Top 7 Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Unfortunately, many businesses make email marketing mistakes that cost them time and potential customers. Here are seven common email marketing mistakes most businesses make and how to avoid them. 

Mistake #1: Not Segmenting Your List

Do you send the same email to every subscriber on your list? If you do, you’re missing a major opportunity to target each customer in a way that might influence a response.

For example, you can segment your list by customer type. You likely have people on your list who signed up for your newsletter, but have never purchased anything from your business. You probably also have people who made a one-time purchase, but haven’t purchased your monthly service. Then, there is the batch of regular customers.

Each of these segments will need something different from your email messaging. Prospects want to know why they should buy. Old customers need a reminder of the products and services you offer. Your most active customers don’t need to be educated about your products, so maybe you should thank them or offer them a referral discount instead.

By segmenting your email lists, you can deliver the perfect message to that group of customers.

Mistake #2: Not Personalizing Your Emails

How do you address your emails? One of the most common mistakes we see is simply starting an email with “hey” or “hello.” This practice often leads to emails ending up in the trash.

Customers want to buy from people that they know, like and trust. The fastest and easiest way to show that you know them is to address them by their first name (assuming you have that information available in your database for the contacts you’re emailing).

Including personal information about the sender of the email is another great way to personalize your campaign. For example, in our email newsletter I always include a note about something happening with me or my family. This helps to humanize your emails and build a personal connection.

Mistake #3: Not Tracking Your Emails

How many emails in your last campaign were opened? How many emails converted to actual sales?

To know how successful your email marketing campaign is, you need to track the performance of your emails. Most email marketing tools have basic tracking for opens and clicks. However, to track sales you’ll likely need to take this a step further. For e-commerce businesses, you can use Google Analytics to track the online sales. For businesses selling via the phone or in-person, you can use special coupons or tracking phone numbers.

It’s important to analyze this data fairly regularly to notice any large fluctuations. For example, if you suddenly lose a bunch of email subscribers, you want to look at the most recent campaign to see what could have caused that. Or, if your click-through-rate increases a lot you’d want to figure out why and repeat that messaging.

Mistake #4: Not Using Conversational Language

Email marketing is not the time to show people how professionally you can write. Inboxes are flooded with dozens of emails per day and the reality is people don’t have the time or interest to read all of them.

Your audience wants to read something that’s easy and gets to the point. Keep your emails conversational and make sure to tell them right away why they should keep reading. Keep your paragraphs brief so they can be quickly scanned. Save the most technical language for white papers and how-to manuals.

Mistake #5: Not Being Consistent with Frequency of Emails

Nurturing your list is an important part of email marketing and you can’t do that unless you’re consistent with sending out your newsletters.

Stick to a schedule, whether that’s once per week, twice per week, daily, or once per month. Keeping the frequency consistent helps subscribers to remember who you are and why they signed up to be on your list.

Plus, if you’re providing content that is interesting and highly engaging to your audience, they’ll come to expect and rely on your emails. Again, they have the opportunity to read dozens of other emails, don’t risk letting yours get replaced by not sending them out as frequently as you should.

Mistake #6: Not Providing Value in Your Emails

Because people are constantly bombarded with emails, they’re likely doing anything they can to free up space in their inbox. To reduce email clutter, they’re going to resent any company that wastes their time and they’ll unsubscribe.

Ask yourself what your email subscribers are really looking for from your email list. Do they want discounts? Reminders of sales days? Expert information? Recommendations and referrals?

Go even further than this and ask what topics they really want to read about. For instance, if you’re a dentist, what do customers constantly ask about? Try to provide this type of value to them so subscribers don’t just ignore your emails.

Mistake #7: Not Asking for the Sale

Perhaps the most common mistake it not asking for the sale. It takes a lot of time to craft wonderful and compelling message or provide customers with great information. You want to make sure that time pays off and in order to do that you need to convert subscribers into customers.

If you don’t tell them what to do next, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to drives sales for your business.

Many people fear looking too pushy and think they’re going to push subscribers away. However, if you never ask for the sale, customers aren’t going to buy. Remember to include a call-to-action for a specific offer that will entice people to do business with you.

The 6 Key Metrics to Track in Your Email Marketing

Email marketing can be powerful and far-reaching -- more people use email than Facebook and Twitter combined -- but you won't get far if you're going in blind.

Email marketing is like any other form of online marketing -- you'll only succeed if you optimize, and optimizing requires data. But which data should you track to learn the most about your campaigns?

The answer to that question depends on the goals of each of your email campaigns. If you're optimizing an email meant to generate sales, you'll look at different data than you would for an email meant to bring visitors to your blog. Keeping these goals in mind will eventually help you optimize more efficiently.

So where to begin?

In this post, I'll review 6 key metrics to track in your email marketing campaigns. I'll also explain how each metric can help to optimize emails with different goals.

Before Getting Started...

You can't collect the data you'll need until you create special tracking URLs through a Web analytics platform. I recommend Google Analytics, a powerful (and free) analytics tool.

In order to track traffic to your website from email campaigns, you'll need to use the URL Builder to create special tracking URLs.

