Creating your Email Marketing Plan requires just as much content and creativity as creating a great blog or website. Unfortunately, it's the one thing that most people fail to implement or procrastinate on in their marketing strategy. And it's the one thing that can take your e-business to a whole new level!
There are two main types of email marketing: the traditional customer follow-up of course, and the second is content based mailing lists to build trust & rapport with your target market.
In this tutorial, we'll look at creative ways to use PLR Articles in your Email Marketing Plan. You'll finally have email marketing working for you - and a lot easier, with much time & less work than you might have imagined!
First, what is PLR?
It stands for Private Label Rights and it is content that you can edit, add to, change the format, etc and claim authorship to once you have made your changes.
PLR comes in all types of formats: articles, ebooks, reports, ecourses, etc. Basically it's just content, and you can use it in any format you like. A PLR article can be used to create a video, a group of PLR articles can be combined into a short report, etc.
Email Newsletter Ideas
We've discussed easy email newsletter ideas before. Your emails don't need to be essay length, professionally designed "newsletters". The main objective is to stay in touch with your readers and build rapport with them - which is best done in short, interesting notes than in wordy or fancy emails.
Still, it can be a lot of work to come up with content for your autoresponder, e-courses, follow-up messages, etc. Not to mention your bonuses or your opt-in incentive to compel them to subscribe in the first place.
This is where PLR content steps in. 😉
3 Simple Ways To Use PLR in Your Email Marketing Plan
PLR content is not the same as reprint rights, or using articles from article directories. You have more options and flexibility with PLR because you can edit and change it to suit your needs...
1. Opt-in Incentive
To encourage visitors to subscribe to your mailing list you might offer them an incentive such as an e-course, a free report or a tip sheet. You can take a great PLR Report and turn it into a time released e-course using an autoresponder. Or you can take a set of articles and use those to put together a free short report. Once you find good PLR content on your topic, you can get creative in how you deliver it!
2. Follow-up Series
If you sell a product online, you'll want to follow up with your buyers and stay in touch with them. Let's say that you sell gardening supplies to vegetable gardeners. You can find how-to PLR Articles or a PLR Report, and break those down into tips that you can share with your customers each week through your autoresponder. You can include links back to your online store, or links to affiliate products if you're an affiliate, when the tips mention or require certain products.
3. Newsletter Content
One of the biggest problems I hear from people who have started a list, or are thinking of starting their first list, is what to send out in the emails to their subscribers. PLR Content is a great source for topic ideas! Articles will general cost you around $1 each, or you can often get 30 page reports for only $20. This is a small investment to have months worth of content for your list.
Again, you want to break it down and keep your emails short and usable. An article with '7 tips for a great vegetable garden' can be broken down into 7 emails (sent once a week, that's almost 2 months worth!). You can expand a bit on each tip and then lead into the next one - keeping them engaged and waiting for your next tip.
You can also use PLR content to create subscriber bonuses, such as short reports or simple how-to guides. Exclusive downloads can really increase your open rate and response rate, and have your subscribers looking forward to more emails from you.
There are a lot of great sources for quality PLR content. You can do a search on Google for your keyword and just include "plr". For example, if you have a blog or list about gardening, you can type in gardening plr.
You don't always know what kind of quality you're going to get, but when you do find a source you like you can stick with it. I get almost all of my PLR from Easy PLR, which is owned & managed by Nicole Dean.
She offers articles, reports and even e-courses and on a variety of topics. Everything from dog training to home interior to search engine optimzation, and just about everything in between. A great place to start your search!
I would love to hear your thoughts or questions on using PLR, and on creating a successful email marketing plan. What is your biggest challenge with it?
Best,
Disclosure: Nicole Dean is a friend of mine, a former sponsor of ClickNewz, and I am both an affiliate and a customer of Easy PLR. 🙂
About Lynn Terry
I never thought about using PLR as content for emails to my subscribers. This is a great idea. I do send out good content instead of just promoting whatever the latest product launch is that week. I have my eye on a few of Nicole's PLR articles. I should get them before they sell out since the ones I want have a limited number available.
My subscribers are in for a nice surprise now that I have this new idea about how to get great actionable content to them without doing all the research and writing myself.
Thank you Lynn for another inspirational article.
Clay
I use it quite a bit - here on my blog, in my emails, and even on my webinars! Remember awhile back when I did the web content writing series? One of those webinars was 100% PLR! Here's the details of the re-write I did for that: http://www.clicknewz.com/2060/plr-article-rewrite/
😀
I do this already, I think it's great as long as you do tweak it to make sure your personality shows through (not always necessary though). It's such a good timesaver!
