How to Use Email Marketing to Work Faster and Deliver Value

Good Karma Meets Hard Data

Jeff Slutz (pronounced Sl-oo-ts) joins us from Nashville where he works at Emma, Inc., an email marketing software and services provider, as one of their senior content writers. Emma helps organizations and companies of all sizes build smarter, more effective email programs.
With such a small team (two people), Jeff and his partner cover every piece of content to come out of Emma, including the website, blogs, guides, infographics, and social media.
Despite the somewhat daunting (and meta) task of working in the marketing department of a marketing software company, Jeff keeps a cool head. He attributes his company’s success to engaging ‘everyone around the house’ in content creation, recognizing and utilizing the strength of multiple platforms, keeping their email content succinct and goal-oriented, and generating that good karma by keeping their clients’ best interests at heart.

In This Episode

• How to ensure you never run out of content ideas
• How to engage the best (and most accessible) brand advocates
• What makes a great webinar
• The most important aspects of email marketing
• How to build good karma with your clients

Quotes From This Episode

“I see too much of people trying to cram everything into a single email. When it comes down to it, people don’t have time. They’re only scanning your email. So, have that big hero image. Have that compelling headline. Really communicate clearly what the value of this piece is and why we’re showing up in your inbox today.” —Jeff Slutz
“We’re firm believers that everyone from product to sales has interesting and compelling ideas and we love to have them contribute to our content. I think that’s a way to also get more folks excited about your content and help them be brand advocates.” —Jeff Slutz

“It’s bringing in the salespeople and saying, ‘What are you seeing?’ It allows us to say to the customer, ‘Hey, we know this is a pain point for you. We’ve specifically put together this piece of content to address those pain points.’ It’s not necessarily a hard sale. It’s a little bit about building up that good karma that, ‘Hey, we really have your best interests at heart and we want to see you do your best marketing.'” —Jeff Slutz

“We really try to not get too caught up in that hard data all the time. We always keep in mind that if someone doesn’t click on an email, they at least saw that and maybe said, ‘Hey, these guys are producing a really cool thing,’ and that kind of impression is really important and can’t really be measured in hard numbers.” —Jeff Slutz

Resources

• Marketo
• The Unpodcast
• Emma
• The Modern Marketer’s Field Guide
• Emma Content Hub
• Emma’s Marketing United Marketing Conference

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Jeff wanted nothing to do with content but instead wanted to be a Marine Biologist. “I was the kid that created the full display of a great white’s physiology and like hunting behaviors for the school science fair and stuff.” But then a bit of reality sank in.
“I got a little older and I realized that I didn’t really want a job where there was a chance I could end up being hunted. Plus I’m not that strong of a swimmer. Shark Week is good enough for me now.” He says his backup plans was, “to enter the NBA Draft, but you’re lucky if you can slide a piece of paper underneath me when I jump, so I became a writer.”