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Visual Email Marketing Tips and Tricks To Stay Ahead In The Competition

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Visual Email Marketing Tips and Tricks To Stay Ahead In The Competition

You must have heard of the phrase ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, and we could not agree more. The famous saying stays true even in the field of marketing.

Email marketing is an efficient tool that budding marketers and brands highly leverage to ace their marketing game. It is a no-brainer that incorporating email marketing into your marketing strategies can help brands promote their products or services more efficiently.

Apart from this, email marketing successfully opens doors for marketers to enjoy various other benefits like lead generation, widening the presence of their brand, and of course, enhancing conversions!

Did you know that the average expected ROI is 40$ for every 1$ you spend on email marketing?

However, including only boring text-based content in your emails can never help you achieve your marketing objectives. You need to lure the attention of your potential customers by adding an element that is aesthetically pleasing, and this is where the power of visuals comes in!

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Why Incorporate Visual Content In Your Emails?

To create an effective email marketing strategy, it is crucial to ensure that it is well-planned and executed. Hence, apart from a result-driven and excellent copy, it is important to add visuals to increase the effectiveness of your campaign.

Visuals hold tremendous potential to catch the attention of the customer due to their engaging presence. Moreover, when used appropriately, visuals can help you convey information quickly and push email recipients to take an action instantly.

Lastly, the highlight is that there are a lot many ways in which you can easily include visuals in your email marketing. Confused about how to begin? Fret not as we have mentioned a few tips and tricks that will help you stay ahead of others.

Without any further ado, let’s begin right away!

5 Important Visual Email Marketing Tips & Tricks

  • Explain complex information with ease using infographics

Replacing typical content with infographics including charts, graphs, and images is a smart move to garner the attention of the recipients and further engage them to gain more insights on the topic.

If you are looking for ways and means to deliver numerically based data in an engaging and detailed format, then including infographics is an excellent move to do the needful as they are perfect for spreading intricate information more appropriately.

Have a look at how the famous writing app Grammarly presented infographics in a rather creative way.

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Garner 10x more attention using moving visuals

87% of online marketers use video as a tool for marketing

Ever since the inception of videos in emails, it has picked up the pace and grown to be one of the most popular forms of visual content. Apart from conveying information and grabbing attention, videos work perfectly for narrating the story of the brand as well.

Moving visuals like videos are super efficient to convert your email recipients into regular customers as they get better and more detailed knowledge about your product or service.

Just like the beverage brand Jot has explained to its users how to brew the perfect cup of coffee, you too can engage your users by adding how-to tutorials or different ways to use your product or service to generate more leads.

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  • Win prospect’s trust and confidence by including visual UGC

Just like any other human, your customer is also a visual being. They believe what they see!

Most importantly, Customers tend to trust other customers more than the brand.

Over the past few years, user-generated content has blossomed into one of the most powerful forms of content since it comes directly from the customers. The best part about UGC is that it is raw and unscripted, which makes it authentic and trustworthy.

Nowadays, customers vouch for their favorite brands by clicking a picture of their preferred products and posting it on various platforms including visually dominated platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

Further integrating these visuals in your emails is a complete win for your brand as the brand validation is coming directly from your customers. Potential customers look for authentic content before purchasing and incorporating UGC can help you seamlessly.

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  • Spice up your emails by adding quirky GIFs

We all love GIFs and we are sure you would agree! They work amazingly well to add a fun factor to your email and make it more appealing. Be it a funny meme, a festive GIF, or simply an informative GIF created by you, it can help you to take your email to a whole new level. GIFs give a quirky touch to your emails and help recipients relate more to your brand.

Quick Tip – Just be sure that the GIF you add adds relevance to your content. It should be able to send the message you are trying to communicate and should make sense.

Take Adobe for example. They ran an exclusive campaign showcasing how their subscribers can animate their innovative illustrations. They even incorporated a ‘Try Now button for making an action instantly. Have a look below!

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  • Tap into impulsive buying using product images

Simply sending a promotional email comprising only a catchy headline and text is not sufficient. You need to add more by including the images of the products that you are promoting. Adding product images would compel your subscribers to click on them and explore your product range.

However, ensure that you are not cluttering the mail with too many images, or else it gives an impact like a sales pitch mail. Secondly, you need to make sure to use only high-definition clear images. Including blurry images would disinterest your subscribers immediately and push them to close the mail.

Jamba collaborated with Revive Superfoods to create ready-to-blend yummy smoothies. As a part of their email marketing strategy, they included drool-worthy pictures to entice their potential consumers. For increased impact, they offered an additional 50% off on the first box for a limited time to their customers.

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Wrapping It Up!

If you are an email marketer and exploring ways to reap amazing benefits from your email campaigns, you must go for visuals in your next campaign.

Visuals can undeniably elevate email engagement and effectively communicate with your potential customers. We hope we’ve shared enough inspiration for you to make your email campaigns richer with these rich media.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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