Email marketing has been a reliable tool in the marketing arsenal for decades, and there is a strong reason for that – it’s among the most cost-effective ways to reach a wide audience and drive significant results.
However, as consumer preferences and exigences and technology evolve, your email marketing strategies are expected to adapt. In this article, we’ll exp/lore 10 well-known email marketing practices that are outdated and potentially harmful to your campaigns. Let’s dive in!
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In the past, marketers would send out mass emails to their entire subscriber list, hoping to appeal to everyone. However, this one-size-fits-all approach rarely leads to good results.
The Solution
Personalisation is key. Do not send identical emails to everyone, segment your subscribers taking into consideration their interests, preferences, and past interactions. Make each email message significant and add value for the user, use dynamic content and craft your messages accordingly.
There are still email marketing campaigns that do not consider mobile optimization. With the majority of emails being opened on smartphones, an email that looks cluttered or hard to read on a small screen can be an instant turn-off.
The Solution
Adopt a mobile-first approach. Use responsive design to ensure your emails look good on any device. Keep your message concise and easy to read, and make sure any buttons and links are large enough to be tapped on a touchscreen.
3. Overlooking the Preheader Text
The Problem
The preheader text is the snippet of content that appears in the email preview. Many marketers forget to optimise this text, leaving it as a generic “View this email in your browser” or even worse, an empty space.
The Solution
Use the preheader text to entice recipients to open your email. Make it engaging and relevant to the content of your email, creating a sense of curiosity and urgency.
4. Reliance on ‘No-Reply’ Addresses
The Problem
Using a ‘no-reply’ email address gives the impression that your brand isn’t interested in hearing from its customers. This can discourage engagement and make your email seem impersonal.
The Solution
Encourage two-way communication by using a monitored email address. This way, subscribers can respond with questions, feedback, or even just a simple “thank you”. This can help build trust and foster a stronger relationship with your audience.
While visually appealing emails can be enticing, filling your email with too many images and graphics can be counterproductive. This may slow down loading times and make your email look cluttered.
The Solution
Balance visual elements with text. Use images and graphics sparingly and purposefully to enhance your message, not overshadow it. Remember, some email clients block images by default, so ensure your message is still clear without them.
6. Inconsistency in Sending Frequency
The Problem
Inconsistent email frequency can lead to confusion and disengagement. Sending too many emails may result in unsubscribes, while sending too few may cause your audience to forget about your brand.
The Solution
Establish a consistent sending schedule that suits your audience’s preferences. Monitor your open and unsubscribe rates to find the optimal frequency for your specific audience. Communicate your schedule clearly to subscribers and stick to it.
7. Relying on Generic Call-to-Actions (CTAs)
The Problem
Using generic CTAs like “Click Here” or “Learn More” may not be enough to motivate your subscribers to take action. These lacklustre phrases don’t provide much context or urgency.
The Solution
Create compelling, specific CTAs that clearly communicate the value of taking action. Use action words and phrases that evoke a sense of urgency or exclusivity, such as “Claim Your Discount Now” or “Get Exclusive Access Today”.
Failing to maintain a clean email list can result in high bounce rates, low engagement, and even being flagged as spam. This is due to inactive or invalid email addresses remaining on your list.
The Solution
Regularly clean your email list by removing inactive subscribers, hard bounces, and invalid email addresses. This will improve your deliverability and engagement rates, as well as protect your sender’s reputation.
9. Focusing Solely on Promotional Content
The Problem
If all you ever send is promotional content, your subscribers may become fatigued and disinterested. This can lead to unsubscribes and diminished results from your campaigns.
The Solution
Balance promotional content with educational, informative, and entertaining content that adds value to your subscribers. By providing a mix of content types, you’ll keep your audience engaged and interested in what you have to say.
10. Ignoring Metrics and Analytics
The Problem
Many marketers still rely on their gut feelings or outdated best practices when it comes to their email marketing campaigns. However, ignoring metrics and analytics can lead to subpar results and missed opportunities for improvement.
The Solution
Monitor and analyse your email marketing metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Use these insights to identify trends, optimise your campaigns, and make data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.
In Conclusion
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, it’s essential to adapt and refine your email marketing strategies. By ditching these outdated practices and embracing modern, data-driven techniques, you’ll be well on your way to delivering more effective and engaging email campaigns. Stay ahead of the curve, and watch your email marketing efforts soar to new heights.
