Avoid These Four Common Email Marketing Challenges

Email marketing, it’s one of the most commonly used marketing tactics — and for good reason. 

It works.

When you consider that 60% of small businesses consider their email marketing strategy as effective or very effective, you can understand why so many marketers invest in it. It’s a communication that has stood the test of time and continues to evolve in the digital world we live in. 

So why do some companies see less than ideal email marketing metrics?

The answer is there could be many factors playing into why email campaigns are not converting like you may have expected. From improving your cold emails to tracking your success, in this article, we’ll take a look at 4 common email marketing challenges that companies face and how you can avoid them. 

Here’s a quick look at the challenges we’ll discuss:

• Forgetting to set goals
• Sending cold emails that don’t convert
• Seeing low metrics and high bounce rates
• Not tracking both successes and failures

If you’re making one of these common email mistakes, you’re not alone. Luckily, just by making a few changes, you can quickly start to see improved results. Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Are you making one of these email marketing mistakes? 

While email marketing can be a very successful marketing tactic. It can also present marketers with quite a few challenges. Sometimes all you need to do is take a step back to see how you can adjust and improve. To help get you started identifying your challenges, let’s look at a few common mistakes made when it comes to email marketing.

Setting goals is one of the most important steps when getting started with email marketing. It’s how you can measure your success and know what adjustments you may need to make. Image courtesy of Pexels. 

You Don’t Have Set Goals

If you set out on your email marketing journey without setting goals, you’re already setting yourself up for failure. Goals are one of the most important things to consider when creating your email marketing plan. Without them, you have no idea how to measure the success of a campaign. 

At first, you might not know exactly what your goals should look like. But as you continue to evolve your marketing efforts, benchmarks should start to appear to help you understand what is successful for your efforts. 

Here are a few things you can consider building into your email marketing goals: 

• Building brand awareness
• Increasing open rates, click-throughs, and conversions
• Growing your subscriber list
• Increasing cart abandonment sales
• Improving customer service 

This list tells you that not all of your goals have to be metric based. Maybe you really want to build stronger brand awareness through your emails. Or maybe it’s an avenue for you to improve customer loyalty through better customer service. 

No matter what the case may be, you need to keep your goals in mind from the moment you start utilizing email. By keeping your goals front and center, you have a much better chance of meeting and exceeding them. 

The great thing about setting goals is that as you hit them, you can grow and expand with new goals. Never stop thinking of new ways to make your current email efforts better and you’ll continue to excite and delight your customers. 

Are you reaching out to potential customers and not getting any response? It might be time to up your cold email game. Image courtesy of Pexels. 

Your Cold Emails Aren’t Converting

For many companies, cold emails are a great way to reach new customers and tell them more about your product or service. But what do you do when you’re spending time reaching out to potential customers and can’t seem to get them to convert? 

It can be a very frustrating process when this happens, but when it’s done right it can provide you with increased conversion and a higher ROI. 

Here are a few best practices that you can follow to see an increase in cold email conversions: 

• • Send the emails from your personal account and use your full name. This practice will help you stay out of spam folders and will add a layer of personalization to the message. 
  • Use the recipient’s name. Using someone’s first name makes the message come across much more friendly and yet again adds a sense of personalization to the message. 

• Make sure your offer is relevant. Do a little research on your customer to make sure they are the right audience for your message. If you’re sending irrelevant information, they’re much more likely to ignore the message. 

• Lead with the value you have to offer. Make the communication about them, not you. Tell them right away what they have to get out of working with your company and how you can solve a problem they may be facing.

Cold emails are a great way to expand your horizons and build your customer base. They may take a little extra work, but the results are worth it in the long run. 

Your campaign metrics speak to how well your customers are receiving your messaging. If you’re seeing negative results, it’s time to make a change. Image courtesy of Pexels. 

Seeing high bounce rates and low metrics is always concerning for companies, but there are steps you can take to bring those customers back. Image courtesy of Pixabay. 

You’re Seeing High Bounce Rates and Lower Metrics

So we talked about setting goals, but what happens if you’re continuously missing those goals? 

While it might be okay to miss your goals every once in a while, it’s not good to consistently see poor metrics and high bounce rates. This is a sign that you’re doing something wrong in your current email efforts. 

To give you a starting place to really understand where your metrics fit in, here’s a list of email benchmark metrics you can reference: 

• Open rates: 12.94%
• Click-through rates: 6.86%
• Bounce rates: 8.85%
• Unsubscribe rates: .01%

Of course, you’ll want to keep in mind that benchmarks can vary across industry and segments. So, you’ll want to track your metrics month to month to make sure to stay ahead of any downward or negative trends. As you start to get a grip on what your benchmarks say, you can start to take action as soon as you identify an issue. 

Sometimes, all you need to do is make a small adjustment to your emails to see higher engagement rates. Maybe a simple adjustment to your subject line or moving the call to action to a more prominent location will make all the difference. 

If you find you’re making adjustments that are moving the needle, take a step back, and see what else you can do to improve your current efforts. Maybe you need to try a new spin on what you’re communicating or look closer at your list segmentation. 

Tracking your success and failures will lead to improvements that result in more conversions and higher ROI. The end result is worth the time it takes to review each month’s campaigns. Image courtesy of Pixabay.

You Aren’t Tracking Your Successes and Failures

Building off of what we just discussed, you should be tracking your successes and your failures. To continue to grow your email marketing, it’s important to really understand what works, what doesn’t, and how you can continue to improve based on this information. 

Not sure what you should be tracking? Here are just a few examples of what might constitute success or failure that’s worth noting: 

• Engagement rates over time, based on email types
• A big loss or influx of contacts from a specific campaign
• The amount of time that users are spending on your emails
• What types of devices your customers are using to open and read your emails

We often focus on what went wrong during our campaigns, such as, low engagement or high unsubscribes. But it’s also important to understand what went well and build off of that. Understanding what resonates with your customers can make all the difference in the success of your future emails. 

Nail Your Email Marketing

It doesn’t have to take an entire overhaul for your email marketing campaigns to start transitioning into successful campaigns. Sometimes, the smallest adjustments can make the biggest impact — you just need to know what to look at!