Email Marketing, List Building, Small Business

3 Unusual Places to Find Compelling Content for Email Marketing

Author: Monica Snyder

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Last Updated on March 5, 2024 by Monica Snyder

Is finding good content to pack in your email envelope driving you bananas? 🍌

If so, I have some good news for you. I am bringing you three secret places to discover email content that your audience really wants and is valuable to them.

Hey, I’m Monica Snyder, and I wanted to share these with you because it really helped me discover things when sometimes my audience is being a little quiet and being able to know what to send them.

#1 Amazon Reviews

Amazon reviews are great because people will go on and talk about a book that they have really strong opinions about.

So what you have to do is find a book that is in your audience's reading library based on the niche. Something to keep in mind is that it does not have to be exactly the thing that you're teaching that you're doing, but think about them as a whole person and what else they might have in their library.

So let's head to Amazon, and I'll show you exactly what I mean. We will take the book ‘DOTCOM Secrets’ by Russel Brunson as an example since it’s perfect for my ideal customer because almost everyone in ‘digital marketing’ has at least heard of it.

Find Reviews with Emotions

Moving along to the reviews section, we need to find reviews with emotions attached to them. This could be complaints or critiques (including positive ones).

Near the top is an ideal review to use, and let me explain why.

So this person is talking about how they respect Russell for the complex web of information that he's laid out very simply. So they like complex information turned into simple concepts. That's pretty true for everybody.

That gives me something I could write about in my email marketing.

I could say, “There's this complex thing of email marketing, and I have simplified it here.”
The second thing that they go on to say is that it reads like a sales letter. Unfortunately, that's what turns him off. So what's great about this review is that it is a three-star review. It's not just negative.

It's got a little bit of both further down the review. He goes on to say,
“it seems like the thing Russell finds most exciting is that he can use psychology to manipulate people into giving him money, which is cool if you're into that. Perhaps I'm too romantic. I am. But the culture of ‘the make money online’ world mostly centered around ClickBank seems to have very little concern for what you sell, but simply that you sell it.”
Now the line ‘Perhaps I’m too Romantic. I am.’ is something that stands out to me.

So I’ll include something like, ‘Perhaps I'm too optimistic. I am.’ I love that because it brings out more character.
I will also take the reviewer’s style of using quotations to emphasize certain words. I could turn that into an email with a subject line of “what” you sell is important, “how” you sell it is also important, or something like that. And talk about how email marketing creates a relationship with your reader so that “what” you sell and “how” you sell it go together in such a great way.

Now we will find one more to look at.

So, this reviewer actually qualifies himself by saying I have studied all these amazing people, which is great. We can actually use these names to research more of our audience.
He phrases, ‘This book has just the right mix of high-level strategy and low-level tactics’. So I could write emails about ‘High-level strategy vs Low-level tactic’ when you should use what he then says down here.
The only downside to this book is that it doesn't address the technical side of things.

So I could also write an email saying, ‘Tired of not knowing the technical side of things? Here are four solutions for you.’

#2 Complementary Websites

The next place we're going to find information is on complementary websites, and we're going to look specifically at their copy and testimonials.

You want to look for websites that are in the same niche. Next, you want to look for sales pages or things that have testimonials on them.

So if you're selling eCommerce products, maybe you look at different eCommerce stores.

Example: Amy Porterfield

For me, it's email marketing, so I'm going to look at Amy Porterfield’s site.

She’s a powerhouse in the digital marketing space, and it’s similar to my audience. So, let’s check out the testimonials.

I could write an email that says,

‘How would you like paid maternity leave to be possible for you?’
Then go on in my email and explain how email marketing makes that possible and how it makes it possible to actually not have to stress while you're on maternity leave because it can be automated.

This testimonial says, ‘I learned my voice in marketing.’ So, I can write an email about ‘How to find your voice through your emails.’
She also has a concern about having ‘no tools.’ So, I could say, ‘Here's a list of tools that you need for email marketing.’

Hoping that you are following along, let’s find another testimonial to get inspiration.

Carrie's talking about her business was one dimensional and that's a really interesting phrase. It's not one that I would normally use.

So I could write in my email, is your traffic one dimensional? Expand it with email marketing. Or if I wanted to go into something else, so say I decided to start also promoting social media training. Then I could say if email is your only thing, you're one dimensional, you need to be broader.

The reason why these testimonials work is because really good digital marketers know how to get a testimonial that sells.

Example: Offer Cure

So let’s get to Offer Cure. I personally like this product, and it’s a successful one. That’s why we are looking for the testimonials here.

So there are a couple of things that we could turn into content.

I could say ‘Making Emails So fun You could literally do them all day’
Then write about a writing process or a framework or talk about how a spreadsheet plus a tutorial makes it stupid simple to put something together related to email marketing.

The next testimonial says,

‘It's amazing how you can make Complex marketing so Simple.’

That's sort of the second or third time I've read that. So it's really resonating that this might be a thing that needs to happen.

So this one from Ashley is interesting.

‘After going through the offer cure, I pulled up my timer to see exactly how long it would take to finish. It would take me to create a strong offer, 38 minutes.'

So I could take this concept and turn it into an email.

‘I pulled up my timer to see exactly how long it took me to write this email.’
I could actually even record it and make it a video so that they can see my editing process and how I get it into the program that I use and all this different stuff.

Example: Amber Housley

So the last place I'm going to go is Amber Housley, who is also a powerhouse woman marketer and has a very girly vibe. So let’s look at some of the testimonials.

She needs a logical step-by-step process.

I can definitely turn that into ‘Hey, here's the logical step-by-step process to creating your next email marketing newsletter.’

So this one's interesting. It says, ‘I love planning, but when it comes to my business, I drag my feet.’

So I can translate that into email marketing and say,

‘When it comes to planning your emails, do you drag your feet? Here's how to solve that.’

Okay, I think I've made this point. So go check out complimentary websites that have your audience look at their testimonials and see how your audience is speaking.

#3 Software Built for Your Audience

The last place is the software that is built for your audience. This could help you answer a lot of technical questions that people are going to have around your stuff.

Example: ActiveCampaign

I'm going to start with one called ActiveCampaign because that's one of the auto-responders I use.

Let's just start with the catchphrase itself. ‘Turn leads into Customers, into Repeat Customers'

I mean, that's a really good headline, right? So, as you've guessed, I can go with a phrase like ‘Would you like repeat customers from your email marketing?'

Another phrase that stands out to me is this ‘Automation gives you back your time.'

Automation gives you your time back, right? I know this. But my email list may not.

I feel like my email list understands that there is automation. I don't think they fully understand the power of what it can do. So I need to do a better job of educating around that.

Then, ActiveCampaign goes on to say ‘It doesn't stop at email marketing…' and reporting.

So I could actually talk about what metrics you're supposed to look at, segmentation, automation, goals, and tracking.

Example: Grammarly

Secondly, we have Grammarly. I just want to get something that's not so obvious, and here we have it.

‘Compose clear, mistake-free writing that makes the right impression with Grammarly's writing assistant.'

I could do ‘Tips and tricks on how to write clear, concise words.'

Grammarly has also got this tone detector, which is really great. So I could write something about how to bring your voice in with tone when it matters to care about grammar and when it doesn't.

And I can actually tell them to come get Grammarly because I really do use this extensively, and I love Grammarly. So that's a product recommendation.