An Article on Email Marketing Issues to Avoid in Marketing.
Email marketing issues happen all the time. The purpose of this article to help you avoid some of them. The average number of business email sent/received in a day is 122 in 2015 and growing says Radicati.com. That’s a lot of emails to go through. It’s no wonder it takes time to get a response. Imagine having to read every one of those emails! When would you ever get any real work done?
The average number of business email sent/received in a day is 122 in 2015 and growing says Radicati.com. That’s a lot of emails to go through. It’s no wonder it takes time to get a response. Imagine having to read every one of those emails! When would you ever get any real work done?
Most people don’t read every email they get. It’s too time-consuming. Instead, they scan the subject lines and delete anything that it isn’t immediately relevant.
67% of marketers say that email is key for attracting and engaging prospects, and the best path to increase email marketing ROI according to Forbes. So how do we cut through the cluttered inbox to reach our potential customers?
It’s all about the headline
Before you write a headline you need to know your audience. Do the research to understand who you are writing to. You miss the mark if you forego this step.
Why is research so important? Through research, the typical customer is revealed. Research helps answer many questions about our potential customers. Questions like:
- “Who they are?”
- “What do they like?”
- “What don’t they like?”
- “How do they want to connect?”
- “What words do they use?”
- “What problems do they have?”
- “What have they tried to solve their problem?”
In-depth research helps the writer to craft messages using the phrases and language the potential customer actually uses. The result is an email that resonates with the reader because it speaks their language. It connects with the reader on their level.
The next step is to craft a great headline or subject line for the email. Using the trusted 4U formula ensures a greater chance of getting your emails read. Here’s why.
When an email shows up, the reader scans subject line to determine if it relevant or worthy to open and continue reading. If the headline doesn’t capture the reader’s attention, the email won’t get read. Worse yet it might get trashed before it’s even opened!
64% of people say they open an e-mail because of the subject line according to Mark the Marketer. Email subject lines are critical. It’s life or death of the email. So write your subject lines using attention-grabbing methods to compel readers to click through and read the rest of your email.
Important points to remember for upping your open rates:
- use words that suggest urgency, such as alert, news, bulletin
- include special offers
- don’t mislead – don’t suggest something that you’re not going to deliver
- spark curiosity
- consider running A/B tests for subject lines to see what works best
Don’t get stuck in the spam filter
Obviously, your email will never get read, if it gets stuck in a spam filter.
There are certain words to avoid at all costs. Check out this list Hubspot put together. It contains a huge list of words to absolutely avoid in your emails. Verify your emails don’t include any of these words.
The next step is to test out your emails using spam content detection tools. There are many free options out there. Here are a few highly rated options by many email marketers:
http://spamcheck.postmarkapp.com/
http://www.jam-software.com/spamassassin/
Try each of those and see what works best for you and help you avoid email marketing issues.
Personalize or not?
Another way to avoid the spam filters is by using personalization. This seems fairly intuitive. Emails that are personalized have a greater chance of being opened. You want to open any letter you received when your name is handwritten on the envelope. It could be someone you know, right?
Personalization of email content yielded the highest average open rate for all email campaigns, with 17.6 percent of all personalized emails being opened according to MailerMailer.
Personalization means including your recipient’s name in either the subject line or the email body content. Campaigns without any personalization achieved a lower email open rate of 11.4 percent. With this in mind, ensure your email marketing is set up to include personalization in both the subject line and the body copy of your email content.
As a general rule, personalization is the best approach. After all, your emails are meant to foster a relationship with your customers. If you don’t treat your customers with respect they won’t stick around for long. One way to respect your customer is to call them by name.
Of course, this means you better have a way to capture their information so you can personalize the email you’re sending. More on that topic in another article about email tools.
So, don’t get stuck with email marketing issues like this one. Personalize your emails for impact.
Add Value
Adding value goes hand and hand with the research phase. During the research phase, you discover what problems, needs, or goals your customers have. Once you know those things you can craft content that helps your customer.
Content that:
- Helps your customers overcome their problem.
- Meets your customers’ need.
- Enables your customers to reach their goals.
Email marketing is informational on purpose. Choosing not to be informational is another email marketing issue to avoid. Email marketing should be designed to help customers solve a problem, meet a need, or reach a goal.
So what’s the best way to do that?
- Answer questions. Again, through research, you will discover what’s ailing your customer. When you know that you can write emails that help them answer their most nagging questions.
- Make lists. Content with lists works nicely for conveying many helpful hints, tips, or suggestions.
- Add value. Another way to add value is to lay out the plans to reach a goal. Providing a step by step approach to reaching a goal can help a customer reach theirs.
- Offer solutions. Lastly identifying a problem and writing about the solution can also add value for your customer.
In conclusion, contact me to help with your email campaigns. I’d be happy to do the research, craft email subject lines using the “4 U’s” method, and brainstorm an email series that will address your customer’s problem, needs, or goals. I also provide email proofing and make recommendations to improve existing campaigns.
