How and When to Recycle Your Content Using Email?

While content powers the connection between you and your customers, resulting in credibility building, email marketing allows you to directly communicate with them. Most marketers see these two as entirely different strategies, but I think otherwise. 

For instance, what if I say that using the same old content you created for SEO purposes, which now you think is of no use, can still be utilized to increase revenue IF you recycle it using your email automation and campaigns? Or imagine using your old content, getting high ROI, and thus making and saving more for your upcoming campaigns; sounds too good to be true?

Keep reading to find out how you can effectively recycle your content using email numerous times in a row and yield desired results.

How to use the same email twice?

Let’s start with the basics. You will be surprised to know the multiple ways you can use a single piece of content. 

For example, suppose you write content for SEO; it turns out great, gives you the desired result, and ranks high in SERP. You know you have done a great job with it, but what about after it has done its job? What do you do with that content? That hard work? Just done and dusted? NO! 

How about using it again? And let it show its wonders once more but in a different context and form and maybe to a diverse audience.

You can use SEO-purpose content for email marketing by integrating different marketing elements into the original content to make it more effective for this kind of audience. 

Let’s discuss it in detail below.

What are content repurposing and recycling?

Content repurposing is editing existing content in your marketing to make it useful for some new purpose. It is typically transformed into a new format.

For example, you wrote an article on “How to achieve maximum productivity in a day” on your blog post, and now you run a Youtube channel too and want to make a video on this topic. You can now reuse your article’s content to make the video. 

Similarly, email marketing can also be one of the repurposing content examples. In this, you repurpose content to make it useful by making changes according to the interests of your existing audience.

This could mean including appropriate pictures, figures, and even updated statistics if needed. It improves your content and ensures customer engagement because you know your audience, and it shows!

Content recycling is finding an appropriate medium to channel your old content into. In simpler words, it means repurposing content across channels to make it more reachable and to bring more traffic to your site.

Using Email marketing as a source of content recycling ensures customer engagement as it builds a one-on-one relationship between you and your customer. 

This direct relation with customers helps you get the best out of content recycling because it lets you interact with them and guide them through their customer journey. 

The benefits of email and content recycling – Why do we reuse emails and content? 

1. You are not starting from scratch

One of the great and most important benefits of content recycling is that you don’t have to start everything from scratch. You don’t have to collect data and linger on research work for a long time because you have already done most of that work before. 

You only need to edit the content according to your new channel and audience. In most of these cases, when you are recycling your content, you find many new ways to make it better and fill out the missing gaps that you didn’t notice the first time you created it. 

For example, you can recycle old menus by bringing new changes and enhancing their quality for the contemporary audience according to present products.

2. Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness 

As you are now not starting from scratch and dwelling on finding new topics, new research material, and new data, your work will be more efficient.

Most of the time-consuming work would have already been done. You will now focus more on adding value to your emails and making them more effective by adding more creativity to the original content.   

3. Helps in Improving Organic Visibility

Using old content for a new purpose is a smart strategy as it adds value to your marketing and increases traffic to your site without a lot of investment.

Therefore, you should not hesitate to repeat your old content because your new audience wouldn’t have seen that content from a while ago. It would be new for them. So it would be a good mix if you add your old content to your automated email messages.

4. Works well with Limited Resources 

Many businesses have to work within limited resources or low budgets, so marketers usually have a hard time finding efficient and effective strategies for content creation. 

This is also where recycling and reusing content comes in handy as it cuts the costs of redoing it all from scratch and makes it less time-consuming. 

5. Results in Increased ROI

Your emails are responsible for pulling your audience into making purchases from your site. But, not every email is opened and viewed so how do we get the desired results? – By reaching out to your audience through different channels and at different times.

So why not implement the same content that has been created for social media marketing purposes into your emails? While your social media campaign will increase your brand’s awareness, your emails will open a portal for you to communicate directly with your customers.

This amalgamation of content and emails would result in a  promising increment in ROI and content’s lifetime. 

6. Reinforcing your message

So what if you have delivered a piece of content once? You can still use it in a different way to reinforce its message. That can be done by adding valuable details to it – anything that supports your message and makes the decision-making process less intimidating for your customers.