Content marketing is the foundation of any successful digital marketing strategy and for good reason. It allows businesses to connect with their audience deeper, establish trust, and provide valuable information that can increase sales and brand loyalty.
However, creating content is not enough. You need a well-thought-out content creation strategy to guide your efforts and ensure your content is aligned with your business goals. This is where content creation strategy consulting comes in. Most of the time small businesses create their content strategy in-house and when they run into issues they hire external strategy consulting services.
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In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps of an effective content creation strategy so you know how to work with a consulting company and what to ask for to unlock the power of content and take your business to the next level.
Ask your content creation strategy consulting collaborator for expert advice to improve:
The Understanding of Your Audience
Understanding your audience is the first step in creating an effective content strategy. Who are they? What do they want? What challenges are they facing? What are their pain points?
You can answer these questions by conducting market research and creating buyer personas. Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your audience’s needs, goals, and challenges and enable you to create content that resonates with them. Here your consultant can help.
Once you have a clear understanding of your audience, defining your objectives becomes critical to creating an effective content creation strategy. By identifying your goals, whether it’s generating leads, increasing brand awareness, or establishing thought leadership, you can ensure that your content is purposeful and measurable and, ultimately, helps your business achieve its desired outcomes.
The Definition of Your Objectives
Once you understand your audience, the next step is to define your objectives. What do you want to achieve with your content? Do you want to generate leads, increase brand awareness, or establish thought leadership?
Defining your objectives will help you create content that is aligned with your business goals and drives results.
It’s important to ensure that your objectives are measurable and specific so that you can track the success of your content creation strategy and make data-driven decisions for future efforts. Additionally, regularly reviewing and adjusting your objectives can help you stay agile and responsive to changes in your industry and audience.
The Development of Your Content Plan
With your audience and objectives in mind, it’s time to develop a content strategy. A content strategy is a roadmap that outlines the type of content you’ll create, how you’ll distribute it, and how to measure its success.
A content strategy helps you stay focused and consistent with your messaging and enables you to make data-driven decisions about your content creation efforts. By creating a well-defined content strategy, you can maximize the impact of your content and achieve your business goals more effectively.
Your content strategy should include the following:
Content types (e.g., blog posts, videos, infographics)
Content themes/topics
Content distribution channels (e.g., social media, email, website)
Content promotion tactics
Metrics for measuring success
The Quality of the Content Produced
Creating high-quality content in combination with modern web design is crucial for the success of your content marketing efforts. Your content should be informative, engaging, and relevant to your audience.
As we mentioned above, it’s important to consider the format of your content, such as written articles, videos, infographics, or podcasts, as different formats can appeal to different types of audiences and increase the overall effectiveness of your content strategy.
When creating content, consider the following:
Use a variety of content formats (e.g., blog posts, videos, infographics)
Use visuals to enhance your content (e.g., images, videos, infographics)
Use data and research to support your claims
Use a conversational tone that resonates with your audience
Optimize your content for search engines
The Distribution of Your Content
Creating high-quality content is just the first step. You also need to distribute your content effectively. Your distribution strategy should align with your content strategy and objectives.
There are various ways to distribute your content, such as social media, email marketing, guest blogging, and influencer marketing. Your distribution channels should be selected based on your audience’s preferences, behavior, and content consumption. Measuring the success of your distribution strategy will help you optimize and improve your approach over time.
Consider the following when distributing your content:
Use social media to promote your content
Include calls-to-action (CTAs) in your content to drive conversions
Use email marketing to distribute your content to your subscribers
Use paid promotion tactics (e.g., PPC, social media advertising) to increase visibility and reach
The Measurement of Your Results
Finally, to ensure the success of your content creation strategy, you need to measure your results. Measuring your results will help you understand what’s working and what’s not and enable you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy.
Consider the following metrics when measuring your results:
To analyze your results, you can use tools like Google Analytics to track traffic, engagement, and other key metrics. You can also solicit feedback from your audience through surveys, comments, and social media. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas of improvement and adjust your strategy as needed.
It’s also important to regularly review your content calendar and update it as necessary. This will help ensure that you stay on track with your goals and adjust your approach based on what’s working and what’s not.
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Conclusion
Creating a content creation strategy is essential for any business looking to reach and engage its audience effectively. With the right approach, you can unlock the power of content and drive meaningful results for your brand.
