Kevin George — January 18, 2019 — January 18, 2019
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Email marketing when well-executed can bring in a huge revenue for your business. Whether you want to build brand reputation, yield new customers and retain the old ones or drive evangelists who look forward to hearing from you, a thoughtfully created email can do it all.
Successful email marketing is not only about generating profits but also about cost cutting. Interestingly, that’s the main concern for clients who choose EmailMonks for their campaign management services.
In view of facts stated above, we have compiled some of the email marketing inaccuracies that could be exhausting your budget without bringing you anything (in return).
Where do most email marketers lose money?
1. Incompetent email marketing strategy
One of the most often overlooked aspects of email marketing is the dormant leads that are just an EXPENSE to you and your business. You must determine at what point a lead becomes a liability to your business and an expense that is not bringing you the potential revenue.
An important point to consider while setting expectations for email marketing is that a subscriber is an opportunity for your business and not an outcome. Many marketers do not make the most of this opportunity and miss out on building a relationship, winning trust, and a HUGE income. That’s where the error lies, and you lose out on your marketing budget.
If someone does not check your emails, it is possible that the subscriber may have overcome the challenge they were facing, may have signed up to your emails for market research, forgotten that they signed up to be on your list, or they just don’t feel like going through the entire process of unsubscribing from your list.
You cannot generate any revenue from someone who is not looking at your marketing information.
Without a competent strategy in place, email marketing is nothing more than a “push” type of direct marketing strategy. Therefore, it is incumbent upon email marketers to study their target audience and work on creating email marketing campaigns that follow the best practices. Inbound marketing is the safest bet if you want to create customer-centric email communications.
2. Incorrect resource allocation
While planning your email marketing strategy, consider long-term goals that you need to achieve from it. Instead of hiring an in-house email marketer, you can outsource your email campaign management to an agency. This will allow you to focus on your business and drive better revenue. Startups and small or medium businesses can particularly benefit from this approach as they would have to pay as and when the task is done. Outsourcing would help you cut down the hiring cost and efforts of resource allocation. However, if hiring a resource works better for your company, go for it.
The bottom line is you should make a prudent decision so that you can make the most of the allocated marketing budget.
3. Shabby Subscriber List
A healthy subscriber list plays an important role in the success of your email marketing strategy. NEVER purchase email lists. Building lists organically through sign up forms or gated content would not cost you as much as a purchased list. Besides adding to the expenses, purchased lists will hamper your sender reputation and email deliverability.
Effective email marketing is all about reaching out to the right people who WANT to hear from you. Therefore, it would make no sense to send any emails to inactive subscribers. However, we recommend you spend on a well-thought re-engagement email campaign to pull them out of dormancy. Remove the unsubscribes and perpetually inactive subscribers from your CRM so that you do not have to pay for any unqualified leads.
4. Missing out on segmentation
Every email you send has a cost attached to it. Sending mass emails to subscribers from different geographical locations would, therefore, be in vain. Segment your list based on the demographics, past purchases, resources downloaded, pages visited, etc. Every subscribers falls in different stages of the buyer’s journey which makes it all the more important to segment the list. Contextual email marketing through proper segmentation is the key to optimize your strategy and make it cost efficient.
5. Non-adherence to legal aspects
Follow CAN SPAM and GDPR guidelines if you do not want to pay exorbitant fines for sending unsolicited emails. You should familiarize yourself with the legal aspects related to your email marketing strategy. The basis of all these laws is sending permission-based emails. Do not send emails to subscribers who have not expressed their explicit consent to receive them. PERIOD.
6. Creation of a new email from the scratch every time
The process of email marketing comprises of several steps like conceptualization, drafting email content, designing the email, getting it coded, and deploying it. Creating one-off email templates each and every time would make the cost of email marketing shoot up like anything.
Seasoned email marketers recommend you use modular templates to send marketing emails. You can leverage innovative one-off templates during the holiday season or when you want to promote the launch of a new product or feature. Using this tactic would feel like a welcome change for your email recipients and help you increase conversions during the peak season.
Use dynamic content in your emails so that you do not have to create multiple versions of the same email. It is effective as well as time saving for email marketers. Moreover, you should also A/B test multiple variations of the same email campaign to understand what resonates the best with your target audience.
7. Email design errors that trigger spam filters
Imagine you spend generously on creating a visually impressive email – all your time, efforts, and resources. Would it even matter if your email does not get delivered to the subscriber’s inbox? Consequently, you should always make sure that your email follows all the marketing and design best practices lest they trigger the spam filters.
Spam complaints can cost you a considerable amount of money according to the country you are in and the laws it abides by. Maintain text to image ratio at 80: 20 rather than creating an image-only email. That’s one of the most important ways to bypass spam filters. Always test your emails before hitting the Send button lest you leave any room for spam filters to catch an error.
8. Lack of email audit
Your email marketing campaigns can get better only if you can get to know the shortcomings in your emails. That’s exactly what an email audit does. It lets you know the elements that you need to work on. Based on the findings of email audit, you can iterate and upgrade your email campaigns. It is better to spend on email audit rather than splurging on a bad email marketing strategy to no avail.
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