If email is already a part of your overall marketing strategy, congratulations you've made an excellent decision. Regardless of newer, more flashy marketing tactics, email has remained one of the most dependable, efficient, and cost-effective marketing tools available.

 

When It Comes To Email, Avoid These Seven Common Blunders.

While email marketing is increasingly important in many B2B and B2C acquisition strategies, it is easy to make mistakes. Keeping this in mind, here are seven common errors to avoid when developing your email marketing program:

 


1.    Postponing The Creation Of A Holistic Promotional Calendar

Email promotions & offers should mirror those on your website, in-store, & other marketing channels to avoid unhappy customers or frustrated employees. Consider the following scenario: a customer receives an email promotion and walks into a store to inquire about it, but the store employee is unaware of the offer or is unavailable in the store. You'll have some disgruntled customers and befuddled employees on your hands. A comprehensive promotion approach eliminates this friction and creates a more consistent customer experience across channels. A complete promotional calendar is a simple way to accomplish this.

 


2.    Stop Segmenting Your Messages

Customers are not all the same. Simple factors such as a customer's age, marital status, household income, and location can significantly impact the products they are interested in and ultimately purchase. Customers in more complex B2B businesses will have varying roles within their organization and pain points and levels of influence. If you do not consider this, you will have a difficult time finding a message that resonates with specific segments of your audience. By incorporating segmentation into your email marketing strategy, you increase the likelihood of relevance, open rates, and, eventually, conversion. Simple methods for incorporating segmentation include:

 

Brand Engagement: Customers who have purchased within the last 90 days are considered brand engaged. More frequent emails to these customers are more likely to result in a conversion.

 

Past Purchase Behavior - Customers who make frequent and consistent purchases have a high average order value (AOV). Emails to these customers may highlight more expensive items or groups of items.

 

Industry - Some businesses sell their goods or services to various industries. For example, one technology-based product company with which we collaborate sells to healthcare providers and educational institutions. Each of these industries requires a very different approach to email marketing.

Related blog: Effective Email Marketing Techniques 2022

 



3.    Refrain From A/B Testing What Works For You

While best practices are beneficial, you should not rely solely on them to direct your email efforts. A/B tests different aspects of your program to see what works best for your company and, most importantly, your audience. When determining the cadence or frequency with which to send an email, it is common to rely on best practices. It, however, will vary greatly depending on your business and customers. Assume you're selling expensive consumer goods purchased only a few times in a person's life, and your primary audience is older and more affluent.

 

On the other hand, perhaps you're selling a low-cost item that you can purchase multiple times per month, and your target market is a younger, less affluent demographic. On the other hand, perhaps you're selling a low-cost item that you can purchase multiple times per month, and your target market is a younger, less affluent demographic. What impact will these factors have on your approach to email marketing? The only method to truly know is to put it to the test. A/B tests should inform email cadence, timing, frequency, and more creative areas like subject lines, messages, visuals, and offers. It will give you the knowledge needed to improve your open, click, and conversion rates.



4.    Not Responding To Warm-Up Emails

Many businesses will transfer their email list to the new ESP after switching email service providers (ESPs). The issue with this method is that the IP address from which you are sending is different and unknown to your recipients. As a result, your emails may be marked as spam and redirected to people's spam folders. To avoid this, we recommend beginning slowly by sending emails to only your most engaged customers and selecting message types that have historically performed well. As a result, the ESPs will "learn" that your emails are not spam, your new IP address is legitimate, and you have an active audience that opens and clicks through your emails regularly. Once the ESP has "warmed up," you can resume sending emails to your entire contact list.



5.    Avoiding The Use Of A Third-Party Tool For Q/A Testing

Ironically, the most difficult part for email marketers is not developing the content of the email but rather correctly rendering images across devices, browsers, and ESPs. It emphasizes the importance of quality assurance testing (Q/A), especially if you're using HTML blocks, dynamic content blocks, table cells, or anything else that isn't part of your ESP's out-of-the-box template builder. As a best digital marketing agency, NetMaticO recommends using a third-party tool, such as Litmus or Email on Acid, testing each email across the major ESPs and devices your audience frequently uses. A proactive approach to quality assurance will ensure that your emails are more effective.





6.    Omitting An Opt-Out Section

Nobody wants their email list to get smaller. However, emailing customers who did not opt-in & making the "unsubscribe" process too difficult can harm your brand and business. Angry email recipients have known to vent on social media publicly, or even worse, to turn to a competitor for future sales. We want your email lists to grow, but not at the expense of harming your brand's reputation or losing a customer. A clear, simple method for customers to opt-out of emails is far preferable to having them opt out of your brand entirely.



7.    Refraining from Using Automation

While email campaigns are unquestionably an essential part of any retailer's acquisition strategy, automated emails have numerous advantages. Automated emails improve workflow efficiency and allow you to deliver more personalized, tailored content to your target audience segments and nurture customers and prospects more effectively. In general, email automation should include the following:

 

"Welcome" Series - 3-5 emails congratulating a new customer and offering a discount on their first purchase. This series will be crucial in determining the type of relationships you will have with your customers.

 

Abandon Cart - 1-3 emails urging visitors to complete their purchase in an urgent tone, such as "Did you forget something?" & "Hurry back."

 

Browse and Abandon - 1-3 emails designed to entice the visitor to return to the site and continue browsing.

 

Post-Purchase - Send 1-3 emails to anyone who made a recent online or in-store purchase. Additional actions and brand engagement should be encouraged through messaging, such as purchasing related products, leaving a product review, & joining a loyalty program.

 

Win Back - Send 1-3 emails urging users with low engagement or open rates to return to the site or opt-out of receiving future emails. Finally, a smaller list of more engaged users is preferable to a more extensive list of disengaged users.

 

If you want to get professional email marketing tips or services you can contact us now. We at NetMaticO providing email marketing services for more than 10 years.