Activate Your Fanbase With User-Generated Content

 In the digital era, everyone is a content creator, and that’s great news for marketers. Brands are boosting awareness by encouraging the public to share their customer experiences on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Just to name a few notable examples, Coca Cola’s “Share a Coke” hashtag marketing campaign asked fans to snap Coke-themed photos of themselves, and Charmin solicits toilet humor from its Twitter followers. But this kind of user-generated content (“UGC”) isn’t limited to social media interactions between a brand its customers. Savvy marketers are starting to mix UGC into their email marketing campaigns — and it’s working. Recent studies have shown that UGC delivers a 73 percent increase in email click-through rates.

UGC is simply content about your brand that is created by your business’s customers or fans, whether that content is photos, videos, product reviews, or testimonials. One obvious benefit of incorporating consumer content into your email marketing is that it saves you time. Instead of having to constantly come up with new content ideas on your own, your customers are the driving creative force.

But the real key to the power and popularity of UGC is that it humanizes your sales pitch. You aren’t the one telling your subscribers how wonderful your products or services are; real customers do it for you. UGC is authentic, and when used as a part of an email marketing campaign, it builds trust in your brand.

One of the best forms of advertisement is a satisfied customer. As amazing as your email content-crafting skills may be, consumers are more interested in what their peers say about your business. In fact, 70 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations and reviews over professionally written content. Zulily takes advantage of this statistic with a “Customer Picks” emails that feature some of their best-selling products, along with a few brief but enthusiastic customer endorsements:

So how can you start integrating UGC into your email marketing? You can put out a call in your newsletter for subscribers to email photos or stories of their experiences with your products or services. Or you can come up with a brand-specific hashtag, ask customers to submit to you via social media, and feature your favorite responses in your next email. You might consider a theme for the submissions that is tied to an upcoming promotion or event.

To celebrate Star Wars Day and promote a Star Wars merchandise sale, Hot Topic asked its customers to submit photos of themselves in Star Wars gear. The best submissions were included in an email photo collage:

Of course a theme isn’t necessary. TeeFury’s emails showcase photos of happy customers wearing the company’s apparel:

To give your subscribers an extra push to submit, you can hold a contest, with a gift certificate or other prize going to the most creative submission. However you go about incorporating customer content into your emails, make sure that you’ve obtained permission from the original creator to use their content and that you’ve articulated exactly how that content will be used.

Once you get the go-ahead, don’t be afraid to experiment with different types of UGC. Photos might work well for one brand, while testimonials work better for another. But if content development is one of your email marketing pain points, then UGC could be the solution.

Read more about email content development here. 

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What Is an Email Conversion?

 The success of a business boils down to whether customers buy what you’re selling. In marketing terms: whether they’re converting. And since email marketing programs exist to support the business, email conversions are a critical metric for most programs.

However, in part because email programs have many secondary goals that are unique from the business’s goals, the definition of a conversion has become more than a little hazy, creating misalignments at some brands. To bring some focus to this issue, we asked five experts two simple questions:

WHAT IS A CONVERSION? IS AN EMAIL CONVERSION DIFFERENT FROM CONVERSIONS IN OTHER CHANNELS?

Everyone had a fairly similar definition of a conversion (which we’ve highlighted in their responses below). However, as they expanded on that, things got blurry quickly. Interestingly, everyone agrees that there are a couple of different kinds of conversions—but they don’t agree on what those two kinds are or what to call them. The possibilities include:

micro-conversions and macro-conversions
email conversions and website conversions
direct conversions and indirect conversions
conversions and conversions to sale

Our experts make great points about why each of these distinctions is important.

ALEX BIRKETT, GROWTH MARKETER AT CONVERSIONXL, SAYS:

A conversion can be many things—it’s simply “the completion of a desired action.” That said, there are two general types of conversions: micro-conversions (opens, CTR) and macro-conversions (end-goal conversions like sales and signups). In general, I think many marketers are optimizing for the wrong type of conversions (micro-conversions) because it’s easier and you can see bigger uplifts.

So for example, if you send a bunch of people an email promising them free beer and pizza, you’ll probably get a sky high open rate and quite a lot of clicks. But then when they hit your landing page and find out you only sell socks, be prepared for a massive bounce rate—and lots of burned trust resulting in an eroded brand reputation. That’s why landing page optimization is such a large part of email marketing—if you maintain message match and keep the conversion scent through the funnel, the results are generally better at every stage.

