EFFECTIVE EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing is still alive and well. It’s still a low cost way to generate high quality leads – when done properly – and despite the rise in social media marketing and mobile marketing, email doesn’t seem to be going anywhere just yet.
With that in mind, it’s still certainly worth your time to focus on building up your email marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, a lot of companies miss the mark when it comes to email marketing. They make costly mistakes that cause them to lose subscribers, get their emails flagged as SPAM, and ruin the performance of their campaign.
Why do so many companies fail at email marketing?
Well, your email marketing will suck if you do any of the following:
1) You bought your list
Buying your email list is a big no-no. Sure, it might let you hit the ground running more quickly than taking the time to build up your own email list, but it’s a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, the people you’ll be emailing haven’t signed up for your list and they probably won’t want to hear from you. That means they probably won’t be receptive to your sales tactics. But even worse, they might flag you as a spammer.
2) You ignore the CAN-SPAM Act
The CAN-SPAM Act is a federal law that sets rules for commercial email. When sending out your marketing emails, you have to follow the rules set forth by this law, such as not using misleading subject lines, always providing opt-out links, honoring opt-out requests promptly, and more. Failure to follow these rules can result in stiff fines.
3) You email subscribers too often
If you’re constantly bombarding your subscribers with emails, you’ll eventually annoy many of them, and they’ll stop paying attention to your messages, filter them into folders they never look at, or unsubscribe from your list. Be careful that you’re not being a pest.
4) You don’t email subscribers often enough
On the other hand, if you only email your subscribers once in a blue moon, they’ll forget who you are, and that may cause them to flag your occasional emails as SPAM. You want to keep your subscribers engaged, so you have to communicate with them.
5) You aren’t providing the content your subscribers want
When people subscribe to your email list, they do so with certain expectations. They have an idea of what they expect to receive from you. Maybe they sign up expecting to get exclusive deals, or maybe they sign up thinking you’ll provide them with useful information.
If you’re not meeting their expectations, your email marketing will be ineffective. So, set clear expectations up front, and give subscribers options to choose what kind of messages they want to see. Give them the option of changing their subscription options including frequency and they are less likely to unsubscribe.
6) You don’t track anything
You should be tracking every aspect of your email campaign – delivery rates, open rates, click throughs, etc. This information will help you assess how effective your email marketing campaign is, and it will give you the information you need to make smart tweaks to improve your campaign’s performance.
7) You aren’t testing
Always be testing. You should be testing out different subject lines, different offers, different layout, etc. so you can see which changes improve results and which don’t. Test everything!
Do you have any questions about email marketing?
Ask them in the comments below.
