Although, other digital marketing techniques have picked up on speed, email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing channels. It does not matter what type of business you have or what kind of industry you operate in; email marketing is extremely crucial for your brand’s top-of-mind recall and bringing customers back to your website.
While email marketing is crucial, there are reasons enough to understand the complexity that it comes with. When click-through-rates (CTR) and open rates are not according to what you had anticipated, you end up asking the most common questions like: did they receive it and didn’t open it? Did they open it and didn’t like it? Why are they unsubscribing?
Email marketing
Read on the five common mistakes that companies make when communicating with their customers. If you are one of them and are wondering why your emails are not performing the way they should, here is how you can prevent these mistakes and make the most of your campaigns:
1- Email marketing mistake: Lack of Personalization
YES! Personalization is the guru to all your marketing tactics. Huge businesses be it Netflix or Spotify have long adapted to this approach. They send you messages that are tailored specifically towards your personality, whether these are in form of song recommendations or something you’d wish to add in your watchlist.
Personalization in email marketing is equally imperative, hence you need to master it as it is one of the main drivers of a successful campaign. According to HubSpot: Personalized emails have about 26% higher open rates, and over 14% click-through rates when compared to other, non-personalized emails.
Lack of personalization opposes the objective of your campaign, and it can surely leave your message ignored or have it land in the junk box – this is something none of you are looking for.
Tips to follow:
- Personalize content based on demographics – Other than just their first name, make strong use of the data that you have collected on your audience: date of birth, gender and interests all of these falls under the hood of demographics. Engaging your audience with personalized emails makes the content more relevant to them and lays a great chance for them to interact with your brand in the future.
A good example of such is Sephora, the brand sends out personalized birthday wishes that comes with a gift card to its customers via email. This does not only make the content of the email relevant but also displays that brand cares about its customers which adds to the long-term loyalty of the customer.
- Personalize recommendations based on consumer behavior – This is another way you can roll out personalized messages to your consumers. This is done through interest-based targeting, customers who have interacted with your products on your website, sending messages relevant to those interactions can increase the chance of your products being bought.
2- Email marketing mistake: Overlooking a Call-To-Action (CTA)
You are always thinking of ways to improve your business dealings, no matter what your business is always on your mind and you wish for your customers for the same – to always think of your business. Don’t You?
What other reason would your customers have to respond back to you if your email is missing a call to action? In order to hit homerun, it is essential that your emails bring in a clear CTA. Because, if you send newsletters or updates without an enticing CTA, firstly you will lose upon conversions, and secondly, your message will be ignored due to failure of establishing a two-way communication; since action from the user acts as their willingness to respond back.
However, on the other hand many brands go overboard by incorporating multiple CTAs in a single message. Without a doubt this will confuse the reader and the purpose of serving your message will just waste both the effort and the money.
Tips to follow:
- Design your emails in a way that does not confuse the reader. Do not go without sending a CTA as establishing two-way communication displays concern to the reader.
- Do not overboard your message with a thousand CTAs. Keep one and make sure it has the highest impact relevant to the context of your message. For instance, you have launched a new product, the CTA should be about making a purchase. An email designed with a simple that says ‘Buy Now’ will do the job.
3- Email marketing mistake: Neglecting Mobile Users
According to Constant Contact, 61% of all emails are opened on a mobile device. WAIT, that’s just not it. Emailmonday says, 59% of respondents check their personal email on the go (on mobile devices), while 65% check their email at home.
It is clear to establish from the stats above, that all of you are set to roll out your emails crafted on computer, you need to check how your mail looks on mobile devices. Since a lot of users are spending their time on mobile devices a smart marketer would know to reach its audience where its present the most. Neglecting mobile-users can be costly for your brand, a non-optimized mobile email finds its way to the junk box and there is nothing that can fight it.
You wouldn’t want to risk that would you?
Tips to follow:
- Send test emails to yourself than to your contacts. This will help you know how your mail is looking on mobile devices.
- Avoid long blocks of text. What is the two-three liner on the desktop that can go up to ten lines on a smartphone screen.
4- Email marketing mistake: Ignoring Concerns of your Target Audience
Coming up with ideas that are relevant to your subscribers can be a tough task. However, all marketers are required to break the barrier of ‘difficulty’ and move a step ahead. If you ignore the needs and preferences of your audience, you’ll surely lose subscribers.
Keeping the needs and concerns of your audience in mind what builds a long-term relationship with your customers. An effective way to address your subscribers through relevant messages is by creating customer personas. As a marketer you in all probability have a good idea about who your target customers are but creating their persons will reward you with detailed and deeper insights specific to their needs. So, in order to tailor towards the concerns of your audience, sending designed messages based on personas is the key to success:
Tips to follow:
- Combine personas into demographics and psychographic groups
- Address data points that are an outcome of this persona categorizing and see improved results
5- Email marketing mistake: ‘One Size Fits All’ Approach (Segmentation)
Marketing works when it’s relevant to the customer. ‘One Size Fits All’ Approach never works, and It never really did work. Your message needs to be tailored specifically to who the audience is.
As superoffice displays, only 11% of the email campaigns are segmented. Through segmentation, you can divide your list into different groups and customize your messaging for each reader accordingly, by doing this you will notice higher click-through-rates and more engaged customers.
A broadly realized methodology called AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) is an equation that enables marketers to give results-driven content to their readers with the ultimate objective of making them travel through the sales funnel.
Tips to follow:
Segment and design your contact list as follow before starting your email marketing campaign see improved results:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Interest
- Educational Qualification
- Location
- Job Title
- Industry Size
Let’s Wrap Up
Avoiding the outlined five common email marketing mistakes above will give a better understanding of your target audience. Furthermore, following the tips provided will surely help you in crafting better campaigns with improved results.
*Time for a bonus tip
Use Email Inspector: It is email list verification software and connects you with all your favorite tools to ensure that you always reach out to real prospects.
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