8 Biggest Email Marketing Mistakes (And How to Fix Them!)
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Email Marketing helps you follow up with your list
I am putting together my presentation for my next email marketing event and I compiled a list of the 8 biggest mistakes that people make with their email marketing campaigns (and how to fix them). I want to share them with you now, so here we go!
#1 Fail to Follow Up - Following up is one of the most important benefits of email marketing - the ability to follow up with your entire list and nurture relationships on a widescale basis. Many people simply fail to follow up, and are losing out on huge opportunity.
#2 Don't Pay Enough Attention to the Subject Line - By far, the number one challenge with email marketing is getting people to open your message. Your subject line is the tiny hook you have at your disposal to persuade the reader to open the message and read further. You might have the best offer in the world, but if people aren't opening your messages, it won't matter. Try crafting a subject line that captures the audience’s attention, creates curiosity, conveys urgency/scarcity or speaks directly to the audience’s pain points.
#3 Send Your Email at the Wrong Time - Another important point about getting people to open your message is to send your message at the right time - the time when they are most likely to be opening emails. For many people, their audience are online during work hours, so try sending your message in the late morning after people have cleared out their messages from overnight.
#4 Messages Are Too Long - A common objection I hear is that people think email marketing takes too long, especially the time it takes to craft your messages. You may not want to spend hours writing your email marketing campaign, but guess what? -Your audience doesn't want to spend too much time reading lengthy messages either!! Keep your messages light, conversational and to-the-point.
#5 Give Up - According to marketingsherpa.com, 86% of people WANT TO RECEIVE promotional emails from you each month (and 61% each week). Just because people haven't bought from you yet, doesn't mean they never will. Many times a "no" means "not right now", so don’t give up. Make sure you are providing value to your audience - every campaign shouldn’t be a sales pitch. I recommend a ratio of at least 3:1 gives to asks - in other words, provide value 3 times, then you can ask for a sale.
#6 Same Message to All Subscribers - The more focused an email you can send to your audience, the engaged they will become. If you are an apparel company, try to figure out what each person on your list buys - (women's clothes? mens? kids? shoes? etc.) The more specific message you can send, they more people will appreciate the time you've taken to learn about them and the more likely to become a buyer. Try including some links in your next campaign and segment people by applying tags to people who clicked-through.
#7 Buy a List - Firstly, in most cases it is illegal to purchase a list and market to people who have not explicitly given permission. This is a federal anti-spam regulation. Secondly, these people have never been introduced to your brand, so they are still at the cold traffic stage of the buying process so they do not know, like & trust you yet, despite the fact that you have their email information. I would rather have 300 interested, engaged subscribers instead of 30,000 disengaged subscribers who have never heard of my brand.
#8 Don't Track Effectiveness - Another huge missed opportunity is analytics. Most people don't look at analytics and don't really know how people are reacting to each campaign. The most important metrics to track include: open rate, bounce rate, unsubscribes, and click-through rate.
If you are interested in learning more about how to make money from email marketing or attending an upcoming event, please let me know!