Anyone who works in marketing knows that email lists are essential for reaching customers. But, what many don’t realize is that email marketing is not just about having an email list—it’s about having the right email strategy to achieve measurable and achievable goals.
Personalized content based on behavior and segmentation enhances relevance, resulting in a higher open rate and engagement. Avoid these outdated email marketing practices to improve your performance:
Lack of Timing Control
Emails are a key element to building a brand relationship, but if your brand is still blasting generic emails to all of your subscribers, it’s time for a makeover. Try out emails nest brands. This can be due to a variety of factors, such as poor deliverability or irrelevant content.
One of the best ways to determine if your email marketing strategy is outdated is to track metrics like unsubscribes, opens and click rates. If these metrics are trending downward, your subscribers are removing themselves from your list because they don’t want to receive your emails anymore. This can be frustrating for marketers, but it’s important not to let one bad metric derail your entire campaign.
Another way to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns is to test them against other measurable goals, like new customer acquisition or revenue growth. Create a test group of subscribers and send an email to that group while also “holding out” a control group that doesn’t receive the email to see which campaign is more effective.
Once you’ve determined the effectiveness of your campaigns, you can then make changes to improve their performance. Jay suggests focusing on content that is relevant to your audience and delivering it at the right time. For example, if your subscribers tend to buy products around a certain date or season, you can target them with a sales event or coupon in their inbox. Additionally, if you notice that many of your customers are abandoning their carts, you can retarget them with a browse abandonment email to encourage them to return.
Adding visuals and interactive elements to your email campaigns is a great way to increase engagement. Jay notes that using emojis, GIFs and even full-length videos can boost open rates by as much as 300%.
Lastly, email marketers can improve their deliverability by segmenting their audiences to send contextual content and implementing double opt-in procedures. This demonstrates to the mailing algorithms that your emails are not spam and helps them stay in the inbox instead of the junk folder. In addition, it’s critical that brands follow GDPR guidelines and maintain a clear and accessible unsubscribe option.
Not Offering Enough Value
If you’re sending emails that aren’t providing any value to your subscribers, they’ll quickly delete your messages or mark them as spam. You can still bring back these subscribers by sending relevant email campaigns that meet their needs and interests. To do this, you must first understand what type of content your audience prefers to receive.
Email marketing is an incredibly valuable tool that allows businesses to reach their target audiences with personalized content. If you’re not seeing results, it might be time to reevaluate your current strategy and start using more advanced tactics that can deliver better outcomes.
The best way to increase your email campaign’s effectiveness is to focus on the personalization aspect. By utilizing segmentation and automation, you can send targeted emails that are more relevant to each subscriber’s situation. This will make your campaigns more effective and improve the overall customer experience.
Often, the best way to do this is by incorporating dynamic content into your campaigns. For example, you can use dynamic data to customize emails to each user’s purchase history or product preferences. This allows you to create more relevant and engaging experiences for your customers, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Another way to add value to your email campaigns is by using a variety of different formats. Jay explains that this can lift your open rates by creating anticipation and curiosity among your readers. This can be anything from using a letter format to radically departing from your template to see what your audience responds well to.
Many marketers believe that generic mass emails are a thing of the past, but this isn’t necessarily true. Consumers have become more sophisticated and expect a tailored, high-quality customer experience from brands they engage with. Whether this is through transactional emails like invoicing, shipping and delivery notifications or re-engagement emails, bringing a great customer experience to your email marketing campaign can help boost engagement levels.
Another way to add value to your email campaigns through a variety of different formats is by making sure your subject lines are eye-catching and interesting. It’s important to avoid outdated strategies like triple exclamation points or excessive capitalization in your subject lines. Also, remember that the most effective email campaigns are opt-in, not opt-out. This prevents your emails from ending up in spam folders and increases the likelihood that your subscribers will actually read them.
Hiding the Unsubscribe Button
The unsubscribe button is a crucial link or button found in the footer of marketing emails that allows email recipients to stop receiving communication from the brand with one click. It is required by law and an important tool for brands that want to ensure their email deliverability and maintain a clean email list. Unfortunately, there are some marketers that try to hide the unsubscribe button in an attempt to prevent customers from leaving but this only backfires and can actually cause subscribers to mark your communications as spam.
Instead, it is a better strategy to make the unsubscribe process as easy and painless as possible for your customers. You should offer a simple, one-click unsubscribe option in the footer of every email, and you should never require contacts to log in or fill out any personal information to unsubscribe. In some countries, requiring a login to unsubscribe can even be against the law!
When customers do unsubscribe, it is also important to respect their decision and avoid any whiny or defensive language. This can come across as needy and unprofessional and may lead to them marking your communications as spam, which negatively affects your email deliverability. Instead, include a brief survey on the confirmation page asking them why they are leaving and how you could improve to encourage them to stay engaged with your business.
Ultimately, while losing subscribers seems discouraging, it is an important part of the email marketing process. It is more important to focus on gaining new customers and building a relationship with them than trying to force people to engage with your communications who do not want to. This is why it is so important to continually learn from your unsubscribe trends and use strategies like preference management, feedback collection, and retrieval campaigns to try to win back customers that have stopped engaging. By doing this, you can keep your list clean and ensure that the communications you are sending are relevant to the interests of your audience. This will increase engagement, and your open rates, click-through rates, and replies, as well as encourage more forwards and shares.
Aggressive Marketing
If you’re playing it safe in your email marketing strategy, it could be costing you more than just time and money. Being a little more aggressive can help you set yourself apart from your competitors and make your business the talk of the town.
Aggressive marketing is a technique that creates elements out of the control of the consumer to get their attention, often by making it difficult or impossible to ignore. It’s commonly found in annoying banner ads, intrusive pop-ups, and emails that require immediate action.
While some of these techniques can be effective, they can also turn off potential customers or be flagged as spam. Emails that are deemed to be too aggressive may not only damage the reputation of your company, but can also lead to unsubscribes and low open rates, which can negatively impact your email marketing campaign.
When it comes to email marketing, it’s important to balance aggressive techniques with more thoughtful and personalized content. Personalization is one of the most powerful and high-converting email marketing tactics that can be used to drive more sales and engagement, but it must be done in a way that doesn’t come across as spammy or annoying.
One of the best ways to avoid the spam filter is to segment your list into groups based on interests, demographics, and location. This can allow you to create unique content for each group, which can help prevent your emails from being flagged as spam. Additionally, avoiding the use of lorem ipsum text (which simply fills in the empty space with random words) can also help your campaigns avoid being blocked by spam filters.
Another important element of an email marketing strategy is to create a schedule that ensures that your emails are being sent at the right times. Generally, most email opens occur in the morning as people start their day, then peak throughout the afternoon and continue through the evening before tapering off into sleep.
Finally, it’s crucial to have a solid plan for how you will build your email list. This can be as simple as offering a giveaway to those who sign up for your newsletter, or more innovative strategies such as a spin-the-wheel or lucky-draw promotion.