Don’t get me wrong, measure micro-conversions. They can provide tons of insights. But play the long game and optimize for the macro-conversions. In other words, keep your eye on the sales, not the clicks.

STEVE LINNEY, FOUNDER OF EMRKTNG, SAYS:

A conversion is simply an action taking place on your landing page—or any other area of your website—that triggers an outcome you want to track. You define what the conversion is you are looking to measure, such as a new subscriber or a purchase.

For me, conversions don’t take place within the email, but on the website. However, website conversion rate is only one part of the story and you need to make sure that all parts of your email marketing funnel are rocking:

• Targeting your audience | measurement: send number
• Subject line | measurement: open rate
• Quality of message and offering | measurement: click-through rate
• Potential customers on your website | measurement: visitor numbers
• Visitors don’t like what they see and leave | measurement: bounce rate
• Visitors do what you want them to | measurement: conversion rate

A/B testing, refining, and tweaking should be always be happening to ensure you have the best user experience and offering you can possibly give. Keep in mind that testing is never ending as there is always something you can improve to ensure you give the customer the experience they are looking for and you stay ahead of the competition.

ERIN KING, SR. EMAIL MARKETING MANAGER AT LITMUS, SAYS:

Marketers often wrestle with determining the value of conversions if they’re not tied to sales, which can lead to the thinking that if a campaign isn’t making money directly and immediately, it’s a failure. The thing about conversions, for any channel, is that they don’t always have to happen immediately, and they don’t always have to follow a straight line.

Basically, an email conversion can be defined as when a subscriber takes the path you point them toward in your message. For example, if your email promotes an event, a click through to the registration page is progress, but a completed registration is a conversion. If you’re sending a monthly newsletter with links to your blog content, the conversion can be measured by how many of the featured posts are read, or how long your subscribers spend on the blog post-click.

Some emails lend themselves to direct conversions (I promote a product, you buy it). But there’s also value in “indirect” conversions, where your email inspires some other interaction with your site or product.

For example, say I send an email promoting a report download. My subscriber opens the email—and then does nothing. But my email reminds them that there’s other content on my blog that they want to check out. Later on, they visit and read some posts, see a promotion for a weekly email they’re interested in, and decide to sign up for it. Is this conversion the one that the original email intended? No, but the email was still the catalyst that started the subscriber down the path to signing up for a new email list, so it’s an indirect conversion.

APRIL MULLEN, SR. MARKETING STRATEGIST AT SELLIGENT, SAYS:

Very simply, an email conversion is when a desired action takes place as a result of a customer receiving an email from your brand. Many marketers, though, consider an email conversion taking place when email is attributed as the source after a customer makes a purchase or some other action such as registering for a webinar or signing up for a contest. That view is fairly myopic, though. Email is so much more than the final conversion event. It has a critical hand in the revenue-driving process by moving your customers down the funnel toward the website through a series of micro-conversions.

What’s a micro-conversion, you ask? They are all the smaller, desired actions that your customers go through to reach the end goal you had in mind for the campaign. Everything from delivered, opened, clicked, etc. should be considered as conversion events or micro-conversions that all have a hand in a campaign’s success.

In fact, if we really consider where the sale/registration/contest entry takes place, which is on a website, then email’s ultimate conversion event is really a click that passes a customer on to the website. I believe email’s ultimate goal is to sell a click because email isn’t actually the place where the final conversion event takes place (that is, unless you are one of those exceptionally innovative brands that has figured out a good experience to sell right from email without driving customers to your website).

The next time you see an email campaign that has incredible click-throughs, but low conversions, don’t blame email. Unless it over-promised something that the website couldn’t deliver, the email did its job.

JOHN CALDWELL, PRESIDENT OF RED PILL EMAIL, SAYS:

Broadly speaking, conversion means any desired, measurable action taken by prospects and/or customers, irrespective of channel. That was the definition of conversion in pre-internet direct marketing. It’s the broad definition of conversion in email, as well.

A conversion doesn’t always involve money changing hands. A conversion can be filling out a form or downloading a report. This is especially true with high-consideration, high-ticket, long-sales-cycle purchases, such as the business-to-business prospecting that marketing-services providers typically engage in. However, for some organizations, conversion always means a sale. Those are called conversions to sale.

