Last Updated on September 1, 2023 by David
Guest Post by Michael Dehoyos
Creating an exciting and powerful email marketing campaign has the potential to greatly boost your business. But in order to do so, you need to ensure that you have a strong, optimized strategy in place. Once someone has given you their email address, your challenge is to transform them from subscribers to customers. Here are the top 8 e-commerce email marketing errors to avoid.
1. Not Welcoming New Subscribers
If you don’t already have a welcome email set up for new subscribers. you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity. The first email you send to your new subscriber is most likely to be the one they read the most because they are at their most engaged with you. Your welcome email should introduce you and the brand, what your subscriber can expect from you (such as frequency of emails) and set the tone for your future emails and relationship.
2. Unclear Call-To-Action
The aim of an email marketing campaign is to achieve a particular goal. Alongside persuasive and engaging copy, you also need to ensure that you have a clear call-to-action (CTA) in your emails. One clear CTA tends to be more effective. It will engage your subscribers and be more likely to persuade them to take action.
“Your CTA button should be positioned somewhere where it can be easily seen. The font should be easy to read and the button itself should be colorful. Make sure the text is short and concise. Think of it as giving one very clear instruction to your subscribers. What is it that you want them to do? Tell as simply as possible,” says Demetria Vaughn, a business writer at Brit Student and Write my X.
3. Failing To Segment Email Lists
One of the most important things to do as your subscriber lists grows is to segment your email lists. This way, you’ll be able to send more personalized and relevant emails to your subscribers and increase the chances that they will actually read them and take action.
Create different lists depending on the type of subscribers you have. For instance, you’ll want to send a different email to those beginning users, compared to your regular, loyal customers. The more targeted and relevant your email campaign is, the more likely it is to be successful.
4. Not Optimizing Emails For Mobile Devices
More and more people are using mobile devices to make purchases online or access the internet, including their email. It’s unlikely that a person will wait until they are at a desktop to open your email and, hopefully, take action. As such, it’s essential that you ensure your email campaign is optimized for mobile users.
Make sure that you check how your email will look on a desktop, tablet and mobile device before sending. If you send an email which doesn’t render properly and appears messy and hard to read, then your subscribers are likely to simply delete it. Furthermore, they will be less likely to open others in the future, potentially even unsubscribing altogether.
5. Not Including Alt Text
Many email users have their images turned off. Whilst it may be tempting to focus on using images as a visual hook to engage readers, this can backfire if your email campaign relies solely on them. To avoid sending emails which appear blank to your subscribers, or which have missing links because of a broken image link, make sure that you use alt text.
Alt text should be a core component of your email campaign. This is simply text which will replace the image in case it fails to load properly or is blocked. Crucially, you want to make sure that the main message of your email is included in the text itself as opposed to an image.
6. Not Considering The Value To The Reader
If someone has chosen to subscribe to your email list, you need to ensure that you are providing them with engaging and relevant content. If your emails are overly promotional and simply focus on you or your brand as opposed to the reader, then there’s a good chance that people may unsubscribe or not engage with your email campaign.
Consider what you can offer to your subscribers. What value does your email provide to them? Make sure that the subscriber is at center of your email campaigns. Similarly, make sure that your emails are frequent, but not so frequent that readers start to delete them before they even open them.
7. Using Dull Subject Lines
The best copy and beautifully designed email campaign will be worthless if your subscribers never even open it. You want to engage your readers and make them want to open your email and interact with the content. For this, a carefully crafted email subject line is essential.
“Your subject line should make readers want to open your email straight away,” says Jack Williams, a web developer at Origin Writings and 1 Day 2 Write. “Luckily, there are some key things you can do to create engaging subject lines. Make sure that you keep it short and sweet. Your subject line should be really clear and simple and you should use any targeted keywords at the beginning to avoid it getting shortened, especially on mobile devices.”
8. Not Analyzing The Results Of Your Campaigns
It’s important to understand your target audience. Collecting data about their preferences can help to greatly improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Make sure that you A/B test your emails and analyze the results. Find out what type of texts, images, CTAs, font and designs are the most engaging for your subscribers and use this information to help you create more compelling emails in the future.
Conclusion
In order for your emails to be successful, it’s important to consider what value they provide for your readers. Make sure that your message is clear, CTAs are easy to follow and that you segment your email lists. If you’ve committed any of these mistakes in the past, the good news is that it’s never too late to learn from them and start implementing smart email marketing practices.
About Re:amaze
Re:amaze is a modern helpdesk and customer messaging platform designed to help eCommerce businesses boost customer happiness and revenue. Re:amaze allows all customer-oriented teams to work together in a shared inbox through email, social, SMS, voice, and live chat. Re:amaze also comes packaged with automated messaging and chatbots so eCommerce brands can succeed at the front lines of conversational commerce.
About Michael Dehoyos
Michael Dehoyos is an experienced content marketer and editor Thesis writing service and Write my literature review, where he works closely with companies of all sizes to improve their marketing strategy concepts. In particular, he enjoys working with companies to create more meaningful relationships and engagement with customers. Michael regularly writes articles for Next Coursework, as well as having contributed to numerous other websites and publications.