In this day, professionals receive more than 100 new emails each day, making it difficult for some brands to get noticed in an inbox. Below are some common mistakes businesses make when sending emails to their target audience and how they can be avoided.
Send Emails on the Wrong Day
Brands are competing against dozens, possibly hundreds, of other emails to capture only a minute or two of a recipient’s time. The day and time chosen for an email campaign will impact how many people open the email and whether or not they click any links. In TSN’s experience, middle of the week distribution yields a higher open rate compared to weekend days or earlier in the week. But that may not be the case for your brand. Each business should determine which day gives them the best results through experimentation, or by using a third-party service that has proven data confirming the best day and time to send communications.
Do Not Include a Call to Action
Sending emails to customers, potential customers and business partners to share information is good, but what is even better is to include a call to action (CTA) in your email. According to Campaign Monitor, “an email marketing call to action is a button or hyperlinked line of text that directs a user to a website of a brand’s choosing.” The purpose of a CTA is to push your audience to take action. The CTA could be promoting a website page or blog post, asking for recipients to reply to the email, or notifying your audience about a deal or discount.
Send Too Many Emails
No one wants to be hounded with emails. It’s important to be strategic in the amount and frequency of emails you send. You want to meet your goals, but you don’t want to annoy your audience. It will take time to find your sweet spot through experimenting. Consider putting your audience into different groups (e.g. members, customers, potential customers, business partners, etc.) and sending each one customized emails based on their interest.
Do Not Send a Welcome Email
Setting up and sending a welcome email to new subscribers is one of the smartest choices you can make. According to Vero, the average open rate for welcome emails is 50 percent, making it more effective than standard newsletters. To make it even easier, you can set up welcome emails to be delivered automatically to new subscribers through a third-party service.
Do Not Track Data and Adjust Strategy
Each time a brand implements an email campaign, the results of that campaign should be measured and analyzed. By measuring those results, businesses can determine if they are meeting their goals, and by analyzing those results, they can adjust their strategy to improve performance. What results should you look at? The answer depends on overall goals, but as a starting point, consider open rate, click rate, most clicked links, and conversions.
With each email campaign, you will learn something new about your audience, their interests, and their habits. Use the information learned to shape your email marketing plan and don’t be afraid to adapt your strategy. If you need help getting your plan started or are looking for some strategy tips, we’ve outlined the steps you can take here.