Whether or not conversions involve immediate sales, it is important to measure the value of those conversions on a rolling monthly and quarterly basis. Measure the number of sales that result from the period’s conversions and divide the number of sales by the number of conversions to get the conversion-to-sale percentage.

But remember, any of these desired actions cannot be considered conversions unless they’re a result of some action taken by the organization. You want to be able to accurately gauge your marketing efforts without artificially inflating them with serendipitous leads and sales.

THE RISK OF CONVERSION INFLATION

Our experts make great points and the distinctions they make are valuable ones. But at the same time, it’s easy to see how confusion can arise and conversion inflation can occur.

The risk is that email marketing programs become out of alignment with business goals and objectives so that you may have a “successful” email program that doesn’t contribute to the success of the business. While the conversions associated with a campaign or email can vary from top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, the conversions that business leaders talk about and care about exist primarily at the bottom of the funnel.

The easiest way to avoid fuzzy metrics, definition creep, and false equivalencies is to keep track of campaign goals and metrics, but then also translate those results so they match up with the business’s goals and metrics. Keeping your email-centric metrics separate and distinct from your business-centric metrics will ensure that your email marketing will be a success in the eyes of your business’s leaders.

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The Complete Guide to Email Automation for Beginners

If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably heard of email marketing automation.

Email marketing automation is an essential part of building a profitable email list for any online business.

In this article I’ll try to cover some important points:

1. How does email automation work? 
2. What type of events trigger automation? 
3. The main terms you need to know before getting started 
4. Email marketing automation tools 

If you are unsure of everything email automation can do for you, then read on…

How does email automation work?

With email automation, when an event happens, an email is triggered (automatically sent). The email is sent from your email marketing tool or from your marketing automation tool.

The relevance of the email, and its timing is important. With a bit of smart automation, you can send the right email at the right time and to the right person, with information that is relevant to them, based on the actions they take on your website.

Another important thing is cleaning your email list. By doing so, you know that the email addresses are real and still active. Read more about how to clean your email list here.

What type of events trigger an automation

Below are some simple examples to understand what I am talking about:

• Email after someone signs up to your email list 
• Email when a website visitor is a previous subscriber – When someone is an email subscriber and visits your website, some email marketing tools can track which pages they have visited on your website and then trigger an email based on this. 
• Survey response – You sent an email to your subscribers and asked them if they were interested in a product. Based on their answer, a different email (or series of emails) is automatically sent. 
• Cart abandonment email – If you collect the email address of the person during the sales process – or if you already have the email address as the customer is an existing subscriber – you can follow up via email to encourage them to come back. 

Did you know that the average cart abandonment rate for e-commerce providers is over 60%. More than half of shoppers abandon their purchase after adding products to their cart.

What are the main terms you need to know before you start with email automation?

Before you get started with email automation, you need to get familiar with some of the most used terms of email marketing:

• Opt-in/Subscribe – when someone opts in to receive emails from you 
• Double opt-in – when someone opts in to receive emails from you and they need to confirm their opt-in 
• Spam – when someone doesn’t opt-in and you send them emails, or when someone does optin and you overdo it 
• Unsubscribe – when someone unsubscribes from your email list 
• Trigger – describes an event that causes something to happen (an email is sent) 
• Sequence – the sequence of emails that are sent after an event happens 
• Email campaign/Autoresponder – a series of emails that are sent for a specific event 
• Bounce rate – the rate at which emails are not delivered. A soft bounce is temporary, but a hard bounce is permanent and means that your message can never be delivered to that email address. 
• CTR – stands for Click-Through-Rate and is the number of times people click on links within an email 

Email marketing automation tools

The main difference between an email automation tool and a basic email marketing tool, is the functionality and the price. An email marketing tool is used for sending regular emails such as newsletters. With a marketing automation tool you can build automation around those emails.

Some features of a marketing automation tool are:

• email sequence builder 
• landing page builder 
• analytics 
• program management – manage marketing campaigns across multiple channels 
• online behavior tracking – email subscribers visiting your website 
• and more. 

If you’re looking for a marketing automation tool, you have a large variety to choose from.

Here are some popular examples: 

• ConvertKit – designed specifically for bloggers 
• GetResponse – growing functionality, but not as powerful as some of the other tools below 
• InfusionSoft – complex to use but very powerful 
• Ontraport – doesn’t integrate with as many products as InfusionSoft does 
• HubSpot – very useful and comprehensive tool, but the price will be higher compared to the other two 

What are the steps for building an email automation sequence

For any sequence that you want to build, the required steps will be similar.

