Four Reasons Why Your Email Marketing Campaign Isn’t Working
For many businesses, email marketing is little more than taking a shot in the dark. If and when it works, it’s down to sheer luck. This is a risky approach. Email marketing has the power to make or break your reputation.
Good intentions alone will not suffice. If you’ve been sending out emails to your subscribers but this hasn’t translated to more sales, you could be making one or more mistakes. We’ll look at some of the most common ones below.
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Too Many or Too Few Emails
One of the fastest ways of getting people to unsubscribe from your mailing list is sending too many emails. On the other hand, communicating infrequently might not cause recipients to unsubscribe, but is sure to lead to disinterest. Out of sight, out of mind. These two extremes are at the heart of the marketer’s dilemma — how many emails is too many?
The best way to answer the frequency question is to look at email marketing statistics. Research has shown that email frequency affects read and unsubscribe rates. The first email of a marketing campaign will usually attract the highest read rate even though the unique read rates may rise to some degree in subsequent emails.
The more emails you send, the higher the unsubscribe rates. By the sixth email, nearly half of your mailing list will have opened at least one of the emails and one in eight would have clicked on a link. With this in mind, sending one email every fortnight is the sweet spot for nurturing leads without triggering widespread subscription cancellation.
Too Verbose and Too Scattered
Email has long replaced snail mail as the preferred means of written communication. For the business owner though, it’s important to recognize that marketing emails are not meant to be letters.
The majority of Internet users today access email through their smartphones. While this means they’ll see your mail faster, it also means you have to keep your message clear, focused and concise. Few people will have the patience to scroll through a wordy message.
Ergo, do not pack too much information in one email, use too many words, or fail to provide a clear call to action for the reader. Instead, work towards getting your message across as quickly and with as few words as possible. Work with the five second rule—can the recipient figure out what the email is about five seconds after they open it.
You Don’t Know Your Audience
Many marketing campaigns fail because the message was not relevant for the audience. The need for marketers to understand their audience cannot be overemphasized. This entails not only recognizing the needs common to your entire mailing list but also identifying the preferences of different segments within the list.
Remember that any two people interested in buying one of your products might be at different stages of the sales funnel. After each email campaign and based on the responses, continuously tweak and segment your audience into groups. You can then send more targeted emails which will in turn build trust, increase clicks and grow your conversions.
It’s Spam
Your best efforts will be fruitless if the emails are ending up in the recipient’s spam folder. The chances of your message being read will be greatly diminished since few people check this folder regularly. In addition, a number of mail servers, such as Gmail, delete spam messages after a couple of weeks.
There are things you can do to reduce the risk of your emails being flagged as spam. First, avoid words like promo, offer, buy, free and hurry. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with them but unfortunately, these words have been identified as common in unwanted email and have thus been incorporated in spam filters.
Second, don’t send bulk emails. As opposed to attaching files, provide a link that readers can click on to download the file. Third, use a bulk email validation tool. These are tools that use proprietary algorithms and validation techniques to determine the legitimacy and reputation of an email address.
These four tips can give you a great foundation. That said, the key to a consistently successful email marketing campaign is dynamism and continuous improvement. What works for you might not work for everyone else. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new ideas.
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