As many of us know, even with all of the new marketing technology and software that appears to be released every single day, email marketing is still one of the most effective and efficient marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes. Nothing else really exists that allows business owners to reach a large number of consumers at a rate of pennies per message. For business owners on a budget, this makes it a better choice than traditional marketing channels like direct mail, radio, TV, and more. In fact, 85% of US retailers consider email marketing one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics.
However, even though email marketing is inexpensive, efficient, and has a low barrier to entry from an execution standpoint, there are still ways that you can get email marketing wrong. Below we share three reasons why people aren’t opening your email newsletters.
1. Ineffective Subject Lines. The subject line of your email is the most critical part, even more than the actual content of your email message. But why? The subject line is the first thing people see and directly influences them to open your email. You should be running tests and experiments on every campaign you send. It’s the only way to learn what works and what doesn’t work. Work to keep your subject lines under 50 characters and avoid buzzwords (“sale”, “reminder”, “percent off”, “product”, “deal”). Why try and avoid buzzwords? It’s because our inboxes are getting smarter. For example, if you use Gmail, you’ll see that it works to automatically filter and place emails in different inbox sections (“promotional”, “spam”, etc). Having similar buzzwords to those spammy and promotional email messages can instantly place your email right into those respective sections.
2. Lack Of Segmenting Lists. Failing to organize your database and send messages relevant to specific segments is sure to cause your campaigns to miss the mark and get trapped in the inboxes of the wrong readers. You should be segmenting your email campaigns by clients, vertical types, past purchase behaviors, etc. This allows you to create relevant content for each segmented list, increasing the chances of them re-opening and engaging with your ongoing campaigns.
3. Poor Deliverability & Engagement. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will look at who you are sending to, how often, the number of abuse complaints from sends and whether email is opened or clicked on. All of these factors determine your reputation with your ISP and affect whether your emails are delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes.
Next time you are getting ready to send out your email newsletter, take a second and think about what we shared above. If you aren’t consistently sending out email newsletters or need help “running harder” at your campaigns. Get in touch with us here: https://gogreymatter.com/contact-us
