Email marketing has proven to be one of the most lucrative forms of digital marketing. Even though other marketing tactics have swooped in, none have managed to usurp email marketing’s position regarding lead generation and conversion capabilities.
That’s why 95 percent of marketers make it a priority to include email marketing in their regular campaigns, but not everyone is successful. Too many companies are pursuing an email marketing campaign using outdated tactics or ignoring some of the most important metrics. If you’re struggling to see returns on your email operation, here are some mistakes you might be making.
1. Sending Emails without Testing
Businesses could easily discern the difference between a great email marketing message and a junky one if they would employ testing first. Making sure the links work, images load correctly and it’s free of grammar or spelling mistakes can immediately improve the effectiveness of the email.
Additionally, employing email analysis services can yield ideas about what to improve. You can check by sending test variations of the same message to a small portion of your email list. When you’ve identified the best performing version, send it on a mass scale.
2. Foregoing Regular Privacy Concerns
Email encryption is essential your protection and that of your email recipients. First of all, employ an email encryption service to make sure the information you’re sending gets to the recipient without leaking private information like consumer names and email addresses.
Then, ensure that users can’t infect your email through a reply by using a no reply email service. When there’s no return address, ill-wishing consumers can’t email malware or viruses that would weaken your systems.
3. Mishandling Unsubscribers
Some businesses think that by making it difficult to unsubscribe from their emails, they’ll be able to maintain recipients longer. However, you’ll actually achieve the opposite effect. Your organization will instead gain a bad reputation that will prevent customers from wanting to do business with you in the future.
Additionally, some businesses are lazy with the unsubscribing process, which makes it difficult for consumers to stop the emails. Your customers should be able to turn off emails with a maximum of two clicks. Making them jump through additional hoops will hurt your brand reputation.
4. Messages without Images and Graphics
Plain, boring messages with no images and graphics to liven up the subject matter are forgettable and largely ineffective. Because the human mind can process images 60,000 times faster than it can process text, it follows that image-clad email messages perform better.
Additionally, the images within the message must be optimized for mobile devices. Since about 53 percent of emails are opened on mobile devices, you’ll be alienating more than half your customer base with messages that don’t fully load when opened.
5. Ignoring Statistics and Analytics
Many companies run analytics services that gather statistics and information, but a lot of executives don’t return to the data after it’s been collected. Aside from the wasted money spent gathering the information, it also does nothing to help your email campaign.
Each piece of information collected can give you valuable feedback on the effectiveness of your messaging system if you use it. Statistics like open rate, click rate, delivery rate and unsubscribe rate tell you which elements are doing well and which need more attention. Monitoring such data will help you anticipate issues, fix poorly performing emails, and put your emails on a better schedule. Additionally, your stats let you know when your email list needs some pruning. You can use ZeroBounce to remove invalid and other risky email addresses from your list.
6. Bad Subject Lines
Too many companies use bad subject lines that either overhype the content or make it look boring. The overhyped subject lines might get more people to click on them, but if the content doesn’t match the excitement of the subject, it’s easily forgettable. You’ll have a hard time making impressions on customers this way.
A boring headline is even worse; it’s totally ignored. People don’t open emails if they don’t promise valuable, interesting information. Finding a good balance between boring and too exciting in your subject lines is vital to improved open rates and conversions.
7. Forgetting the Value Factor
The best way to write memorable emails that entice opens is to employ the value factor. If your message doesn’t solve a problem for the reader or entertain in some way, your message might as well be as generic as “Give us your money just because.” That’s not going to fly with the vast majority of readers.
Focus on creating information that’s interesting, exciting, or potentially life-changing for your customer base. Pulling from your content marketing and developing customer personas can help you decide which messages will perform here. This is one email marketing mistake you don’t want to make.