Email Marketing: To “Send” or not to “Send” That is the Question

When it comes to creating quality marketing campaigns, email marketing is still a good choice, especially for small business owners. It can engage an audience, develop a readership and lead to sales without breaking the bank.

Email marketing can be used in a variety of ways. It can be used to promote a new product or service, create a memorable customer experience, turn leads into customers, build your brand identity, and connect on a deeper level with your audience. While email as a channel works well for many businesses, there are a lot of email campaigns that don’t produce, for a variety of reasons, including irrelevant content and bad strategy.

To help avoid these flops, I wanted to go over some of the most common email marketing mistakes that small businesses can make.

The most successful email marketing campaigns start with a list full of qualified leads and email addresses of people who will be interested in what you offer. When you’re emailing your customers, it’s important to first understand why you’re emailing them. You want to get something out of the relationship, whether it’s increased sales or website traffic, but you still need to cultivate a relationship with them. If every email you send tries to sell your products, your customers are going to become annoyed. Try to find a balance between helpful content and product offers.

Relationships should start slowly. Maybe, begin by sending out a weekly or monthly newsletter to your client base with some tips that are relevant to your industry. Mixed in with this regular content, you could then highlight some relevant new products or sales.

One of the most common email marketing mistakes is not keeping an eye on your sender reputation. This is an oversight that can affect your spam rates. The sender reputation score, which internet service providers set, weighs your daily email volume along with your bounce and unsubscribe rates. The more often your emails bounce or result in recipients unsubscribing, the lower your sender reputation score. Fewer emails sent can correlate to a higher sender reputation score.

To improve your sender reputation, you must first track it. The easiest way to do so is with a website or tool that needs just your URL to pull up your score. There are several sites available to do this. Just put in your URL, the monthly email send volume you project, and some additional requested information and you can get your score. You’ll also have access to sender reputation reports and some tips on how you can improve your score if it is poor.

The emails you send need to serve a purpose. Whether you’re looking for your customers to purchase a product or just simply follow you on Instagram, there should be a call to action. It’s important to be clear about what you’re looking for from customers, if not, you’re just stacking their inbox. Decide what you want the recipient to do, get their attention, and enable the action to be smooth and in as few clicks as possible.

You don’t want to overuse these “calls to action.” Because if you’re asking your subscribers to buy multiple products, sign up for another email list, post a photo on Instagram, support a cause, and a bunch of other things, you’re going to separate your audience into too many different funnels. And as a result, you could end up with 100 people taking 10 different actions, rather than having 100 people taking one action.

Getting email recipients to open your email is the first step to a successful email campaign. The average open rate for emails across all industries is around 20%.

To get higher open rates, it’s key to follow subject-line best practices. These vary a little by company, but most agree that it’s a good idea to keep your subject lines short. Email subject lines should usually contain an average of 40 characters across seven words. Leading with this could be the best approach to increasing the open rate.

For the best engagement, keep your subject lines short, clear, and engaging. Better yet, write catchy email subject lines. This is easier said than done but following the general rule of keeping subject lines in the range of 40 characters can help you stand out in some potential customers’ inboxes. Depending on the audience, some businesses may find that using emojis or colorful language in your subject line increases open rates. Other businesses may have better success with more professional wording. The tone of your subject line depends to a great extent on your email recipients.

These are just a few of the things to think about when planning an email campaign. There are so many more. If you want your email marketing campaigns to be successful, these steps are just a few that can certainly help. But to ensure that your email campaign is a huge success that results in new customers and additional revenue for your company, be sure to do plenty of research before pressing that send button.