Email marketing is a powerful tool for attracting, engaging, and connecting with your target audience in order to increase sales and business income. It outperforms other channels like social media in terms of the value of content, personalization and reach. Results are measurable and the entire email marketing strategy is cost-effective.
Many things could go wrong with email marketing and render your efforts useless. Here are some common mistakes that can produce poor results on your email marketing strategy:
NO WELCOME EMAILS
Welcome emails have the highest open rates. It is a great way for your brand to start a relationship with prospects. We all know first impressions matter- this is your chance to make the right one. Statistics even give us reasons why it is so important. Welcome emails have an open rate of 86 percent, greater than other commercial emails. Subscribers who get welcome emails are 33 percent more likely to connect with the brand in the long run than those who do not.
It is a good way to position your subscribers into entering your drip campaign workflow.
More than just sending for your own benefits; reports show that a welcome email is actually expected by 74 percent of new members. So, why not give what your audience wants?
How to avoid this:
Do not ignore the importance of sending a welcome email. You can choose from our pre-set welcome email templates for a start and customize them for your brand.
NOT OPTIMIZING FOR MOBILE DEVICES
As much as 61% of emails are opened with a mobile device. It is a great loss if your emails are not properly optimized for mobile devices. If it is not optimized for mobile devices, a large group of your audience won’t be able to read it no matter how valuable the content is. Even when they attempt to read through, most people will find it irritating and a waste of time and would rather abandon it.
How to avoid this: In optimizing your email for mobile, both content and design matter. Make your subject line succinct and to the point. Images have to be of the right size and quality (or avoid them altogether). The typeface, email size, and average scroll time should all be optimized. Choose layouts that best suit the content of your mail i.e if the content is mostly text or pictures.
There are many responsive email templates available to you on Sendmunk. If you want to build from scratch, the drag and drop feature makes it pretty easy.
NO AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION
One size doesn’t fit all. Nobody wants to be spammed with emails that do not have any relevance to them or their needs. Engagement automatically increases when each segment of your audience is provided with valuable content they can relate to properly.
How to avoid this: Doing proper customer journey mapping helps you visualize the interactions different kinds of customers are having with your brand and segment them properly for personalization. Review the information of the audience you have available and decide how to classify them.
Demographics like age and gender can be used to segment your audience.
Perhaps you have a special offer or a piece of content that is only relevant to your prospects in a certain nation- you segment this audience based on location.
You can also segment based on purchase history. The emails you send to new prospects should differ from those you send to those who have already purchased from you. And they, in turn, will differ from emails delivered to long-term clients.
NO VISIBLE UNSUBSCRIBE BUTTON
Only crooks, leave no option for escape. Leave your subscribers with the option to exit your email list without hassle. As much as you want to increase sales, it is more important that you respect your subscribers’ decisions.
How to avoid this:
If you are customizing your email from scratch, ensure that the button is visible enough for the audience to see. Customize your unsubscribe page settings to your taste and you might as well leave a note that shows you are concerned about them leaving. There is an option to adjust the settings to allow unsubscribers to give a reason if they wish. This permits you to make future improvements based on reasons most unsubscribers give.
UNHYGIENIC CONTACT LIST
Email list hygiene can make or break your email marketing strategy. It comprises deleting incorrect and inactive email addresses from your mailing list and just sending meaningful communications to your subscribers. According to a 2017 survey, one out of every five emails is never delivered to the inbox of the intended recipient. Because it activates spam filters, it is either banned by the email service provider or sent to the junk folder. The lesser your email open rates, the higher the chances of emails ending in spam.
How to avoid this:
Decide how often you want to clean your list. Don’t be afraid to let inactive subscribers go. It is not the number of subscribers that matters, but the number of active subscribers. You can notify them of your action in your last mail to the subscriber- also adding how the brand feels about letting them go. Use proper software for your email campaigns. The software used can make a difference between emails entering spam or a high deliverability rate. Sendmunk has dedicated engineers ensuring 99% uptime and email deliverability monitoring.
SPAM TRIGGER WORDS
While there’s nothing wrong with pressing your reader to act, spam filters frequently penalize emails with subject lines that generate an undue sense of urgency or pressure by sending them to spam. Nothing is “urgent” if everything you send is “urgent,” at least in the eyes of your prospects. Prospects even lose trust when your emails are highly exaggerated. If your subscribers find enough value in the content you provide, urgency will only develop naturally. This false sense of urgency is penalized by sending emails into spam rather than into the recipient’s inbox.
By Debra Deck
How to avoid this: there are certain ways you can spam proof your emails to avoid the overuse of words that create a false sense of urgency. Doing this will prevent your mail from being caught by spam filters before getting to your audience.