1. Find out who you want to attract

Start by analyzing the customers who have bought from you in the past and try to figure out what are the characteristics and interests of your customers.

2. Do some research about the issues of your existing customers/audience

The next step is to do some research and find out the issues your customers/audience encounter while using your services/product. Doing that will help you come up with an incentive for people to subscribe to your services/product.

3. Use the info collected and create your incentive

Use the information from the above steps to create a buzz around that topic. You could also create a guide as a solution or use the info in your opt-in message. This will get people to sign up and then all you have to do is to offer them a free trial of your product.

4. Direct people to make the action you want them to make

You need to create some sort of a “map”, to think in advance. First you have a welcome email, then some follow-up emails with links to the guide created in the step above. After that, what should they do?
They could become a customer, so you must move them to a customer list
If they don’t become customers, you can move them to a newsletter list

A tool you can use for that is Lucidcharts.

5. Create your emails

When you’re creating the emails, think about the relationship you want to build with the subscriber. Make them feel welcome, as part of the community, tell them about yourself and deliver your promises (free trial, a guide, etc.).

With every email you send, make sure that you are building a relationship as well as providing quality content.

6. Create the sequence in the email automation tool

You will need to create a sequence, add emails to that sequence and then specify when the emails will be sent.

An example:
Welcome email – send immediately
Email no.2 – 2 days later
Email no.3 – 4 days later
Free trial/discount offer – 5 days later
Offer reminder – 6 days later
Add them to a customer list if they bought, or to a newsletter list if they didn’t

*days are counted after the welcome email is sent

Note: Your series of emails will be different depending on the type of service you provide and who you are targeting.

7. Deploy your opt-ins and segment your audience

Now you can setup the opt-ins on your site. Depending on the marketing tool you use, you might have the functionality and opt-ins required, but it’s always better to use a specialized tool.

OptinMonster has some smart functionalities and it also provides multiple ways to collect opt-ins.

Some examples of OptinMonster functionalities:
opt-ins based on your blog categories; this means that you can segment people based on where they opted in.
different opt-ins based on the page they visit
different opt-in based on their location
different opt-in based on their actions (abandon the cart or product purchase)
A/B testing for different opt-ins

8. Drive traffic to the opt-ins

Now that everything is in place, it’s time to drive some traffic to the opt-ins. This could be organic traffic, referrals from other sites, paid traffic from Google, Bing, Facebook Ads, etc.

9. Analyze and optimize your results

Measure what works and optimize it. To improve your opt-in rate you can change the words, the opt-in style or the incentive.

The same thing is available for your email sequence: if you notice that people are not opening your emails, you can test different subject lines. Keep in mind that the way you communicate with your new email subscribers needs to be completely different to the way you communicate with existing customers. You will need to split these two out.
Wrap

Successfully segmenting your email list guarantees that messages are landing in the right inbox at the right time.

You can educate. You can connect. You can sell.

Remember, the number one rule of email marketing automation is to keep your users’ experience as your top priority, so think outside of the (in)box!

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4 ways to leverage email marketing with PPC

When it comes to the fast-moving world of internet marketing, everyone is looking for that competitive edge. If SEO and email marketing are already a developed part of your marketing campaign, PPC (pay-per-click) can be another useful tool to help grow both your conversions and your leads.

Use PPC to test email marketing elements

While we can use email marketing to increase leads in a variety of ways, PPC advertising offers a great way to test out the elements of your marketing emails, like landing pages or possible subject lines, before using them in a mass email. PPC gives you ample space to safely test out that edited copy, those new keywords or a new landing page and get an early peek at conversion rates. Using these tools can help optimize your message and increase its rate of success before sending it out to your entire list. That said, PPC ads are not only a great environment to test out elements of email marketing, but are versatile enough to try out nearly any element of your marketing campaign.

Build email lists with PPC

A great way for anyone to start introducing PPC into their campaign is by using it to grow your email list. While email can be used to increase both conversions and leads, PPC is a terrific way to boost both of those numbers even further. In this case, you can measure every email gained from a PPC ad as a conversion and a success toward this goal. Someone clicking on a PPC ad should arrive at a page that shows off the service or product one is offering, but with two possible ways of gathering potential customer information:

First, the primary focus of this page should always be the conversion itself. Part of this process will gather the customer’s email along with other information for things like receipts and contact or shipping information. Simple enough.

