Email marketing is one of the most effective tactics in digital marketing. While it is ever changing, its relevance only increases. In fact, our research shows that over 50% of people say they still read the majority of their emails. Those results are too critical to ignore. A lot of small business owners either believe that email marketing is dying or that it is not crucial to their core business. Quite the contrary. Not only should you be using email marketing, it should be one of the biggest drivers of revenue to your business. If you don’t use email marketing, you need to. If you do, here are a some typical mistakes that you can avoid. HIDING YOUR IDENTITY We will never understand the logic behind it, but many small business owners make the mistake of hiding their identities behind their brand, or completely leaving any human involvement out of their emails. You need to make sure that your users know who they are receiving emails from; you need to make sure that they know they aren’t just talking to a program. Our research also states that click through rate in email marketing is significantly higher when the company name is mentioned in the subject line. So our recommendation would be to have the “from” line show a human name, and then also include the company name in the “subject” line. POOR SUBJECT LINES You have just seconds before a user decides whether or not your email is worth clicking, let alone reading. Subsequently, the subject line has the greatest impact on this split second decision. Xingley research concludes that subject lines between 28-39 characters have the highest open rate—that’s tested across 200 million emails. In our customers’ experience and through utilizing industry research, we've found the most effective subject lines are transparent, setting the direction and expectation of the email’s contents. On the other hand, our customers' worst-performing subject lines attempt to directly advertise or sell. Even if selling is what your email is about, you can still deliver value without screaming “20% OFF, LAST CHANCE!” We are not suggesting that you never include discounts, exclamations, numbers or even caps in your subject lines. What we are proposing is that you be mindful of the fact that users are constantly bombarded with email marketing, receiving between 50-100 emails per day! Having a good email marketing reputation is not only good because it keeps you white listed (off the spam lists) but it creates a great user experience.  Side-note: Another quick tip is to only send emails when you have something valuable to offer. That means even if you master great subject lines, if your email's content sucks,  you lose. Offer value or don’t send. Period. USING TOO MANY IMAGES Using a plethora of images is detrimental to your email marketing. Not only is this a red flag for spam detectors, but you never know exactly how all of those images are going to show up when a user receives that email. Sure, you can test all you want, but with as many email service providers as there are, you are likely to reach someone's inbox with your email looking like a collage. Images are important for your users, however; research indicates that 65% of people prefer emails with mostly images, while only 35% prefer contextual emails. One thing that is clear, however, is that email service providers boldly state that using too many images (especially high resolution images) has a negative effect on your spam score and some of these email service providers will actually stop you from sending them. Keep it simple with a hero image, maybe a couple relevant product images and your logo. That’s it. SENDING EMAILS WITHOUT TESTING If you want to know the quickest way to lose all gained trust with a customer, look no further than email testing, or the lack thereof. Sending emails without testing is a sure fire way to look like a fool to your users. Wrong logos, mismatched pictures, spelling errors and tons of other mishaps take place when you are not careful. One comical mistake that we’ve seen when users use templates is leaving dummy text in their emails. You know, the lines that say something like, “tell your subscribers what your email is about here.” How embarrassing. Send one email like that and we promise you will never send another email without testing. Or save yourself the hassle and just start testing now! NOT MEASURING DATA All major email service providers use analytics and to report crucial KPIs to their customers (key performance indicators.) We do the same at Xingley, but can offer additional analytics since our program sells your product for you—right from your email. When you sign up for a free trial with Xingley, you can easily see why our customers rave about our easy-to-use platform and supporting analytics. Aside from shopping KPIs, your main email marketing KPI’s should include:
  • Bounce Rate
  • Delivery Rate
  • List Growth Rate
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR)
  • Sharing/Forwarding Rate
  • Conversion Rate
  • Revenue Per Email Sent
Conclusion A lot of email marketing mistakes come by simply not using common marketing sense. When you are meeting someone for the first time, you don’t forget to introduce yourself by stating your name (i.e. forgetting a “from” name in your email.) Nor do you meet someone and try to sell them something in the first interaction you have with them (i.e. over selling in your subject lines and email copy.) If you don’t do any of these things in real life with real relationships, don’t do them in your email marketing strategy either. Selling should be a seamless and enjoyable process for your users which is why Xingley embodies this approach to email marketing. Let’s see how powerful your sales can be when you use a system that helps you avoid these 5 email marketing mistakes.