- [Instructor] Email marketing is a low cost method
of contact, and therefore pretty easy to take for granted
or to overuse.
If sales are down and you're in charge of emails,
you'll probably have someone come to you
and say, "We need to send more email".
They may not know what they specifically want to send
or even what segment of the list they want to contact,
they just want results.
Because sending email is so ubiquitous,
it can be hard to explain to non-marketers
that sending an email
that gets underwhelming results can be worse
than not sending one at all.
Let's take a look at some of the most common pitfalls
that you'll want to avoid.
Number one, copying everyone else.
Here's where a hefty dose of caution and a strong sense
of your brand is necessary.
Just because everyone else
in the field is sending a message talking
about a current issue doesn't mean that you have to,
especially if the topic is sensitive.
Here's an example from a provider of dog products,
after they were challenged by their customers
to follow up their social media posts
about the Black Lives Matter with some action.
Personally, I think the content was heartfelt
and well-written, but it did give me pause.
Number two, a rigid schedule.
While I do recommend having a calendar
that outlines what you'll send to whom and when,
you can't let it get boring.
One of the best mistakes I made was sending an email
on a different day, a Sunday morning, to be exact.
After that, I learned to shake up the schedule
and see what my audience responds to.
Number three, ignoring the data.
Email tools these days will give you a ton
of data about your customers and how they interact
with the emails you send.
If you think one image might work better
than the other, for example, run them both
in separate emails, this is called an AB test,
and see what works.
You could be right, you could be wrong,
but let the data help you decide rather than guessing.
Number four, failing to plan.
It's hard enough to stay on top of the marketing demands
for even the smallest of businesses.
Without a plan, growth is less likely.
This isn't to say that you can't act
on sparks of inspiration or react to current events,
but without some goals,
a strategy for evaluating the results,
and a workflow of production,
you'll be letting one of your most valuable assets,
your customer list, go to waste.
Number five, bad subject lines.
When I look at my over-packed inbox,
a subject line has got to grab my attention
and entice me to open it.
I have to recognize the sender and I need to know
what that email is about before I'm going to take the risk
of wasting my time.
One of the worst offenses I see regularly
with subject lines is talking about yourself all the time.
Here's just a few that I pulled out of my inbox recently.
Number six, nonresponsive emails.
Growing numbers of subscribers are reading your messages
on their mobile phones and tablets,
with mobile being the most popular.
As high as 42% of all emails are read on mobile devices.
This means that the emails you send must display
on the mobile phone.
In fact, most professional marketers now recommend
that you start from the mobile design first.
Your email service can tell you
which devices your audience uses most often,
and you can view your email in those different layouts.
Number seven, not meeting expectations.
This is probably the most important pitfall to avoid.
If your emails aren't meeting reader's expectations,
they'll unsubscribe and they might just mark it as spam,
for a fact.
Brilliant words, cool videos,
and amazing headlines aren't going to help you
if the email just isn't what the reader expected
or wanted to receive.
Two major pitfalls
regarding expectations are frequency and content.
If you promise to send once in a while,
but send them every day, you're going to make your readers mad.
If your readers were expecting weight loss advice,
when they subscribed, and then you send them lots
of products to buy, that just not cool.
According to a recent email usage study conducted
by Adobe in July, 2019, respondents claimed
that they spend approximately three hours a day
managing email at work, and another two at home,
that's five hours a day working on email.
Yeah, this totally proves that email is important,
but it also says that there's a big opportunity
for marketers to use their email
to engage with customers in relevant and useful ways,
rather than simply creating more.