Then, you should always include a secondary call to action (CTA) that can still obtain an email conversion even if the person decides not to purchase. This shouldn’t distract from your main objective and should encourage potential customers to give you their email address and offer them something in return. An example of this might be “Sign up to be notified of future discounts” or “Sign up for news and tips” — anything that could appeal to someone interested in the ad but not quite ready to commit to what you’re offering.

Use your email marketing data to optimize your PPC ads 

The information you have gathered via sending conversion emails and looking at click-through rates isn’t just useful for your email marketing. While emails commit to a higher percentage of overall conversions for many businesses, PPC ads can be a powerful tool in gaining conversions themselves. The keywords, subjects, headlines and offers that have been successful in the past can likely be integrated into your PPC ads as well. At the least they are powerful starting benchmarks to help augment your marketing strategy. This can be great information in reaching out to a brand-new audience or wider market, and increasing your numbers across the board.

Plan PPC campaigns to boost email click-through rates 

A large part of successful advertising at its core isn’t just about the message itself and how strong it is, but about the amount of exposure to your message that your potential customers receive. Time and time again research shows us the power of the Exposure Effect, and how customers who are exposed to a product or service multiple times are simply more likely to commit to a purchase. PPC ads can provide more exposure to your message outside of your emails. You can do this by starting a PPC ad campaign that begins a day or a two before your email campaign goes out, and ends a few days afterward. The awareness and exposure of these PPC, ads coupled with your hard-hitting emails, can work well together to increase conversions.


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Email Marketing Services: The Deliverability Myth

I had enough.

Every time I review an email marketing service, there’s a smart guy who comments on that post like this:

“You might pay less per month with another service, but how well does it deliver your mail? Do they get through the ISP barricades? Does the email land in a spam folder before it reaches the intended party?”

Then they tell me that they use AWeber. Or GetResponse. Because the deliverability of the emails sent via these services is awesome.

It should be clear to all of us that there are good companies (usually AWeber and GetResponse) and bad or not so good companies (all the other companies). If you pay for the services of the good companies, the deliverability of your emails is guaranteed. You can live happily ever after.

I really had enough of this subtle crap some so called veterans (and other email marketing noobs) spread wherever they can …

1. AWeber. GetResponse. And Others. In My Spam Folder

Message sent via AWeber …

Message sent via GetResponse. By GetResponse! (Message sent to their affiliates on Dec 10, 2015)

I can keep posting such screen captures here. They aren’t the only examples.

And there are more companies whose servers were used to send emails in my Gmail’s spam folder. Not only these two. iContact, MailChimp, INinbox and others.

2. Are These Email Marketing Companies Lying to the Customers?

If you check these companies websites, you’ll see claims regarding a 99% deliverability. Or similar claims. Are they lying to their customers?

It’s easy to jump to such a conclusion. But it’s not fair. And not true.

These days any decent email marketing company has a deliverability team. And I’m sure that these teams work hard. But it’s not easy. And they aren’t Santa Claus, Superman or whatever hero some customers expect.

3. Why Are Some Email Messages Flagged by the Spam Filters?

Some email messages sent via these companies’ servers are flagged as spam. At the same time, I claim that these companies don’t lie in their deliverability claims.

It looks somehow confusing, doesn’t it? There’s a simple explanation though …

Almost all legit messages I got in my spam folder included one of these clarifications that you can also see in the screen captures posted above:

Why is this message in Spam? It’s similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.

Why is this message in Spam? It contains content that’s typically used in spam messages.

What exactly do they mean? Let me give you a clue. I’ll show you an example …

Recently S.D. has launched an internet marketing product and he sent via AWeber more emails to his affiliates. Four of them landed in my spam folder though. Not the first four. Not the last four. In no particular order.

The same sender, the same email marketing company.

What was the difference? The text of the emails.

4. The Unpleasant Truth Regarding Email Deliverability

If you don’t know what you’re doing, veteran or not, GetResponse employee or not, the email marketing company you send your emails from … cannot always save your ass. Especially if you’re into a sensitive niche (examples: WAH, MMO).

If you include blacklisted domain names in emails or if you use a marketing language similar to spammers’ language, your emails will be routed to the spam folders. Irrespective of the amazing email marketing company you use.

