A guest post about email tactics from Mike Khorev, SEO expert.
Building an email list is not an easy endeavor. Almost every email marketer would vouch for that fact. That is why you should be mindful of the kind of emails that you send. It’s one of the most potent marketing tools in your arsenal, so you must be careful how you use it.
Of all marketing tactics, email marketing is engaging, direct, easy to use, and excellent for building online relationship building. It is perfect for small businesses.
With such promise, it’s also common for many businesses to commit a lot of mistakes. Common reasons for email marketing to flop can be boring content, poorly designed emails, poor CTAs, etc.
In this post, we look at the most typical mistakes and how marketers can avoid them.
Overcrowding Your Emails
The best way to increase the recall value of an email and prompt the desired action is to keep it simple. The days of overcrowded and cluttered emails are long gone. For a successful email marketing campaign, you must pick one main/central message and tie it with your subject line. If necessary, you can always display the offer following the main message somewhere below in the email.
One of the worst things you can do to irritate people and make them give up midway while reading an email is to overstuff it with too much information and too many offers.
Hiding the Unsubscribe Link
A lot of the time, people will see your emails and decide to unsubscribe. Now, most marketers would provide the unsubscribe button in two ways –
- Hide it as a link inside the footer
- Make it easily viewable and easy to access
While the latter is an ideal way to go about helping customers stop receiving emails, the former could easily frustrate them.
Make it easy for your customers to unsubscribe from your services. Do not try to trick them by hiding the button. They are not going to buy from you choose to force-feed them emails suddenly. Respect your customers’ choice. And, when they do stop receiving messages, do not send them future messages, or you could risk getting fined and marked as spammed.
Not Optimizing the Emails for Mobile
Most consumers would use their smartphones to view emails. Therefore, you must optimize your email campaign to make sure they load and view well on mobile screens.
No matter which email management tool you use, you would usually get the option to see how many people are opening emails on mobile and how many are opening on desktop. You can find this data under the analytics option. According to a study, almost 3 out of 4 users are likely to delete an email if it fails to load correctly on mobile.
As a marketer, you must test out an email copy by sending it to yourself and checking it on multiple devices and screens. Look for things like –
- How well the font displays
- If the video and graphics look good and load well
- The overall flow of the email
- Ease of viewing the email
- Is it easy to scroll through the email when accessing it from the phone?
Some of the best email campaigns have always offered an exceptional user experience on both desktop and mobile. It might take some time to perfect the email before it looks good on mobile, but in the end, it will all be worth it.
Sending Too Many Emails
One of the worst mistakes that a LOT of marketers make is bombarding someone with way too many messages. If you also send a ton of emails in a day, you should stop that right now.
It’s a privilege that people have subscribed to your email list, not a right of yours to send them multiple messages in a day.
The average person receives about 121 emails in a day. For this very reason, most people feel annoyed as they receive way too many messages in a day.
Ideally, you should send no more than one email every week. Alternatively, you can list preferences for users to pick from at the time of signing up. This approach will allow them to decide the frequency of emails that works for them. You can even ask them to pick the kind of messages they prefer to receive.
Not Adding Relevant CTAs
Sending emails that ‘check in’ or say ‘hi’ is not a very good strategy. Mostly they irritate users and waste their time also. Only send messages that have a clear purpose and a goal. It would be best if you also supplemented relevant and clear CTAs according to those goals.
Below are some examples of relevant CTAs you can include –
- Join our program
- Book our upcoming event
- Shop now
- Forward this email to your friend
- Could you share it on social media?
Other than this, you should also avoid repeating the same message again and again within the same body. There’s no need to drill the same thing over and over.
Avoid placing too many of these CTAs as it might confuse an average reader as to which one to pick, and they may give up altogether. In the end, it could hurt your conversions quickly.
Bottom Line
Are you ready to elevate the success of your marketing strategy? Consider some of these five key points from this post and implement those the next time you sit down to craft an email.
Mike Khorev is an SEO expert and digital marketing consultant who helps small and mid-size businesses generate more leads, sales and grow revenue online. He offers expert advice on marketing your company the right way through performance-based SEO, digital marketing, web design, social media, search engine marketing, and many other online practices.
mikekhorev3@gmail.com : https://en.gravatar.com/khorevmike https://twitter.com/MikeKhorev https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekhorev/
Photo by Kind and Curious on Unsplash