With these tracking URLs installed, you'll see how email recipients react to your campaigns and interact with your website. Then you can really get your hands dirty.

Metric #1: Clickthrough Rate

Clickthrough rate, or CTR, is perhaps the most universally important metric worth tracking. Whether you're promoting a sale or registering subscribers for a webinar, you'll always want recipients to click on links or share buttons in your emails. Engaging email campaigns earn more clicks from recipients. If your CTR is unusually low, then you'll know your messaging needs work.

To calculate CTR, divide your total clicks by the number of emails that reached their destination. Then multiply the answer by 100.

Don't be surprised if your CTR seems low. A study by Hubspot.com found companies that send 16 to 30 emails per month see median clickthroughs of 6.5 percent (and that's twice the CTR of companies that launch just one or two email campaigns per month).

Metric #2: Conversion Rate

If CTR measures engagement, then conversions measure effectiveness.

If the goal of your campaign is to entice people to complete an action -- such as requesting a quote, downloading an e-book or making an online purchase -- then anyone who follows through counts as a conversion.  These actions can be tracked in Google Analytics by setting up Goals.

To calculate your conversion rate, divide the number of email recipients who completed their desired action by the total number of emails that reached their destination. Multiple the answer by 100.

Conversion rates will always be smaller than CTR. However, a strong CTR with a weak conversion rate usually means your offer or your landing page needs some TLC.

Metric 3: Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate

If the goal of your email campaign is to get people talking about your business, then you'll want to pay close attention to your email sharing and forwarding rate. This is a measurement of how many people click on "forward" or "share" buttons embedded in your email. Shares and forwards can help raise awareness of blogs and social media profiles, and they're great for organically advertising compelling services and sales.

To calculate this rate, divide the total number of clicks on share/forward buttons by the total number of emails you've delivered. Multiply the answer by 100.

Shares and forwards also usually bring new people to your email list. Also, this metric can help you understand which campaigns your customers find to be most compelling.

Metric #4: Bounce Rate

Are your emails reaching their intended targets? Although email marketing isn't as engaging as social media marketing, it's still powerful because emails reach their intended targets and have tremendous staying power.

Emails remain in inboxes until they're deleted, creating opportunities for reengagement.

Unless, of course, those emails bounce, meaning they can't be delivered to recipients' inboxes. These can be "soft" bounces -- temporary problems usually resulting from server problems -- or they can be "hard" bounces from email addresses no longer being valid. Too many hard bounces can cause your ISP to flag you as a spammer, which can harm your marketing efforts. Delete invalid email addresses from your lists as soon as you're made aware of them.

To calculate your bounce rate, divide the number of bounced emails by the total number of emails you've sent. Multiply the answer by 100.

Check your bounce rate if an email campaign surprisingly underperforms. You might find that a hardware issue, not a marketing issue, is impeding your efforts.

Metric #5: Growth Rate

Even with stellar CTRs and conversions, your efforts will eventually fizzle out if you're not adding new emails to your list. That's because your list will shrink over time as people get new email accounts, unsubscribe or flag your messages as spam. Your growth rate is the no-nonsense answer to whether you need to more urgently grow your list.

To calculate your growth rate, subtract the number of emails you've lost from your total new subscribers. Divide the answer by the total number of email addresses on your list, then multiply that answer by 100. Positive numbers are good; negative numbers, not so much.

Metric 6: ROI

Is your email marketing campaign profitable, or are you spinning your wheels? Calculating your ROI gives you the answer. You'll definitely need to outfit your emails with analytics tracking URLs in order to learn your overall ROI.

To calculate this metric, divide the amount of money earned by your campaign by the money you've invested in your campaign. Multiply the answer by 100 to get your return on investment. Don't expect all of your campaigns to be profitable right off the bat, especially if you don't have a sizeable email list. But keeping track of your ROI will help you stay within your email marketing budget.

Conclusion

Email marketing is powerful and effective, but only if you know how to optimize. The six metrics reviewed in this article are a great start. Become proficient in monitoring these metrics, and you can rest easier knowing whether your campaigns are hitting their targets.

Email Marketing Lessons from Trump & Clinton

With this year’s election, there sure is a lot to talk about.  It seems like every day we have some new gossip on Trump or Clinton.

But if you sift through all the noise, there’s actually a lot you can learn from this election - specifically with email marketing.  

In this article I’m going to dissect one email from each candidate so you can see what they’re doing right and where they could improve by incorporating email marketing best practices.

Neither candidate is perfect, but one is head and shoulders above the other from an email marketing perspective.  For both candidates, we’ll review a few of the most critical elements of email marketing:

• From name
• Subject line
• Personalization
• Call to action

Let’s start by reviewing an email from Clinton…

The Clinton Email Example

The From name for the Clinton emails is “Hillary Clinton” so the emails appear to be sent from Hillary herself.  This follows email marketing best practices because the email looks personal, which helps increase the open rate (number of people that open the email versus ignore it).

The Subject line for this particular email is “Let me know when your birthday is.”  This is a missed opportunity, which likely hurt the open rate for this email campaign.  There’s no benefit in the Subject line and no compelling reason to open the email.

