Why your email marketing campaign is not working

Friday, August 27th, 2010 in Email Marketing by Renier Meyer

When email marketing is used correctly it can deliver one of the highest returns on investment of any online marketing method. Email marketing has a couple of advantages, firstly it is very cost effective , it is highly targeted if you use an opted in mailing list, it is also highly measurable if the right tools are used. This all sounds very promising but your email marketing campaign can also go horribly wrong.

I have seen a lot of clients run email campaigns and from all the mails sent out the number of people that actually opened the email is around 10% in some cases it went to 20%. Now with stats like that you must ask yourself what am I doing wrong?

The first thing that is very important is to have an opted in mailing list. If people went on your website and said that they would like more information on your specials or future services and/or products they are highly targeted possible clients in the future. I receive a lot of newsletter each day that I did not subscribe to, and I either delete them straight away or I don’t open them at all. On the other hand Newsletters that I have subscribed to I recognize and take time to read through it, because I know I will be interested in it. So if you buy a list somewhere and are planning to send that out, know that the response on that will not be very good.

The Subject of your email is the most important part of your email. Make sure that the subject is clear and informative and that it also attract the reader to open the email. Avoid using words like “buy”, “win” and “free” in your subject as some spam filters might see your email as spam, and the client won’t even get a chance to see your email.

Once you get the reader to open your email you might lose them on your email if your content is not up to scratch. The success of your email marketing campaign will depend a lot on your content. You must ensure that it is informative and of value to the reader and that it address their problems and needs. Add value to your email by offering humour, interesting information or promotions.

If you plan your email marketing strategy well, do good research on your market and make use of the tips above, you can be sure that you will see good results from your email marketing campaign.

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Andrew Stromberg

I'm a big fan of email marketing and agree with the points that you've made above in your article. Specifically, the subject line can be particularly challenging to figure out. I've read about many strategies for keeping it interesting, and removing the "cheese" factor. That's solid advice, and I like to test various subject lines over time to continually improve our client open rates. You're sure right though, these can be a big challenge. We also design custom templates for our clients at http://www.ASKAdvertising.com and brand the email template just as we would brand a flyer or a business card. Keep it all consistent so the branding and identity is consistent though all media channels. Great article here on some of the basics and benefits of email htmls though.

sabestmarketing

Hi Andrew
Thanks for the comments you have made. I agree with you, it's challenging to come up with subject lines, not just for email marketing but other forms as well, like your Ads in Google Adwords. The best way is to test different subject lines as you said, and then see how they perform. Luckily the tools that are available today makes our life easy when it comes to analyzing how people react to different Lines.

Renier