The 7 Biggest Mistakes Email Marketers Will Make in 2023 And How To Avoid Them
These 7 email marketing mistakes are commonplace throughout the world of email marketing and are ruining your business outreach. Email marketing can at first appear simple but when you scratch away at the surface any experienced marketer will tell you it’s far from easy.
We put together a list of the 7 most common email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them, don’t say we don’t treat you:
1. Selling Too Hard:
While Email Marketing does provide an exceptional platform to facilitate selling, pushing the sale too hard is extremely off putting for readers. If you try to sell to your audience with every piece of communication then there is a high chance your customers will become disengaged. Finding a good balance between sales emails and useful, helpful info is essential for developing your relationship with your audience.
Sharing appropriate and relevant information that your contacts would find useful along with frequently asked questions is a great way to engage with your audience and provide value with your content marketing strategy. By sharing this valuable information you improve your reputation as an industry expert and leader in the field while building that relationship of trust with your customers.
2. Failing to Optimise For Mobile:
Over 61.9% of people now check their emails on a mobile device, compared to their laptop or desktop. So it is vitally important for your emails to be optimised for mobile devices
If your Emails don’t fit on a mobile screen, the font is too small to read or it takes too long to scroll down, then the reader will simply click off and delete the email. With people’s attention spans at record lows and we are bombarded with thousands of messages and notifications a day, if information isnt captivating or spoon fed to us then we will simply turn off. Which is exactly what people will do with your emails.
3. Not Segmenting Your Customers:
Segmenting your customers is one of the most important parts of email marketing. Catering to the needs of each of your customers is difficult as they all have very different wants and needs, so sorting your customers into smaller groups of similar demographics is crucial for a successful email marketing campaign. When you send marketing emails directly targeted to these groups, customers are more likely to engage with your content. Avoiding this more direct approach is a common email marketing mistake.
Age, Gender and Location are great places to start, however in order to further target more specifically you should look to consider factors such as buying habits, hobbies and lifestyle choices. By segmenting your customers into these smaller more specific groups you will be able to personalise your communications further and improve your marketing effectiveness massively.
4. Failing To Use Clear Calls To Action:
It is important to be clear in your communications and what you are looking for from your customers, otherwise you are just cluttering up their inbox.
All your emails have a purpose, so decide what that is and what you want the participant to do. Buttons, pictures and links can all be utilised as CTA’s in order to get the user to complete the desired action in the fewest clicks possible.
It is possible to overdo it with Call To Actions, use them sparingly so as to not confuse and overwhelm your audience by telling them to do lots of different actions.
5. Ignoring GDPR Legislation:
In order to comply with the GDPR legislation the tactics and strategies that email marketers can use have changed drastically. Instead of marketers being able to contact anyone they want, customers will now have to give express permission and opt in, in order for businesses to be able to contact them.
Therefore in order to comply with the new legislation be sure to add clearly visible “opt in” and “opt out” buttons so customers can easily change their preferences and keep their inboxes.
6. Cluttered Design:
Images, videos and fancy graphics can make your emails look professional and well produced, however when you overuse these elements and fill your emails with too many visuals, your emails start to lack substance and value. While many consumers have computers capable of loading lots of high definition images, videos and graphics, designing a campaign around these elements estranges the reader and makes the actual content seem irrelevant.
We’re not saying dont use images, graphics and charts but use them where appropriate, utilise a ‘less is more’ approach. Don’t focus too much on the aesthetics of your emails, content always comes first.
*Tip*: Keep your total data image weight between 600KB and 800KB, and resave PNGs and JPEGs to reduce your file size.
7. Failing to Personalise:
We have saved the best till last with this one. Without a doubt one of the best ways to engage your audience is to send personalised communications. This includes segmenting your customers into groups of similar demographics but also covers addressing the reader by name in the subject line and copy.
With people receiving more emails than ever before it has become increasingly difficult to stand out in the customers inbox. Sending segmented messages and personalised communications is crucial if you want your business to succeed with its email marketing strategy. Personalization is proven to increase open rates, click through rates and conversion rates.
Wrap Up
By using this guide you now have the knowledge of the most common mistakes email marketers make and the know-how on how to avoid them. Be sure to come back and reference this guide throughout the year to make sure you aren’t making any of these mistakes.
If you would rather leave it up to the professionals then Inboxx specialises in direct email marketing campaigns for any industry. Our campaigns are designed to get you noticed by the people that matter, boosting your leads.
Contact Inboxx at: Email: grow@in-boxx.com Phone: 0161 543 4461
