4 Mistakes that Drag your Email Marketing Campaign to Trash!
Did you ever wonder why the rates of your email didn’t work very well? This is a problem many marketers ask themselves nowadays. Starting from the bottom, is email marketing still a great tool in increasing sales? My answer is yes, it still is, but there are some frequent mistakes marketers do, that make many managers give up on this great and efficient tool.
The success of the email marketing differ significantly from one domain to another. Each industry has its struggles and presents different grades in the success of their email marketing campaign. For instance, consumer goods have the greatest success for open rates (41,4%) according to GetResponse email marketing platform Report on USA, Europe Asia and Australia companies data. At the opposite pole, online advertising network companies have the lowest rates, of just 3,2%. Online advertising network companies have the greatest click-to-open ratio of 44,9% comparative to the lower values obtained by consumer goods company of just 22,87%.
More and more, pay-per-click campaigns are seen as more effective. Email marketing is being considered a tool no more adequate to the actual market context. Some of the marketing specialists will even sustain that this tool is not working anymore.
With all this debates, the practice shows that email marketing campaigns still work for many businesses. In fact, a well structured email campaign, with valuable content can be more effective than ever. Many times marketers tend to not value the impact that a great content might have. A message that offers a solution to your potential customer result in a good conversion. On the other hand, a plain robotized message could generate exactly the reverse for your business, your recipients spamming your email.
With all the advantages of a email marketing campaign, most of the marketers do not succeed in getting the best out of this campaigns. A list of what you should avoid in your email marketing campaign will help you succeed:
1. Buying lists and not building the lists
Many marketers buy lists that different agencies sell. These lists, most times, are very expensive, and the right to use them is limited. Also, more important, sending emails to these databases can lead to a great number a spammed emails, high bounce rates and low conversion. Instead, you can build a list of emails with people that are really interest in your product. One classic method to build a database is by inviting site visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. Another way that is more appealing, and can bring you more data about the user, is by offering a free E-book, or free reports that people interested in your domain would consider attractive.
The advantage of building a list is the implementing selection criteria before, excluding unused email addresses, and also categories of consumers that are not interested at all in your products. This will lead to a lower rate of spam and better targeting.
Remember though that if you send an email to someone who did not agree to receive any information from you is not OK for your image, and also not OK for your campaign results. As you probably know it is harder to have your emails opened once you were already spammed.
Try to avoid this by sending messages to people who already agree to receive emails from you.
Also take care at the frequency of email sending. Try to maintain a constant contact with your potential consumers, but make sure not to overwhelm them.
2. Untargeted audience
Segment your list by age, gender, geographic, by occupation or by other information you have. This will give you the opportunity to send more targeted messages to different group of customers, different messages for B2B or B2C. Also, you can rule different campaigns just for women or just for young potential clients.
3. Offering content with no value
A great mistake many marketers make is they send emails that bring nothing new, or no solution to the targeted audience. Valuable email content increase your relationship with your audience, on the other hand, content with no value will lead to great unsubscribing rates. This is a bad image of your company’s services, and insuccess in sales .
What to pay attention in offering valuable content?
Firstly, try not to make every message about your product, or promotions!
Secondly, offer solutions, ideas, free materials that are useful for your potential customers.
Thirdly, use good images, links to great articles, or video materials that the recipients would even share to others in order to gain more interest among your audience about who your are and what you have to offer.
Forth, use inspirational messages for different occasions, make your audience feel you don’t only have an offer to deliver, but your have a lot more than that to offer.
4. Not checking the statistics
Evaluating the efficiency of email marketing campaigns is very important! Many marketers have a fast look over the statistic, and do not pay attention to the actual issues transmitted by different indicator values.
For instance, a low Open Rate might indicate a high frequency of email sent, not interesting subject for the recipient, or a low trust for the sender – this situation occurs especially where there is no trust based relationship already established between the sender and recipient.
The quality of the content can be evaluate by the click rate within the message. Also this indicator might reveal the call to action efficiency and the importance of the message for your audience.
Another indicator is the unsubscribe Rate, this shows information regarding the quality of the list you used and also about your whole content relevancy.
Evaluating constantly your campaigns statistics will, in conclusion, offer you important information regarding things you can improve in your next email marketing campaigns, such as the most efficient frequency, timing, content and also it will help you easily keep track of your consumers.
I will start to underline a set of advantages that email marketing can bring to you:
1. Is the most cost-effective marketing tool!
Spend less and earn more using email marketing campaigns. When you build your database, email marketing costs can be reduce to the time you spend to actually establish the campaign.
Today with instruments as Monkey Survey or SendGrid you can send an amazing amount of emails in minutes. All you have to do is previously gather a significant number of emails from your services or products potential consumers.
2. You can reach a great number of potential or existing customers.
You have no boundaries on how many potential customers you may personally approach. This is a great advantage, given to the reality of sales success, that shows that many times even people who we expect to buy will not buy given the many contextual situations.
Also, sales success is measure in percentages, that in many domains are less that 5%. In this case, sales success is all about the greater number of emails we have sent. For instance, if you work in the electronics sales domain and your sales rate is of 5%, if you send your email to 1000 potential customers, you may have 50 buyers. Knowing this, if your target is 100 buyers/month, the only thing you have to do is to increase your number of sent emails to 2000 emails/month.
In conclusion, you are not limited, the only thing that can limit you business or your sales target through email marketing is just the time you have to search for new prospects and their emails.
3. You connect personally to a Representative of the company, starting conversations that can lead to long term collaborations.
Today, many of our business relationships start through an email or through a phone call (we refer in this article only to the emailing strategy. Individualized messages are much more appreciated than general messages, marked many times by spam.
Offering something valuable to a potential partner through email can be the first step in a long journey of a good collaboration.
In the next session we will develop more what you have to pay attention to when you personal approach a new potential partner.
4. It allows you fast access to your customers replies or questions in real time
Each clients’ feedback is a real asset for a good marketer. Understanding what your clients questions or needs are is essential for developing your products and services in such a way that they become more desirable. Also, quick and efficient answering to your client needs will lead to trust increasing and a reliable relationship.
Five steps for a good email marketing campaign.
We will present you five steps that will help you not encounter these problems in your future email marketing campaign.
- Establish your purpose. Before even sending your email you have to have a clear determined marketing strategy. What do you want to achieve? More sales? More reads? Or more traffic?
- Build your own database!
- Segment your database according to gender, occupation, or other information.
- Use valuable content for your clients.
- Evaluate constantly your email marketing campaign statistics.
Share with us your problems in your email marketing campaign! We are here for you to give you the best consulting and also to help you succeed!