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).

Jenna Tiffany | Let'sTalk Strategy featuring in room 2

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

• Firstly, 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 (more on that later). 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. Even Rand Fishkin (who was also speaking at SMX Munich) has tweeted that one email address can be worth 1000 Facebook page likes.
• 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 that email can provide SEO marketers with valuable insights about customer behaviour.
• Email provides a unique testing base for new content tech. Take AI-generated subject lines, for example. Domino's pizza, struggling to engage their subscribers through email, experimented with AI-led subject lines. The result was a 26% uplift in opens, a 57% uplift in clicks, and a 753% uplift in ROI. When AIs write 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. Applying this to your content strategy could make all the difference for your SEO.
• 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 compliment and drive one another - it’s time to put our strengths together.

If you want to learn how to optimise your email for SEO insights, here are my top five tips:

1. Be prominent. Put your ‘subscribe’ links where people can see them! Don’t hide the email sign up, make it prominent like these examples below:
   
   You can’t gain any email insights if you’ve not got an email audience. Retain the engagement at the point of sign up by optimising the first email campaign you will send your new subscribers, by sending 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. I’ve worked with brands who’s email subscribers had the longest page time dwell and read the most pages of content than any other source of traffic. Use email to drive qualified traffic to your website and segment your list if you’re not already personalising
3. Be useful. Unless your subscribers signed up for fluff, don’t send them fluff. You’re not going to get anywhere if your stuff is consigned to the Spam folder at a glance. Send out emails which add value for your subscribers. Make your emails useful to them. Like this example below, where the customer enters their email address when the item comes back in stock:
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. Keep analysing, cross-referencing, and learning!
   
5. Integrate email insights. Test your email campaigns and use the results and insights 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 and test the ones that drive the most clicks from email campaigns on your website.

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.

If you’re looking for a speaker for your event, get in touch.

I’d love to speak to your audience and help provide input to overcome your specific strategic issues!

@JennaTiffany

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jennatiffany

About Jenna Tiffany

Jenna Tiffany has been recognised as one of the top 100 female marketers to follow, is a Chartered Marketer and Fellow of the IDM. She is the Founder & Strategy Director at Let'sTalk Strategy providing consultancy services across the digital marketing mix. Jenna has over ten years' marketing experience within B2B and B2C and both client and agency side.

Industry recognised expert as an elected member of the prestigious DMA Email Marketing Council. Jenna provides marketing consultancy to brands worldwide. As a proven thought-leader, competent public speaker and publisher, Jenna can be regularly seen sharing her latest trends and key industry topics internationally.

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