Planning to Automate Your Email Marketing?
Here Are a Few Common Mistakes to Avoid
Emails have now grown to be more than just a communication channel. In today’s time, emails are used vigorously for marketing by several businesses. In fact, 35% of marketers send around 3 to 5 marketing emails to their customers.
They find email marketing to be one of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to reach the target audience. It is a perfect tool for building relationships.
Email marketing is one of the most crucial aspects of content marketing. In fact, it is among the most potent content marketing funnel tips that are given by experts.
Marketers use email marketing to nurture the leads they manage to attract in the first phase of the consumer journey. Businesses have an email marketing flow set in place. This is mainly done to direct the consumer’s decision when they are in the consideration stage.
Email marketing is also a way to speed up the purchase decision of consumers. Marketers can offer discounts and coupons to further keep the consumer engaged.
There was a time when reaching out via emails was considered a time-consuming task. Just imagine sending hundreds of emails individually in a day. Not anymore.
Things are way better now, thanks to the automation tools.
The ease and convenience that email automation brings to our lives are simply mind-blowing. In fact, we have reached a point where you can personalize your automated emails. Personalization is the key to a consumer’s heart.
Email marketing automation is one of the most popular strategies. Yet, there are plenty of mistakes that even the best of the best make. But you don’t have to.
I have compiled a list of all the common mistakes businesses make in an email marketing campaign that you should be avoiding. Find them below.
Starting without An Action Plan
Your email marketing is a crucial part of your content marketing efforts. While you plan religiously for your content marketing, why not do the same for your email marketing as well? Without any plans and goals in place, you will be lost in the dark.
You won’t know what to expect, what returns you should be looking for.
Thus, always have your objectives set way before you automate and start blasting your emails. Identify what stage of the consumer journey you are targeting. Is your goal to generate leads? Or, are you looking to improve customer experience? Is it both?
Once you have your goal in place, create strategies that help you reach each of your goals.
Spamming the Consumer
Many believe that sending plenty of emails will get the attention they desire.
Do you know what they are overlooking? The fact that they are being perceived as spammers. Choosing quantity over quality will not be as fruitful as you might consider it to be.
It’s very easy to be a part of the ‘spammer category’ when you have automation tools in hand.
This is another reason why you need a plan in place. Figure out your frequency beforehand. Only strive to send emails that are relevant to the stage your audience is in during their consumer journey.
Sending the right message at the right time is what will help you steer clear of making this mistake.
No Plans of Integrating with Database
Your database should be the core of your automated email marketing strategies.
Your database has everything that you need to add to your email, from your consumer’s name to the personalization elements that you are planning to incorporate.
Many avoid integrating their database with the automation tool. As a result, it gets tricky for them to personalize emails and even communicate back and forth between the tool and database.
You can integrate all that you want to add to your database, however, you should only use a few of the data points like first name or maybe your recommendations on the basis of their past transactions. Starting small will help you avoid sharing too much too soon.
Not Keeping up With the Trends
It’s a tendency to keep doing what’s driving results. Many overlook the fact that trends change. It’s what they are supposed to do.
You cannot keep using the same methods in 2021 that you used in 2019. This is because what might have worked for the audience then will not be relevant in today’s time.
For instance, if you are still using the technique of sending more and more emails (a very 2016 tactic, by the way), you are more likely to see a drop in engagement rates. On the contrary, those sending fewer emails per month overall have been seeing a rise in their open rates since 2018.
Apart from the fact that your audience will not find your emails relatable, there are also chances of getting penalized by Google.
What does penalized mean, you ask? You will see a dip in your SERP rankings, your domain authority will fall, backlinks will be removed, your keywords search volume will reduce, and consequently hamper your credibility. Yep. Merciless.
Not Personalizing Content
I can simply not emphasize the importance of humanizing and personalizing your content. Almost everyone has talked about how personalization makes or breaks your strategy, yet the problem persists.
When you personalize your emails, it helps consumers understand that you’ve spent time researching them. This also gives a hint of your investment in your consumer’s interests to some extent.
Not personalizing emails is one of the most common problems that novices do. They misinterpret the use of automation tools and narrow their focus down to volume. Personalizing your emails, even if you’re automating, should be a top priority.
Wondering how you can personalize your emails? Depending on the kind of industry you are in, you can add (edit) the following information in your email template.
– First name
– Company name
– Recommendations based on past transactions
– Congratulating them on their achievements
– Where you found them from
– Job position
– Pain points
The more variables you add, the more credible and hand-crafted it will look. Just make sure to be careful when testing your emails out. Just test one variable at a time.
Distracting Your Receiver’s Focus
Many times, businesses send out emails that have several distracting elements added to the content.