When creating your content creation strategy, it’s important to start by defining your goals and audience, conducting thorough research, and developing a comprehensive plan. You should also focus on creating high-quality, valuable content that resonates with your audience and delivers on your brand promise.
By following these best practices, analyzing your results, and refining your approach as needed, you can develop a winning content creation strategy that drives growth and success for your business.
Starting a business can be an overwhelming process for any entrepreneur, and having a content strategy in place is one of the most important steps.
However, startup companies often have limited resources when it comes to content marketing. This can make creating a successful content strategy challenging but certainly not impossible.
The key is to focus on what works best for your business and budget and make sure that the content you create aligns with your overall goals.
Here is a breakdown of some key steps for creating a content strategy for your startup.
What Makes a Reliable Startup Content Strategy?
A good content strategy will help you create engaging materials that attract potential customers and build your brand. It should also focus on creating valuable content that solves the problems of your customers and keeps them coming back.
For instance, if you’re a tech startup, your content might include tutorials on how to use your product or information about the latest industry trends.
As long as your content is relevant, informative, and entertaining, it will be more likely to engage your audience.
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Understand Your Target Audience
Understanding whom you are targeting with your content is essential for any successful content strategy. Knowing your target audience will help you create tailored materials that resonate with them at every step of their journey and build lasting relationships.
Think about the demographics of your target audience, such as their age, gender, and location. Understanding who they are, what are their pain points, and what they need to solve them will help you create content that meets their expectations.
To define your target audience, consider creating personas based on your ideal customer, which will help you craft content tailored specifically to their needs.
For example, if you’re targeting young professionals, you might create content about how your product will help them save time or money.
Define Your Goals and Objectives for Your Startup Content Strategy
The foundation of an effective content strategy is to define what you want to achieve with your content. Are you looking to attract new customers, build brand awareness, or promote your products or services?
Knowing your exact goals and objectives will guide you in conceiving content that is tailored to those objectives.
For instance, if your goal is to build brand awareness, you might create content that educates potential customers about your niche and the product or service you offer.
While you define your goals and objectives, it’s important to set realistic expectations. You should also keep track of the results of your content strategy so you can measure its success.
Set Measurable Goals
As a startup, you have to set measurable goals for your content and be aware of your tight budget. This will help ensure that you can track and measure the success of your content strategy.
Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART). If your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might set a goal of increasing website traffic by 20% in the next six months.
Remember to set goals for your content. For example, you might set a goal of increasing the number of clicks on your articles or videos by 10%. This will help you measure which content resonates with your target audience and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Create a Content Calendar
Once you have defined your goals and objectives, it’s time to create a content calendar. A content calendar is the frame of planning and scheduling your content in advance.
It should include the type of content, the topics covered, when it is published, and who is responsible for creating it. Meanwhile ensuring that your content is aligned with your goals and objectives and is being created on time.
A good calendar should also include any deadlines and special events that may require content creation. For instance, if you’re launching a new product, you might create content to promote it around the launch date.
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Of course, it’s important to track and analyze the results of your content strategy. The purpose is to identify which content works best for your target audience and adjust your strategy in consequence.
You should also ask for feedback from customers to ensure that your content fulfills their requirements and that they find all the necessary info. Feedback will be the basis for creating more valuable content that resonates with them and increases your chances to reach the business goals.
Choose the Right Platforms
The next step in creating an effective content strategy is to choose the right platforms. As a startup, you need to make sure that your content reaches your target audience.
Think about where your customers are most likely to come across your content and focus on those channels. You may also want to consider using paid advertising to reach a wider audience if the budget allows for it.
With the right platform, you can ensure that your content reaches the right people and drives results. Some popular content venues include social media, blogs, and email newsletters.
Prepare All Marketing Assets
You need to prepare all marketing assets needed for your content strategy. Marketing collateral may include visuals such as logos and images, videos, templates for creating content pieces, and any tools or software needed to measure the results of your efforts.
In order to pop up in search results, optimize your site for search engines. Improve the user experience on your website, and keep an eye on its loading speed and technicalities to generate a positive experience for your visitors.
To make your website more effective and eye-catching, try some website design agencies such as Designrush. Hiring external help is another option to ensure your website is user-friendly and optimized for search engines.
Other marketing assets may include promotional materials such as flyers, banners, and other items that can be used at events or conferences.
By being organized and preparing all of your marketing assets in advance, you’ll be able to create a more effective content strategy.
