Email marketing is a great way for businesses to reach out to their clients, advertise products and services, and foster brand advocacy. Nevertheless, there are several common mistakes that businesses make in email marketing implementations that affect their results negatively. In this article, we’ll go over the top 5 email marketing errors you’re likely making and how to get rid of them.
Not Segmenting Your Email List
Segmenting your email list is the process of breaking your email list into different segments based on similar demographic, interests, and behaviors. In this way, you will have the ability to create more personalized and targeted email campaigns that will better suit your target audience. Segmenting your list helps you personalize and optimize your email marketing.
The pitfalls of not segmenting your email list include low open, click-through and conversion rates. Don’t make this mistake, spend some time learning your target audience and designing segments that align with your business.
Sending Too Many Emails
One of the easiest ways to frustrate readers and get them to unsubscribe is sending too many emails. Despite keeping your audience in the loop, emailing them too many times will not help you.
Avoid making this error and strike the right compromise for your business and your customers. Think about how often you send emails, what content is valuable and what your subscribers want.
Ignoring Mobile Optimization
As more people use mobile devices, make sure to optimize your mobile email campaigns. Mobile opens 46% of emails, making it the number one email reading platform according to Litmus. If you don’t take mobile optimization seriously, you are likely losing more than half of your audience, which reduces engagement and conversion rates.
If you want your emails to be mobile-friendly, here are some best practices:
Use a single-column format: A single-column format makes your content read better on smaller monitors and reduces the possibility of overlaying or distortion.
Design clean: Don’t over-use images or graphics that impede the load speed and make the email look messy.
Larger font sizes: Small font sizes are difficult to read on a smartphone. Try to maintain a font size of at least 14 pixels for body text and 22 pixels for headlines.
Optimize images: Be sure images are sized properly and contain an alt tag if it fails to load.
Make calls-to-action (CTAs) stand out: Your CTAs should be prominent and easily accessible on mobile devices.
Neglecting Subject Line Best Practices
When people get an email from you, the subject line is the first thing they see. The wrong subject line could get your email ignored or flagged as spam. By not following subject line guidelines, you’re sacrificing the opportunity to engage your audience and convert them.
Here are some tips to ensure that your subject lines run as efficiently as possible:
Keep it short and sweet. The best line should be around 30-50 characters. This makes it much easier for people to see your message and will also ensure it looks correct on mobile.
Individualized: Sometimes a little customization is enough to put you over the top in terms of interaction. If a user can add their name, location or other details, it can make them feel meaningful and engaged. For example, instead of “John, You’ve Got An Exclusive Offer! “-a compulsion that mass mail simply can’t afford.
Sensible Language: If there’s a verb that can make something happen in your subject lines, then use it. “Buy Now,” “Membership Today” or “Get Started” might entice your subject line with such an urgency that the recipient would read your email. Convincing words drive click-throughs even higher.
Spam words: Words of all shapes and sizes have the potential to set off spam filters and some will just send recipients missing your message. Terms such as “free,” “urgent,” or any words that have the same meaning in your subject line. Be more descriptive and use plainer language.
Prove and Measure: As the saying goes “measure what gets measured, manage what”. Of course, this could apply to email marketing. Utilize A/B testing to compare different subject lines. Open rates, engagement metrics, and conversion statistics will be the top notch factors to capture your ideal audience. Use that insight to further optimize and adjust future campaigns.
Don’t Boost and Test Your Emails.
Email marketing is not a one size fits all approach and what might be effective for one business might not be for another. Failure to test and optimise your emails will mean lower click rates, missed conversions, and a drop in ROI.
In order to avoid this mistake, make sure to test your emails before you publish them to your entire list. Use split testing for subjects, content, and calls to action to see what works best for your users.
Lack of Personalization
Email marketing is all about personalization. You can boost engagement, strengthen relationships, and convert more by sending specific messages to specific subscribers. But still, companies continue to mail standard, one-size-fits-all emails that are impersonal and boring.
If you don’t want to make this mistake, segment your email list according to subscriber actions, interests, and preferences and employ dynamic content to create individualized messages that resonate with your subscribers.
Overlooking Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is a feature that allows your emails to go directly into your readers’ inboxes instead of their spam folders. Failure to deliver emails can lead to low open rates, revenue loss and reputation loss. To prevent this, make sure that your email list is clean and current, have double opt-in verification, stay away from spam and other nonsense, and keep an eye on your email deliverability metrics.
Conclusion:
Email Marketing can help businesses immensely, but it’s very important to stay away from common mistakes that can hurt your results. By segmenting your email list, sending out the right number of emails, making it mobile friendly, writing strong subject lines, and testing and refining your emails, you can design effective email marketing campaigns that engage with your audience and provide your business with the results you desire.
