Marketing Email: Don’t Send Junk

Don’t let your messages get lost in an inbox full of emails by sending junk.

By Madison Jacobs
 
Part 1 of the “4 Reasons Why Your Emails Aren’t Opened” series

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, only 28 percent of marketers reported that their marketing email messages actually contained relevant content, were sent on time to a segmentation of subscribers and had a clear conversion goal. Typically, you should expect to see between 15 and 35 percent open rate on your emails depending on the content, list engagement and the relevance to the subscribers.

This is part 1 in a series of posts on the 4 reasons why your emails aren’t getting opened. In this post, I will cover the first reason why your messages may be unread by your subscribers.

You Send Junk.

Ask yourself this question. Would you send your customer and prospect marketing email messages to your friends and family? If not, you may be sending junk and need to find a better way to provide your subscribers with valuable content, versus content that they could care less about.

• If your email messages are useful, they contain elements that are resourceful and people want to save and archive your messages.

• If your email messages are interesting, they contain relevant information that is usually good for forwarding to their contacts.

Think about your email inbox and how many messages you get each day. Now, think about the ones your read every day and how you see value in them. When creating emails to send to your prospects and customers, create email messages that you would want to read if you got them every day.

A great way to tailor you messages so that they provide lots of value to your readers is to segment your subscribers into different groups that receive different types of content.
For example, if you sell products online, use an automated system that separates people into groups that you designate.

Say you sell women’s shoes online. You can group people according to what pairs they bought, what colors they bought and how many they bought. You can send them follow-up offers or discounts that are relevant to one or more of these criteria. That way, you can thank them again for making their purchase and provide them more merchandise that they actual may be interested in.

Don’t send junk. Again, think about what messages you read and find interesting and keep them in mind when you are creating your own marketing emails.

In part 2 of this series, I will talk about how subjects lines can make or break your open rates.
Humor is a great way to connect with readers and provide value at the same time. How do you incorporate some fun into your emails? Let us know in the comments below.

Check out “Authentic Marketing” for tips on using customer testimonials in your email marketing strategy.