Source: YouTube
Prioritize Keyword Research
Once you have all of your assets ready, it’s time to do some keyword research. It is one of the most important steps in creating an effective content strategy.
Identify which keywords are relevant to your brand and target audience and create content that is useful for your buyers and accomplishes all the requirements to rank.
A solid keyword research strategy should also include a competitor analysis to see what keywords your competitors are targeting. It’s a way to identify potential gaps in the market and create content that stands out and may outrank the competition.
Help Your Audience Find Your Content
You should always make sure that your content is easy for your target audience to find. Be anywhere your audience is present. Besides optimizing your website for search engines, creating a content distribution plan that includes channels such as email newsletters, social media posts, influencer marketing, etc.
Paid distribution is another option you can test if you have the budget. Paid ads can help you reach a wider audience, spread the word and drive more traffic to your content.
Diversify Content Formats
To cater to your audience preferences be ready to diversify your content formats. Such an approach may include videos, podcasts, infographics, and even virtual reality experiences.
By diversifying your content formats, you can make sure that you’re covering all bases and reaching a wider range of customers.
Blog articles, case studies, and webinars are also great content types for startups. With these formats, you can provide valuable information to your customers, showcase the expertise of your business and give them a solid reason to choose you.
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Long-form content is an effective way to build trust with your customers. This type of content should cover topics in greater detail than shorter pieces like blog articles.
Some long-form content examples are eBooks, whitepapers, and webinars that provide valuable insights into a particular topic. It’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your industry and build trust with your customers.
When creating long-form content, focus on providing helpful and actionable information that your audience can use, such as step-by-step tutorials, tips and tricks, and case studies.
Publish a Case Study
Case studies are an effective way to showcase the success of your solutions. They can help you establish trust with customers, demonstrate how your solutions work, and show off your expertise in a particular industry.
When creating a case study, you should include an overview of the company, its goals and objectives, any challenges it faced, and results achieved. Try including metrics such as the number of new customers, new leads, increase in revenue, profits, and more.
Stay Flexible and Adaptable
It’s essential to stay flexible and adaptable when creating a content strategy. Trends in the industry can change quickly and you need to be ready to adjust your strategy.
You should always be open to trying new ideas and experimenting with different types of content. It is likely to give you an edge and stay ahead of the competition and create more engaging content for your target audience.
Finally, you need to review and revise your content strategy regularly to make sure it remains effective. Analyze the results of your efforts and make adjustments where necessary.
For example, when you notice that a certain type of content is not resonating with your target audience, you can switch to something else. Enhance what works to stay on top of trends and ensure that your content remains relevant and produces results.
Conclusion
By crafting and implementing an effective content strategy, you offer your startup the best chance of reaching its goals and growing.
Developing the right mix of content will help you build brand recognition and drive more traffic to your website.
Invited guest author
Nina Walker is a web designer and psychotherapist based in Phoenix, Arizona, US. Passionate about digital marketing and content writing. After finishing a course for content writing, she became a part of the DigitalStrategyOne agency. She writes short stories and blogs for sites.
Companies across the world tend to gain insights from customer data that is majorly extracted from customers’ payment records. For example, a customer buys bread from a particular brand and makes payments using debit cards, credit cards, or other online payment methods. Many brands selling related products such as jam, butter, brown bread, etc. can use this customer’s data to pitch them to buy their products by sending discounts and sales messages.
This changes if a customer is making a payment via cryptocurrency as it’ll become harder for brands to extract the said customer data. The reason behind this is that cryptocurrency does not keep any record of the payment history thus bringing a new set of challenges to the digital marketing industry.
As we move forward in time, blockchain and cryptocurrency are penetrating the digital marketing industry proving their utility. Hence, understanding how cryptocurrency impacts digital marketing becomes crucial. This article brings you insights on the same. Let’s get started.
Digital Marketing Today
Currently, digital marketing thrives on the shotgun approach to reach large audiences. This includes pushing advertisements, promotions, etc., and hoping it’d bring in higher conversion rates (like 2% of the reach.) Everyone from local businesses to brands that offer international shipping relies on this approach.
Private companies collect and sell the information to digital marketing stakeholders to target specific demographics. Notably, the viewers have very less to no control over how or when they’re exposed to this advertising content. They’re also not financially compensated for the time they spend watching the ads.
Lastly, even for advertisers, it is difficult to find out which ads were effective and what members of the audience responded to which ads. Here’s how cryptocurrency and blockchain technology changes all of this.
