Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase website traffic and your blog’s conversion rate.
With an ROI of 3,800%, you have the potential to generate lots of traffic with every email you send.
However, there’s also a slim chance you won’t achieve blogging success through email marketing.
Why?
Because of a few seemingly simple, yet fatal mistakes you might be committing. Here’s seven of them:
1. Buying lots of email tools
We all tend to go overboard with online tools, especially those that we’ve proven to make our lives easier. But even though they are useful, they will never replace skills for crafting compelling emails. At the end of the day, it’s not about the tools you use. Instead, it’s your ability to connect with your audience that matters.
When choosing email tools, it’s best to settle for one with all the bells and whistles than a handful with just one feature each. Here’s a list of email tools that we’ve tried and loved over the years.
- Drip – An excellent tool for marketing automation. Drip helps users design and send emails that are customized according to the customer’s buying process.
- ActiveCampaign – The one-stop shop for email marketing and more. From designing and optimizing emails to tracking conversions, ActiveCampaign allows users to do it all from one platform.
- BombBomb – One of the few tools that let users send personalized video emails straight to their prospects’ inboxes. BombBomb also has an app version so users can record videos from their smartphone and send it to any inbox instantly.
2. Not segregating your list
To write a compelling email, you need to know who your subscribers are. Email personalization is all the rage these days and with good reason.
Therefore, the only way that you can send personalized emails is by organizing your list according to demographics.
One way to organize your contacts list is to add tags to each subscriber. It’s basically assigning keywords to your subscribers to accurately classify them. This system ensures that you send the right message to your subscribers’ list.
Most email tools have this feature except MailChimp, which uses the list-based system. Instead of tagging subscribers in your campaign, you must send the same campaign to each of your lists.
Some prefer this way of sending email to subscribers. However, it leaves little room for flexibility and efficiency.
3. No way for subscribers to unsubscribe
Your subscribers have the right to opt-out of your email list any time they want. This usually happens if they are no longer interested with what you’re sending them.
GDPR rules state that email subscribers have the right to withdraw their consent any time and that you should make it easy for them to do that.
This is why every promotional email you send out must always include an option to stop receiving emails.
If you go out of your way to prevent subscribers from unsubscribing, please rethink your actions. You’re just pissing people off, especially if their needs are not aligned with your emails.
4. Not sending emails regularly
There’s the saying “out of sight, out of mind.” In the case of email marketing, not sending regular emails lessens your brand recall over time. It also leads to data decay, which affects the relationship you’ve built with your subscribers.
This is especially crucial in maintaining your account-based marketing strategy.
The purpose of email marketing is to keep relationships. Thus, it’s vital that you send your subscribers an email at least once a month (better if twice or 4x a month). Sending them something regularly reminds them that you exist.
In fact, you don’t have to log in and send them emails every time you have something important to say.
If you plan on sending them messages in advance, you can schedule them using your email marketing tool.
Drip emails are part of an effective marketing automation campaign so it’s best if you look more into that.
Doing so saves you time and lets you focus on driving results from your list.
5. Not delivering on your promise
Nothing breaks people’s hearts more than broken promises. So if you promise to post a new blog on a particular day, or have a giveaway, make sure that you do good on that promise.
When you don’t deliver on a promise, it makes people feel like they’re insignificant. And what do people who feel unimportant do? They leave.
6. Sending them promotional material every single time
We all know that email is an excellent channel for converting subscribers into customers. And it might seem like a good idea to send promotional email one after the other. However, your subscribers won’t like it.
Over-selling your products or services will only convince your subscribers to hit the unsubscribe button faster.
Keep your subscribers engaged by balancing promotional emails with actionable and engaging content. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:
- Give readers a chance to get to know you – Send emails about your brand story, maybe even throw in a couple of behind-the-scenes photos in there.
- Reward subscribers with high-quality content that is valuable to them – Invest in creating white papers, reports, and infographics.
- Write content that your subscribers are passionate about – Ask them what they want to know and deliver that information if you can.
7. Not tracking your progress
The only way you’ll know if your email campaign is effective is by keeping track of your progress.
Checking your open and click rates will give you a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Do your emails help you close more sales and increase company revenue?
Does it help increase web traffic?
These are a just a few questions you can ask yourself to see if you’re actually getting results from your efforts.
Conclusion
Just like every other “sin,” they’re forgivable.
But first, you have to forgive yourself for committing any of the mistakes above. You can’t become better at email marketing if you don’t acknowledge your failures. From there, you can start making better decisions with the email campaigns for your blog.
As you can see, it only takes a couple of tweaks to nurture, even grow, your email list. Remember, it took time and effort to get your subscribers. Don’t let them slip through your fingers.
Related posts:
How to Get More Email Subscribers for Your Blog
How to Use the Art of Email Marketing to Launch Your Blog & Start Converting
