Did you know that around 66% of marketers send emails to people who have not yet converted (behaved or purchased something relevant to what they’ve been told in that email)?
With so many customers, prospects, and leads lacking awareness or interest in your product, it’s essential that you find a way to get in touch with them; ideally, you want to engage with them until you can trigger a sale.
Here’s where things can go wrong.
1. You don’t have the right email list. This is the most common cause of unopened emails. You need to find a way to buy a list of emails that are relevant to your target audience (or at least a segment of it). You can use various tools like Mailchimp, HubSpot, or Marketo to build a list of emails.
2. Unsuccessful email marketing. A whopping 85% of businesses say email marketing is integral to their marketing strategy. Fewer than 15% of marketers say their email campaigns are very successful. If you fall into the latter group, congrats! You’re doing something right.
But if not, it could be because you’re not adapting to changing consumer behavior in the digital age. In a 2018 study, HubSpot discovered that the most successful email marketers change their approach periodically to ensure that their strategies remain relevant and effective.
For example, around 40% of marketers use content curation to generate leads. But while that may have worked in the past, the modern consumer is more likely to seek out content that relates to his or her interests.
Get to the Point Quickly
If you want to generate a response to an email, you need to keep things concise and to the point. Longer emails with lots of fluff will likely get marked as spam.
If someone doesn’t recognize your company or send you an email based on a past interaction with your brand, you can bet they’ll never look at you or your products in the same way again.
On the flip side, if someone buys something from your company or follows your brand on social media, your email will be among the first things they’ll see when they log in. You want to ensure that it’s a good experience.
Personalize
When you’re sending a mass email, you’re usually doing it to multiple people. But when someone opens your email and selects the details about which they’re interested, you’ve got the perfect person to target with personalized content.
In the digital age, consumers are more engaged with brands that they perceive to be more personal. In a 2018 survey by HubSpot, 82% of respondents said they’d be more open to hearing about a new product or service from a brand that they perceive to be more personal.
Make It Easy
The key to effective email marketing is in the design of the email itself. You want to provide enough information for the recipient to know exactly what the email is about, but you don’t want to overwhelm them with details.
Instead of, let’s say, including a lot of text in the body of the email, keep it short and sweet. If someone needs more information, they can always click a link to take them to the website. Or, if you’re sending a sales email, include a call to action like, “Buy now” or “Sign up today.” Easy breezy.
Test, Test, And Test Again
One of the most common mistakes that newbie marketers make is using A/B testing to try out new marketing strategies without actually knowing how successful they can be.
If you’ve got the technological know-how, you can set up automated email campaigns that send out a series of emails with different subject lines and content until you find one that performs best.
For example, if you’ve got a lead magnet that you think is doing well, you can create a corresponding email with the headline “Get the Free Report” or “Download Now to Get the Free Report.” You then compare the conversion rates between the two and continue to tweak the text before you hit send.
Avoid Spam Traps
There are numerous ways that email marketing can go wrong. One of the most common issues that businesses face is getting caught in spam traps. If you want to keep your company email list free from spam, you can buy a dedicated IP address from a company like Cloudflare. Or, you can sign up for a free Gmail account with privacy enabled.
Both of these solutions provide anti-spam protection while still allowing your company to have a functional email address.
Find Your Niche
If you’ve been in business for a while, you may have already found your niche and carved out a space for yourself in your industry. If not, take some time to discover the categories or sectors that you’re good at and enjoy doing. If you can find a way to speak to your audience and provide value, you’ll be able to build and grow your email list.
Once you’ve got a decent sized email list, you can start to segment it based on behavior. You can use tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, or Marketo to create email marketing segments, or campaigns, based on a combination of the data you’ve collected about your customers.
For example, you might want to send an email marketing campaign to people who haven’t bought from you before. Or maybe you’ve got someone on your email list who purchased a luxury item and you want to send them an email about the latest discount or promotion on luxury goods.
Monitor The Results
It’s important to keep track of the results of your email marketing efforts. Without solid data to back up your claims, you’ll likely lose credibility with your audience. To keep track of the results of your email marketing strategies, you can use various tracking software like HubSpot, Marketo, or Mailchimp.
If you decide to take the simpler route, you can create a spreadsheet with your email marketing metrics, such as:
- Open Rate: The percentage of emails that were opened
- Click-Through Rate: The percentage of emails sent that were clicked on
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of people who opened your email that actually bought or signed up for a service
- CASL Rating: The percentage of people who opened your email that are likely to buy from you based on their past experiences
These metrics are all well and good, but you need to take a closer look at the last one. The CASL (Commercial Awareness, Sensitivity, and Likelihood to Recommend) rating is particularly important because it measures the likelihood that someone will purchase your product or service based on their interaction with your brand. Considerations for the rating include: