3 Ways to Take Your 2022 Digital Strategy to the Next Level

I recently had the opportunity to attend Digital Summit Detroit in my hometown of Detroit, Michigan. I spent a day and a half attending sessions, listening to keynote speakers and soaking up wisdom from some of the top digital marketing pros in the field. 

While there were several great presentations, a few ideas stood out above the rest. As your business develops its digital marketing strategy for 2022, these are 3 areas to review or revisit to create a strong digital marketing foundation for the new year.

1. Upgrade your email subject lines to increase your open rates 

Your email program is one of the strongest tools in your digital marketing arsenal. Email programs allow you to share timely, valuable information with your audience while tracking opens, clicks and engagement. One of the best ways to ensure your emails are read is by creating an attention grabbing subject line. 

Strong subject lines should be able to easily answer this question for the recipient: “what’s in it for me?” State how this email is useful and tell them why they should read it. Second, personalize the language by using the pronoun “you” so it’s clear you’re speaking directly to the recipient. For example, “Just for you,” or “What you can learn from…” Finally, create a fear of missing out (FOMO) or add in time-sensitive deadlines that create a sense of urgency. 

Ready to increase your open rates? Follow this simple formula to upgrade your subject lines:

2. Ensure only engaged contacts are on your email list

Many people resolve to clean or declutter at the start of the year. Businesses can also embrace this resolution and scrub their email lists. Improving your list’s hygiene will not only help increase your open rates, but it will also ensure the people who truly care about your brand or business are receiving your emails. 

Begin cleaning your list by creating segments of people who are most engaged, occasionally engaged and not engaged. Develop a re-engagement campaign to get recipients in the bottom two groups to open your emails. If these contacts are still not opening or engaging, unsubscribe them from your list or move them to a suppression list and attempt to re-engage at a later date. 

This can improve the deliverability of your emails, meaning they end up in inboxes instead of marked as spam, and boosts overall performance. 

3. Perform in-depth research to create content that ranks

Instead of just writing a blog post on a relevant topic and sharing it on your company’s website, take your content to the next level by researching keywords behind your idea. People often search with very specific terms, and your content is more likely to be read if you include relevant, high-ranking keywords in your writing. 

When developing content, create a target persona and think about how they search. Keep in mind that they may use different search terms than you. Keywords Everywhere is a browser add-on for keyword research that shows monthly search volume, CPC (cost per click) and competition data of keywords across websites. This tool can help you find a balance of keywords that are common but not overly saturated. 

Once you determine a strong keyword, type it into a search engine, examine all the sites showing up, and view the commonalities. From there, you’re ready to develop content that is not only relevant to your audience but also attracts additional traffic to your website. 

BONUS: Below are a few additional digital tools presenters from the conference recommended to help enhance your writing and SEO in 2022: 

• Headline Studio by CoSchedule: Create your most clickable headlines ever by using Headline Studio’s recommendations, resources, and inspiration—in just one tool.
• Hemingway Editor: Make your writing bold & clear – the app highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors 
• Semrush: Optimize your visibility across key channels and create engaging content for your users through a variety of SEO and research toolkits 
• Side-by-Side SEO Comparison Tool: Run a comparative SEO analysis of 2 or more web pages to see how search engines view the pages as well as potential opportunities to optimize page content 

Bri Carlesimo is a Senior Account Manager at Pierce Public Relations.