Email marketing is one of the most personal forms of digital marketing. It is very necessary to not make email marketing mistakes because email marketing makes it easier to gain trust, build loyalty, and enhance customer retention.
Here are some of the top email marketing mistakes to avoid this year.
Mistake #1
You don’t have a targeted, defined audience. One of the first steps to any new email marketing campaign is to have a product or service to promote, as well as a defined audience for that product or service. Automation tools allow you to segment your subscriber list based on specific attributes, like age, gender and interests. Fleshed-out content, personalization and workflow will come later. Once you know what product or service you’d like to promote, you can segment your list and define an audience to target.
For example, to promote the COVID-19 vaccine, the Health center sent emails on a rolling basis to specific patient populations. They worked with population health to prioritize and invite the highest risk, eligible patients, first. They segmented messages based on language preference (English vs. Spanish) as well as patient portal activation (active v/s Inactive). The campaign was a massive success; the unique open rate for the vaccine invitations was consistently above 60%.
Mistake #2:
You Don’t Use Personalization or Automation Tools Does your email marketing strategy begin and end with e-newsletters you send to a broad audience? No single newsletter could meet the needs of all subscribers. What’s the most efficient method of delivering the right content to different audiences? How will you know if you were successful? When you commit to marketing automation, the answers are at your fingertips. Marketing automation uses tools and data within your CRM to deliver custom content based on your audience’s interests. Automation makes it possible to: Respond quickly after someone subscribes by sending a welcome email. Schedule content delivery so that you don’t have to manually coordinate every newsletter release. Personalize messages by including the user’s name in the greeting.
Mistake #3:
The template design isn’t a priority. Do you recreate your emails from scratch each time you send one? Or maybe you use a generic template that doesn’t match your brand style or stand out in any way? One mistake that some email marketers make is not prioritizing custom template design. You can streamline your email marketing efforts by taking the time (and budget) to create well-designed, professional templates. Then, you can run A/B tests to see which design templates resonate best with audiences. Custom template creation gives you unique content blocks that look crisp and clean, yet on-brand.
Mistake #4:
Your emails blend in with your competition. For email marketing, how bold are you? When trying to stand out, simplicity rules. You have few words and little time to show that your email is worth a click. A thoughtfully crafted subject line and snippet along with a good mobile experience can slow your subscriber’s roll so that they absorb every juicy detail. Start with a short, interesting subject line: Your subject line should create a sense of urgency without feeling shammy. And you have only 25 to 50 characters to do it. Write an enticing snippet: This is the first line of text after the subject line. Leaving it blank could cause an error message. Instead, use this small window of opportunity to share an interesting fact, summarize your email or highlight a new offering. It’s just one line, so be concise. Use mobile-friendly design: Users are often opening your email on their phone, so keep things tight and clean. Succinct content and smart use of headers make for easy reading. And don’t go overboard with images. When they don’t display correctly, images become big white gaps that detract from your content.
Mistake #5:
You don’t have enough content to distribute through email. Once you’ve enticed users with your exceptional topic and easy-to-read format, they’ll expect regular emails from you. It’s challenging to keep developing fresh content — especially if you’re managing newsletters on multiple topics. But you don’t need to reinvent the wheel and write articles with follow-ups.
Mistake #6:
You Set It and Forget It Some newsletters will be more successful than others. Analytics provide valuable insights into what’s resonating with audiences and where there’s room for improvement. This information is available in real-time, so check early and often — and respond to what the data shows you.If you’re not managing the campaigns and understanding the behaviors and overall data, it can affect your relationship with your audience.
CONCLUSION:
Don’t set and forget. Pull It All Together In 2022, it’s time to rethink your email marketing initiatives. It’s time to ditch the common mistakes above and take your email marketing to the next level. Make this the year email marketing has the biggest impact on your business.
