What are you doing wrong with your email marketing?
Email marketing is still far and away the most effective way to acquire and retain customers. In fact, it's roughly 40 times more effective in acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter—combined. If you’re not experiencing the wonder of email marketing, it may have something to do with your approach. Here are some helpful tips to help get you on the right tack.
You’re Lacking Signs of Authenticity
For some businesses, the emails they send out may not look “professional” enough, which often leaves people questioning if they’re actually receiving emails from the business they intended. Make sure that your emails have clear logos that align with those associated with your business and brand. It also helps to have email addresses that follow the format of name@company.com. People will more readily believe they’re receiving emails from a legit source.
Your Content Is Not Relevant To Your Audience
It’s important to understand your audience and why they’re subscribing. It’s also important to understand that different groups of people want different things out of your business. For example, some may be interested more in promotions, some are interested more in news and educational tidbits.
There’s also the buyer’s journey to consider. Are they trying to solve a problem, find more about how your industry can help them, or deciding between companies?
This is why marketing automation software like CRM is essential, because it will help you group your customers based on their interests and how they interact with your business. These groups will be used to create segmented email lists to send them personalized emails.
Also, on the unsubscribe page, give them the option to change which ‘group’ they’d like to be part of first rather than leading them straight to the exit. Remember that people also change and want different in life, why wouldn’t their products and services be any different?
You’re Sending Either Too Many Emails (Or Not Enough)
According to the Digital Marketing Association, a good number of emails to send is 2-3 per week. If you send too many emails, you run the risk of coming across as spam.
The more emails a person receives from one company, the more they weigh if the content they’re receiving is worth it. That tends to be a losing war that leads to unsubscribers. This is why 2-3 emails roughly every other day or every three days ia good balance. Sending too few is also a losing war, because you may fail to make an impression in the first place.
Your Emails Can’t Adapt to Mobile
In a fast paced world, more and more business professionals are reading and responding to their emails strictly through their mobile devices. If your email is hard to read, or the images don’t resize to an optimal level, chances are people aren’t going to fight to read your emails. They’ll just move on to the next one.
Your email needs to responsive, scalable, and easily translatable to different resolutions and devices.
Are You Sure Your Emails Are Being Delivered?
This is something that is often overlooked, but if people aren’t receiving your emails in the first place, that’s a pretty solid reason why they aren’t opening them. It could the person is no longer using the address. It could be that the address no longer exists. Or maybe you’ve been put on a spam list by their spam list.
Investing in a CRM software will help your team pick up on things, so you’re not just sending emails into the void. Confirmations are a great way to assure your customers that their concerns have been heard and aren’t just floating into the void.
You’re Not Collecting Email Metrics
Even if you’ve done all of the above steps, you still need to check to make sure that your approach is working or could be improved. Otherwise, you don’t know if it’s successful or not until it’s too late. CRM software will allow you to measure things like open rate, CTA click rate, and deliverability to see precisely which aspects of your email are working or not. You should set a benchmark for your company. A good place to start is your immediate competition.
You’re Not Optimizing Your Emails
So you’ve figured out some of your emails are pretty unsuccessful. Remember that changing your emails doesn’t have to be a drastic. If you see that once people open your email, it’s quite successful, then maybe that’s a sign that you need a more enticing subject line. Sometimes a minor tweak here or there makes a huge difference. You can also just tweak certain aspects of you emails, like the arrangements of graphics or attempting to send the email at a different time that aligns better with your customer base.
Download our Email Marketing Best Practices Guide, and get ready to improve your emails' performance.
