A desperate attempt to grab the attention of your customer in a misleading way can upset and turn away your customer forever. If you’ve engaged in such a strategy you’ve compromised your brand value. Some email marketing strategies take this wrong path. The world of email marketing is getting intensely competitive. Why should customers open your mail and respond to it when they already have many emails to read?
The first thing that one does before starting work is run through their inbox quickly. Imagine, just before starting work you spot an email subject line that reads something like this,
‘Your application is rejected’, janet@yahoo.in.
Obviously, your instant reaction would be,
‘I never applied for anything. So what is this mail all about?’
When you open the mail it has this huge heading with an image,
‘Loan / Credit Card Application Rejected? Find out why?’
Now, this drives you mad. This is one example of misleading someone into opening your email. Result – the reader marks your mail as spam.
You put in so much of thought into designing mails, writing the content but, when you strategize campaigns to reach the customer you make vital mistakes. Marketing is all about connecting with customers, presenting something useful to impact their life significantly and make them happy. You can’t cheat your customers into reading mails, blogs or watching an advertisement. When customers turn away from your emails and ignore them, there is something inherently wrong with your email marketing strategies.
Some mistakes that can make your customers turn away are:
Not delivering your promise:
Someone has signed to receive your emails and still chosen to ignore it. This implies you’ve strayed away from what you promised to deliver in your emails. You’ve not lived up to the customer’s expectations. Spend some time to make sure you are sending mails to only those customers who are interested in them. Start by reviewing the email acquisition process.
- When people sign in to receive emails do they know who they are signing in for? Make sure people you are sending mails know you and want to receive mails from you.
- Do people know what you are going to share with them? You have to inform your audience what kind of information you are planning to share with them. When people sign in, they expect certain information; are you sending the right stuff as expected by them?
- When you promise them to send particular kind of information but, end up mailing something else, it’s disappointing. You aren’t keeping your promise you’ve made to your customer.
If you aren’t following these instructions your email marketing efforts are not seeing the results and your reputation is at stake. Your focus should be on building a connect with your customers rather than over pushing your products or services.
Ignoring the core of your business – customer behavior:
The structure of your business is built on customer behavior and studying it leads to its success. Sending promotional emails with discount offers, newsletters, informative material, etc is an effective way to begin your email marketing campaign. Further, you keep improving on ways to grab customer attention by designing and writing interesting mails, learning to send emails at the right time, using the most apt and response driven subject lines, etc.
You are making utmost efforts to maximize your email marketing strategies but, are you studying the response to your emails and observing customer behavior? Emails should be sent as a response to customer data that records customer behavior. Suppose a customer is inactive then send an email to nudge him to get him back. If he is active, send mails to inspire him to engage more.
Data driven emails are impactful. And we as marketers shouldn’t miss this point. Always focus on content that leads to conversion. Send exclusive offers and content to people who consistently respond and open your mails.
Send behavior driven emails. If someone is requesting particular information, deliver it via email. Couple it with a newsletter subscription, or webinar and a strong call-to-action. Always be focused; customize individual emails based on how customers open, click and respond to your mail. Sending ‘one email to all’ era has come to an end.
Too Many Calls-to-Action (CTA) creates confusion:
Marketers try their level best to trigger a response from the customer. Rather they try to do too much in one email. Having one CTA with one link to your landing page brings clarity and leads to conversion easily. Have clarity of goal and decide what you are trying to do through the email. Pinpoint your goal; generating leads, promoting your blog, sharing information, etc. Keep the content simple and have a clear call-to-action.
Email campaigns should have a goal about what they want customers to do when they read your email. Make it clear to the reader what is expected. Reader should know what you want them to do.
Crafting subject lines that mislead and make customers flinch:
I often receive emails with subject lines that make me flinch. Some of them that I remember are:
Desperate pleading: ‘Open me’
All caps screaming out for attention: ‘URGENT ATTENTION’
Overuse of punctuations: ‘Exciting offers!!!!’
Some marketers blatantly mislead the audience to have them to open their mail. For example ‘Your health insurance has been approved’ or ‘health insurance approval.’ You haven’t obviously applied for any health insurance but, still the marketer is nudging for no reason.
When you get curious and open the mail it gives minimal information like ‘get cashless claims from 6000 plus hospitals. Then it says, ‘Click here to submit your details’. When you click on the link it directs you to a website that helps investors to compare various health policies.
I wish marketers understand that instead of misleading customers, being transparent and honest to them can help achieve their goals easily.
Email address says “no reply”:
When you send an email, reveal your identity because, there is a bond of trust that develops and the reader / customer knows where the mail comes from. If you send generic mails in the ‘from name’ space as “no reply” or “admin” it implies that you are not looking forward to conversing with the customer and you care less for customer’s response. You are missing the biggest opportunity to engage with customers.
These are disastrous email marketing strategies to avoid if you want to see your email marketing strategies succeeding. Juvlon is here to assist you in implementing email marketing strategies that are effective and result oriented. Visit our website to know more about email marketing tools and subscribe to Juvlon Newsletter for latest updates about online marketing.