What All the New Tools Mean for Marketers
Now that we can target, execute and track our marketing efforts like never before, we are expected to. Content marketing is at an all time high. The name of the game is being creative, relevant, and effective all at the same time. And it’s not enough for people to read your messages; your messages need to illicit the desired responses. Email marketing seems to offer the best of all worlds, but there are very important details involved in avoiding trash bins, spam folders or high unsubscribe rates.
To Do or Not to Do, That is the Question
There’s a million things you could try to implement for your email marketing strategy. Each business is different. What most businesses have in common are the mistakes made. Remember to put equal focus on avoiding common errors and trying new tricks. Avoiding the pitfalls below can drastically improve your email marketing results.
Metrics & Optimization: Less is More
There’s so many things you can track, but that doesn’t mean you should try to keep your eye on all of it. Narrow your scope to opens rates, click rates, and increase in subscribers. These numbers will provide insight about essential aspects of your campaign: they show what is working and what is not. These three metrics can help you experiment with a lot of email marketing details: subject lines, the number of links in one email, what time of day you send your email, etc. Analyzing too many metrics at once can lead to a complete disconnect with your audience and overlooked observations.
About That Click-Through Rate
Nothing will kill your click-through and conversions rates more than emails that don’t have a clear call-to-action. People don’t open emails to pass time; they scan the content looking for a purpose. If your call-to-action is not immediate, it will cause confusion and overall dissatisfaction. Ideally you should only have one call to action per email and you need to emphasize it to draw the user’s eye. Reiterate your call-to-action multiple times throughout the email and spice it up with large buttons, bright colors, text effects or in-body gifs. This increases the chances your subscribers will do what you want them to as a result of reading the email.
Making Emails Relevant to Recipients
Failing to execute basic segmentation will also cause subscriber dissatisfaction. Segmentation means creating smaller lists (or segments) from your subscriber master list. Let’s say you have an email list of 1000 names and 500 of those people have previously purchased a pair of sneakers from you while 500 have not. If you separate them into two lists, you can send one list an offer to get socks that match the sneakers they already purchased. Then you could send out a separate email to those who have not purchased sneakers offering a first time discount if they buy sneakers and socks together. This will likely yield a significantly higher return than sending a single email to all prospects with a generic offer. Using customers’ actions as a guide for segmentation is a powerful strategy and encourages personalization.
How to Handle Images
Up to 52% of customers have images disabled in their default email settings. This is a large percentage of your recipients and particularly true with mobile devices. Few things are more unseemly when you first open an email than an empty box with a red x in the upper left corner. Design campaigns featuring clever copy that works with or without images; the image is simply a bonus if they see it. If they don’t, they can see any alt text you choose; do so wisely. Before hitting send, check your email messages by testing them across multiple devices, browsers and email clients.
At the End of the Day…
How many emails do you read in a 24-hour window? How do you choose? Customers respect clarity and assurance when it comes to email marketing. They only want info from a reliable, unobtrusive source—info that directly benefits their lives. Dodge these common pitfalls and you’ll be sure to win their favor. Want some help? We’re ready to partner with you. Click here to send us a message.