On average, you actually get again. 40 times as much as you invest in marketing. Sending e-mails and newsletters to potential customers as well as loyal customers should be part of the everyday life of online shop operators. In addition to the surprising effectiveness of its activity, it is also quite easy to implement.
Yet there are some typical pitfalls you should look out for. In this article we will inform you about some of the important things that you deliberately avoid.
The article presents the following pitfalls:
- You are not sending greeter mail
- You have no clear “Call To Action (CTA)”
- You are underestimating Order-Confirmation entries
- You are sending from a “Noreply” address
- You do not segment your list
- You send mail containing only images
- You are assuming the mail looks good on all devices
- You're appearing not as professional
1. You are not sending greeter mail
The first email you send to new subscribers is the most important one. This email should be sent immediately when they sign up in your mailing list. Why? At the moment a person gives you his email, this person is engaged and wants to communicate with you. That's now you have a golden opportunity! The person has performed an action that gives you a valuable opportunity to build a relationship. You're highly current in consciousness right now.
Welcome mail has high opening rate
The average opening rate of greeter items is 50%So let's say that this is the same thing as that. Welcome Mail 86% more effective than regular newsletters. Make sure you don't throw this option away. When a person has just joined your mailing list, they should receive an email that would welcome them. Please note that this mail will become the recipient's first impression of you!
Welcome mail brings forward future communication
The first email you send is so important because it also sets the tone as an email to come later. You must think that this first e-mail plays a significant role in future communication with subscribers. Do you have a formal and professional tone when communicating with customers, or are you perhaps informal and fun? What tone you're coloring your welcome mail with, creates expectations for future communication on the other side. Here you should have some insight into the target group you want to build relationships to. What tone do they expect and prefer? If you miss, you can risk them does not open multiple emails from youSo let's say that this is the same thing as that.
Effective elements of a welcome mail
There are many ways to design welcome items. Some effective elements is to thank the person for having joined and to welcome him in the group. You should also explain who you are and how your communication will be in future. Expectation management is very important. How often will you send newsletters? Making the recipient aware of this may reduce the risk of the person returning to the list. Notice, you should definitely respond to these expectations, otherwise they are nothing worth it.
Use Welcome Mail Strategic
Also be a little smart over these elements. Now you have the person's attention – why not use the opportunity to obtain the desired action from him? Present, for example, more of your social channels; and encourage their follow-up;So let's say that this is the same thing as that. Then you suddenly have more contact points and dialogue options, without having to bother him with a whole bunch of emails. If you represent a online store, you should use the possibility to get the person back to the store’s website. Consumers are exposed to too many impressions during the day, so make sure to catch attention before anything else does.
2. You have no distinct “Call To Action (CTA)”
Content is essentially useless for you if you do not include a CTA. This also applies in e-mails and newsletters. Do not leave the job of the recipient to find out what you want him to do. Then the chance becomes unnecessary that they will not do what you had hoped.
Nobody can read your mind, and you should have a form of what you want to achieve before sending an email. To achieve your goal, focus on this in the mail design. Text, images, design and CTA shall drive the recipient towards the desired action.
How to make an effective CTA
Here Are Some ”best practices‘:
- Make it visible. There's nothing in the way of using colors and larger visual elements.
- Make sure the text is of interest. It often works with texts as simple as ”Buy now“, and other clear invitations to action. However, try to capture the curiosity of the recipient, as this increases the likelihood of actual action. What does he get from doing what you say?
- Keep it simple. Do not give more notifications at once. People have limited attention, so you won't confuse potential customers. Confusion may lead to no action. What is the most important CTA for your goal achievement? Focus on this one. Avoid having multiple different CTAs in one and the same email.
- Repeat the message! Although you shouldn't put multiple CTAs in the same email, there's nothing that says you shouldn't have multiple buttons that encourage the same thing. By doing this you will only give the recipient more possibilities to discover the possibility and interact. Instead of making it harder for him, you make it easier!
Three. You underestimate “order-confirmation” emails
This applies to you who are trading online. If you are sitting with this thoughtful attitude: ”Now the customer has acted by me. So great, then the job was done!“ – think again. You may already send out an automatic confirmation message with email acknowledgement when completing a transaction? Did you know that these emails would like to have one opening rate greater than 70%- What? Taste that figure (average opening rate for regular mail rarely exceeds 18%).
Customer experience does not end in a transaction
Do not let marketing and customer experience die out at this point. You are served here a rare opportunity. Do not throw it away by designing an e-mail containing only confirmation, receipt and thank you for your trade. Of course, the e-mail should contain these three elements – the customer expects it, and a thank you promotes positive challenges.