9 Ways on How Blockchain Impacts Digital Marketing
1. Impact on Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
In the current digital marketing world, third-party authorities/hosting platforms like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc. connect advertisers and website owners (with a wide range of audiences) by taking a cut from their profits. They’re the middlemen that connect advertisers and website owners.
Blockchain eliminates the need for these platforms that host advertisements. Advertisers can simply upload their ads to the blockchain and the blockchain will make them available to its platform users.
Blockchain further verifies that every user is genuine and that the website is only charging the advertiser for genuine clicks.
We live in an era where consumers care not just about the quality and pricing of products, but also about the integrity of the brand and its processes. In the past, people would shop for whatever was being advertised to them. This would leave them with multiple questions like:
Was the item organic?
Was it authentic?
Is the product shipped from the said source?
Was it made in a fair-pay environment?
Thanks to blockchain, buyers can finally know the answers to these questions. Blockchain allows companies to verify exactly where an item was made or produced, what kinds of soil the item was grown in, or how much the workers got paid to work there.
Example: Unilever teamed up with IBM on a blockchain project that would help them disclose information about their business footprint. Their goal also includes disclosing the way they collect and utilize information on customers, hence maintaining full transparency.
3. Impact on SEO: Better Keyword Research and Analysis
Did you know?
46% of all searches on Google have a local search intent. And that the first organic results boast a CTR of 39.6% while the first local pack result boasts a CTR of 17.8%. In 2022, it is crucial for small businesses to invest in SEO and have a strong organic presence in their local market.
Doing so is not possible without leveraging advanced search tools at your disposal. Trying to check up on keyword rankings may sometimes become taxing and frustrating for SEO professionals. Even with all the advanced analytics platforms, it can feel like an uphill battle.
Along with the location, login status, device type, browser type, and cookies — keyword positions dramatically affect users. Blockchain can come to the rescue here. Blockchains are incorruptible and easily accessible, and can thus provide fast results, accurate keyword rankings, and so on. It also ensures that the information that it gives out requires minimal analysis.
Blockchain technology provides a modern approach to tracking digital campaigns. The current tracking methods rely on platforms’ proprietary technology and a black box of data that we cannot see within. Blockchain could lead to tracking information from impression to conversion even as we begin to move away from cookies, unlike the current tracking method.
Example: A digital advertising blockchain protocol named Lucidity aims at bringing complete transparency to the digital advertising world. It stores and verifies all marketing events using blockchain technology. The marketing teams would get real-time data about their campaigns and payments using smart contracts.
Industry Impact: A well-known brand, Toyota observed a 21% increase in its advertisement campaign performance using Lucidity’s platform. Toyota eliminated wasteful spending by blacklisting sites with higher discrepancies. They were able to achieve this simply by shifting their budget to higher-performing sites.
5. Middlemen Become Irrelevant
It would be fair to say that digital marketing has concentrated traffic to a few select sites and advertising networks. Traditional search engines (middlemen) decide what ads are most relevant for a particular user and bombard them with pop-ups against their permission.
Blockchain-powered networks have empowered the arbitrage shift from established middlemen to the users themselves. The users can enter into smart contracts directly with the advertisers and have full control over how much information they are willing to share.
Hence the advertisers will be able to pay the users directly for access to their personal information and get approvals to serve them the ads. Blockchain-based startups like RightMesh also reward users with blockchain tokens for sharing their data.
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6. Consumers Get Rewarded
The platform users will be able to select what ads they want to view online. If they engage with the ad’s content, they will be rewarded with crypto tokens. They’ll also be paid crypto tokens for lending their personal data to advertisers. In short, it is the user that will be paid for their information and will have full control over their own data.
Example: A privacy-oriented software company, Brave uses blockchain to block unwanted ads. It uses rewards to enable users to reward frequented sites and content creators with its basic attention tokens (BATs.) Brave’s ad blocker uses blockchain to track harmful ad popups and neutralize them.
7. No More Click Fraud
The ad clicks made by bots are a major challenge for the advertising space — it ends up costing advertisers a lot of money. In a blockchain environment that uses decentralized servers for digital activity monitoring, click frauds are reduced if not eliminated altogether.
Blockchain being the unhackable distributed ledger can help reduce online fraud of this kind. It provides transparency for people involved in a transaction without giving away their personal details, along with proving they are real people. Most Ethereum and bitcoin wallets provide the utmost secrecy concerning the users’ confidential information.
