the biggest mistakes with email marketing
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Fact: by the end of 2017, there were over 4.9 billion email accounts worldwide*
Fact II: 86% of business professionals choose to use email as their preferred method of communication**
But not everyone is doing a great job. Here are three of the biggest challenges that small businesses have with email marketing:
#1 - Not following up - most of us are ultimately in sales and we should always be looking to build relationships. After you meet a new business contact, it’s easy to shoot someone an email and tell them how nice it was to meet them, but many people drop the ball here. You should continue to follow up with them, by providing value and offering help. Your email marketing campaign will help you do that. You’ve done the hard part by making the connection, don’t let it fall away!
#2 - Create compelling subject lines - Once you’ve established your email marketing program, the biggest challenge is getting people to open your message. In most industries, open rates are under 35% - that’s a 65% failure rate! So you need to be doing everything you can to maximize your open rates. Try a personalized headline with a specific benefit in the subject line like: “Customers calling you? I can help you with that”
Furthermore, if you use words like “donate”, “free” or “buy” your message might get blocked by your email spam filter and your audience will never see it (and never read it)
#3 Make sure you’re delivering value - make sure you communicate to your audience what’s in it for them. Your customers are only interested in themselves, so every message can’t be a sales pitch. Try to educate, inform or entertain people with your emails. If you are helping people and providing valuable insight and information, it will help develop trust with your audience, as well as distinguish you as an authority.
If you avoid these mistakes, your email marketing program will be much more successful in getting people to know you, developing a relationship and ultimately lead to more sales
**Hubspot, 2017