Get a good review
The point is, you should be more strategic than that. The customer has just acted by you, and thus had a positive experience. What else can you get out of this now? Is this perhaps a perfect opportunity to ask for a (hopefully good) review, or a valuable feedback? You should try to get the person to follow you in other social channels, and maybe publish something about his purchase there (46% by those who shop online trust social media in their purchasing decision)?
Make the customer buy more
Can you take the opportunity to show more products you think the customer likes? Even though the customer has just acted by you, this does not mean that this person is excluded as returning customerSo let's say that this is the same thing as that. For example, can you add clickable images of related products, recommended products or perhaps give him a personal discount on selected products?
Get greater attention through relevant content
Moreover, content should never be underestimated – particularly not good and relevant content. Have the opportunity to create content that tells the customer h
is the product/service most likely to be purchased? 41% reads reviews and blogs before making a purchase online. So make sure to give your customers the knowledge they need to become returning customers. For example, in the order-confirmation email, you can attach targeted content to the current purchase. Note that visual elements are more effective than text, and that you should have a clear CTA early in the email to capture the attention.
There are many ways you can get the customer to engage even more – it's only creativity that sets the limits. What are your main objectives? What behaviour do you prefer from your customers? Keep this in mind when designing the email.
4. You are sending from a “Noreply” address
Many establishments use a noreply address to prevent recipients of, for example, marketing campaigns from responding to e-mails. Of course, sending from a noreply mail may be tempting. You do not want to spend much time answering customers' emails, when was the intention that you would only get out with your message? Hopefully you agree that this thinking does not sound good.
A number of negative effects
Using a noreply address you may be at risk of being serious adverse effects on your e-mail marketing. Some of these are as follows:
- You can damage the brand and the trust that customers have in you. This leads to reduced exposure. You should always set customer needs rather than your own. In the long run, this is most profitable.
- You are preventing contacts from communicating with you. When the main advantage of e-mail is that you can develop good customer relationships, this becomes self-responding.
- You're hurting your delivery ability. If recipients automatically filter noreply addresses like spam, you will get worse results than needed.
- The email will become impersonal. Everyone you communicate to is individuals. People like to communicate with people. “Noreply” does not appear to be a real person. This can therefore do so. harder for you to get the receiver willing to convertSo let's say that this is the same thing as that.
- You are missing potentially valuable information from those you have in your list. Some may want to inform you about e-mails that they have a new email address, or they do not work in the same place anymore. When you do not get this information, you will be sitting with their old address that is no longer in use.
- The probability that you are stored in your address book until the recipients are reduced. Would you like to store a noreply address? When the recipients fail to do this, you will speed up get in the spam or get marked as spamSo let's say that this is the same thing as that.
- When recipients see that they cannot contact you by email, a reaction will often be to report you as spam.
You do not want to limit communication
Is your goal of sending out emails really to make your life easier? Your goal should at least be to offer value to customers and potential customers. When you find the way into the inbox of the recipient, you should: ensure that the recipient has the possibility to respond;So let's say that this is the same thing as that. Interaction is always a concept of striving for when it comes to marketing. If recipients are not able to respond to the messages you send, they will: act that you really don't care about them. There’s nothing good coming out of a view that says ”I want to get out to you, but I don't want to hear from you.“. The person who receives the email from you is a person who already has a relationship with your business – you therefore do not want to limit communication with him.
Sender is clearly visible on devices as mobile
But people don't notice the sender's e-mail address very well, do they? Mobile has become the clearly preferred device to read mail onSo let's say that this is the same thing as that. The consequence of this is that people are now reading their mail on smaller screens than before. To balance the negative aspects of this, the inbox on the cell phone gives a display of the consignor – including the e-mail address. When you see as a consumer that the address cannot be responded to, it is less likely that you will open the e-mail at all.
Important after GDPR
According to GDPR, it is even more important than before to steer away from “noreply”. In future, when you are marketing through e-mail, you may have to assume that recipients can determine their privacy rights. Then it's stupid if the email can't be responded to. If you should nevertheless decide to use “noreply” address in your marketing, please make sure that the recipient has the opportunity to sign up for the mailing list (this is legally required). When sending commercial mail, the recipient should always have the possibility to unselect this in the future. According to GDPR, a good rule of thumb is this to think that the termination shall be as simple as the notification processSo let's say that this is the same thing as that.
5. You do not segment your list
You may have developed a long list of e-mail addresses? The problem is that not everyone is necessarily interested in the same thing. Therefore, always consider segmenting your recipient list.
Relevance required
Relevance is the hot dog here! An email may be as well-made as that, but avoid sending it to people who are not interested. An example of this is that you are running a online store, and want to send out a newsletter for a specific product you have on sale. Of course, this email does not want to be sent to those you know have already purchased this product, perhaps even at full price.
