Category: Email Marketing

Many businesses today are adopting email marketing as part of their improved marketing strategies. This should come as no surprise given that email marketing is able to pull in a much larger number of customers than social media marketing can.

The goal of all email marketers is to target the right customers with the right content via email. They often utilize a variety of content delivery strategies and styles in order to maximize customer engagement and boost the likelihood of customers making a purchase.

There are many ways to do email marketing right, and there are equally as many ways to do it wrong. Here are 6 common email marketing mistakes to avoid.

Poorly written content

Most big companies have access to a team of writers and marketers who are able to create and deliver quality content for their email marketing campaigns. They put effort into making sure the content they deliver is well-written in order to maximize customer engagement.

Customers who are sent poorly-written emails are less likely to engage with its contents, and may even ask to unsubscribe from your company’s mailing list.

This problem is especially prevalent with new subscribers who often unsubscribe if the first email they receive from a company is low-quality.

Some mailbox services automatically classify badly written or structured content as SPAM. As a result, your subscribers may not receive your emails in their inbox if they’re poorly written.

It is important to maintain a certain level of quality for your email content, as poorly written emails could be doing more damage to your reputation than good.

Not targeting customers correctly

Email marketing is most effective when marketers are able to target the right customers with the right content. This usually means marketers will create different content for different customers after segmenting them on the basis of their tastes and background.

In some cases it may be acceptable to send the same content to everyone in a subscriber list. However, subscribers are most likely to engage with your content when they feel it has been specifically catered to them. Content that resonates with subscribers increases engagement, and the likelihood that they will make a purchase.

Companies should segment their customers after learning about their backgrounds and preferences using marketing analytics tools. Demographic data can be useful for testing out content that customers are likely to respond to.

Making your content too promotional

Many customers are turned off by content with sales-heavy language that feels excessively promotional. You should focus on creating engaging content by using storytelling, rather than simply promoting your product or services.

Customers are likely to visit your website or look up your products if they’re moved by the email content accompanying it. Content that utilizes good storytelling is often more memorable and emotionally engaging than content that feels overtly promotional.

A good tip is to focus your content on the customer, rather than on your product or services. You’re more likely to win over customers when you display an understanding of who they are and what they’re seeking, before tying it back to your product or service.

Poor mobile optimization

More than 70 percent of people view their emails on mobile devices. If the content you’re emailing to subscribers has not been optimized for mobile devices, it can look cluttered or difficult to read when they attempt to access it.

Poorly formatted content is likely to be deleted in under three seconds in 70% of cases, regardless of the quality of the content itself. Mobile users who have had poor experiences with unreadable content from companies are less likely to purchase from those companies.

Businesses need to put effort into ensuring the content they deliver to subscribers looks great on all devices, or risk losing subscribers and sales.

Infrequent or poorly scheduled emails

If you’ve informed your subscribers that you’ll be sending them content weekly or monthly, it’s important to stick to that schedule. Subscribers who receive or don’t receive content at a particular time could become fed up with your company and unsubscribe.

Sending content too infrequently could cause subscribers to forget about your company. You should determine the best frequency for sending emails in order to maximize subscriber interest and engagement with your content.

In addition to this, sending emails too infrequently could “cool down” your IP address. IPs that see frequent usage are allowed to send more emails without them being flagged as SPAM by the recipient’s mailbox service. When you stop using your IP for a while, it may no longer be permitted to send large volumes of emails to your subscribers’ inboxes.

Not including a call to action

One mistake that companies make far too often is forgetting to include a clear call-to-action in their emails. A well-indicated call-to-action should encourage the subscriber to engage, and continue engaging with the company’s content.

The goal of a call-to-action is to promote interaction, with the hope that the interaction will eventually lead to a purchase.

You can make your call-to-action easier to see by using bright colors and bold text. It should include simple directions such as “buy now” or “learn more” so that subscribers have a clear understanding of what their next step should be.