In the end, here’s a tip:

Never ever choose your email marketing service based on the claims regarding the awesome deliverability posted here and there by all kind of “experts.”

Almost all modern services have a good deliverability. You’re the one who can ruin the deliverability of your emails.

P.S. If you want to have a good laugh, go to Warrior Forum. You’ll find marketers unhappy with AWeber’s deliverability that moved to GetResponse and marketers unhappy with GetResponse’s deliverability that moved to AWeber. Everyone is ready to swear that their open rates are better now :)

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10 Avoidable Email Marketing Follies

Digital marketing has opened the door for a lot of brand messaging strategies. Even with the rise and rise of popular channels like social media, instant messaging, and now, conversational commerce for communication, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways for businesses to reach new and existing customers.





However, it only takes one quick swipe to land your email into the trash folder. Brands continue to make a lot of simple mistakes that can kill your entire campaign. Let’s discuss some of the most avoidable mishaps you can keep in mind when crafting your next company email.


1. Not personalizing

Perhaps the biggest and easiest email mistakes to avoid is failure to personalize. According to an oft-quoted study by Experian, personalized promotional emails have a 29 percent higher unique open rate and a 41 percent higher click-through rate than ones that are not. Beginning an email message with cookie cutter openers like “Dear Subscriber” or the notorious “Dear Valued Customer” is a one-way ticket to the trash folder.







Doing this makes the correspondence look like spam right off the bat. Contrast that with Spotify’s highly personalized emails that take into account your past browsing patterns, site interactions, and preferences. Kudos to them for making the reader feel like they’re the center of attention!







With GetResponse, it’s a breeze to personalize your emails dynamically for various customer segments.


2. Failing to integrate with other marketing channels

While email is one of the older digital marketing tactics, it is hardly a standalone channel anymore. Therefore, ensuring it works in tandem with your website, app, and social media profiles while incorporating customer data is a must. Even though this seems obvious, there are a number of obstacles that stand in the way.

Integrating multiple channels with your email marketing strategy means that each tool must work in concert to provide the most relevant content in the most appealing way. Every consumer touchpoint needs to be linked to allow the flow of information to run smoothly. Marketers have been struggling with this concept for a long time.







Properly merging multiple channels is crucial in creating more targeted and consistent communication. In order to ensure consistency across all of the channels where you market, you need to make sure your inter-departmental teams communication and document sharing is up to snuff.

Surmount the risk of weak multi-channel campaigns by getting your content creation, customer support, sales, SEO, PR, and email marketing departments work together using a collaboration tool like WorkZone. Individuals and teams working on different campaigns – paid or organic – can easily stay on top of what the others are doing and share updates with them.






3. Bad subject lines

The subject line is by far the most vital part of the entire email. It is the first (and only assured) thing a viewer will see when the email shows up in their inbox. It is what makes them decide whether or not they want to read it.

Subject lines determine the life and death of your email. Drawing in readers depends on how carefully you craft it. Don’t go overboard with buzzwords or “free” or “amazing.” Excessive use can come across as clickbait and will result in a trip to the trash folder. That said, there are no hard and fast rules for subject lines – even a spammy, all caps subject line might grab attention now and then:







You’ll come across innumerable studies and articles on how to write the right subject line that will deliver 541 percent more responses, but the long and short of it is that you need to creatively make it clear, concise and clever. Find a happy medium between boring and overly ambitious. Let your brand’s persona shine through!


4. Focusing solely on promotion

Email marketers should prioritize engaging customers instead of spouting corporate jargon. Consumers today are becoming less and less susceptible to blatant sales tactics such as this:





While the ultimate goal is obviously to sell your product or service, the focus should be on delivering valuable, relevant content. Try doing things like providing links to your blog posts within the email body, directing viewers to compelling brand material instead of just in-your-face promotions.

I’m not advocating not selling your product by any stretch of imagination. All I want to emphasize here is that you need to find the elusive balance of content, design, and deals in your emails.

5. Not proofreading thoroughly

There is perhaps nothing worse than sending out a business email riddled with typos and grammatical mistakes. When this happens, a good deal of your professionalism is diminished. Take a look at this “small” mishap:





In the subject line, “Not Get It” was most likely supposed to be “Now Get It.” See how one letter can make a huge difference? This error completely changes the whole message of the email.

