Get your subscribers thinking about your products just in time for you to sell them one
As an editor and email marketer, do you have a regular plan of action every week? Do you know what you’ll be sending out in email a month from now? If you do, great. If you don’t, then welcome to the heavily saturated world of disorganized email marking.
It’s not uncommon for publishers to pick and choose which categories in their blog that they want to write for. When there’s no featured product, it’s not uncommon for editors to guess at what they should be promoting when the day comes up. When there’s no schedule, there’s no reason to assimilate a strategic plan of action.
However, the day you decide to plan in advance and create an editorial calendar, here’s the strategy that works.
One of the most popular methods of increasing email conversions is something we affectionately call the “one-two punch”. Maybe you think of Boxing when you hear it. When we hear it, we think “money, money, money!” Just kidding. Sort of.
The concept of the “one-two punch” is to lead with an email newsletter on Monday that poses a problem and asks a question. On Tuesday, the solution to that problem and question is a delivered via a product promotion.
This same strategy is repeated on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday can be used for anything else, whether it’s list-building by offering away a free product, delivering a week-in-review, a letter from the editor or anything else you have cooked up.
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For example:
You’re an editor for a food publication. It’s the week before Christmas and you’re tackling people’s current interest in making food for their holiday parties.
On Monday, you write a tip that offers a single suggested meal plan for Christmas day. Your recipe titles link back to their digital articles on the website.
This is purely editorial. You’re offering a single idea that they can use on Christmas. You have them starting to think about meal plans. The editorial is already sponsored by Tuesday’s product, but it’s not front and center, it’s casually sitting on the right side of your email newsletter.
On Tuesday you offer a full-blown promotion for your Christmas Cookbook that offers 32 different Christmas meal plans. If they didn’t get what they wanted the day before, they can certainly find what they’re looking for in your cookbook!
Perhaps on Wednesday you offer up a cookie recipe. On Thursday, you sell your cookbook of 101 Christmas Cookies.
You see where this is going? This is one of the best-kept “secrets” in email marketing. Creating an editorial calendar will also help you organize these types of strategies in the future.
