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Thursday, October 20, 2016
The Importance of Storytelling in Content Marketing #MPB2B
Once upon a time …
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …
There once was …
These aren't just classic fairy tale or movie beginnings. They represent memories. They evoke feelings. They get our minds churning. They signal that an exciting story is about to unfold-and those stories are powerful.
As content marketers, we need to be in the business of storytelling if we want our content to resonate and inspire. As Shane Snow, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Contently, said during his session Create, Connect, And Optimize Through Storytelling: The New Formula For Content Success at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum.
“When you engage in a story, your brain lights up.”
We want our audiences' brains to light up when they experience our content. And at a time when content is absolutely everywhere, weaving a good story can set it apart from the rest. Here's why:
#1 – We're programmed for stories.
Stories and the way we react to them is part of our human makeup-dating back to caveman times and evolving to where we are now. As Snow said, stories make our brains light up. Research shows that when people are engaged in a story, there are a number of different parts of the brain that are connected and firing.
#2 – Stories break down barriers.
Stories help us understand each other. They connect us. They can inspire compassion. They can change our attitudes.
#3 – Stories build relationships.
Our human predisposition toward embracing stories, coupled with the connectedness stories give us, helps us build stronger relationships.
To open his session, Snow referenced a recent poll he had conducted. He asked his following to vote on who they would elect as president of the United States: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling or England's Queen Elizabeth.
The response? Overwhelmingly in favor of J.K. Rowling. Why? Because people felt like they knew her. There was a connectedness there-a relationship had been built.
How Do You Tell Better Stories?
Snow's framework for content marketing storytelling is simple: Create, Connect and Optimize.
Create: Create content that can tell your audience compelling stories at each stage of the buyer's journey. At the top, address shared interests and values. In the middle, tell stories about your company and your customers. At the bottom, dive into stories about your products and services. In addition, at each stage, the style of content you create could fall into three buckets: timely, seasonal or evergreen.
Connect: Choose how you will share your content with your audience based on Utilize your owned site and your email list to share content for sure. When it comes to additional tactics such as social media or webinars, make your choice based on whether you're hoping for brand awareness or conversions.
Optimize: Once you've created and connected, you need to find out whether your content is actually effective. Start by looking at engagement metrics to determine where you're winning and losing. Then take the steps to refine your content is created and shared with people.
“Stories have the potential to unlock changes and kindness, and improve our humanity,” Snow said. “If we think about it this way, we can do a lot of good in the world.”
If you're attending MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, we'd love to connect. Find us on Twitter at @TopRank, @leeodden, @azeckman, @amywhiggins, @leiladlf, and @CaitlinMBurgess.
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Microsoft beats estimates with $22.3 billion in quarterly revenue
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
7 Top-Performing Unbounce Marketing Emails to Copy, Paste & Customize
I've been wanting to write this post for a while, though I always had a slightly different format in mind. But after seeing this incredibly delightful and generous post by messaging app Drift, I knew I had to steal borrow their format (sharing is caring, right?).
If you're like me, you have multiple email accounts: one for work, one for pleasure and - admittedly - one for newsletters and other spam. As you can likely empathize with, I get a buttload of emails every day. Of which I read very few.
Here are some reasons why I actually read an email:
- I have to. It's either necessary for me to do my job or for me to function in society (i.e., “Your cell phone bill is overdue”).
- It's from a friend or family member. (My grandma is legit tech savvy.)
- The email subject line is so gosh darn intriguing that I literally cannot not click.
- It's from a source I trust, and/or the value is clearly indicated in the subject line or in the email opening.
That's pretty much it. And a quick poll of a few of my team members revealed they shared my sentiment.
So, if you're writing an email on behalf of your business (or on behalf of your client), it better fall into one of the above categories. Otherwise, it'll end up in email heaven. Or if you don't believe in heaven… email nothingness.
Lucky for you, we've compiled our (Unbounce's) top-performing emails (based on open rate, click-through rate or other defined metric of engagement). AND WE WANT YOU TO STEAL THEM.
Here's what's included:
- Blog welcome email
- Re-engagement email
- Campaign follow-up email
- Holiday email
- Feature launch email
- Oops email
- Nurture track welcome email
Plus we've highlighted what made them so successful and provided actionable tips for translating what worked to your own emails.
And for your copy-and-paste pleasure, here they all are in a Google doc.
Get all of Unbounce's top-performing emails
1. Start a conversation with your blog welcome email
This email was just one of the amazing things to come out of our two-week publishing hiatus. It's the welcome email that is sent after someone subscribes to the Unbounce blog:
Subject line: Just another welcome email
We had three goals for re-working the blog welcome email: (1) inject personality, (2) get recipients to actually engage and (3) gain insights about what our readers actually struggle with as marketers.
Whereas our previous blog welcome email got at most one response per month, this email prompted 20 genuine responses in its first 30 days. Here's one:
This one, too:
If that wasn't enough, the email also sustained a ~60% open rate (multiple online sources state 50% is industry average for this type of email). We'd like to think it has something to do with our borderline self-deprecating subject line… but then, maybe we were just lucky.
2. Revive dormant contacts with a re-engagement email
After the release of our web series The Landing Page Sessions, we sent this email to our unknown subscribers. (Note: We define unknown subscribers as people whose email is the only data we have, and thus cannot determine if they are market qualified.)
The goal of the email was to get recipients to check out the first season of the show, which showcases our product in a delightful and actionable way.
Subject line: Wanna binge watch the Netflix of marketing videos? 