There’s a myth out there that says email marketing is dead. Some people believe social media has taken over and business owners should only use that to connect with consumers. This myth has hurt a lot of business owners because they’ve missed the power of email marketing.

Email marketing is not dead. It’s alive and well. In fact, according to a ExactTarget’s Channel Preferences survey, 77 percent of people prefer to get retail messages via email. Not only that, 44 percent of people bought at least one product or service because of a promotional email last year, reports Convinceandconvert.com.

Email marketing should be part of your content marketing strategy because it extends the reach of your content. The more people you can touch with your content, the higher the likelihood they will buy from you and recommend your services and products to others. The following are some of the best ways that will show you how to integrate email into your content marketing strategy.

Repurposing Your Blog

You provide a lot of information on your blog. Not all your consumers will see it, especially the new posts. This is why it’s important to implement email to let people know of new posts. You can do this in three ways:

1) Add an email sign up form to your blog.

People can sign up to receive an email every time a new blog post is published. What’s great about this is that email recipients can forward it to others who they think will benefit from the post.

2) Create a newsletter with new blog posts.

If you already have an email list, you can use it to send newsletters with snippets from recent blog posts. You can use images and then hyperlink the title of the posts, so recipients can easily click on it to go to your blog.

3) Send emails with information from your posts.

People enjoy receiving personalized emails, and you can do that easily by using one or more of your blog posts. Start the email with a friendly introduction, and then provide readers with useful information taken directly from the blog post. At the end of the email, invite them to come to your blog to read more.

Integrating Social Media Content

Content marketing is huge on social media. People are publishing articles on their blog and then sharing it on social media. Social network users are liking, sharing, and retweeting these posts. The more popular posts go viral, and that’s what you should pay attention to when integrating email in your content marketing.

Use Your Social Media Posts

Use a social media analytical tool to track how well your posts do on social media. Identify your most popular posts and use the content in those to create an email for your list. You already know your audience is interested in the topic because it gained interest on social media.

Research Trending Topics

Search for keywords or #hashtags to identify what people are talking about on social networks. Once you have a clear idea what people are interested in, you can create an email that contains information that interests your audience.

Bonus Tips for Your Emails

As you’re sending emails, be sure to do the following for more success with content marketing.

• Include social media sharing buttons in your email, so people can post about your email.
• Add social media connect icons, which will enable people to see your Facebook page, Twitter profile, etc.
• When people sign up for your emails on your website, send an automated email to thank them.
• When people unsubscribe from your email list, make sure to invite them to follow you on social media. Just because they don’t want to receive your emails doesn’t mean they don’t want to connect in another way.
• Send a survey using tools like Jotform to generate more engagement. You can even embed the survey onto a page on your site with a call-to-action after it’s submitted to a popular blog post or landing page.

Don’t Forget to Market Emails Too

Email marketing goes both ways. You market your content and emails. Post on social media that you’ve just sent your subscribers the latest email newsletter. Invite your followers to sign up on your site.

You can create a web-based version of your emails to publish on your site. You can then market it on social media as new content.

Track, Adjust, Resend

Once you start sending emails, it’s important to pay attention to how they perform. You can do this by tracking how many people click on the links in them. If you don’t get a good response from an email, try something different for the next one, and then track how that one performs. There’s a lot of trial and error with email marketing, but once you understand what works with your audience, you can keep sending more of what consumers love.