Every time a person receives an irrelevant and uninteresting email from you, the person loses some respect for the brand. Likely to increase the probability of this person avoid opening future mails from you, although these should be more relevant.
Segment the mailing list
Segment your mailing list according to what users show they are interested in, and preferably where they are in their customer journey. You should be extremely careful about new members on the list. These can easily fall off if they find you irrelevant. If you are sending e-mails with offers to them, make sure that the products you present to them are products they are likely to be interested in. If you are completely intimidating, you often lose these faster than loyal customers.
To segment your list in a reasonable way, you will often need more information than general things like email, name and phone number. Examples are sex, age, geography, interests and previous purchases of you. If you have the ability to obtain such information legally, you should use this to make communication with the customer tailored and relevant.
6. You send mail containing only images
Sending an email may be tempting, which is only one big picture. That's how you avoid experiencing poorly formatted emails, right?
Reasons why it's not a good idea
- It increases the probability of email trigger spam filtersSo let's say that this is the same thing as that. This is because those who are running spam are willing to hide text in images.
- Not everyone gets images automatically. This means that these recipients may have to download the image manually. What will meet them is a completely blank email. Think about it: What would you do if you received an apparently empty email? You'd probably ignore it.
- Loading the mail takes a long time. It takes longer to upload images than text. The longer it takes, the greater the risk of the receiver clicking out. Not only do you lose the opportunity to promote your message. You also risk getting in spam or in worst case getting a “unsubscribe”.
- The recipient loses the ability to search your mail in the INBOX. This makes it difficult if he or she needs to get back to the mail at a later date.
However, images are important, as visual elements are more effective than text. A rule of thumb may be to go for 60% pictures and 40% textSo let's say that this is the same thing as that. This is how you can avoid some problems with the actual delivery of the mail.
Seven. You are assuming the mail looks good on all devices
You may have experienced sending out a newsletter you have prepared by desktop template, and after sending it, realize that it does not look good on your mobile phone? Since most emails are opened on mobile, you should especially optimise for this.
In particular, it is important to optimise for mobile
In e-mails, you should like to use images as this is more effective than plain text. Make sure the image files are not too large! Make sure they don't spend too long uploading. For every second your photos use to load, you lose in average 7% conversionsSo let's say that this is the same thing as that. When images are not optimized for mobile, you can experience that the image is simply too large to fit into your mobile screen. If this happens, it's not worth 1,000 words anymore! The user experience is therefore very poor.
While images can quickly become too large, another trap is easy to assume that buttons are too small. For small buttons, the receivers quickly click incorrectly, and the user experience is reduced once again. The average size of an adult point finger is 1.6 to 2.0 cm. Think about this next time you create an email.
Response templates make it easier
Why make it more difficult for itself than necessary? When you are doing email marketing and newsletters, it is good to find simple tools that let you focus on the content. There are a number of good tools you can use for e-mail marketing and newsletters. Examples include MailChimp, Apsis and Emarsys. What you should think about is selecting tools that offer you responsive templates. Respondive means that the content, both text and images, seamlessly adapts to all screen sizes. Response templates allow you to focus on the content while the email is automatically configured.
Eight. You don't appear professional
You have completed an e-mail or newsletter and want to have it sent out and finished it. Don't do this until you've made sure you're acting professional.
Do not destroy the conversion option
Mail marketing is a potentially very efficient activity and it really does not require much work. You might have got a solid template and structure, so everything really just goes on autopilot. This is great, just don't ruin your ability to snuff. Sending out e-mails and newsletters, such as full of typographical errors, contributes to unnecessary quality reduction. Write error, especially in a CTA, is the safest way to destroy a conversion. You should always appear professional, if not, your credibility will be reduced and potential customers will lose their trust in you and the brand. If the email looks questionable or amateur, recipients will rarely let the doubt benefit you.
Do Not Be Fast
It's easy to look blind at what you're doing yourself. A tip is to have some ice in your stomach and take a little break, before you look at the work with new eyes. Make sure the grammar is correct, that all URL links are correct and that you have spent time designing an optimal topic field. I'd rather send you a test to yourself, and I'd like to have some colleagues, so the work is quality assurance before sending.
Have you experienced any pitfalls when working with email?
Source references:
The inspiration to write the article (optin monster)
Guide to send good greeter mail
Examples of welcome items that can inspire you
Good tips for confirmation-e-mail
46% of online shoppers trust social media
Why you should not use noreply-e-mail
Noreply limits your possibilities
Mobile is the preferred device to read email on