The Worst Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid
With their work going out to hundreds, if not thousands of subscribers, an email marketer’s mistakes are seen by a lot of people. With 3.7 billion global email users in 2017 and with 73% of millennials identifying email as their preferred method of business communication, email marketing is still an incredibly substantial piece in the online marketing puzzle, and a service Blue Whale Media offers!
From managing your email’s content to ensuring you have a solid strategy for reader engagement, email marketing is a multi-faceted and intricate aspect to marketing.
Ensuring your email marketing content is well-written and properly-directed can result in powerful results, with 89% of marketers saying email was their primary channel for lead generation.
We’ve compiled a few helpful pieces of advice relating to your email marketing’s content, engagement and backend support so that you can foster a healthy and active readership.
Vague Subject Lines
An email’s subject line is usually the only thing most readers will look at, so it’s important to make it clear and to the point. A case study in 2011 found that emails with clear subject lines had 541% more clicks that subject lines trying to be overly clever. This is because when it comes to browsing emails, people are absolutely cutthroat.
Overly wordy subject lines are almost immediately ignored and discarded as spam or junk mail by most people, as are emails whose subject lines are trying to be too vague. In general, have the keywords of your subject line as early as possible, front-loading important words. Most importantly, have the subject line be a clear explanation of what your audience will get by opening the email in order to generate real engagement.
No Reader Engagement
While a newsletter is for keeping an audience-base informed, email marketing is sent out specifically to promote products or services and to engage the receiving audience. Make sure that the email you’re sending out is properly equipped with images that will load, links that click through and writing that captures readers’ attention.
Look into engagement segmentation, which staggers your email newsletter sends in order to drive better engagement results with users. Analyse the portion of your most engaged users and send to them first. Wait between 30 minutes to an hour and then send out the newsletter to the rest of the subscribers. Your ISP will see the bump in activity and engagement from the first group of users, leading them to boost your sender reputation score and automatically route the second wave of sent emails into inboxes rather than spam boxes.
Going Straight to Spam
We mentioned engagement segmentation above, however, it can’t be stressed how important engagement is when it comes to ensuring your email newsletter doesn’t get put directly into spam folders. If large amounts of inactive subscribers are dragging down your open rates, click-to-open rates and ultimately your sender reputation, your email marketing will be going straight into junk folders.
To prevent this, take a look at your list of subscribed readers and try to figure out those who are still interested in hearing from you. Make an effort to re-engage these readers, before determining who isn’t interested in your email marketing and wiping them off the email list.
No Personal Touch
When you sign up for an email newsletter, you know that it’s a mass-distributed piece of content for thousands of readers, which is why it’s so pleasantly surprising when an email newsletter has any kind of a personal touch. Addressing the reader with their first name instead of “Dear Reader,” will keep your email marketing from feeling lifeless and robotic.
Make sure that your written content has a clear and engaging tone that your readers recognise. If you run an investment company, your newsletter readers will be looking for serious and effective market tips with the proper jargon and lingo. Always look for ways that you can tailor your email marketing to your audience and even down to your specific readers.
Call Blue Whale Media for Your Email Marketing Needs
Email newsletters have the power to form a tight relationship with your audience, increasing your brand’s recognition and reputability. Along with this, a properly directed email marketing can re-engage and redirect customers towards specific products or promotions.
The tips above are just a few ways you can improve your email marketing strategy and increase the overall effectiveness of your company’s online marketing, however, it’s custom-marketing research and work that is most effective for any kind of business. If you’re interested in Blue Whale Media’s personalised online marketing and email marketing services, give us a call at 01925 552 050.