It is also important to avoid having multiple calls-to-action in an email, as it could confuse readers or discourage them from reading the rest of your content. A single call to action is likely to yield the best results for engagement.

The aforementioned email marketing mistakes are just a few of the many mistakes marketers often make. Creating a successful email marketing campaign can be a trial and error process, so you should expect to make some mistakes. However, your ability to learn from your mistakes and improve will determine the success of your email marketing campaign.

Email marketing is using email platforms and servers for marketing purposes. This is one of the oldest and earliest forms of digital marketing. Email marketing was born as soon as or shortly after email systems became operable. It works by generating and collecting lists of client and lead email addresses. These emails can be collected willingly or through the help of third party agencies.

Source: Statista

Email marketing was the dominant digital marketing method in its heyday. Since then, email marketing has fallen out in favor for new methods and technologies. This occurred due to a longer chain between the business and the customer. Emails, in general, have also fallen out of use in the general population. Despite this, email marketing is seeing resurgence like never before. This is because of new techniques and methods to bring it in line with the present. Your business still stands to benefit a lot in the following ways from email marketing.

Lead Generation

Email signup lists are still some of the most effective ways of collecting email addresses and leads. Entering your email ID is a very simple process and most users complete it without any problems. You can build up large lists of potential leads with proper techniques.

You can target leads to suggest emails of their friends, relatives and acquaintances. In a very short time, your business can potentially have a wide lead network.

Versatility of Scalability

One of the major benefits of using emails in your marketing is its scalability. You can choose to scale it as big or as small as you want. The ball is entirely in your court for this matter.

You can target a global audience with the click of a button or scale down to a very specific local level. Both approaches have their own purpose and application. The good news is that this scalability does not require complex operations. All you need to do is set or remove filters and you will have a list of email leads. This is different from other marketing methods where scale changes can be difficult.

Higher Conversion

Email marketing often brings better lead conversion than other marketing strategies. However, it must be noted that this is only in relation natural and organic strategies. If you raise an organic list of interested leads, they are more likely to respond favorably. Such leads have signed up because they have an interest. If you tailor your emails for them and include calls to action, you will see better results.

Conversely, if you start sending irrelevant mass emails, you will see no traction.

Targeted Messages through Segmentation

Email lists can be easily segmented and categorized. Your business can easily divide and derive different categories from an email database. You can then proceed to market to each of these categories in specific ways. Delivering specialized content for different categories brings about greater success. It avoids the negative stereotype of junk mail and delivers relevant content.

This is one of the innovations in modern email marketing. The method of mass emails and hoping for conversions has largely gone the way of the dodo. Intelligent spam filters will also delete and remove such emails. Your content should be intelligently developed to bypass such filters.

Targeted emailing also gives you better insights on your customer groups. The information gained can better refine your other marketing and business activities.

No Barriers to Entry

Unlike other modern digital marketing methods, email marketing has little to no barriers to entry. You need only have a secure and robust email server and an email list. You can promptly get started on your email marketing efforts.

This ease of access means every business—big or small—can implement email marketing. You don’t need to spend a fortune in setup costs. Thus, email marketing has very low costs compared to other methods. This holds true even when your email marketing operations become more robust. Email operations are as old as the internet and considerably cheap by now.

Accurate Review Procedures

The simplicity and ease of email marketing extend to its analysis and review. It is very easy to trace and identify successful campaigns. You can identify immediately which email content and campaign is working well. This can be judged by which campaigns were more clicked on, scrolled through all the way, and which CTAs were clicked on. You can track sales or other actions easily.

This is different from other methods where result analysis can be time consuming and expensive.

Higher Return on Investment

With the right strategies in place, your business can see substantially higher ROI. This is because of the low costs of email marketing combined with the massive reach. With a small cost, you can reach very large audiences in a simple way.

The right strategies can capitalize on those many leads and a lot of sales can be generated. All the while, there is no corresponding increase in costs to achieve more sales. Your business can go in the green very quickly with the right email marketing policies.

