If email marketing does not currently have a place within your overall marketing strategy, it is time to rethink a few things. Once you begin utilizing email marketing, come back and read this blog to ensure that you aren’t making any of the 5 common mistakes.
For those of you already using email marketing, how does your strategy stack up? These 5 mistakes are quite common yet dangerous. Read on to see what they are and how you can avoid them!
Not Having a Mobile-Friendly Design
First and foremost, is your email design mobile-friendly? If you are using a template from a reputable email platform (e.g. MailChimp, Constant Contact, Vertical Response) chances are it is mobile-friendly. If you created your own template, this might not be the case. Take a moment to test your email template on a mobile device. Is it re-sizing to fit the width of the screen? Are the contents readable and the buttons clickable? If you find yourself pinching and zooming to read the email, you may be in trouble.
According to Litmus, mobile makes up the majority of email opens. If your design is not mobile-friendly, the majority of your subscribers are probably not reading it! Check to see if there is a pre-made template in your email platform that you can switch too. Or if you would like an original template, ask your developer to code you a responsive template.
Ignoring A/B Testing
Just because you think that a subject line is enticing, doesn’t mean your users feel the same way. Unfortunately, you cannot know exactly what each of your users thinks without directly asking them, and even then your response rate probably won’t be 100%. This is where A/B testing comes in to play. Many email platforms allow you to A/B test your subject lines, content and more!
A/B testing allows you to create 2 subject lines (or email contents) and randomly send them to your list. Your email platform will monitor the send to determine which subject line is the ‘winner’. This is a great way to test if your subscribers prefer hard sells, witty subject lines, deals, or buzz words like ‘sale’.
Using an Email Address or From Name with ‘No Reply’
How do you feel when you receive an email and have a great question but cannot reply to the email? You probably feel pretty frustrated. Chances are this situation makes you think differently about that company’s customer service. This happens to a lot of people when a company sends an email from a ‘no reply’ address or the From Name of the email says ‘no reply’. Rob Walling, Founder of Drip, points out that “people want to interact with people, not mailboxes” (Zapier).
It is important that you set up a reply address for your email blasts that can be replied to. Think about creating an alias email address, such as ‘contact@company.com’ or ‘customerservice@company.com’. Add the members of your customer service team or marketing team to this email so you can create a triage for handling replies. This allows you to engage with your users in a whole new way!
Sending without Testing
Sending without testing is a huge no-no. Just because the email looks correct in the builder does not mean it looks correct upon receipt and it certainly does not mean it looks correct across different email carriers. Before sending your email, always send a test copy to yourself and check it on desktop and mobile. Better yet, send the email to multiple team members using different email carriers (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.). Finally, consider investing in Litmus. Litmus allows you to easily view how your email will look across a handful of popular devices and email carriers. With Litmus you can ensure that your email is displaying properly for a large percentage of your subscribers.
Not Reviewing Analytics
You will never improve your email marketing strategy if you aren’t monitoring your email analytics. It is important to report on the performance of your email blasts so that you can see how your open rate, click rate, conversation rate and more are stacking up. By ignoring analytics you are setting yourself up for a loss. By monitoring your analytics over time you can “anticipate potential issues, profile recipients, discover the best time and frequency of your mailings, and track the percentage of active vs. inactive customers” (Mailup).
If you need assistance with managing your email marketing strategy or coding a responsive email template, please contact Informatics.
