5 email marketing mistakes you don’t want to make

Email marketing is dead. Surely, you’ve heard that one before.

But, before you fall for it, here’s why email is in fact alive, well and kicking.

Online consumers spend 138% more when they are subject to an email campaign than those who do not receive email offers.

At the same time, email is 40 times better at acquiring prospects than Twitter and Facebook are.

The reason why there is so much talk about the death of email is that some marketers are using old strategies and outdated email campaign methods to try to reach out to their savvy audience.

Email blasting, poorly designed templates, and unresponsive email programs simply do not work today.

If your email marketing campaign is not giving you solid conversions and sales values that make you smile, perhaps you could be making some of the following surprising mistakes:

Failing to create a segmentation strategy

Using a basic segmentation strategy can do wonders for your conversion rates. Depending on your brand, it is likely that different subscribers need different content.

Sending the same content to a new subscriber and to someone who is lower in the sales cycle can have negative consequences such as unsubscribes and users reporting your emails as spam.

Most email marketing programs let you segment your audience easily. While segmenting can get complex, you can start by focusing on basic groups such as your most frequent or biggest customers, new subscribers, those who have purchased in the last year or two years etc. You can also develop a segmentation strategy by using demographics such as age, gender and income if your brand calls for this.

Sending specific emails to specific subscribers increases the chances of your content being read and your prospects acting on your call to action.

Sending too few emails

This one is a bit confusing for many marketers. On one side, there are those who support limiting the number of emails and on the other end of the spectrum are echoes about upping your game and sending more content to boost your email campaign ROI.

Which is which?

Balance is necessary. Sending one email per month is too low of a frequency and your subscribers will easily forget why they signed up with you. Blasting three emails a day everyday is not a smart idea either. It will also depend on your niche.

Ideally, your subscribers should hear from you at least once a week. Some businesses have a lot of products on offer all the time and this may require sending more than one email a week.

The rule of thumb is to focus on quality: If you must send an email every day, the content must be highly relevant and well thought out.

Another tactic is to give subscribers the option to choose how often they want to hear from you, especially if your business necessitates sending multiple emails in a day.

Conduct A/B testing to help you determine the click through and open rates when you send a certain number of emails over a given time.

Employing too many calls to action

Consumers are busy. Asking them to undertake more than one action at a time actually keeps them from taking any action.

Dedicate each email to just one call to action. Using an image-based call to action such as a bright button has been shown to increase click through and conversions rates significantly.

Whether you use an image-based CTA or a traditional rich text link, you can increase conversions by asking subscribers to do just one thing. Then, be sure to repeat the CTA within the email body or at the end of the email to encourage more clicks.

Leaving out the infallible mobile audience

It is 2017. Mobile is super popular. In fact, more than half of your prospects will first come into contact with you via their mobile devices.

Email abandonment and unsubscription rates are much higher for programs that are not optimised for the mobile experience. In fact, 80% of mobile users delete emails that do not look good on mobile.

Responsive email designs can boost readability, click through rates and user experience.

Most modern email programs are compatible with email recipients and mobile devices. But that’s just part of the story. Some of the things you need think about to make your emails look great on mobile include:

• Your email template
• The structure of your content- Smaller paragraphs and lesser content is preferred.
• Links- Limit the number of links and calls to action. Button links work much better than links.
• Fonts- Ensure that your content is readable by using the appropriate font and font color.

Having the wrong list

This may seem obvious but working with the wrong list will not give you the results you want. Some ignore traditional email marketing and buy email lists but it can have major consequences for your business.

It is likely that most of your recipients will unsubscribe from your list and report your emails as spam. At the end of it all, you would have wasted a lot of money on a list that did not bring any real ROI for your business.

A better approach is to build your email list organically. With so many options including lightboxes, sidebar subscription forms and dedicated landing pages, you can build a list of prospects who show real interest in your products or services.

Email Marketing Still Works…

Admittedly, open rates may have decreased these past few years, but when done right email marketing can transform your sales funnel by bringing in qualified leads, nurturing these leads further down the funnel, and maintaining customers’ loyalty even after the initial purchase.