Curated content newsletters are on the rise with content creators, digital marketers and brands of all sizes. Why? When you combine the power of email as a marketing technique with how fast content is consumed nowadays, curated newsletters can tick a lot of boxes for businesses.
Because consumers are faced with information overload and don’t know where to look for reliable, quick news content they can trust, newsletters are one way to keep your brand top of mind, promote thought leadership within your niche and generate sales.
What Does It Mean If an Article Is Curated?
Content curation involves sifting through articles and news stories to find relevant information and pieces for your intended audience. The goals of this marketing strategy are to engage users, build credibility and cultivate brand loyalty. By showcasing information and articles from world-class organizations, your brand can improve its content ROI.
What Is a Curated Newsletter?
A curated newsletter is a piece of content that features the most important news or trends in your industry. Think of curated newsletters serving the same purpose as your favorite artist’s mixtape. It is a compilation of the best, timely and compelling content shared in an easily digestible format.
To find the best content to share, marketers will often sift through many of their content pieces to pick out the best of the best to feature in this update. Their goal is to find educational material to provide a high-level overview of what’s going on in the industry right now.
The content that you share doesn’t have to come from just your blogs and social media posts, and it is recommended that you look elsewhere within your niche. Sharing content from other creators allows you to build relationships with customers – while providing a complete, 360-degree lens of the story you are trying to tell to your readers. Even if a consumer is loyal to your brand over one of your competitors, promoting content from multiple sources will provide your readers with the information that they don’t necessarily have time to search for.
Benefits of Curated Content Newsletters
If you already have a robust content marketing strategy in place, you may be asking yourself, “Why do I even need to create a curated content newsletter, on top of everything else I am doing?”
There are plenty of benefits to adding a curated newsletter to your current content offerings and editorial calendar. Let’s jump right in.
1. Curated News Saves Your Readers Time
A staggering 2 million blog posts are written every single day. There’s so much digital noise on the internet that it can be chaotic for someone to find what they are looking for. All of this content available with a click of a button can make users feel like they’re missing out on top stories due to time constraints.
Curating relevant news stories for your audience solves this problem; you’ll do all the heavy lifting of finding the most important and topical stories for your readers and putting them all in one place. Your readers won’t have to spend tons of time researching online, which is a benefit that they are sure to remember when associating with your brand in the future.
2. A Curated Newsletter Provides a Snapshot of What's Important
Again, with all of the world’s information at our fingertips, it can be exceptionally hard for someone to determine what content is important and what should be ignored. Readers are often presented with too much information from a brand and can initially feel confused about what to read and when. Curated content newsletters remove the busy work for readers — they are an easy-to-read format that only contains the information that is important to know.
3. Email Has a Proven Track Record of Success
With more contemporary marketing formats like webinars, podcasts and video campaigns, it’s all too easy to forget that email marketing is a tried and true communication method. There’s a reason email is still around today and most marketers see it as a worthwhile marketing strategy.
The statistics speak for themselves. There are 4 million daily email users, and more than 306 billion emails are sent and received daily. Emails are powerful — for every 1 dollar spent on marketing, email brings in a whopping 42 dollars. This is an ROI of 4,200%, making email one of the most effective content strategies available.
So with these numbers in mind, why wouldn’t you want to invest in email marketing?
4. Relevant Content Helps to Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
When you save people time and provide them with excellent and relevant content, you’ll soon stand out as an authoritative figure in your space. Being on top of the latest news and information in your industry or niche helps to develop your brand as a thought leader and can contribute to a more comprehensive thought leadership content strategy.
A thought leader influences a narrative, is a go-to resource in their field of expertise and can do wonders for a company’s brand recognition and authority. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased importance of digital advertising, thought leadership content has become more important than ever. In fact, 51% of decision-makers note that they are reading more thought leadership than when the pandemic started. This strategy is also producing real ROI for organizations. Approximately 53% of organizations noted that they awarded more work to a company after engaging with this content.
5. Curated Newsletters Expand Readership
One of the great things about email is how efficient it is. Newsletters are a great way to get content in front of a large number of people in one fell swoop. You can easily target a wide population of your consumers and encourage them to learn more about who you are, what you do and the content your brand produces. Plus, email newsletters often include external links to other sources, like your website and social media platforms, which can improve clicks and sessions.
6. Valuable Content Is Often Behind a Paywall
Only 20% of Americans currently pay for their news. However, credible journalism and high-quality editorial pieces are increasingly being put behind a paywall. Incorporating these journalistic pieces into your marketing can allow your team to showcase valuable and unique content. By partnering with a content licensing firm, organizations can curate world-class articles to their audiences, providing extra value to consumers.
AdvisorStream partnered with NYTLicensing to provide its advisers a way to share valuable and credible content from world-leading publications. They are an award-winning marketing platform, aiming to help financial advisers grow their business.
Through AdvisorStream’s technology, advisers are able to create consistent and tailored newsletters for clients with articles focusing on finance and lifestyle. Due to AdvisorStream’s content licensing initiatives, they are able to include articles from Harvard Business Review, The New York Times and other publications to help advisers build credibility and brand awareness.
7. Curated Content Drives More Engagement
Curated content works, no matter your industry, since it tends to be viewed as more objective. It also allows your team to deliver educational content to your audience on a more consistent basis. Educational content helps B2C companies like Nike sell for more shoes. On the other hand, B2B emails focused on educating buyers can help build more meaningful connections and better relationships.