Example: IBM uses a blockchain platform to verify its ads supply chain, and find fraudulent data.
8. Higher Lead Conversions
Collecting data from various sources, combining it, and running various campaigns based on it is the most common marketing approach. However, it isn’t an accurate one. There’s a clear lack of consistency and accuracy when campaigns are run based on this data.
Blockchain will help get access to precise data and insights as blockchain transactions are decentralized. It means that data collection will be possible directly from the consumer. The consumer will have the liberty to choose the types of ads they actually want to see rather than being bombarded with unnecessary ones.
In addition to that, they’ll be fairly compensated for the same. This ensures a higher ROI from the campaign run-off.
How? You’d ask!
The consumers who agree to give your brand the data are most likely already interested in your products or services. Hence, generating quality leads becomes easier. Imagine, having access to an entire database of customers who are ready to make a purchase.
This approach requires higher costs and efforts but, you’ll be able to collect far better leads using blockchain as compared to any other traditional method.
9. Enhancing Privacy Protection and Security
Data security is a huge issue for everyone involved in online transactions of products and services. At some point or another, everyone wonders if their identity or financial information has been compromised. With blockchain, each transaction is verified and publicly visible, but the people involved are anonymous. This ensures privacy and security.
The Verdict
As crypto-driven blockchain technology becomes more pervasive, digital marketers must have a plan to incorporate them into their marketing campaigns and overall strategies. They must take into account the benefits and drawbacks of engaging in crypto-driven advertising.
Cryptocurrency, sure, is a challenging concept for marketers but it is not a difficult one for those who’re looking forward to engaging in more transparent and authentic marketing practices.
Do your email marketing campaigns work effectively? No? Probably you make some common email writing mistakes that scare away your customers and kill your sales. If you fix these mistakes, you will double your sales in a week, most probably.
Sounds like a good deal to you?
Here is a list of the top ten email writing mistakes that marketers make. Check it out and learn tricks that will help you improve your email campaigns:
Misspelling the customer’s name
How do you feel when the barista gets your name wrong? The chances are you feel like you are not “the most valued customer” in a coffee shop. And how do your customers feel when you misspell their names? They feel the same way.
As Dale Carnegie says, “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” If you want people to reply to your emails and buy from you, make sure you’ve got their names right. Check it manually.
Look through the names on your email list. If you spot typos in first names, don’t hesitate to fix them. For instance, if there are names like “Jescica” and “Luiis” you can correct them respectively as “Jessica” and “Luis”.
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If some names on the list sound like fake ones, you should delete them. For instance, you can’t consider the word “Hgmmcfdlert” as a real name, and you can’t use it in your marketing emails. Probably, the customer typed this word in a signup form by mistake. So, you should better start your email with the standard phrase “Hi there” rather than an awkward one “Hi Hgmmcfdlert”.
Auto-corrected words
Text editing tools are helpful, but you can’t trust them fully. Sometimes they “overdo” their job and substitute misspelled words with irrelevant words. Take a look at the following real-life examples of wrongly autocorrected words:
● Baked => Naked
● Drink => Drive
● Castle => Casket
● Drums => Drugs
Well, if you make such a mistake in a message sent to a friend, it will not cause you big trouble. But if you use a wrongly autocorrected word in your marketing email, that may ruin your campaign.
So, please, don’t rely on advanced technologies fully, even on AI-powered ones. Read the text of your email before sending it to the client.
Not being specific
When you’re writing emails, you should be specific. You should articulate your offers clearly and precisely.
Let’s say you want to offer your customers a discount. Don’t put it this way:
“Click the link below to get a discount.”
Explain what kind of discounts you are offering and to what products these discounts are applied:
“Click the link below to get 15% off on our new dress collection.”
The more detailed information you provide to your customers, the more likely they will click the link and place an order. Modern customers tend to make more informed buying decisions, and you should keep that in mind when crafting your email marketing campaigns.
Misspelled company’s name
Your company’s name is something you write “on autopilot”. It’s a word that you don’t bother to check for typos. You have written your company’s name thousands of times. And you feel like you always spell this word right, even if it has a tricky spelling like Schwarzkopf or Wittgenstein&Co.
But the truth is you can make a typo in any word, and your company’s name is not an exception. You should always check your company’s name, email, phone number, and domain name for mistakes. It will help you protect your brand image and increase sales.
