That’s true.
Email marketing has an impressive ROI if done right. While many businesses have great ideas for email marketing, they make a few mistakes which adversely affects the success of their campaign.
You will be surprised to know that these mistakes are very common and at least one email I receive every day has one of these issues.
In this post, you will go over 10 mistakes that bloggers, businesses, marketers and sometimes even experts make that kills their email conversion rates.
But, before this, I advise everyone to read popular blogs on email marketing to keep up with the trends and researches
Let’s dive in.
1. Overhyped Subject Lines
“Breaking News! This Will Never Happen, Ever and I Mean Ever Again!”
“You will stop breathing if you see this”
I have seen quite a few email subject lines like these that are sensational and overhyped.
BUT
Until and unless you have something super important to share with your readers, you probably do not want to use these subject lines.
Think about it this way.
There is an element of trust between the readers (who have knowingly subscribed to you) and you. If you send emails which do not offer value but have sensational subject lines that imply otherwise, as time passes, readers will stop opening your emails and start viewing them as spam. This happens especially when your readers open the email and it is not what they thought after reading the subject line.
*Trust killed*
I would rather sacrifice click-through rates and maintain the integrity of my business. What about you?
2. Email address or from a name is “no reply”
A lot of marketers and bloggers commit this mistake – sending emails from admin or noreply instead of real email addresses.
Yes, there was a point in time this did not matter. But, the audience has grown and they like to interact with humans now (not mailboxes, admins or “no reply”).
When businesses send email marketing campaigns using no-reply, they are losing out on engagement. In fact, no-reply is similar to asking your potential buyer not to talk to you.
Instead of this, send it from one of your real email addresses and encourage your subscribers to hit reply and share their concerns. Look at how Tyler Lessard from Vidyard uses his official email address to send emails
3. Email offers no value
Isn’t this pretty obvious? No one likes to read emails that offer literally no value.
And, yet, there are brands that send such emails.
Noah Kagan of AppSumo says, “I see people sending follow up emails that have nothing valuable for the reader. It’s cliche but anytime you sign up for a service you get a generic, “Oh, go click this and do this and just PAY US NOW! Just ask yourself if your emails are valuable even if your potential customer never buys.”
While your subject lines needs to be catchy, your content should always focus on benefits to your readers, be actionable and informative.
4. Too many CTAs
I will let these stats do some talking first –
Despite 60 percent of consumers claiming they prefer image-based emails, research shows that emails that contain too many images or too many calls-to actions don’t perform as well as emails that are plain text or include fewer CTAs. (SuperOffice)
Look at this way. If you go online to shop and receive 1 million results for the item you want, you are bound to feel overwhelmed and may be, even quit to shop.
Similarly, if your readers are given too many options to avail, they are most likely to NOT click anything. So, keep it simple and to the point.
Some of the most successful emails have been simple and clear. Isn’t it? This gets us to the next point –
5. Email is too long
I have seen marketers spend too much time writing emails that are filled with ideas, CTAs, and content. Readers would have to spend a considerable amount of time to read these emails and unfortunately, most of them just skim through it and miss the CTAs that you include.
Again, keep it short, simple and highlight one CTA that you want to focus on. If you have a lot to share, send small emails and send them more often.
6. Personalization faux paux
We all know personalization increases conversion rates.
Did you know that by using a specific personal name, rather than a general email address or a company’s name, you can increase open rates and click-through rates by as much as 35 percent. (SuperOffice)
But, if you mess this up, it gives a bad impression to the readers. Nothing seems less personal than reading a personalization tag.
Send test emails and correct these minor errors. Remember email marketing is automated and this type of error can result in loss of trust.
7. The Email list is NEVER segmented
I cannot imagine marketers not focusing on segmenting email lists.
Marketers have witnessed an increase of 760 percent in email revenue from segmented campaigns. (Campaign Monitor)
You should never underestimate the power of segmentation and its ability to increase your conversion rates.
For example, if I signed up on your website for blogging tips, you should know whether to share beginner, intermediate or expert tips with me. Similarly, if you are an invoicing software, you should share content for small/medium businesses and large businesses separately because the requirements differ a lot.
Segmented email campaigns get 14.31 percent more opens and 100.95 percent more clicks than non-segmented campaigns. (Mailchimp)
8. Not optimizing for mobile
In today’s world, most of the reader use mobile phones or tablets to access emails. If you are not optimizing your emails for mobiles, you are losing out on your readership.
According to a research by Bluehornet, Emails not optimized for mobile devices get deleted by a majority (80.3 percent) of users. three out of ten users unsubscribe from the list if the emails are not mobile optimized.
9. Sending emails at the wrong time or sending too many emails
It is important that you send emails at the time when your specific target audience is most likely to read them.
I have noticed that businesses send emails late in the night or early in the morning and these are unlikely to be read in India.
According to Coschedule research, Tuesday is the best day of the week to send emails. If you send two emails a week, send the second email on Thursday.
Another problem I have seen is sending too many emails. Personally, when I am bombarded with emails every day, I unsubscribe even if the content is valuable. It just seems spammy.
78 percent of consumers unsubscribe from emails because brands were sending too many emails.
10. Ignoring analytics
A lot of these problems can be resolved if marketers pay attention to the analytics. But, many marketers, don’t.
There you go.
One-third of consumers have purchased products and services from emails and it is an important marketing strategy to generate quality leads.
So, start analyzing what you are doing wrong and fix it. If you follow these 10 DON’Ts then you are sure to see a hike in conversion and engagement rates.
What do you think? What was that one mistake in your email marketing strategy that dropped your conversion rates? Let’s talk about it in the comments section.