According to a study analyzing social media posts, curated content drove 33% more clicks. Additionally, many content teams are strapped when it comes to content development, with 49% of marketers noting that they ran into content creation challenges. 76% of marketers choose quality over quantity when it comes to their editorial calendar. However, both factors are important when creating a robust content strategy. When done effectively, curated content will feature thought leadership insights and articles that your customers will find valuable. You can gain ideas for what to curate by taking a look at industry publications and examples of the content being curated by your competitors. By showcasing content from reliable sources, your audience benefits from high-quality information, leading to an increase in trust and loyalty.
Getting Started With Curated Newsletters & Emails: 7 Steps to Begin
We know that sending out curated content newsletters is a fantastic way to promote your content, showcase your brand’s expertise as a thought leader and enrich your email communication. But how do you get started? Here are some steps to begin.
1. Know Who You're Targeting
Simply put, curated content newsletters speak directly to your target audience’s interests. So to resonate with them, you’ll need to have a deep understanding of who you are targeting and why you are targeting them. Dig in deep to understand your audience’s preferences and the messaging they want to receive. The answers you find will help to propel your content creation and strategy moving forward.
2. Develop Your Email Lists
You most likely will have different messages targeted toward different groups of people, and each message requires a curated newsletter. Take the time to segment out your consumers based on which message you will want them to receive. You can have as many lists as you’d like, depending on your needs.
To ensure all your bases are covered and you get in front of as many eyes as possible, include a mix of both loyal customers and those who are looking to learn more about your company and industry.
3. Divide Up Your Email List by Persona or Topic
As mentioned above, you will have multiple messages to promote. The way you partition the messages out is completely up to you. A recommended way to ensure that content is relevant to the intended audience is by dividing up the lists by the persona receiving them or the message itself. Doing this makes sure that all the right people are receiving the right content and are not turned away by overly promotional material that doesn’t relate to them.
4. Start Brainstorming Content Ideas
Use the wide expanse of information on the internet to your advantage. To brainstorm content marketing ideas, we recommend looking at what your direct competitors are talking about. Take note of not only how they promote their content, but how their audience reacts.
Then go from there and explore other channels that may be popular in your specific industry. This can mean subscribing to Google News updates, listening to podcasts, checking out graphics on Instagram … truly the world is your oyster. There is no one “right way” to create content, so feel free to get creative.
But no matter the content formats you choose, remember to leverage past data to determine what pieces were most popular or engaging. Your findings may surprise you. For example: During the pandemic, AdvisorStream found that lifestyle and wellness content was very popular, despite being a financial platform. Experiment with different types of articles and feel free to test out some new ideas. Use the data to evaluate what was successful and what wasn’t. These insights will help you create a better-curated newsletter.
5. Decide What News Stories Are Important
After brainstorming ideas, you’ll need to figure out your angle for your newsletters. Ask yourself what news stories are important to share and why. Do you want to be the sole focus on the news in your industry, or is your focus going to be on more evergreen pieces? How timely do you want to be? For some inspiration, take a look at how news is being presented right now in your industry, and see if you can identify any gaps that you can fill.
6. Determine the Right Frequency
How often do you want to send out these curated newsletters? Are you leaning toward one time per week, or once per day? Or are you considering a more conservative approach? Know that there is no right answer, as it all depends on your content marketing goals and KPIs!
Again, look at what your competitors are doing to get an idea. Then, consider how much content you can produce internally — it may not be realistic to come up with new content more than once per week, or even once per month depending on your resources.
7. Consider Licensing News Articles
If you find yourself pressed for time and don’t have all the resources necessary to produce a content strategy at scale, consider licensing news articles or outsourcing some of your content development efforts.
Developing news content is a time-consuming process, and it’s worthwhile to check out the different licensing options available to you. By leveraging news from renowned publications like The New York Times, Harvard Business Review or the Financial Times, you can establish yourself as a credible source in your industry.
Best Practices for Curated Emails
1. Provide Information from High-Quality Sources
In an age where it is difficult to discern facts from fake news, providing information from credible sources is vital. By leveraging news content written by world-class reporters from The New York Times or industry insights from Harvard Business Review, your team can provide reliable and insightful information without worry.
2. Quality and Quantity Matter
One of the benefits of curated newsletters is that your team no longer has to decide between quality and quantity. Both of these factors matter when creating a relationship with a client or prospect, and curated content can help you send out emails to your clients on a regular basis.
3. Showcase In-House Content Too
Even though curated content has been shown to drive more clicks, content leading back to your website will drive more conversions. To increase engagement and conversions, it's important to provide an optimal mix of content, showcasing industry insights from thought leaders and content produced in-house.
Final Thoughts
A curated content newsletter can be a fantastic way to boost your brand awareness and authority in a sea of digital content. As email is a marketing tactic with one of the highest ROIs available, it pays to take advantage of email newsletters when growing your client base and interest in your brand.
If you are looking for some extra content to bolster your current content strategy, look no further than the NYTLicensing Group, which empowers companies to connect with their audiences, while harnessing world-class journalism and content curation options to fit their needs.
Explore more about how the NYTLicensing Group can help you meet your marketing goals today.
