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tiffany@tiffanycoxdesign.comIs Email Marketing Still Effective? (or just a dead unnecessary time suck)
4 . 22 . 2022
Email Marketing is ever-changing and evolving in its use and ultimately its effectiveness. There are a lot of things to know about how to use email to your advantage and how overuse can lead to a cold and dead email list. So is Email Marketing still effective? Let’s explore some reasons why and why not.
We have to ask ourselves, why are we using email marketing? Email marketing can be a great way to stay in touch with your customers and offer them new products or services. It’s also a good way to remind them of your company’s existence and educate them on what you do.
Another great use is reminding subscribers of events and webinars, especially if they are programs that are being run live and that need an engaged audience in attendance.
But overuse can lead to a toned-out audience that is no longer engaging in your emails. But how do we prevent this?
Have you ever opened your inbox only to find you have 100 NEW emails, all promotions from random companies you forgot you had subscribed to? Raise your hand if you’ve ever gone on an unsubscribing spree! I sure have and there are a few reasons why.
If you are sending too many emails to your list, there is a chance that they will burn out and unsubscribe. But this is not the only way to get your email marketing list burnt out. They can also be burnt out if you send them too many similar emails or if you send them emails that have no value to them.
The best way to prevent email marketing list burnout is by making sure that you send them relevant and valuable emails.
Focus on education and bringing high-level value to your audience.
This may seem difficult to achieve when you are just promoting a new product or service but if you can incorporate some teaching into your promotions, you will have a much better engagement and therefore a much better sales rate.
Over the years spam blockers built into email clients have gotten more and more stringent. Even in the past year so many of my relevant emails have ended up in my spam folder and my client’s spam folder. But how do we prevent our message from getting lost in the junk bin?
To avoid spam filters, it is important to make sure that the content of your email is relevant and not just mass-mailing.
It should also be personalized as much as possible and make sure that the recipient has genuinely opted in. Adding the subscriber’s first name as a merge field in the email can help this.
You should also use a company domain name instead of a personal email address. Sending a mass email from a Gmail account is a sure-fire way to end up in spam.
It’s also important to make sure your email address or domain is not already blacklisted. A great tool to use to check if your domain is blacklisted is MX Toolbox.
And just as a reminder sending mass emails to addresses that have not opted in (ie. a purchased, cold email list) is not only against the terms of service in almost all email marketing software but is also in a serious legal grey area. No one wants to get their domain blacklisted or even worse get sued by someone who got your cold email. So make sure the people you add to your list know that you are adding them.
Sometimes you can do all the right things and still end up with a poor open rate on your email campaigns. But I want you to think of this more as an opportunity to reinvigorate your list and get them engaged or even remove them completely.
A quick and easy way to see if people still want to get your emails is to literally ask them! Send out an email with a click or subscribe automation that asks them to click on a link or button to continue receiving emails. This will let you know who the silent lurkers are and who just doesn’t care anymore.
A lot of people think a list clean-up is unnecessary but there are a lot of really good pros to a spring cleaning.
#1 It lets you know who’s really engaged so you can focus your attention on those people.
#2 Cleaning up your list can save you money on software costs! Most email marketing platforms charge per contact so if you have hundreds of people just sitting in your email list unengaged they are actually costing you money.
#3 It can reengage people who have just been passively opening your emails and not reading them.
With just some small tweaks to your strategy, email marketing can still be an effective tool to have in your marketing toolbox.
We know making your email marketing effective can be confusing. So if you need a little help we’re here for you! Schedule a discovery call today so we can help you craft a killer email marketing strategy that works for you!
