I recently attended The Future of Measurement and Messaging Conference in London, England. Despite a lengthy career in marketing, I was pleased to learn a great deal from digital marketers in Europe who presented at and attended this informative one-day conference. But there was one presentation in particular that really stuck with me, perhaps because the content was, well, about content.

The presenter was Catherine Toole, CEO of Sticky Content. Her presentation was called "What makes good email copy?", and I have been completely impressed with her and thoroughly paranoid about my own writing ever since.

Which is a good thing.

The point of Catherine’s presentation, I think, was that we marketing communications writers need to be ever mindful of the content we develop, its impact on those who read it (whether intentional or not), and how to make it better. I couldn’t agree more.

The fact is that marketers are human (yes, all of us). As such, even the best of us can forget the key tenet of marketing: understand your audience. And this simple yet inevitable fact sometimes causes us to write content that may achieve our business objectives, but may not be relevant to our audience.

The truth is, content matters. In fact, it matters a great deal. As more and more email fills the inboxes of our target audience, we need to make our email marketing messages stand out even more. That means understanding our audience – their needs, wants, motivations, interests, etc. And, perhaps more importantly, we need to put our audience ahead of our own priorities.

Catherine Toole recommends using the rule of the Three S’s when developing email marketing content:

1. Subject – make the subject line appealing to the recipient so they’ll open the email

2. Sender – make it clear that the email is coming from someone your audience knows or cares about, don’t make it a mystery

3. Significance – make the email content significant and relevant to the recipients

She also urges us to keep these four criteria in mind for creating relevant content. That is, make it…

• Branded
• Urgent
• Brief
• Enticing

…to your audience, of course.

And as we fight our human urge to see our own needs first, the content will matter more to our audience than it does to us. After all, that is the point, right?

How are you making content more relevant to your audience? Share, discuss and debate here. I dare you.

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About the Author

Cathi Mason is director of marketing programs for Lyris. Her team is responsible for executing programs that deliver quality leads to the sales team.

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