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In 2021, more than 306 billion emails were sent worldwide. At first glance it may seem outrageous, but if we think that we are more than 7,700 million people, we have an average of 40 emails per person in a whole year . Does it now sound more credible? In my case, without having to take a look at the inbox, I can assure you that I (very) far exceed that figure. And if we talk about sent emails, too, everything must be said.
Among those more than 300,000 million emails we can find all kinds of emails, but this time we are going to stick with commercial mailings . Specifically, with those that do not finish working as they should. We are going to analyze what are the common email marketing mistakes and how they could be avoided.
Incredible as it may seem, in 2021 databases are still being bought. Have you received in recent days commercial emails from brands that you had never heard of? Probably, but when we talk about poor quality databases, we are not just referring to the GDPR and legal point of view .
The first question you should ask yourself is whether your database has the information you need What are we talking about?
explicit data: The information that a contact consciously provides when filling out a form: name, surname, email, etc.
Implicit data: The information that you can extract or deduce based on the type of materials that have been downloaded, which pages they have visited on your website, which emails they have clicked on, etc.
If your database is limited to a name and an email, you should consider how to get the information you need. For example, adapt your forms to the type of data you would like to obtain . Is your brand looking for B2B clients and for you is the size of the company a critical factor? You can incorporate a field in your forms in which you ask for the number of employees of the company where you work. Does the province, the country or the sector condition your sales process? Find a way to collect that information.
The fact that you have obtained a database with express authorization and with relevant information is not a guarantee that you are doing things right. Also think about how up-to-date that information is . If your contacts are from a trade show or campaign from six years ago, there's a good chance they're out of date. Even well-maintained databases decline by an average of 22.5% each year . If you haven't worked on that list since then, your open rate will probably suffer and your bounce and unsubscribe rates will skyrocket above what's recommended.
Hence the importance of a regular cleaning of your databases . Has a contact not opened the last eight emails? Why do you keep sending him emails? From time to time you should carry out reactivation campaigns or unsubscribe from your database those users who are not involved.
Improvisation is not a good adviser in email marketing and, in general, in any digital marketing strategy. What specific objective do you want to achieve with your shipments? What action or actions should trigger? We already know, 99% of the brands are going to respond “let them hire my services” or “let them buy my products”, but not all emails necessarily have to focus directly on sales.
If you only think about the value that your company is going to get from that shipment, why would someone be interested in opening and reading your emails? Change the focus and also focus on the way you can add value to your recipients at each of the levels of your email marketing campaigns:
In each of your automated flows.
In each of the emails you send.
Without a defined audience there can be no adequate strategy either. Think about the types of users you are addressing and how communication with them is going to be: what their purchase process is like (and at what exact point they may be), type of messages, tone of communication, visual style, shipment, number of weekly mailings, etc.
"We better send the mail to the entire database, just in case." Does that phrase sound familiar to you? There we can find the origin of another of the usual email marketing errors, which usually cause very poor interaction data. That "just in case" can be a major problem.
Do not forget to work on the segmentation and personalization of your mailings , so that they are relevant, useful and adapted to the interests of the people who are going to receive them:
Segmentation . If you have your database well categorized and you have a sending history, it will be easier for you to launch relevant emails adapted to certain groups of contacts. Are you going to make an offer in a specific geographical area? Does the service you want to promote have more value for a sector? Do you want more information for potential customers who have already shown interest in a specific product? Target only those contacts to whom you can add value with that specific shipment.
Personalization . Let's start by clarifying that it is much more than putting the classic "Hello" plus username in your emails. Beyond the use of tokens with information available in the database and trying to give emails a more human touch, personalization is closely related to segmentation and is often invisible to recipients. According to a study by Litmus , among the most common criteria for personalizing email marketing shipments, in 2020 the name of the contact or the company (72% of those consulted), previous interactions with specific products or services (40%) stood out , previous interactions with emails (39%) and previous purchases (38%).
The possibilities of segmentation and personalization are very wide , usually based on the explicit and implicit data that we talked about in the first point of this article. Hence the importance of a well-structured database with adequate information.
Even if you have a good database and if you have prior express permission to be able to target the contacts in your databases, keep in mind the use of good practices so as not to fall into the spam folder of your contacts:
Activate the DKIM and SPF protocols , as a way to verify the authenticity of your shipments before Internet Service Providers (ISP) and your recipients' email clients.
Make sure your bounce, unsubscribe, and complaint rates aren't too high .
Avoid the use of certain words that trigger antispam filters : offer, free, discount, urgent, etc.
Do not abuse images .
Avoid using URL shorteners and suspicious links .
If you don't worry about these kinds of details, your domain's reputation can suffer and you can end up on blacklists that condemn your submissions to the spam folder.
The mail is already in the inbox, now what? In reality, if the recipient does not open the email, it will not matter if you have sent a disastrous email or a spectacular one with an attractive design, well structured and useful and valuable messages.
Think about the more than 300,000 million emails that we talked about at the beginning of this article. Between that volume of emails, you have very little time to convince the recipient and stand out in their inbox.
