In recent times, when traveling and meeting in-person has become a limited option, one of the most powerful tools to reach your customers is via personalized and meaningful emails. If you are wondering if Email is still worth your time, then you should see these stats:
- Emails generates $38 for every $1 spent
- 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement in the past 12 months
- 80% of business professionals believe email marketing decreases churn and increases customer retention
Yet, if you are falling short of your goals before jumping to conclusions, let’s check if you are making some of the most common mistakes while emailing your customer. Even the best of the brands are not untouched by these mistakes–so let’s have a look if you are making any avoidable mistakes that are pulling your revenues backward.
What mistakes do you spot?
As per Databox research, 52% of marketers have made 2-5 email marketing mistakes in the last year. Topping the charts is ‘sent a marketing list with broken links’ followed by ‘sent the wrong marketing mail’ and ‘sent the marketing mail to a wrong list’.
Human errors are almost unavoidable, but not sending an apology mail could make your brand seem arrogant or careless. So let’s look at some of the common mistakes most eCommerce businesses make and how to avoid them:
7. Wrong, Broken, or No Links at All:
We have all received emails with wrong, broken, or no links at all. It’s frustrating and we all know that. This small mistake can cost a huge loss to an eCommerce store. For instance, if you are running a sale campaign and providing discounts to your customers. You send a mail with a broken link to access the sale, you know that your customers won’t take the pain to visit your online store, search for the products on sale and then decide whether to buy it or not. Just because of that broken link you would lose that potential customer at the first step itself.
This is why reviewing your emails thoroughly is important. You can follow at least a do-er and check-er model so your friend/colleague does a once-over. You can also make it a practice to send promotional emails containing links to your own team first to check and verify if everything is working as expected. But still, if you miss out and send a mail with a broken link you must send an apology mail with the link attached, you can also provide an additional discount or coupon as a goodwill gesture.
6. Sending Emails with Wrong Personalization:
We are all wired to respond better to personalized communication as opposed to a generic one. If your readers have their name, or any other personal detail in the first few sentences, chances are their subconscious will increase the likelihood of their response to your CTAs.
But system-based personalization can also sneak in errors, as most of the email automation tools will allow you to insert personalization tags that are auto-populated. Senders often fail to check whether the tags are working as they should-resulting in poor customer experience. A test mail to self and a fresh pair of eyes can catch these seemingly silly mistakes.
5. Sending Wrong or Incomplete Email:
Imagine your team has a great idea for a campaign, you wrote the best copy and chose outstanding visuals but miss mentioning the duration of the campaign! Or worse, you sent it to a completely different segment.
These mistakes can be a reason for an enormous embarrassment. However, it’s not the end of the world. You can still fix it by acknowledging the mistake and sending an apology mail with the correct content. Test emails and verification by a different team can also reduce this kind of error. You can also phase out the e-mail blasts to different segments instead of sending them all together.
4. Sending Emails with Typos:
Sending emails with typos could cast your brand in a poor light. Customers can perceive that you don’t take them seriously or that you’re careless. Typos can significantly affect the success of your campaigns. It can become a distraction that will directly affect the open rate and click rates.
You can avoid this mistake by proofreading the subject and the body of the email. In case you don’t have time for that, you can also take a second opinion by sending it to your colleagues and friends for review who can provide additional feedbacks apart from the typos. AI based writing-assistance tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid can also help avoid embarrassing typos.
3. Unresponsive Display–Garbled Emails:
With your customers using various screens to access emails, the onus is on you to ensure that your emails are readable across browsers, platforms and devices. E-mails that display incorrectly on mobiles are often deleted in less than 3 seconds.
Most Email Marketing tools including Qubriux, provide customization of emails for mobile and desktop devices. You can also check the preview of your emails across platforms and screen-sizes for responsive display. Responsive design of emails can directly affect your conversion rates; consider reading your test emails across at least 3 devices of different screens and platforms.
2. Shallow or No Segmentation:
Segment-specific email marketing campaigns perform 100 times better than generic emails sent to all. For e.g.: If you are running an eCommerce business and promoting shaving creams, so targeting the male demographic would be an ideal choice. Sounds obvious, right? You can further go deeper into the segment by offering promotions on sensitive-skin variants to the younger segments that may have some trouble with razor burns during the early years.
There are multiple parameters on which you can consider for leveraging segmentation. A few of them are:
- Engagement Behavior (Open, click, abandon carts, etc)
- Demographics (Age, location, etc)
- Past Purchases (Active, loyal, at risk)
- Media Source (Social, organic, referral, etc)
Take the time to think through the segmentation and personalize your communication. In today’s world, sending the same communication to all can leave your customers cold!
1. Not Emphasizing the CTAs
CTA or Call-to-Action is the single most powerful tool in email marketing which can increase you traffic, conversions, leads, sales, and revenues. CTAs are the gateway for recipients to get redirected to your website. Elimination of CTA from an email will leave the recipient confused as to what are the next steps to be taken. Or even having too many CTAs can get the recipient puzzled about the exact intent of the email.
It’s proven that more than 90% of visitors who read your headline will also read your CTA copy. Single CTA guide the recipient on a specific path which is the actual intent of the email. A clear and concise CTA would help in more conversion and increased revenues. Also, design them to appear at the right place with the right contrast and you will reap better conversions.
Do consider experimenting with the size, positioning, color, and highlights of CTA to optimize for more clicks and conversions.
Conclusion:
As human beings, it is impossible for all of us to be error free. Mistakes do happen and it’s a part of the business which everyone understands. Yet, we can all have checks in place to avoid avoidable mistakes and errors. Next time you write an email, hopefully you will be wary of these 7 common mistakes. If you have any comments or additions to the list comment below.
For any query related to e-mail marketing automation and accelerating your ecommerce revenue, please reach out to cs@qubriux.com