11 things that make email marketing pointless – essential things to fix if you want real sales results
So many clients ask about how they can get more (or any) results from their email marketing. They are often disillusioned, puzzled and frustrated as to why this marketing approach delivers so little – when they expect so much. They wonder what they are doing wrong and whether email marketing simply no longer works.
Let’s set the record straight. It is definitely still relevant – and the reason it’s not working probably lies with you.
Is email marketing still relevant?
Absolutely. Email is a mainstay of marketing, despite an increasing focus on inbound marketing methodologies.
Yes, some prophets of doom say it’s dying – but the statistics say otherwise.
There is a ton of evidence that’s impossible to include here, but:
65% of companies use it, ahead of all other forms of customer communication, says conversational marketing research.
93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content, says the Content Marketing Institute.
The UK Direct Marketing Association still benchmarks email marketing delivery at above 98%, average open rates above 20% and clickthrough rates above 2% across sectors, with the tech industry achieving higher than average figures.
Desperation, dodgy lists and dreary email marketing content is destined to fail
With the sales year now well started, businesses and marketers everywhere are getting busy setting up campaigns that focus heavily on email.
Sadly, a lot of their messages may either never reach their targets or fall on deaf ears when they do.
Many of us have taken email for granted. Thanks to the proliferation of tools to enable any business to start email marketing more easily and cheaply than ever, it also has become an activity that is often done spectacularly badly.
Bad email marketing practice abounds, as businesses everywhere do it for the wrong reasons, target emails badly, and deliver dull messages.
When it works, as it does for many big brands, it delivers a marvellous ROI. Smaller and growing businesses often embark on it with huge enthusiasm and effort, only to gain little value for their spend, and huge disappointment.
Why is email marketing so damn HARD?
It’s not easy to stand out. You’re competing against a huge crowd: not just your solutions or services competitors, but everybody who wants your target to listen or engage about anything.
You are up against today’s smart inboxes. These scan for and stream obvious promotional and sales material quickly to the promotions or other tab (or spam, if you’re unlucky).
Individuals are also getting smarter about filtering out obvious sales phrases they see repeatedly.
Then there are the increasingly intelligent filters of over-the-top email management software. Frustrated decisionmakers adopt these because they would otherwise go quite insane.
Because of all these barriers, you must make sure that your email campaign itself is well conceived, planned, targeted and executed. Everything must be up to scratch, including your expectations.
11 tough-love pieces of advice to deliver results
Email marketing can still make a huge contribution, although is not the be-all and end-all of marketing tactics.
You just have to do it (a) better than you have been doing, and (b) better than other people.
These are the top pieces of advice I give my clients:
Don’t send out email campaigns through desperation. It’s not a quick-fix tactic – you need to plan long term email campaigns that nurture, not slam offers out whenever the pipeline looks a bit light. Do it for the right reasons.
Don’t, don’t, don’t scrape and buy lists. It can sometimes be essential early on to acquire access to a pool of targets, but do it the smart way such as partnerships and sponsorships (media, associations). These may mail to opted-in audiences on your behalf. List acquisition from data brokers is usually a route to disappointment and can create legal risks too. The question of how to grow your own database and lists organically, through opt-in, should precede your email marketing approach, not be an after-thought.
Fix your flipping messaging. A problem not just in email marketing but in all areas of marketing is the tendency to think about the world from your perspective, not the target’s. Stop telling them how good you and your products/services are, and think about the pains and issues they face, instead. It goes beyond just the message, so deserves its own tip:
It’s not about YOU and your products it’s about THEM and their needs. Repeat that until it’s sunk in as a mantra for all your marketing.
Watch your language. Lazy, ‘salesy’, formulaic emails that promise the answer, unmissable opportunity or one-time, unprecedented discount don’t work for higher value selling. Yes, there are some verbal tactics to learn, and trigger words that set off predictable responses. These must be couched within fully considered messages and more considered subject titles. Content that delivers no value, or is dull, samey and doesn’t intrigue the reader will never work.
Stop selling the wrong thing at the wrong time. You must sell your trustworthiness, value, relevance and results long before you talk products, services and offers. Pushing the wrong message or content asset to people before they are ready is a sure route to unsubscribes.
Set out with the right aims in mind. Simply turning on a tap of inward leads cannot be the only goal. What role email could play in all aspects of growing and nurturing your potential relationships is a much better starting point.
One-to-one relationship building is where smart marketing minds have focused for years. Marketing to an ‘audience of one’ and speaking just to them lies behind the advanced segmentation of many consumer mega-brands and the drive to adopt personalisation technologies. Even if advanced targeting tech isn’t in your arsenal, you can consider how to apply this thinking. Divide your niche and divide again. Think what people have in common, and what separates them. Tailor your messages and timing to what suits them, not you. Refer to point 4 and repeat it several times.
Revisit the true value of your offers. Too often companies think if they offer a discount, a limited-time act-now offer, an extra-value bundle, it will be enough to secure sales. In combination with quick-fix thinking, it’s disastrous. The offer seems like a cost to you, so is pared back to the minimum. Or it is something that is simply not valuable in the eyes of the target market, whom you have never asked for an opinion. Print out point 4 and stick it visibly on the wall beside you.
Get the right technology to help you succeed. ‘Cheaping out’ on the minimum necessary platform that you can use for free or next-to-nothing until you can justify spending on a proper marketing automation platform almost guarantees you will never get there. You need to A/B test and refine campaigns. To connect emails to effective landing pages and funnels. Then access data that is meaningful. Otherwise, email marketing will often disappoint.
Remember that the email inbox is only a tiny part of your target’s world. Their real-world inbox still exists, and they absorb information/messages offline too. You need to plan how to build relationships via a range of touchpoints, both online and offline in the real world. If the urge to mail is overwhelming, you might consider integrating a physical mailing that will land in their lap. Again, it absolutely must be within a wider campaign, not a quick one-time blast, or you’ll be desperately disappointed and significantly poorer.
What to do next
Marketing campaigns of any kind will rarely pay dividends if you simply don’t know what you’re doing and don’t listen to professional advice.
How do you assure the success of a campaign? Clear messages and calls to action. Tight, compelling copy. Templates properly designed for mobile as well as desktop. Knowledgeable and focused targeting. Supporting content assets with real value to the reader. You need it all.
If you don’t have those capabilities in house, for goodness sake source them from the outside.
Remedy specialises in giving common-sense business marketing counsel without pulling our punches, to help our clients succeed and grow. If you’d like that kind of input, please don’t hesitate to reach out.