There’s a lot of white noise in your customers’ inboxes. Here’s how to rise above it.
Horray! You’re finally entering the world of email marketing with a slick, well-produced newsletter chock-a-block full of great content to excite your customers about your brand. You have a giant database of addresses and you’re ready to get out into those inboxes and do some glad-handing.
Only…no one’s opening your emails. You click through rate is in the dumps and your heat maps are all stone cold. What could possibly have gone wrong?
Lots of things. Most of them pretty preventable. The following is by no means comprehensive, but it does touch on some of the big reasons your email marketing isn’t working.
Your Boring or Problematic Subject Lines
A good subject line is equal parts art and science. You want something tantalizing, something that no mere mortal could resist clicking on. And one great way to do that is to create a sense of urgency – studies have shown that subject lines with a sense of urgency in them (“today is the last day” “time is running out” “just 24 hours remaining”) enjoy 22 percent higher open rates. (There is a caveat to this, as we’ll get to momentarily).
There is also the school of thought that would tell you to personalize your subject header, either by name or by geography, but the jury is still out on their effectiveness. Put yourself in your audiences’ shoes (or inbox, as it were). You see an email come in from a business that regularly sends you newsletters, promotions or what have you but this one has your name and hometown in the subject header. Are you more inclined to open that, or does that smack of a form letter?
In trying to sound more informal, you wind up coming off as impersonal. And speaking of unintended consequences, try to avoid trigger words that will land you in spam folders.
Words like “free” can trigger a junk filter, as can phrases like “act now,” so be careful when creating that sense of urgency. Take a look through your own spam folder for a taste of what sort of things get separated, or check out a handy list here.
Your Timing is Off
When do you generally peruse new emails?
Is it first thing in the morning before you get down to business? During the post-lunch afternoon lull? Maybe you idly scan through the contents of your inbox during the evening hours on your phone?
A study by MailChimp showed some interesting results overall, with overall open rates bottoming out for email campaigns sent at 3:30 in the morning and climbing steadily until around 10:30 a.m. After that, open rates decline steadily throughout the day. That pattern more or less continued when the data set was broken down by different verticals (age, occupation and even political affiliation of recipient; general category of email marketing whether hobby, non-profit, government) but there were a few key differences that could make a huge difference in your particular open rate.
The fact is, reader habits run the gamut when it comes to email marketing. Your audience may be mostly made up of morning readers or they may be primarily night owls.
You won’t know until you test. A simple A/B test, with one portion of your overall email list being sent, say, at 6 a.m. and another at 10 a.m. will let you know where your best shot is for getting that huge open rate you’re looking for.
Your Content isn’t What People Want to Read
The content you put into your marketing is important, but the way you present it is critical.
Start with your overall message. It can be tempting to throw in a bunch of different things into your marketing – news about a new deal, a call to action to follow you on social media, promotion of upcoming products or services, news about your organization – but the key here is to keep it simple.
Pick one message that will anchor your email. It will help you in determining an effective subject line, and it will also create something your customers will actually read all the way through.
Speaking of which, you want to give them something to read. You may have a ton of great, eye-catching photography but the sheer magnitude of devices and email clients out there means you have no idea how they are going to show up in the final product. Some customers may be reading it on desktops, some may be on mobile, some may be using a web-based inbox and some may be using a native program like Outlook.
There’s just no way to account for all of them, so try and keep the artwork simple with one strong image and some very brief text. You can always link it out to something longer with a call to action and voila, you’ve turned that open into traffic.
Of course, the best way to ensure a successful email campaign is to leave it to us by calling us at 904.638.7555, or filling out our contact form.
Like what you read? Looking for additional tips and tricks to help your small or medium-sized business succeed? Check out more of our blog posts here.
