For any marketer, getting the right set of eyes on your content is only one part of the challenge. Once you’ve been able to get your target’s attention, you need to be able to keep their attention.

According to a recent article from digital marketing platform vendor Silverpop, in most cases, the effort exerted in trying to get subscribers to notice you a second time would be better spent working to maintain their attention while you have it. The blog post offers a five-step process for keeping customers keen on your content:

1. Develop a welcome series.  According to the article, email subscribers are most engaged within the first 40 days of signing up. Knowing this, marketers need to take advantage of the time they have by developing a smart welcome series telling subscribers everything you want them to know and asking them everything you want to know.
2. Personalize the content.  Using what you know about your clients and prospects, segment the audience in various ways to ensure that the content is as direct and relevant to them as possible. Delivering content that is relevant and dynamic encourages subscribers to stay engaged.
3. Automate content delivery.  Once you’ve successfully established personalized and dynamic content to subscribers, take advantage of a marketing automation platform to automate content delivery and ensure you’re getting the right message out at the right time.
4. Monitor and assess behavior.  Be sure to monitor and analyze the level of engagement subscribers have with your content. By digging deep into customer and prospect behavior, you’ll be able to re-engage them as their attention is fading, rather than after they’ve lost interest.
5. Re-engage the lost.  No matter how diligent you may be to follow the previous steps, some customers will inevitably lose interest. When this happens, the article recommends taking an customized approach based on your particular industry, but generally suggests starting small. Ask for a preference update, then perhaps roll out a “Welcome Back” campaign updating the subscriber and reminding them why they loved your content in the first place.

Bottom line, working to keep targets and customers focused on your content among all the other content and marketing noise is hard. But keep in mind that not only is it more cost effective to keep an existing customer than to get a new one, but by engaging customers early, they are more likely to stay engaged. Additionally, engaged customers are easily transitioned to loyal followers and enthusiastic advocates.