A much more compelling Subject would have been “I want to send you a gift” since that’s ultimately what the email was about.  Who wouldn’t open an email from Hillary Clinton that said she wants to send you a gift?  Nobody is the answer.

Now on to personalization…  This is again where Clinton’s email falls short. The email is addressed to “Friend” so right away it smells like a generic, mass email (aka “junk mail”).  

Finally, the Call to Action is a button that says “Get a note.”  Since when is a “note” exciting?  It’s not and that’s why this is a weak Call to Action that likely did not get a high click-through rate.

Now let’s review the Trump email example...

The Trump Email Example

Again, the From name is the candidate’s name, in this case Donald J. Trump so it looks like a personal email from Mr. Trump himself.  

The Subject line in this example email is “Hilllary - I’m coming for you.”  In no way is this boring like the Hillary example above.  When you read this Subject you feel like you’re in the middle of a debate fight and you almost can’t resist the urge to open the email to read more.

In other words, Trump’s email creates curiosity which is one of the best ways to get more of your emails opened.

Once you open this email you’re instantly addressed by your first name, which makes it feel like Trump is speaking directly to you.  Plus, midway in the email Trump addresses you by name a second time.  Everyone loves to hear (or read) their name and repeating it throughout an email is a proven way to increase response rates.

Finally, Trump’s Call to Action is a button that says “Contribute $$$ to win.”  It doesn’t just say “Contribute $$$” which is the most obvious Call to Action. Instead, Trump added a benefit to the Call to Action to emphasize why it’s important to take action.  It’s not about contributing, which benefits Trump; it’s about being a part of the winning team.

What Did We Learn?

By reviewing each candidate's email we learned that Trump’s marketing team has done a better job with email marketing compared to Clinton’s marketing team.  

However, with just a few tweaks Clinton’s team can dramatically improve their email performance.  They need to use compelling Subject lines that encourage more opens, include personalization throughout the emails, and highlight the benefit in the Call to Action.  

Remember these examples when you’re drafting your next email campaign. Small edits to each of the key elements highlighted above can make a huge difference in the success of your email marketing.

Online Marketing: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

 

I love old Clint Eastwood western movies.  They were always on TV when I was growing up and I would instantly get sucked into a ~3 hour movie, along with all those commercials.  Hey, I figure there were worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I've probably watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly about 10 times by now.  To be honest I can't always tell which one of Clint's movies I'm watching until they reintroduce it after a commercial.  They all include gunfights, signature one liners from Clint, and some timely, precision tobacco spitting.  My kind of movie. :)

Even if you haven't watched the movie, you can probably guess there's a good guy, a bad guy, and an ugly guy.  I'll spare you the details and jump right into how this relates to online marketing.  In my experience, online marketing plays all 3 of those roles: Good, Bad, and Ugly.

 

 

The Good

 

The good is usually what draws businesses to online marketing in the first place: It's affordable.  In some cases, it's downright free.  For example, any business looking for local customers can set up and optimize a Google+ Local page and within about a month get free exposure in Google's local business results.  No upfront fees.  No ongoing fees.  No fancy software to learn.  Just free exposure when local customers are searching for you.  Hard to beat free when it comes to driving new business!

Even advertising is usually more affordable online versus offline.  With Google AdWords you only pay per click so there is no big upfront investment like there is with TV, print or radio ads.

Of course, affordability isn't the only reason online marketing is good, but I think that gets the point across just fine.  Now let's look at the bad...

The Bad

The bad news is that online marketing is always changing!  Just when you think you've mastered search engine optimization (SEO), Google will go and change their algorithm.  Or just when you've built up a hefty Facebook audience, Zuckerberg decides to tweak their EdgeRank algorithm so you have to pay to get your posts in front of your prospects and customers.

Scroll through this list of Google algorithm changes to see just how frequently the search engine landscape changes.  Trust me, it's nearly impossible to keep up, and I do this for a living.  There's just no way a business owner can stay on top of all the trends and best practices without help.

And Google is just the tip of the iceberg... Have you looked at all the options available with online marketing?  Talk about overwhelming.  There's SEO, local SEO, search advertising, display advertising, Facebook advertising, email marketing, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, press release services, website conversion optimization, tracking and website analytics.  I could go on and on but you get the point.

Now, let's turn to the ugly side of online marketing...

The Ugly

First, there's the glut of information available.  There are books, blogs, articles, videos, and podcasts published online daily.  Some of it is sound advice.  Some of it is applicable for certain types of businesses.  And some of it outdated, or simply inaccurate.  Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for a business owner to know who or what to pay attention to, which leads to poor marketing decisions.

Second, there are many low quality (and even unethical in my opinion) online marketing providers.  For example, I've talked to many business owners who paid and lost thousands to an SEO company that guaranteed #1 rankings.   My spam folder is full of these prospecting emails so I know how tempting it can be for businesses.  However, the reality is that no one can guarantee #1 rankings. As soon as you see or hear that phrase, run away, hang up, or click delete. That's a red flag that you're not dealing with a reputable company.