Digital Marketing

7 Ways To Use Email To Boost Organic Traffic

It’s the bread and butter of your career, but it’s also possibly the bane of your existence.

Connecting with targets like a siren song, whether they’re in the office down the hall or on a beach vacation across the globe, is almost inevitable. And the modern world cannot function without it.

Of course, we are talking about email marketing.

Usually softer selling than other types of marketing, it offers an incredible return on investment, return on average $36 for every dollar spent.

But what exactly is it?

to me WikipediaEmail marketing is the sending of a commercial message, usually to a group of people, using email.

In a broad sense, every email sent to a potential or existing customer can be considered email marketing. It includes using email to send advertisements, solicit business, or solicit sales or donations.”

For digital marketers, this primarily means one thing: directing recipients to a website, either to get more information, to make a purchase, or to perform some other action.

In other words, traffic is the name of the game.

But, can you really use email marketing to increase your organic traffic? Definitely!

A major part of search engine optimization (SEO) is off-page factors, including social media shares and backlinks.

High-quality traffic will also affect how your site is ranked by Google and other search engines.

And one way to encourage all of this is through effective email marketing.

So, let’s look at the $10,000 question: How do Do you use email marketing to increase traffic?

Here are seven ways you can increase traffic to your website:

1. Aim accurately

Bounce rate – It’s a dirty word in internet marketing.

And while there is such a thing as email bounce rate (i.e. emails returned by the recipient’s server), what really matters to digital marketers is website bounce rate, i.e. the percentage of your visitors who leave your site without taking any action.

This is where email marketing can really shine. Whether you buy your list or compile it yourself, you need to be equipped with some basic information about your audience, which will allow you to run highly targeted campaigns.

To improve traffic, your email campaign should go to people who are genuinely interested in your content, whether because they have expressed some interest in the past or that your content can help solve a current pain point.

These types of visitors will likely spend more time on your website, signaling to search engines that your website is a good resource. Google will learn about your site’s authority and raise your ranking accordingly.

2. Understand user intent

Why would your email targets open your messages? Because you are offering them something of value and they see some relevance in what you sent them. (Or maybe you just write the best subject lines in the world).

There are three main types of user intent and email marketing can be used for all of them:

  • navigational – where the user tries to access a specific site, in this case, congratulations, job done.
  • Informational Where the user searches for information.
  • transactions – When the user is ready to make a purchase or take another action online.

If you also manage SEO for your organization, you are probably familiar with this concept.

If not, get who it is and ask them what long-tail keywords or meta searches are driving people to your site.

Then, use these to create emails that will connect with your audience.

By providing content that meets the user’s needs, you weed out low-quality visitors, and boost your SEO by improving the quality of your visits.

3. Use newsletters with exclusive content

Once you know what your target audience is looking for, you can create content to address it.

And regular newsletters with exclusive content are a great way to keep your brand on top of consumers’ minds.

Show your audience the value of your brand and build a reputation as an industry thought leader by emailing them weekly or monthly with relevant information.

If you have a company blog, this is a great resource to mine for content your audience won’t get anywhere else. And by clicking “read more” in your newsletter, they do exactly what you want – visit your website.

4. Email and social media integration

Email marketing and social media are both useful tools on their own. But when combined, the effectiveness of both grows exponentially.

Use your social media presence to invite followers to subscribe to your email list and vice versa.

Not only will this build rapport, but it will also allow you to develop more personalized communications.

Include “share” tags in your emails so that recipients can cross-promote your content.

Incentive-based referrals are another effective marketing tool you can use to interact with customers, for example, “Follow us on Facebook to get 10% off” or “Send this link to a friend to get an exclusive eBook”.

Sharing email content like this can drive searches and traffic to your website.

5. Personalize your email content

Which email message do you think will get a better response: one with a generic opening like “Dear Customer,” or one that says “Jeff, we have a special deal just for you!” (Assuming your name is Jeff, otherwise it would be weird).

As a marketer, you probably already know: this Personal emails have better open and click rates – And that’s only when they use the recipient’s name.

If you really want to increase the impact of your emails and drive traffic, you need to take advantage of segmentation.

By dividing your list into smaller groups based on specific criteria, you can provide relevant content that is more likely to get clicks.

For example, let’s say you’re running an email campaign for a computer store that sells both Macs and PCs.

By dividing your list into those with Macs and those with PCs, you can ensure that your content is relevant to the recipient.

You can take the shotgun approach, but the number of people interested in both is probably small, so you start to run the risk of becoming annoying and leading to unsubscribing.

And even if your audience doesn’t open your email, your brand name will still be in the back of their minds, so next time they do a web search you’ll be familiar and more likely to get a click.

6. Conduct A/B testing with SEO keywords

We touched on this briefly in issue two, but it bears repeating; Your email campaigns should use A/B testing, just like your landing pages and other content.

You should try different versions of your emails with your SEO keywords to determine which one gets the best results.

Try putting your brand’s most popular search terms in the subject lines, preview text, and body copy.

What’s great about this is that it works in reverse too – do you find that you get great results with a certain keyword in your emails? Try adding it to your SEO terms and it will help increase traffic to your site.

7. Ask for reviews

Every brand will claim to be the best in its field. But consumers know this and treat it with caution.

On the other hand, reviews have more influence on decisions because they lend legitimacy to your marketing claims.

After all, 98% of consumers read reviews. People tend to trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

And savvy marketers like you know that email marketing is a great way to get them hooked.

One of the most effective times to send it is a post-purchase when the novelty of your solution is still fresh in the customer’s mind.

Personalize your emails and include links to review sites to make it easier. Keep your email short, and you are more likely to get a response.

If you’re doing email marketing for a local business, asking for feedback is especially helpful. Not only will it affect your ranking in the local search results, but it will also allow customers to feel like they are helping someone in their community.

Email marketing and SEO go hand in hand

Your digital marketing channels are part of a much larger campaign.

They are all interconnected and by adopting a holistic view, you can use them to your advantage and help each perform better.

If you improve the quality of your email marketing, you will attract more qualified traffic to your website.

You can also direct targets to specific pages where they are more likely to have longer visits and engage with your content. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of conversion.

Sending your content through emails also earns you more shares and drives more visitors. It encourages other sites to backlink to your content, thus boosting your credibility.

And all of those working together help make your SEO efforts more effective.

More resources:

  • 11 Powerful Email Marketing Tips You Should Know
  • How To Succeed With Email Marketing In The Competitive Travel Space
  • Content Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners

Featured image: NicoElNino/Shutterstock

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