As you can see, the margin for error is extremely small. Before hitting send, be sure you’ve gone over the entire message multiple times. It also helps to get a second pair of eyes on the content before it gets sent out. A tool such as Grammarly will be of immense help, especially if you’re composing quick emails in your browser itself.


6. Not having a call-to-action (CTA)

The end goal of a business email is to push the viewer in the direction that leads to a conversion of some sort. Whether it be directing to product pages, blog content, or just your home page, a good CTA is essential. Failure to place one within the email will result in minimal return and your click-through rate will suffer. Take a look at this email:







While this imagery is compelling and informative about the deal being offered, where does the viewer go from here? There is no obvious CTA button or link to follow.

The CTA is what the entire email leads to. They are one of the most common factors used in A/B testing. GetResponse of course lets you test every aspect of your emails and other marketing ventures. Even the little things like color or text on a CTA button can make a huge different in gaining conversions.


7. Too many CTAs

At the other end of the spectrum, adding too many CTAs can make your email come across as cluttered and unfocused. At first glance, they tend to look like excessive spam and readers will be inclined to skip over it altogether. Take a look at this one:







While the promotion itself isn’t bad, there are just too many options available for one email.

It’s best to keep to one, concise CTA. In fact, emails with a single, hyper-focused call-to-action can increase clicks by 371 percent and can even boost sales by 1617 percent!

Think of your email like a sales funnel in itself. The design should work to bring the viewer to a clear-cut outcome without a second thought.


8. Not getting the timing right

Apart from the email itself, the timing you choose to send out your business material is an extremely important factor to keep in mind. If an email is sent at a bad time, all the effort you put into crafting the subject line, content, CTAs, and graphics was for nothing.

For example, if you are a B2B company and send out an email blast at 5:30 pm on a Friday, chances are, very few people will be on the receiving end and it will be buried come Monday. CoSchedule has put together a number of studies that have found the most optimal times to send business emails.







Additionally, take into account the geographical dispersal of your audience across different time zones. Your email marketing tool will have a simple function to segment your lists and avoid mishaps like these.


9. Sending too many/not enough emails

Flooding your viewers’ inbox multiple times per day is a surefire way to either get your emails deleted, or worse, have viewers unsubscribe. On the other hand, not sending enough can result in consumers forgetting about your brand. You need to find the perfect balance of persistence without being annoying. As each business is unique with a different set of followers, this can be tricky.

For example, National Debt Relief tried to send out promotional emails every day or so. As it turned out, receiving debt consolidation emails that frequently didn’t sit very well with their subscribers and they lost nearly 15 percent of their list before deciding to tone it down.

This will more than likely take some trial and error. Start small and gauge the results. Look at your open rates and find a rhythm that works.


10. Neglecting key metrics

Perhaps the biggest advantage of marketing in the digital world is the ability to track results and learn from both victories and failures. In terms of email marketing, keeping an eye on the reporting section is crucial for any campaign. You will gain all kinds of insights like what kind of messaging results in higher click through rates, how many email addresses should be taken off the list, which graphics work best, and much more.

Failure to look into your detailed reports and data is one of the biggest sins to commit in digital marketing. Without data-driven information, how do you know the degree in which your brand messaging resonates with the target audience?

More importantly, without collecting data on customer actions following the campaign, your ability to nurture leads and send follow-up messages is severely compromised.

There are six key metrics to keep an eye on throughout an email marketing campaign:
Click-through rate – the number of subscribers who clicked on links in the email content as a percentage of total delivered emails
Conversion rate – the number of recipients who followed the sales funnel in the email and took the desired action as a percentage of total delivered emails
Bounce rate – the percentage of emails that were not delivered successfully
List growth rate – the rate of net increase in the number of subscribers in your lists
Sharing rate – the number of recipients who forwarded the email or clicked the share buttons linked to their social networks as a percentage of total delivered emails
Overall ROI – the net profit the email campaign is generating compared to how much you’re spending on it expressed as a percentage of the total cost

Consistently monitoring your campaign and tweaking it is a complex process, but it’s the key to determining success in the future.


In conclusion

The good news is that all these mistakes do not require an enormous effort to fix. With email marketing, the best you can do is learn from your past and try again. The game is all about closely watching the data and finding the right combination of content, showmanship, timing, and creativity.

What have been your greatest email marketing follies? What did you learn from them? Tell us about it in the comments below.

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