SMX Munich conference takeaways

I was recently delighted to be invited as a speaker at the Search Marketing Expo in Munich. SMX Munich is Germany's largest search-marketing conference, with a packed agenda and an impressive array of speakers.

Among the SEO experts and the data gurus, I got to weigh in on my own special subject: email marketing, and why it's relevant to every search marketer.

If this is a topic you're interested in, here are the major takeaways from the conference.

Conference takeaways

• Email is a very important tool for marketers of all kinds. Email is not just for email marketers. It drives ROI, delivers engaged traffic, and provides a unique testing base. Small wonder that 73% of marketers state that email is their preferred channel.
• Email gets results. The ROI and engagement statistics for email say it all.
• SEO and email marketing are strongly aligned. Not just in goals, but also in methods, challenges, and strategy.
• AI and automation are driving change. For both SEO and email, AI, predictive automation and voice activation are transforming the marketing landscape.
• Email can drive SEO. The objectives of SEO marketing and email marketing are broadly the same: keep the brand relevant, reinforce the brand's message, keep customers engaged. Email's direct engagement format means it can provide SEO marketers with valuable insights about customer behaviour.
• Email provides a unique testing base for new content tech. When AI writes subject lines, email engagement analytics feed back to the AI, teaching it what works and what doesn't. The AI then learns and improves. This presents a great way to get data on content and keywords which engage, in double-quick time.
• Email provides scalable insights. Email data can be as broad or as granular as your segmentation strategy allows. This means that SEO insights from email are scalable and brand-specific, something you don't get from wider web analytics.
• The future is closer alignment between email and SEO. AI-written web copy based on email content data may not be as far off as you think. Email and SEO complement and drive one another, so it's time to put our strengths together.

Five tips to optimise email for SEO insights

1. Be prominent. Put your subscribe links where people can see them. You can't gain any email insights if you've not got an email audience. Retain engagement at the point of sign up by optimising the first campaign you send new subscribers with a welcome email. This will be the best performing email you ever send, because the subscriber is at their most engaged. Test the journey and keep refining it.
2. Segment and personalise. Raw data isn't enough. You need to know who that data's coming from. Quite apart from the fact that personalisation is good marketing strategy anyway, it really helps with SEO if you can accurately map different datasets to different segments.
3. Be useful. Unless your subscribers signed up for fluff, don't send them fluff. You're not going to get anywhere if your content is consigned to the spam folder at a glance. Send out emails which add value.
4. Content is the hook. This is a two-way street. Email doesn't just help SEO, SEO helps email too. Content written with SEO in mind is what will hook your subscribers, build brand engagement, and drive up your KPIs.
5. Integrate email insights. Test your email campaigns and use the results to inform your SEO activity, and vice versa. Test the winning email subject line as a title for the corresponding page on your website. Share insights on CTA wording that converts.

But most importantly, speak to your email team. Don't silo yourselves into separate departments. Combine your knowledge to create stronger content and more cohesive branding all round.