There are some factors that have a direct influence on email open rates, mainly:
Sender: Avoid making your shipments from impersonal email addresses of the "noreply" style. Whether it's in the name of a person in your company or directly displaying the brand name, open rates will be better if the recipient is familiar with the sender.
Subject: The optimal size should not go beyond 41-50 characters, to make sure it looks complete on mobile devices as well. Take a few minutes to put yourself in the shoes of your recipient and think about whether that subject is going to get their attention. Evaluate depending on your target audience if the use (not abuse) of emoticons can be recommended.
Preview text: We are talking about the small text that can be seen below or below the subject before opening the mail. Whether it is indicated directly with HTML code or defined from an email marketing platform (there are many that allow it to be added as another field), pay attention to those first preview lines, intended to provide context, attract the user's interest and that you have a clearer idea of what you are going to find if you open the mail.
Shipping time: What time is it recommended to send your emails? There are no unique recipes here, there is no perfect day of the week and time for everyone. Of course, it will always depend on your target audience: B2B or B2C environments, sector, country... It is one of the elements that is usually assessed with A/B tests.
Expectations :Are recipients waiting for your mail? For example, when we download some type of material on a web page (an ebook, a guide...), we tend to expect an email to automatically arrive in which the download is delivered to us. The timing is always going to be good (we are looking for information at that precise moment) and the expectations are clear. Hence, these emails usually have very high opening rates. That level of interaction is not always possible, but we should always ask ourselves if our recipients expect us to contact them or if they will perceive it as an intrusion.
Your emails should look good on any type of screen and device . It may seem like an obvious recommendation, but different email clients do not usually display the same email in a uniform way, since there are quite a few differences in the way they read the HTML code. As main basic tips:
Check your emails in different email clients . According to Litmus , around 65% of emails are opened on the Apple iPhone (33%) or Gmail (32%). A clear clue to know where to start.
Pay attention to the mobile version of your email and make sure it looks great on small screens.
Look for a visual style consistent with the brand : colors, fonts, type of images, icons, etc.
Keep in mind that many email clients do not load images by default . Make sure the email makes sense on its own even if you can't see the images.
Do not abuse textual content . A user should be able to get a general idea of the content of the email at a glance. Write so that it is possible for your contacts to do a quick scan (bold, bullets...) and even then they can correctly interpret its content.
Try to follow the AIDA method so that the recipient goes through these four stages during the reading of the mail: attention, interest, desire and action.
Provide a web version so recipients can view the email in a browser if they choose.
If you have planned correctly, each of your emails should have a clear and measurable objective and a desired action (only one per email) that your contacts should take.
It should also be clear to recipients what their next step should be . Try to incorporate a call to action (CTA) , be it an image, a button or a link, in a visible area that can be accessed quickly without having to scroll much.
And think beyond email. Where are you going to send contacts if they click on that call to action? The ideal thing would be for them to reach a landing page that works as a point of conversion and in which they can fulfill the objective of the email, without intermediate steps.
Another million dollar question when we talk about common email marketing mistakes. What is the ideal shipping frequency? In reality, there is no single solution for all industries and types of customers.
If you are looking for trends, you can find them, of course. For example, according to HubSpot's 'Not Another State of Marketing Report' , 35% of email marketers say they send between 3 and 5 emails per week to their contacts . That is the most repeated answer, but once again, think about your brand, because what for others may be an ideal number, for certain types of audiences, it can border on harassment.
Without the right technology, it is difficult to carry out an effective email marketing strategy. Consider hiring a platform that allows the automation of email marketing actions , obtaining information on the behavior of contacts in the web environment of your brand and the integration of that platform with your CRM or databases.
Today there is a wide number of tools available, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, with very affordable costs for companies of any size.
Measure, compare and adjust. Any marketing strategy should take these three steps into account. Of course, that loop is also applicable in email marketing.
Worry about calculating the ROI of your global email marketing strategy and, in addition, try to choose a manageable number of metrics that allow you to see the evolution of the different campaigns. What is usually measured? According to Litmus , and here's no surprise, the top eight most used metrics by marketers are opens (95%), clicks (88%), unsubscribes (73%), clicks on opens or CTOR (69%), rate bounce rate (56%), conversions (55%), deliverability (47%), and database size and growth rate (37%).
Ok, you already have the data in hand and you may be wondering, for example, from what figure can a rate of unique openings be considered good or what percentage of unsubscribes begins to be worrying. There are studies, such as the GetResponse benchmark metrics , that you can use as a guide for different countries and sectors , but remember that there may be many other factors that you should take into account. These figures are not unquestionable, rather you should use them as a simple reference.
Also take into account the possibility of doing A/B tests to test subjects, delivery times, images, colors, calls to action, communication tone... Each test tries to focus on a single element, in order to have a clear vision the scope of each of the changes you make.
In short, if you are interested in avoiding these common email marketing mistakes (we have only selected the most common), trust experienced professionals who will help you build a good database, plan your strategy in advance, follow the best practices that we have seen in the article, measure the results and adjust what is necessary. It is not easy to stand out among those more than 300,000 million emails that are sent each year, but you will be closer to achieving your goals.