Email Marketing Mistakes Businesses Must Avoid

Email is an effective way for many small businesses to communicate with their target market. Business owners favor it because email marketing is relatively easy to manage once it’s set up – add a campaign, create content, send it out, then rinse and repeat. However, if your email marketing lacks the key elements needed to make it highly effective, you could be wasting resources. You could significantly improve your email marketing efforts by avoiding the common mistakes many businesses make.

Not targeting your content

Many businesses view their email marketing as a numbers game – sending out a certain number of emails on a certain date and hoping for the best – without regard for the quality or relevance of the content. Considering that the primary reason most people open an email is to receive something of value – useful information or a meaningful offer – sending generic, one-size-fits-all content almost ensures it ends up in the trash or spam folder.

If the purpose of your email marketing campaign is to increase engagement with your prospects and clients, the content needs to be timely, relevant, and high-quality. Businesses that incorporate marketing automation with their email marketing program can learn who is engaging with them and what topics interest them, then develop relevant content likely to be consumed.

Not getting permission to send

Email marketing can only be very effective if it is done with permission. Buying a list and blasting emails without recipients’ consent can put you in the crosshairs of anti-spam regulations and email service providers who can hurt your email reputation. It can also be a complete waste of resources. When it comes to effective email marketing, more is not better.

Instead, develop and cultivate a willing audience from your target market who opt to receive your email communications. These might be visitors to your website who request information, people you meet, or social media contacts. They will know why they are receiving your emails, so they are more likely to open and read them. It does take a little longer to build a list, but it will be high quality with substantially higher open and click rates.

Not segmenting your lists

You know how you react when you receive a generic email that you know has been blasted out to thousands of people. So why would you subject your target market to the same treatment? Your top prospects or clients should not receive the same content you send to someone brand new to your sales funnel. While providing personalized content with each email is unreasonable, you should ensure your content is relevant based on the recipient’s interests and position in your funnel.

With lists segmented by interests and position in the funnel, your email marketing software can automatically tag the appropriate content to be sent at the appropriate times, improving your open and click rates.

Focusing only on email analytics

Many businesses focus strictly on "vanity metrics," such as the open rate, which is fine, but it tells you very little about how well your email marketing is working. While it’s good to know that someone opened your email, you have no idea what happened next. Did the recipient click on a link? Did they visit your website? What did they do when they went there? Do they continue to engage with your emails, social media, or website? That’s the critical information that lets you keep your lead engaged and moving down the funnel.

With marketing automation software, your email marketing becomes more interactive with your leads and more proactive in tracking them across all your digital channels. More importantly, it can help you predict which ones are more likely to become prospects so you can better focus your sales efforts.

Not using email marketing data to manage your funnel

Businesses thrive on leads. Whether generated from a website, an 800 number, or an email response, each represents the possibility of a sale at the end of the funnel. But often, the information collected along with the leads leaves you in the dark about who they are calling and why. As a result, businesses spend valuable time pursuing questionable leads.

However, when marketing automation software is used to track each lead’s engagement and its behavior through multiple activities (i.e., links followed, website page visits, time spent, information downloaded, social media interaction, etc.), data becomes available that can score a lead based on that person’s level of engagement. You can then prioritize leads based on their readiness to be contacted and tailor their approach to the interests and motivations of the lead, turning what otherwise would be a cold call into a much warmer call.

Adding analytical tools such as marketing automation increases your marketing costs; however, you can expect your return on investment to far exceed what you spend on lead generation and business development. If you’re going to expend the resources on email marketing, you may as well do it to achieve maximum results.