Synchronized Marketing

You can use email marketing to complement and bolster other aspects of your marketing operations. All emails have links to a business’s various social media pages and websites. This is part of standard procedure for email marketing. You can thus direct traffic from your large email lists to other pages and sites of yours. This will provide better metrics across the board and drive customer engagement.

The Future is Bright

Email marketing is poised to get big boosts from artificial intelligence (AI). AI is promised to bring several changes in email marketing and broaden and deepen its capacity. You can thus use email marketing in better and refined ways. How does automized personalization sound? That is the future of email marketing with AI.

Conclusion

These benefits and many more are why you should not abandon email marketing. Sometimes, the answer lies not in getting rid of the old, but bringing peace between old and new. Email marketing with the best current techniques and methods can boost your business substantially.

DigitalParc delivers results-driven online marketing services, including SEO, web design and pay-per-click (PPC) solutions. Contact us to learn how we can guide you through digital landscape and ensure your business has a presence online.

Digital marketing is a very fast changing field. Discoveries and innovations can become old as soon as the next day. The rate of breakthroughs is increasing more and more as new technology is developed. The access to cloud computing platforms has become widespread. This has led to a drastic increase in the scale of Internet marketing operations.

Businesses can be left scrambling to catch up in such a fast-paced environment. A business has to perform many tasks to stay updated with such technological changes. It has to do away with the old, research the new and adapt to the changes and advancements. This mad dash can mean that information is not always communicated effectively. The purposes and benefits of new developments may not be clear to businesses. This situation gives rise to many Internet marketing misconceptions. The ground becomes ripe for wrong ideas and theories that spread.

Here are 2020’s biggest Internet marketing misconceptions.

Myth #1: Internet Marketing and Nothing Else

The number of people who have access to the Internet is increasing every year. More and more people not only have access to the Internet; they are using it more. People in the west have taken their purchasing activities entirely online. Developing countries are also catching up with easy and cheap access to Internet. This can give the illusion that Internet marketing alone will be enough.

That could not be a more wrong myth about Internet marketing. Traditional channels of marketing still have very important functions to play. There is still a huge global population which uses conventional forms of marketing. A business should have a healthy marketing mix.

Myth #2: Presence Alone Is Enough

Many businesses fall victim to this Internet marketing misconception. They think that establishing an online presence is enough. It is commonly believed that once a business has established an online infrastructure, they can leave it. The website and social media channels can exist for whoever wishes to use them.

This is a very outdated conception of digital marketing. It is also a recipe for disaster. Modern online marketing is all about customer engagement and interaction. Customers are used to interacting directly with companies arguably more than ever. You need to provide a steady stream of content to sustain your Internet marketing efforts. Your marketing will only bring success if your content is shared and is relevant for your audiences.

Myth #3: A Single Social Media Profile is Enough

Many businesses are still content in only having a profile on one social media channel. Some use Facebook, others prefer Twitter, and some rely solely on Instagram. This is a wrong idea and rooted in stereotypes about the different platforms. Facebook is seen as more official and respectable. Twitter is seen as open and free while Instagram is seen as trendy. The truth is, all of them are all of those things at once.

Choosing to forego any one of the platforms is crippling your own online user base. The marketing efforts which make the most waves are coordinated across all platforms. They naturally link and support each other. The content for them is tailored differently. As a business operating today, you should have profiles on all social media platforms. You can never predict when one might start to fade out as that new one you looked down on becomes the talk of the town.

Myth #4: Only Big Businesses Can Afford Internet Marketing

This is another myth about Internet marketing which is painfully inaccurate and outdated. This might have been true once when Internet marketing was still developing and the Internet was a lot more expensive to access.

Now, however, you can access your favorite websites from the palm of your hand. Social media platforms have removed the biggest barrier to marketing activity: cost. You don’t need money to set up profiles on Facebook and Twitter. Your business can make one right now and start marketing itself. Indeed it can be said that Internet marketing has proved more useful for small businesses.

