1. Why should I not send email marketing out from my own email address?
There are several reasons why you should not send your email marketing via Outlook. The obvious ones include saving time, detailed delivery reporting, personalisation etc. But the most important reason is often overlooked: every time you send out groups (15 or more) of emails from your personal/business email address, you stand a strong chance of being flagged up as a spammer on your hosting companies email servers. This means that in time, your day-to-day emails will end up going straight in the Junk folder. When you use a professional email marketing company they manage the servers and protect your email address from being flagged as a spammer!
2. How can I improve my email marketing response rates?
Increasing the response rate is simple for most businesses that are in the early stages of email marketing. All you have to do is personalise your emails by adding ‘Hi Steve’ instead of just ‘Hi’, or put details of where you last met them. This should increase your response rate by 64% (Direct Marketing Association).
“Around three quarters of companies surveyed rate email marketing (72%) as an excellent or good return on investment!”- Econsultancy
3. How can I generate more sales leads from my email marketing campaign?
Firstly ensure that you have a strong Call to Action on your email, that way your readers will know what you want them to do with it. A good email marketing system will also provide you with post delivery reports, so that you can see exactly who has opened and clicked through to specific links. By using this information, you can target future campaigns and do focused follow up activities to increase success rates.
Send your campaigns out at the optimum frequency – by sending them out on a regular basis, you will increase confidence and stand more chance of being at the forefront of the readers mind when they need your services.
4. When is the best time to send an email campaign out?
Timing is everything, try to avoid sending your email out first or last thing in the day, on Mondays and Fridays or during holiday periods, as there is less chance of getting a positive response. You should also be consistent when you send it out. Whether once a day, once a week, or once a month – make sure you stick to it. The more consistent you are, the more your clients will become familiar at receiving your emails and this will help build your brand.
5. How can I build my email marketing lists?
There are several ways of gathering good qualified data for your email marketing. These range from adding a sign up form to your website, asking customers for their email addresses, setting up competitions or doing some cross marketing – or if you need to grow your database quickly, you can purchase a data list, but be careful to ensure it is the latest data and that it has been cleansed.
6. How can I ensure I do not break data protection laws?
In principle only market to individuals and businesses that have consented to receive the mail or meet the ‘Soft opt-in’ laws.
- Provide clear details for the individual to contact you – address, phone, email etc…
- Have a clear opt-out process that you always follow and respect
- Tell people what you are going to do with their data
- For more details, please see the ICO good practice guidelines by clicking HERE
7. What should I put in my subject line?
Your subject line should be compelling, descriptive and to the point. More and more companies are using email marketing, which is why your message should stand out in the inbox. Try doing a split test with different subject lines and compare the open/read rates for each one. Whatever you do, do not be deceptive as this will only annoy the reader, get your email added to the junk pile and damage your brand.
8. Why am I not getting enquiries from my email marketing?
There are several reasons why email campaigns often fall flat, it could be that your Call to Action is not strong enough, which means that your reader does not know what you want them to do with the email. Or perhaps you are not tracking the responses properly or following them up. Try looking at your reports to understand what your readers are doing when they get your email.
9. Why is my email marketing getting a high unsubscribe rate?
- You are sending the emails to the wrong people, try updating or cleansing your data
- Your message is not appropriate to the reader, try putting yourself in your readers shoes and ask, would I value this?
- You are being flagged as spam, by using the wrong words (i.e. herbal viagra, confidential, sale, etc.). Your readers’ junk mail filters will often put ‘spam’ in front of your email. Try running a keyword check on your email before sending it out, as this can highlight some surprising words that are not liked.
10. Why are all my email marketing campaigns not being received?
Putting spam filters aside, the most common problem is old or general data. If it has not been used for a while (this can include some recently purchased data,) a good proportion of the email addresses will not exist any more, so will bounce. There are several ways to get qualified data which include networking events, adding a subscribe field on your website, old customers or buying in a list from a good supplier (choose your supplier carefully or you may be wasting your money).
popcorn is a smart, easy-to-use and efficient platform that not only helps you compose beautiful emails and newsletters but also helps you manage your sales funnels and leads. If you would like to test popcorn and see if it could help improve your email marketing game, you can sign-up for the free trial here.
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