Email marketing is still king.
With email almost 40 times more effective at gaining new customers than Facebook and Twitter, it is very much a necessary marketing avenue.
Great news – provided your emails are actually being opened.
So how can you break through the noise? And with spam filters ever sensitive, how can you avoid ending up in your audience’s junk folders?
Read the 7 reasons why your email marketing could be failing.
1) Lack Of Customisation
Take a look at your inbox. You’ve probably got a list of emails, each one as boring as the next.
Spam and emails from brands you don’t know and may not have signed up for.
It takes something eye catching or familiar to make you actually open an email.
Email giants Mailchimp, advise that emails with the user’s name in have an increased open rate and including a city name could be even better.
As well as this, a report by Adestra found that personalised subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened.
Pretty convincing stuff.
But remember, be cautious of coming across too informally. If your customer prefers being addressed by their full name, we wouldn’t recommend suddenly using just their first or even worse. Using an informal nickname…
2) Not Optimising For Mobile
Over 50% of emails are now opened on a mobile phone, meaning the days of sending an un-optimised email template are over.
If your email isn’t appearing correctly on your customer’s device, let’s face it, you look sloppy.
Email marketing platforms including Pure 360 and Mailchimp allow you to preview your email on various device types and browsers, so there really is no excuse.
It’s vital that you communicate your message correctly. Test, test and test again.
After spending hours designing your email and writing copy, don’t let yourself down by pressing send too hastily.
3) Email Subject Lines
Your subject line is arguably the most important part of your email.
In fact, 33% of email recipients open an email based on subject line alone.
A key point to remember – the goal of your subject line is to sell your email, not your products!
You can sell to your customer once you have enticed them enough to open your email, so don’t risk potentially losing them with a product based subject line.
“Sarah, here’s something we think you’ll love” is a lot more appealing than “Pink winter hats for sale.”
The average office worker receives 121 emails a day, so your subject line needs to demand attention. Keep it under 40 characters and remember – refresh your subject lines!
Repeating the same line every week is going to become very tedious for the customer, so be original!
4) Messages Getting Flagged As Spam
The world of email marketing is heavily saturated with sales promotions, bad marketing and worst of all, junk.
In fact, it is estimated that for every 88 emails received, 76 will be legitimate emails and 12 will be spam.
Ensure your email marketing avoid words including “Free,” “Help” “% Off” and “Reminder” which come across as too salesy and can also trigger spam filters.
5) Stale Email Lists
Newsflash. Sending content to the same email list over and over again is not going to work and keeping old data that doesn’t respond to your email marketing is a waste of revenue.
It’s a good idea to refresh your lists and segment by those who have engaged with your emails.
And for those who haven’t for a while? Send them a targeted email with a subject line they can’t ignore such as “Do I bore you?” You’ll soon cut out the un-engaged subscribers, resulting in a targeted list of potential customers, much more likely to convert.
Getting rid of un-engaged contacts could improve your spam score.
This will also ensure higher open rates. Plus – you don’t want to offer special rates and freebies to people who are probably not going to spend money with you.
6) Content Heavy
Be concise. The idea of an email is to entice the reader to click through to your website and convert.
Bad emails swamp the reader with too much information. Customers need the key points. Fast.
If you don’t communicate your message quickly, your competitor will.
7) Wrong Delivery Time
You’ve perfected your message, segmented your data and you’re ready to hit send.
But wait – the time that you deliver your email is just as important as what you’re saying.
So send it when your customer is most likely to open it and tailor the content based on their habits.
Is it their birthday? Did they just buy something? Do they have something sitting in their cart?
Are your customers early risers or do they prefer reading their emails on their lunch break?
This makes your timing more relevant and increases engagement.
Final Thoughts On Email Marketing
And remember, view every email marketing campaign as an opportunity to learn more about your customer. Every email sent is a learning curve.
Capture data, dissect it and share it within the marketing group and the rest of the organisation.
If you would like to find out more about email marketing or need help with creating and sending your next campaign, we can help.
ICAAL have an in-house team of email marketing experts, who are fanatic about emails. Our team can design, code, optimise, send and report on your campaign, providing you with a truly all round service.
View our website and call us on 023 8033 2675 to book a free consultation.
Need Marketing? Think ICAAL.