Want your business to stand the best chance of success when contacting customers? Email is undoubtedly the king of communication in the corporate world but your marketing campaigns could be more spam than success if you don’t avoid the following pitfalls!
1. Sending too many emails
A common problem experienced in many an email inbox is oversaturation. As email is such a widely recognised communication tool, the average email account will receive a large number of messages each day and if you’re constantly flooding your customers with emails then you’ll only exacerbate the situation.
To avoid sending too many emails, consider using email automation which will help you schedule and send emails frequently – but not too frequently. Emails with “daily” and “weekly” in the subject line increase click-through rates whereas those with “monthly” in the title actually reduce it so it’s worth taking this into account too.
2. Not engaging with social media
Although a number of consumers still prefer to be contacted through email for commercial purposes (74%), that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t merge your email efforts with other systems. As much as 59% of businesses are now merging their emails and social channels and this is something you should be doing too.
Even something as simple as adding social sharing buttons to your marketing emails can increase their click-through rate. These messages have rates 158% higher than those without the buttons.
3. Not going mobile
Failing to embrace the mobile phenomenon could be incredibly detrimental to your business where email marketing is involved. For those aged between 18 and 24 years, email is one of the most popular activities on smartphones with around 48% of all emails opened on these devices.
Even business users are locked into their mobiles with 35% of professionals checking their inbox using a mobile device. Unless you want to alienate a big portion of your target market, you need to make sure your messages are optimised for mobile viewing – something only 11% of firms are doing.
4. Sending emails at the wrong time
As well as getting the number of emails you send right, you also need to make sure you’re sending your messages at the right time. Emails sent during the working day naturally stand a better chance of being received almost instantly but even the day of the week you choose to send your emails can affect how well they perform. Accord to research, Monday is the best day to send marketing emails as they achieve the highest revenue per email.
5. Making your email inaccessible
As well as making sure your emails are optimised for mobiles, you also need to make sure they’re accessible in other ways. More than four-fifths (84%) of those aged between 18 and 34 years use a preview pane when reading their emails so you need to make sure you convey vital information in the first part of your message to stand the best chance of success.
You should also ensure your choice of language, imagery and other content is suitable for your audience and accessible to all.
