There’s been a lot of change over the last few years; customers have changed, so have sales strategies. Many of the original email marketing techniques are now outdated,

An email marketer has two options; stop following them or ending up as a wishing they had. If you choose get with the times, then here are the mistakes that you need to avoid:

Obtaining contact details

Obsession leads to desperation, and desperation clouds one’s judgment. Marketers were obsessed with sales success and spared no thought about whether or not prospects want to be contacted for a product or service offer.

It’s high time they learn to acknowledge and respect a prospect’s concerns for privacy. There’s no harm in obtaining contact details, provided the prospects are already aware about it. It’s unsolicited if they are not, and that’s a mistake.

It’s our tendency to ignore unprompted mails that flood our inbox. Oftentimes, those mails find their way to the spam folder. We simply don’t want to receive product/service offers from people we hardly know.

The same applies to prospects. Call them up first or make contact in some other way, ask for the email address humbly and then send a mail. Buying email addresses in bulk and spamming people’s inboxes no longer counts as a reliable strategy.

The subject line

Content is king and nothing is outside the king’s empire, not even email marketing. The subject line is the most important part. Stat figures indicate the subject line prompts nearly 33% respondents to open an email. Since an email subject line is small and has only a couple of words, marketers often don’t understand how to make it catchy.

Copywriting techniques can give them a hand. In copywriting,  good copy is considered something that has all the following attributes:

• Crispness and conciseness
• Informative
• Personalization
• Instructive

You might wonder whether it’s possible to add all these elements to the subject line which consists of less than ten words.

The answer is yes. See the subject line below:

Relax and stop worrying about your car, because…

Notice the subject line above has only eight words in it, yet it is personalized, crisp and tells what to do (not worrying about the car). Personalized subject line increases the email response rate to 22%. The three period marks at the end hint at continuation, so the receiver of the email opens it.

Optimizing for mobile viewing

The handheld segment has undergone an insurmountable growth. Many brands are now striving for mobile marketing success. Some marketers, however, are stuck with the anachronistic approach that keeps the handheld segment out of consideration. What’s even worse is they make up almost 50% of email marketers.

Here’s something that they need to know. An email that’s not optimized for mobile viewing is likely to be deleted by 63% Americans and 41% Europeans. What’s the point of crafting an email, which probably won’t even be opened?

None.

Unless a marketer optimizes emails for mobile viewing, he’d never get access to the full spectrum of potential leads. Mobile optimization is not rocket science, emails can be optimized for Smart devices through the following ways:

Image resize: Since mobile screens are small, images need to be resized. Go to the HTML editor of your email, then change the maximum width to the proportion of small screen and make the maximum height “auto” so that the height is automatically adjusted based on the width.

Responsive email template: If creating one from scratch appears like a daunting task, buy one from a template seller. They are also available for free. Here’s a list of responsive email templates, both free and paid, from which you can choose one.

With responsive templates, you don’t have to worry about mobile optimization. HTML and CSS allow you to tinker with visual elements and the layout of an email. Be creative as this could decide your campaign’s fate.

Use automated tools

Automation can cause a significant shift in the existing way of email marketing. Such tools can reduce the need for manual task, improve the email open and response rate and help the campaign to register an overall impressive ROI.

You can do pretty much everything with email marketing tools - optimize the creative elements in the email body for all types of devices, track not only the open rate of your mail but also the campaign links, clicked multiple times, create a list of responses and activate the auto-responding option (in case the respondents reply back), integrate your email campaign with Google analytics and even undo the deletion of a campaign email.

The use of automation tools is becoming widespread in the digital arena. Even lead generation and engagement are becoming automated. Email marketing will go astray without automated tools, which can redirect it to the path of success.

Managing the list

A vital part of an email marketing campaign is to manage the mailing list. It’s not easy and if automation is not done right, can prove fatal for the campaign. So approach with caution.

Managing an email list depends on categories. The basic categories are:

• Those who fills out the signup form
• Those who visits your site
• Those who buy from you
• Those who unsubscribe
• Email addresses that don’t exist any longer

You must be wondering about the second entry in the list, how is it possible to get mail ids of people who visit your site for the first time, right?

Surveys can make it possible. Show them questions when they are on the site, not in the form of a pop-up but as a submission form on the bottom right or bottom left navigation.

Delete the ‘unsubscribers’ from the list, as well as those email ids, which don’t exist anymore. There’s a logic behind doing this apart from trimming down your mailing list, and that logic is your ISP won’t deliver up to 56% of your campaign emails if your list contains more than 10% of non-existent subscribers.

Image Courtesy: pixabay.com