I like to tweak mine as well, Ruth. That's what I love about private label rights vs reprint rights - the option to reformat or rewrite as you please. And for the price, well you can't have content written for you at that rate!
I yet not started one but I'm willing to start one as soon as I reach my traffic goal. Thanks for this productive tips.
Hi Arafat,
What is your traffic goal? And do you really want to miss out on all of the potential subscribers up until then - or not offering your first visitors the option? I'm just curious why you're waiting...
Lynn-this is a great idea. I haven't used alot of PLR in the past but plan to implement it into my New Year's plan especially now that I have Blog Calendars set up for all my clients. Multipurposing that content into the email marketing strategy just saves me even more time!
One of my other New Year's plan's is to really ramp up my email marketing so this post is perfect!
Thanks!
http://TwitterTina.com
Hey Tina 😀
I just started using PLR more heavily this past year myself - and with great results! And you know me. I *love* to write content LOL. It has really made a huge difference for me both in content idea generation and in higher quality content for my lists & blogs.
I love that you are ramping up your email marketing strategy this year. A lot of people believe that "email is dead" - that couldn't be further from the truth 😉 Smart thinking!!
PLR is just the bomb diggity - I can't get enough of it! It might just be the coolest thing since sliced bread! I've really enjoyed your sharing with us so openly your unique ways of using it in all the different ways that you do.
And I'd have to say, hands down, EasyPLR is the best! Love their stuff!
Now between a post at Angela Wills' blog this morning and yours here, I've got wheels turnin' in my head - better go do something with that! 😉
LOL - better get to work! This new year is already slipping away from us! 😀
I have just started a list on one of my affiliate sites. The product owner provided me with text and podcasts to send to my list. My biggest problem so far is walking the thin line between providing useful information and too much information that they won't need to buy the product.
Thanks for reminding me about PLR I am going to look for some to create a new list of customers that have purchased.
You definitely want to offer your content with both value and purpose, strategically leading your readers in a certain direction. Good thinking on your part to put some time into that. 😉
I love PLR. It’s a prime example of working smarter not harder in the internet marketing business. Using PLR content is a strategy for marketers who don’t have time to write their content or just don’t relish the task of writing.
I also use it to generate ideas when I'm drawing a blank. I took one PLR article out of a pack I purchased (dirt cheap!) and turned it into a series on my blog, a live webinar, and ultimately a rebrandable viral report! 😀
Nice post about PLR (Private Label Rights)in Email Marketing Plan. yet i have not worked on PLR. I will try it now. Thanks for sharing this descriptive information.
Hi Lynn
You're right PLR content has so many possible uses, it's easy to forget. Thanks for giving me some new ideas. You're also right about http://www.easyplr.com I've come to love her stuff and she also is pretty goog about giving away freebies here and there.
Hi Lynn,
As a copywriter, seo expert and internet journalist myself, I found your articles and ideas regarding PLR writing - most intriguing. Yet, there is one important factor I still miss in the equasion: How does it co-exist with search engines "double content" prohibition?
I would love to read your solution to that, If you may.
Hi Edith,
See this post:
http://www.clicknewz.com/2078/duplicate-web-content-google-penalty-myth/
I hope that helps 🙂
My niche is narrow, as far as SEO goes, and I have unique traffic challenges because of that. But I am passionate about my niche and able to write with authority, so that's OK.
BUT there is also no good PLR out there on my topic.
Should this be a warning sign to someone who is choosing a niche they are not involved in: if there is no good PLR out there, you might want to reconsider the popularity ($$$) of the niche?
Nice post! Very informative. It's very interesting to learn something new.
I was working as email marketing manager for 2 years but I have never thought about using PLR creating emails.
Nice tips, I think that I'll use your tips preparing my next email campaign.
My list is slowly growing over time to nearly 3,000 now and I often struggle to find time to add more emails to my follow up series. I have a bunch of PLR articles on my hardrive that I've never used. What a great idea to adapt some of that content into emails for my subscribers....often they don't hear from me for weeks so this will be a nice way to send them some free information and build my relationship with them...cool stuff 🙂
Hi Lynn,
great tips. I was worried about not having anything to write about and also I was concerned about using PLR, you've put both of my concerns at ease.
I almost spent $197 for a course on how to set up a follow-up system. That's how bad I want to learn how to do this. I guess now all I need to spend is about 50 bucks to get plenty of content.
I know this is a old post of yours but, It helped me a lot.
Thanks Lynn.