Again, here email marketing plays its role by offering you to connect with your audience directly. It gives you the chance to use your old content and revamp it according to your audience’s current preferences and needs (based on the info you have collected from your interactions with them).

While you’re trying to reinforce your message, it’s crucial that you provide them with clear information while answering any of their questions, just like you would do if a friend asks for a suggestion. 

What content and emails should you repurpose?

The confusion about which content to repurpose and reuse are common among marketers. And the answer to this question is that you should repurpose the content that previously has been a hit among your audience! 

Repurposing highly performing content might have a chance of performing well the second time as well and may succeed in bringing a new audience. 

We have seen from many first-hand experiences that if the email worked in the past, it’s likely to work again. You can also repurpose not very high-performing articles by improving their quality. 

You can make them better by adding new information or adding images and figures, or statistical graphs – Anything that makes it more informative and understandable can be valuable for your customer.

So, keep your content evergreen by constantly adding new information and keeping up with what it’s going on in the industry. And keep assessing all of your old and new contents performances to make a suitable decision to figure out which content will work out best for repurposing. 

When should you repurpose content?

Another confusion that marketers face while using content for repurposing: when should they repurpose it and how many times they can use it.

The simple answer to this question is, “it depends.” A good marketer or a business person knows his audience. 

We learned in Email Marketing that knowing your audience is very crucial. If you know them, you would know what they want and what is the right period to give them a particular message or information. 

You should know how to connect to them and what will drive them to your store. Building this kind of relationship with your audience through content and email will also help you answer the second question. 

You should repurpose all your outdated content and update it according to current affairs. Providing outdated information could lose your customers as they would lose their trust in your brand. 

Thus repurposing your content for new offers and new changes in your business can be a smart and efficient choice. However, make sure that you don’t overdo it and don’t bore your audience with the content of the same theme.

How many times can you reuse the same content?

Not every customer of yours will open all the emails from your company. They are often left unopened or are directed to their spam folders. That’s why it is suggested that you reuse and resend content multiple times so that your audience doesn’t miss it.

Especially when there is an important announcement or offer in your business, for example, if you work in a clothing company, you need to update your audience about seasonal sales or new arrivals.  

But you should make sure that it is not the same formatted email every season so as not to alienate the audience. It would be best if you framed it differently using a different context. 

You may use the same content from previous years, but it should not be the same idea. You can change the tone of the content according to the new seasonal campaign you are running using different taglines and images. 

There are many opportunities to reuse the same content repeatedly by adding value to your audience and making it look relevant and fresh every time. 

You can use single content for multiple purposes by adding automation suitable for every campaign. This helps you leverage content to its fullest capabilities which adds value to customers and enhances their experience with your brand. And thus, persuading them to engage with your emails and ultimately make a purchase. 

How to choose content for recycling?

• The best performing

It is always best to reuse the content that has performed best in the past. By using software like Klaviyo, you can track the performance of each email you send out. 

The emails that performed the most in the past are much more likely to achieve well again. You should not let your best pieces of content go to waste. It is always the best option to recycle those pieces of content according to a new context and framework.

• Fits the marketing strategy

Using best-performing content is a wise choice as long as you do it smartly. You should not just focus on content’s previous performance but also its marketing qualities.

You need to make sure that it is designed well to attain the marketing goals of the current campaign. It must fit the marketing strategy so the message is clear and you can convey the information to your customer so they act the way you want them to.

• That Adds value

As a seller, the most important thing for you should be to add value to your customer’s experience. For example, informing your customers about the changes in the products, if any, explaining its benefits means you are helping them make an informed decision.

Suppose you run a business that sells cakes, and now you have changed the recipe of your products. You added something else to the mix, e.g., nuts. You must inform your customers about this change to make a suitable decision for themselves. 

As nuts can be very allergic to some, they should have full information on what they are consuming. This information is valuable to the customers, and they appreciate such communication. 

Conclusion 

While recycling your content using email, your focus should be on what kind of content is eligible for repurposing and how frequently a single content can be repurposed.

Keeping in mind the points discussed above, rest assured that you can make the best of your email marketing through content repurposing and recycling.