As social media becomes more and more established as the communication method of choice, it can be easy to overlook the value of email. For small businesses, email marketing can be a cheap, simple and effective means of reaching out to customers.
Many small businesses are disappointed with the response from email marketing, however, and either simply give up on the basis that it is an outdated concept or keep plugging away with the same lack of results. It's likely that, on both counts, these businesses are making simple but significant mistakes in the way in which they are marketing their customers via email.
Some of the most common mistakes made are as follows.
Emailing customers that haven't given permission
Email providers and customers go to some lengths to restrict the content in their inboxes. Unwanted or spam email is likely to languish in a junk folder before being deleted, having never been read. Shrewd marketeers know that customers will only respond where they have opted in to the receipt of such emails and businesses should move to setting up marketing lists on this basis. Opt-in or double opt-in processes ensure that customers really are interested in what you have to say and mean that you are already ahead of the game when you click send.
Poor subject and “from” lines
Customers may be receiving hundreds of emails a week. With limited time on their hands, they will make flash decisions around which emails get opened and which go straight to trash. Subject lines that concisely but innovatively describe the content are far more likely to attract customer interest. Customers also need to recognise the sender, and will prioritize emails where the company domain name appears in the email address. Web-based email addresses such as Hotmail simply suggest that this is spam.
Sending the wrong things to the wrong people
Email content needs to be relevant to the audience. The more specific the content of the email, the more tailored the audience needs to be. Opt-in marketing can help with this enormously, because customers will have already started the process of identifying what they want to read about. Nonetheless, it falls to businesses to ensure that distribution lists are appropriate to the marketing messages.
Not tracking success
Businesses must always gauge the success of a marketing campaign. It is only in this way that they can establish what works and what they need to do differently next time. Metrics should be analysed to identify the most productive formats, times of day, subject lines and those users that are most likely to click through. Ignorance is not bliss. If you don't know what works and what doesn't, you will simply be throwing good money after bad.
No purpose to the content
Some businesses opt to use email marketing simply because they think they should, not because they really have something worthwhile or important to say. Email marketing isn't compulsory. Businesses that target a certain number of customer contacts per year with bland, regular emails are simply wasting their time. The content of messages needs to be timely, valuable and interesting. Customers should feel that they want to do something else, whether it be to click through to a web page, to forward the email to somebody else or to share the information via a social network.
With all the attention on sites like Facebook and Twitter, email is now starting to be seen as an old-fashioned concept, but it still has great relevance to businesses of all sizes. Email doesn't need to be a substitute for social marketing and can easily sit alongside it, as part of an overall strategy. Nonetheless, businesses need to be aware of what to do, and what not to do, when it comes to emailing their customers.
Many small businesses are disappointed with the response from email marketing, however, and either simply give up on the basis that it is an outdated concept or keep plugging away with the same lack of results. It's likely that, on both counts, these businesses are making simple but significant mistakes in the way in which they are marketing their customers via email.
Some of the most common mistakes made are as follows.
Emailing customers that haven't given permission
Email providers and customers go to some lengths to restrict the content in their inboxes. Unwanted or spam email is likely to languish in a junk folder before being deleted, having never been read. Shrewd marketeers know that customers will only respond where they have opted in to the receipt of such emails and businesses should move to setting up marketing lists on this basis. Opt-in or double opt-in processes ensure that customers really are interested in what you have to say and mean that you are already ahead of the game when you click send.
Poor subject and “from” lines
Customers may be receiving hundreds of emails a week. With limited time on their hands, they will make flash decisions around which emails get opened and which go straight to trash. Subject lines that concisely but innovatively describe the content are far more likely to attract customer interest. Customers also need to recognise the sender, and will prioritize emails where the company domain name appears in the email address. Web-based email addresses such as Hotmail simply suggest that this is spam.
Sending the wrong things to the wrong people
Email content needs to be relevant to the audience. The more specific the content of the email, the more tailored the audience needs to be. Opt-in marketing can help with this enormously, because customers will have already started the process of identifying what they want to read about. Nonetheless, it falls to businesses to ensure that distribution lists are appropriate to the marketing messages.
Not tracking success
Businesses must always gauge the success of a marketing campaign. It is only in this way that they can establish what works and what they need to do differently next time. Metrics should be analysed to identify the most productive formats, times of day, subject lines and those users that are most likely to click through. Ignorance is not bliss. If you don't know what works and what doesn't, you will simply be throwing good money after bad.
No purpose to the content
Some businesses opt to use email marketing simply because they think they should, not because they really have something worthwhile or important to say. Email marketing isn't compulsory. Businesses that target a certain number of customer contacts per year with bland, regular emails are simply wasting their time. The content of messages needs to be timely, valuable and interesting. Customers should feel that they want to do something else, whether it be to click through to a web page, to forward the email to somebody else or to share the information via a social network.
With all the attention on sites like Facebook and Twitter, email is now starting to be seen as an old-fashioned concept, but it still has great relevance to businesses of all sizes. Email doesn't need to be a substitute for social marketing and can easily sit alongside it, as part of an overall strategy. Nonetheless, businesses need to be aware of what to do, and what not to do, when it comes to emailing their customers.
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