEO encompasses everything that involves getting a Webpage that coveted spot under the limelight. This includes search engines crawling through a Website and indexing individual pages into a mass database.
SEO has two main divisions: on-site and off-site optimization. The former entails improving your Website’s layout, content, performance, keyword structure, and other relevant aspects. The latter requires publishing content on external sites to promote inbound links to your Website. When these two divisions are properly carried out, you can expect a more fruitful SEO campaign with better ROI.
Content: The Champion of All Social Media Channels
There is one underlying principle that governs all successful email marketing and SEO campaigns. This principle is what all successful ventures have in common: powerful content. Don’t raise a brow just yet—powerful content may already sound hackneyed, but its implication is as important as before. For example, an email that contains plenty of interesting graphics—photos, videos, infographics—will still wind up in the bin if it has no good content to accompany it.
For an email content to be effective, it has to be concise. Relay your message in not more than 125 words to optimize your open and click-through rates. Good content should pique the readers’ interest so make sure that the email you send out is relevant, timely, and interesting to your audience. Most important of all, the content should contain a call to action (CTA). Inspire your audience to like your Facebook page, retweet your post, subscribe to your YouTube channel, visit your Website or simply stay alert for your next email. A compelling title will grab your audience’s attention and make them open your email, but a compelling body will get them to either stay or opt out.
How Email Marketing Can Influence Your SEO Campaign
No direct relationship exists between email marketing and SEO. Search engines like Google don’t exactly crawl through emails and rank them based on certain criteria. Having a large list of email subscribers doesn’t do much to your SEO campaign either. No, the relationship between SEO and email marketing is crucial and rudimentary, but it’s not altogether obvious. Here are some ways you can harness the power of email marketing to boost your SEO campaign.
Drive visitors to your Website
Email marketing is a good way to promote your Website. It’s an effective method of content promotion that can potentially increase not only the visibility of your Website content but also its level of engagement. Targeted keywords and compelling CTAs are effective email marketing strategies that can direct your audience to important landing pages, thereby boosting your search engine rank. This means you can attract more inbound links from bloggers and industry influencers who find your Website relevant and interesting. More inbound links to your site means higher traffic, and higher traffic yields better ROI.
Keep your audience engaged
Email marketing is useful in directing traffic to your other social media channels. By integrating your other social accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, in your email templates, you keep your audience engaged and informed about your latest news, promotions, and contests. Although social media engagement doesn’t directly impact SEO, having a large digital following can increase the odds of your brand reaching more potential clients.
Some of the ways you can promote your social media channels are by inviting your readers to leave a comment in your YouTube channel, asking them to share your Facebook post, and enticing them to follow you on Instagram. Segment your email list to see which of your readers are more engaged. Knowing who shares, retweets or comments on your posts will help you narrow down and focus on your target audience.
Promote brand awareness
Email marketing doesn’t always have to drive sales. You can send out an email just to increase your brand awareness. If your email recipients constantly find you in their inbox, you will get noticed sooner or later. Your recipients will grow curious about your brand and your offering. Just be careful not to send too many emails, as that can put you directly in the recipients’ spam folders. There are right ways to use email marketing–exhaust them to your advantage.
Build credibility with clients
Email marketing is an effective way to build a good reputation and nurture your leads. You don’t always have to send out promotions. You can just provide your audience with useful and valuable content. Soliciting engagement and driving sales are not always the priority of email marketing. Beyond just those goals, it’s important to retain customers by showing them how your brand can improve their lives. Build credibility with them first. Once they understand your purpose and acknowledge your importance, they will gladly become your brand’s heralds.
Use vital statistics for SEO purposes
You can analyze your email marketing statistics and use the results to improve your SEO campaign. For example, you can send an email newsletter and determine which of your articles are the most popular. With that information in your hands, you can curate more topics that appeal to your target audience. You can also use your email to identify which of your social media channels elicit the most engagement.
Email marketing is a powerful tool that can send your SEO campaign to new heights. The more you know about how these two marketing concepts are related, the more you can use them to your advantage. The next time you send out an email, remember that what you’re actually doing is inviting your target audience to get to know your brand better.
Aby Nicole League is a contributor to BusinessTown.com.