Myth #5: SEO is Irrelevant

SEO, or search engine optimization, was one of the earlier online marketing methods. It is as old as the origins of Google and search bars. Unfortunately, some businesses today think it is irrelevant and outdated. That thinking is another Internet marketing misconception. It is tied to the idea that something old will always become redundant. That is not always the case. Sometimes, things persist because they work for a reason. SEO is still as useful—and arguably more useful than ever before.

The online marketplace of ideas and content has become more saturated than ever. Trying to form your own voice in such a competitive environment can be tough. SEO is the main tool to help you achieve a distinct identity. With proper SEO, your content can rank high across the Internet. You can target a global market and ensure that leads are generated.

Myth #6: Negativity is Bad

Many businesses remain stuck in old ideas about publicity and negativity. One common complaint about social media is the openness of criticism and negativity. A person can go right up to the CEO of a business and make a complaint.

The modern thinking is that any publicity is good publicity. A negative situation and review can be easily turned around. If a business takes time to address negativity, it can earn lifelong customer loyalty. Handling such cases with delicacy and sensitivity often makes all the right news. That is exactly what a business wants.

Conclusion

These are some of the current ongoing Internet marketing misconceptions. The point to note about these is that they are never permanent. These misconceptions may finish tomorrow and become the common notions of the day.

That is the case with technology and the Internet. The fast pace of development means that notions and understandings can change in no time. The old becomes new and the new becomes old. However, now that we’ve busted these myths, we recommend that you start working on your online presence today!

CAN-SPAM stands for “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing”. George W Bush signed the CAN-SPAM Act into law in December 2003.

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 established the first national standards for the sending of commercial emails. In short, the Act gives email recipients in the United States a legal right to stop commercial advertisers and solicitors from emailing them.

According to the Bureau of Consumer Protection, CAM-SPAM covers all commercial messages, which – as defined by law – includes any electronic email message that promotes a commercial service or product.

Penalties for Non-Compliance

As an email marketer there are three specific areas in which your emails must comply: content, unsubscribing and sending practices. Non-compliance of the CAN-SPAM Act can be costly, with each and every email in violation of the Act being subject to penalties of more than $40 thousand.

Practically, How Does This Law Affect Business Owners and Marketers?

The CAN-SPAM Act was designed to set email boundaries. As a US-based business, you must stop sending emails to any recipient that requests you to stop. The Act sets standards for commercial emailing, often referred to as ‘spam’.

The CAN-SPAM Act differentiates between a transactional email and a commercial email. There is no need to worry about CAN-SPAM compliance if you are emailing an automated purchase receipt or responding to a customer service enquiry. On the other hand, emails containing customer solicitation or marketing information must comply.

As an Email Marketer, How Can You Comply With CAN-SPAM?

No. 1: Your Email Must Clearly State The Identity Of Your Organization

When sending commercial emails, marketers often pretend to be a different or more prominent company or organization. They do this in order to improve the chance the recipient opens the message. Not only must your email accurately identify the business or staff member responsible for the message; your routing information (which includes the originating email address and domain name), and the From, To, and Reply-To information must be accurate.

No. 2: The Subject Line Can’t Be Deceptive

The subject line of your email must be an accurate reflection of the email’s content. If your email’s subject line discloses an ‘Inspirational Quote of the Day’ within the email, that is what your email must feature. The actual terminology of CAN-SPAM states that your subject line must be truthfully and accurately reflect its email content. The information can’t be misleading.

No. 3: If The Message You Are Conveying Is An Advertisement, This Information Must Be Disclosed Clearly And Conspicuously

You must make it clear that your email is an advertisement within its body. This can be achieved using a range of methods. You could insert small print at the bottom of your email, for example, stating the email is an electronic advertisement.

No. 4: Make Sure Your Recipients Know Where You Your Business is Physically Located

You must include a valid, physical postal address in each and every commercial email you send out. This address may be a post office box registered with the United States Postal Service, your organization’s current street address, or a private mailbox registered with your business.

