Email marketing is by far the most cost-effective way to reach your target market and connect with them on a personal level. After all, they have trusted you enough to give you access to their inbox.
But there are certain mistakes we see businesses make time and time again when trying to implement their email marketing strategy.
Here are three mistakes we regularly come across, and how you can make sure you’re not making them.
1. Sending Your Email From An Unattended Mailbox
An unattended (or perceived unattended) mailbox such as ‘[email protected]’ or ‘[email protected]’ doesn’t give a good impression of your company and generally, these don’t have very good open rates either.
These emails are uninviting and show a lack of communication AND interest from your part. Your readers want to know that you are interested in getting feedback from them.
Email is a two-way conversation, and you should show that you respect this, by allowing them to get in touch if they would like to. Sending your emails from a mailbox that they can reply to will initiate this 2-way conversation.
In fact, many companies actively encourage it in their emails; all they need to do is hit the reply button. This simple tweak can lead to an increase in your email open rates and hence more of your subscribers actually reading your message as opposed to just deleting it.
Additionally, when you enter a conversation with your market you can gain incredible insights into their buying process, what problems they have and much more- just by talking to them. So it’s something that you should actively pursue, not avoid.
You can also go 1 step ahead by including information for your social media channels and even your phone number and ask readers to contact you directly should they have any issues.
Aim to be as open and approachable as possible, so you can start building trust with your readers.
Remember people only buy from businesses and brands that they know, like and trust- so give them a reason to do so.
2. Not Tracking Metrics And Analytics
To be a successful email marketer you need to track the behaviour of your customer. There are so many tools on the market nowadays that can help you do this that it’s almost impossible not to know how your email marketing is performing.
How well does your audience react to a promotional email? What about an email with pure value content? How do image based emails perform compared to emails that just contain words? Do story based emails work best for your audience or do they like to be entertained?
All these are questions you can answer when you are tracking the data associated with each campaign.
You can see which emails got the most click-through rates, which were not so successful, which emails caused people to unsubscribe and which ones were shared. Anything you do in online marketing can be optimised using analytics and email marketing is no different.
Analytics can also highlight subscribers that have not been very active or engaged with your email campaigns and you can segment them out and re-engage them with a customised campaign. Such is the power of tracking and analysing.
Not sure what subject line will get more open rates? Test it!
Your email software can help you do that and even track which one performed better so you can keep that and discard the other.
3. Lack Of Focus
What’s worse than not sending emails to your list? Sending emails that have no focus.
Before creating any email marketing campaign you need to plan what it is that each email will do for you. What would you like it to focus on?
Will you be introducing a product? Will it be an engagement post, asking for your reader to reply and ask questions? Or will it be a newsletter?
Whatever the outcome, you need to make it obvious in the email so the reader takes the action you want them to.
Now you know the mistakes to look out for, you can avoid making them in your own email marketing campaigns.
If you would like help with your email marketing you can contact one of our email strategy specialists, to discuss what mistakes to avoid in your email campaigns. Get in touch today.