Not adding a call-to-action
Probably one of the biggest email writing mistakes marketers make is not asking recipients to complete a specific action. If a marketing email doesn’t include a call-to-action button, the effectiveness of the campaign will be close to zero.
It’s not enough to craft a valuable offer for customers. It’s necessary to convince customers to accept this offer right here and right now. After reading your email, customers should have a clear understanding of what steps they should take next:
● Visit your website
● Make a call
● Add a product to the shopping cart
● Complete checkout
● Download a file
● Book an appointment
● Buy tickets
● Write a review
● Join your platform
● Get a quote
● Watch demo
● Sign up for your giveaway, etc.
Image source: Email from Starbucks.
Overusing call to actions
While some marketers don’t use call-to-actions, others overuse them. Probably you received such emails where you were asked to complete a few actions: to visit a website, to follow X brand on Facebook, to write a review for Y product, etc. I bet you completed none of the actions specified.
Let’s face it. We live in an age where the attention span is extremely short. To close more sales, we should get rid of distractions that can steal the attention of our customers. We should eliminate the unnecessary call to action and draw the customers’ attention to one action we want them to complete.
A call to action itself should consist of two or three words. It must be straightforward and concise. For instance, if you want prospects to buy your handbag, choose one simple CTAs “shop handbags” or “buy handbags”.
Image source: Email from Jimmy Choo.
Writing too-long emails
There is no such thing as a “perfect length of a marketing email”. Thus, you don’t need to focus on a word count.
However, you should try to keep your email as short and concise as possible. Don’t overload your email with unnecessary details. Provide only essential information that adds value to the customer.
The fun fact is that it’s easier for most people to write a long email rather than a short one. Why? Crafting short emails require more wit, creativity, and writing talent. It is always more challenging to articulate an idea using ten words instead of 100 words.
If you use to write long emails, it’s time for you to revisit your approach to email writing. Consider getting help from a thesis writing company, or start editing your emails by yourself. Get rid of excessive wordiness in your emails, and you will increase conversion rates.
Making typos in a subject line
Will you open an email if you spot a typo in a subject line? The odds are you will decide that this email is not worth reading and move it to the bin.
How does it happen that marketers make typos in email subject lines? This phenomenon is easy to explain. Modern marketers heavily rely on proofreading tools and services. They proofread the text of each email automatically, but not the subject lines. Eventually, marketers forget to check the subject lines manually.
What about you? Do you pay special attention to a subject line when proofreading your email? No? You definitely should. It will help you increase not only open rates but also sales.
Using professional jargon
You should understand that your customers have different knowledge and backgrounds. You can’t expect all of them to know niche-specific jargon. And you can’t use jargon in your marketing emails.
When customers see an unfamiliar word, they get confused and feel stupid. And when customers get emails that include too many jargon words, they feel like the letter is written in a foreign, unknown language.
Your task is to show your customers that you speak the same language. You should write your email in simple language, avoiding industry-specific terms, or explaining them, if necessary.
Grammar and typos are not the only things you should care about. You should also double-check whether you have specified the correct date and time.
If you don’t want to confuse your customers, don’t forget to check how many days are in a chosen month before writing an email. Sounds like obvious advice to you?
Well, it may surprise you, but some inattentive marketers specify non-existing dates like September 31st (there are only 30 days in September) or February 30th in their sales emails. For instance, they write that the “coupon will be valid till September 31st”. You don’t want to make such a silly mistake, do you?
If some of your clients live abroad, it might be tricky for you to understand what format is better to use D/M/Y (European) or M/D/Y (American). The best solution here is to use another format that everyone can understand the right way and write “May 6th” instead of 6/05/2021 or 5/06/2021.
Conclusion
Have you just realized that you make one (or a few) of these mistakes on a regular basis? Don’t panic. Acknowledging the fact that you are making a mistake is the first step in fixing this mistake. You are moving in the right direction!
Now you should revisit your approach to email writing and find a way to create error-free emails. It will help you increase sales and achieve other marketing goals you have set.
You are just a few steps away from huge success. Embrace changes, fix mistakes, and you will accomplish everything you have been dreaming of.
Invited Guest Writer:
Daniela McVicker is a digital marketing connoisseur. Daniela’s interests are related to all things blogging and SEO. Nowadays she is a collaborator of Essayguard and various other businesses where she shares some of her marketing experiences and concentrates on helping them gain awareness in the online world.
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