As a result, it disrupts your consumer’s focus and directs them to another element (probably different links that you added to your email). This results in dissolving the purpose of your email marketing.
Send an email with the main focus in mind. Having multiple goals can cause problems. Create one campaign for one goal. If you have more goals, then create more campaigns.
Let us suppose your consumer is at a purchase stage. This is where you will be focused on making sure that your consumer goes ahead with the purchase without any distractions. Just send a link to your pricing page. Avoid adding any additional links like your social media or blog.
You should also not be sending too many questions in your email. A few, relevant questions are alright. Too many of them will distract the consumer and make them annoyed because of how much effort they will be required to put in.
Don’t add any data or achievements about your company to your email. No one wants to read that. At the right time, you can add a link to your web page that talks about this and more.
Lastly, only include one CTA in your entire email. More than one only seems like you’re trying too hard.
Not Reading Into the Data Collected
One of the best and the most beautiful things about automating email marketing is all the data that is collected. Now, if you don’t leverage this data, what’s the point of automating your efforts?
Many marketers either don’t bother to go through the data collected or they lack strategic thinking or knowledge. This can lead to the wastage of a lot of precious data.
You need to learn data analysis. Take some time out to read your consumer data. This will help take your efforts to a level where you will actually see returns. You can easily segment your list and even target your customers at the right time with the right message that seems to be working.
You can also use this data to find areas of improvement and learn from your mistakes.
Not Testing or Optimizing
Many believe their assumptions to be perfect. They choose to not test and simply keep sending the same format, same variables, and same content. You cannot just put your emails on automating and sit back.
Testing is perhaps one of the most important practices that help you understand whether your methods and variables are right or wrong. It helps you identify what strategies are worth pursuing and what is causing a hindrance.
You should be doing A/B testing for your variables to avoid making the mistake that others might be making. In this phase of testing, you will be testing out different CTAs, subject lines, and even landing pages.
Apart from this, also make it a point to try different devices including mobile phones, desktops, or tablets.
This will help you get an idea of how your users will feel when they go through your email from different devices. Your emails should be designed responsively because you don’t know what your consumers are up to when you send that email blast.
You should also be testing out different times. It will help you identify that one slot where your subscribers are most active and are most likely to open and read through your content.
Testing More than One Variables
There are many who know the importance of testing but might simply lack knowledge.
These businesses might send out emails changing more than one variable at a time. This shows how no plans and strategies were made before the business planned to jump into email marketing.
One of the main reasons for this is because it will be difficult to track which variable actually led to an improvement or deterioration of your strategy. Thus, you should only check one variable at a time.
Let me give you an example of what I mean when I say one.
Suppose you added a link to your website in a blue-colored button. Here, you will either change the color of the button, the font, or the placement. Just one of the elements.
Using Spam Traps
The obvious spam traps are the worst.
They make your emails look like they are trying really hard to attract consumer’s attention. Too many dollar signs or over-usage of the word ‘Free’ can make your email look less credible. And you don’t want that to happen.
When you test your emails out, they will act as spam filters, no doubt. But you should be careful when writing your content yourself.
Make sure you are avoiding the use of these buzzwords and spoiling your own reputation. It is one of the worst practices in the world of emails.
This will also help keep you away from the receiver’s spam folder.
Adding Broken Links
When emails are on automation, what many do is set it up and don’t bother to go back. Many of these emails have links to maybe other websites that they are sharing as a resource.
Senders don’t bother to check if the links they are adding are broken.
Broken links can cause inconvenience in the lives of the consumer. Any kind of inconvenience leads to the failure of your marketing campaign for that consumer.
Just imagine how frustrated they will get if they actually find the resource helpful but aren’t able to reach the site.
Hence, you should always check the links you are adding thrice. You might know the situation of your website, but when you are adding links to other’s sites, it’s crucial to keep a check if the links are working, if the information is updated, and other related details.
Not Using the Previously Collected Data
We have already discussed how many don’t bother to read and analyze, or even collect data. There’s another batch of individuals who might analyze their data but they leave it aside. They don’t go back to it.
It is crucial to keep a check on the data that has been collecting for months. This helps you understand how much you have improved. It helps you keep a track of what worked and what didn’t.
This data also helps you understand your business trends.
Automation is a great tool that allows you to do all this and more easily. Yet, it is not being leveraged fully.
Conclusion
To conclude, we can say that strategizing and planning your email marketing campaign is extremely crucial before using the automation tool. It is important to have a goal in mind if you wish for your efforts to be fruitful.
Testing, optimizing, and data analysis are a few of the most important practices that many avoid. You shouldn’t. It is these practices that will help you improve your efforts. These will also help you understand what you’re doing wrong.
Creating an automated email marketing campaign is about a lot of trials and errors. But in the end, it’s all worth it.