No. 5: Let Your Email Recipients Know How to Opt-Out from Future Emails

CAN-SPAM requires you to offer users directions on unsubscribing from your emails. This information is typically placed at the bottom of an email. The opt-out information must be clear and conspicuous. Ensure that opt-out requests will not be blocked by your spam filter. A user must be able to recognize and easily find the opt-out information. In addition, the ‘universal unsub rule’ must be adhered to, which allows email recipients to unsubscribe from all future marketing emails from you.

No. 6: Promptly Attend to Opt-Out Requests

An email recipient’s opt-out request must be processed within 10 business days. Keep in mind that you are not allowed to…

• Charge an “unsubscribe” fee.
• Ask the email recipient for any personal information other than his/her email address.
• Ask the recipient to take any further steps beyond sending a reply email or going to a single webpage to unsubscribe.

Once an email recipient has unsubscribed from your email messages, you must not transfer or sell their email address, even if it is in a mailing list format. The exception to this rule is that email addresses can be transferred to a company you’ve employed to help you comply with CAN-SPAM Act. Any contractor employed to handle online marketing or advertising must also abide by CAN-SPAM. The contracting company is liable for all violations.

No. 7: Be Aware of What Others (like Your Marketing Agency) Are Doing on Your Behalf

According to CAN-SPAM, you are legally responsibility for your email marketing, even if you employ a separate company to manage your campaign. Be aware of what anyone sending emails on your behalf is doing. You are liable for the actions of anyone you authorize or hire to send marketing emails on your behalf.

In Conclusion

Your business will be CAN-SPAM compliant if you follow the above seven guidelines. Third-party email platform providers typically try to automate any of the above criteria that can be automated. We strongly suggest you check your marketing emails before sending to ensure they meet all the CAN-SPAM criteria.

References:

“CAN-SPAM Compliance: What Is CAN-SPAM & Why Does It Matter?” What Is Email Spam?, emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-tutorial/can-spam-compliance.aspx.

“Email is a persuasive channel—it helps brands put custom content in prospects’ hands to remind them about deals and discounts,” said Brafton, a marketing news industry. Many corporations are off the email marketing bandwagon, however email marketing is still a powerful strategy—if the email content is accurate and timely. In order to accomplish this, brands need an apparent insight into what drives web traffic, and what encourages web users to engage and to convert.  American Airlines is an example of having a successful email marketing campaign, as they have a powerful and active ecommerce hub.

According to MediaPost, American Airlines increased website conversions by 400% with its new email strategy.  This strategy is called the “Abandoned Cart Program”.  The idea of this strategy is to target prospects that browsed American Airlines flights, added a desired flight to their shopping cart, but ultimately did not purchase the flight.  If the flight is ignored for more than 24 hours, American Airlines sends out a personalized email offering the lowest and most flexible price to the flight the prospect added into their shopping cart.  Compared with standard fare sale campaigns, the email strategy resulted in 300% higher open rates and 200% higher click-through rates—along with the 400% increase of conversion rates.

“Not only did the Abandoned Cart Program deliver phenomenal results, but the learning it provided on big data analysis is helping us to improve the relevance of all our email programs,” said Kay Kerman.

This was an instance of a retargeting campaign, where companies use ads to offer the customer a better deal so that they’ll come back and convert when they were so close to doing so on their original visit.

The American Airlines email campaign proves that customer involvement, call-to-action marketing, and a successful email marketing strategy will drive online conversion.  Marketers and industries that wish to develop their online strategies should develop influential email campaigns that support customer relationships in order to successfully increase conversion rates.

Take a look at your business and see what channels you’re getting conversions from. What channels could you be seeing more from? Whether your company is massive like American Airlines, or runs a nearly microscopic operation, you need to open opportunities.

No matter your budget, you should be looking to diversify your advertising budget into as many channels as possible. This is how you find growth and reach more people. Don’t be afraid to take risks, you may yield results you never expected possible.