According to statistics from SuperOffice, email marketing is still the most effective marketing channel. That is why most businesses prioritize email marketing strategies over other marketing efforts. In fact, over 290 billion emails are sent every day. With your prospects and clientele receiving so many daily emails, it can be difficult to find ways to stand out. Your email campaign should drive engagement and you should be reporting on open rates, read rates, and other statistics that show you how a campaign is performing. Being able to understand and reproduce your successful email campaigns is critical in growing your business. Equally important is understanding which campaigns are not producing positive results so you can stop wasting your time, money, and other resources on unsuccessful ventures. It can be challenging trying to figure out why your email effort are not successful. Having the right application in place that provides email metrics and statistics is a good place to start. Additionally, there are common mistakes businesses typically make with their email marketing efforts. An article on SuperOffice.com talks about five of these common errors to avoid which we highlight below.
1. Sending for “This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How often do you receive an email from a “donotreply” or “noreply” address and automatically think it is junk mail? Using one of these address types does not catch the recipients’ attention in a positive way and they may disregard your message. You should always send from an address your customers or prospects can reply to and be sure to include additional contact information like office phone, mobile, etc.
If you are emailing from a service where you customize your outgoing email, it is a good practice to do so. By adding a name to your email address, your message feels more personal and the recipient is more likely to engage with you.
2. Ignoring Mobile
With the world continuously moving to a mobile-first experience, you cannot ignore this with your emailing efforts. In fact, according to Constant Contact, 61% of emails are opened on a mobile device. To keep these customers and prospects engaged, mobile-friendly email content is necessary. If you send out an email campaign with a non-mobile friendly template, on average, 61% of your emails are going to be unread simply because the recipient could not view your message. That equates to a huge loss of investment on your campaign.
Before sending out an email, we recommend sending to a few internal inboxes. Test with different domains (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) and certainly test both the web and mobile experience before blasting out your email campaign.
3. The “One Size Fits All” Approach
Spending the time and money curating the perfect email for a specific purpose and then sending it out to any email you can get your hands on does not work as well as you might think. If you include CEOs, Administrators, Sales Reps, Support Reps, and so on – yes, your message is reaching more people, but it may not be reaching the right people. When it comes to effective email marketing, relevance is well, what is most relevant. One way to make an email campaign more relevant to your client base is to segment your lists. Segmentation can be done Title (market to all CEOs in your database at once), Company Industry, Location, Company Size or Annual Revenue, or if they have filled out a form expressing interest in learning more about your product offerings.
Once you have your customers and prospects segmented, you can tailor your message content specifically to them. With personalized content to a unique segment, you will begin see higher rates of engagement from your recipients.
4. Sending Complicate Emails
While it you may think adding glitz and glam to your email content urging the customer to “Click Here!” or “View this Link!” is more engaging, too many call outs or action items could be off putting to the end user. It is important not to overcomplicate your message and make the recipient think too much about how they need to move forward if they are interested in learning more from you. Adding a single call to action gives the recipient a simple choice. Either “Yes, I am interested, let me take this action to learn more”. Or “No, I am not interested, I will not take this action”. Additionally, if you include too many links, your email could be caught by spam and the recipients may not ever see it.
Make sure to keep in mind points two and three when creating your email content. Your call to action must be mobile friendly, especially if they must click a link to fill out a form or navigate away from their inbox in any way. Secondly, the content should be relevant to your segments. If you are sending to a CEO segment, keep in mind most CEOs are constantly busy. Keep your message simple and to the point. Do not make them take additional steps as that may decrease the chances of them engaging back with you.
5. Hiding the Unsubscribe Link
Even after a prospect or customer opts in to receive emails from you, they have every right to change their mind and may decide to opt out after a few emails. If you hide the unsubscribe link or make it difficult to find, you might cause tension and anger between the contact and you. If they cannot unsubscribe and continue receiving irrelevant emails clogging up their inbox, the tension will only grow worse and you risk receiving upset reply emails or unpleasant, public reviews. Not everyone you email will be interested in your offerings and furthermore, not everyone who has expressed interest will end up purchasing from you. By offering a simple unsubscribe or opt out link in your email messaging, you can at least end your communication with someone on a respectful note. Who knows, somewhere down the road, they may wind up reaching back out to you or referring a potential customer to you. By hiding the unsubscribe link, you may leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth about your company. Not only are you losing their business, but if word spreads about their negative experience, you may be losing out on even more.
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach your end users and it is not going away any time soon. To improve your email marketing efforts, you must be obtaining metrics on your campaigns and learning from those insights. Find ways reproduce your successes and more importantly, learn from your mistakes. By following these tips and learning from your email metrics, you should see improved engagement in your email marketing efforts in no time.
AMPED is a CRM software with email marketing behavior built into the application. AMPED provides key email campaign metrics showing you how effective your marketing efforts are. Additionally, AMPED provides ways to segment your records and customize your email content helping you to avoid any mistakes in your emailing efforts.
Do you have any email mistakes you have experienced and learned from and care to share? Shoot us an (mistake-free) email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., we would love to hear from you!