Technology has surely made things easy but that does not mean that certain uses of technology do not have their peculiar nuances. Take, for instance, e-mail marketing. Most people have this misguided impression that e-mail marketing involves nothing more than sitting behind the keyboard and sending e-mails to a bunch of people while expecting results to just come. It does not work that way. E-mail marketing has a peculiar technique and manner of use. The problem is, if you are not tactical with the use of e-mail marketing, you will face challenges that can put you off.
E-mail marketing, as the name implies, is the sending of commercial emails to a number of people who are either customers or prospective customers. It is a highly rated digital marketing tactic which involves sending tailored messages to one's customers to build an impactful relationship with them.
E-mail marketing is still in vogue, contrary to claims that it is dead. It does not appear ready to be phased out yet, owing to the many financial benefits that are tied to it. Nevertheless, like every other good thing, e-mail has its peculiar challenges also. In this post, you would learn what these challenges are and how you can overcome them. With 59% of the human population now on the internet, you cannot afford to not learn how to tackle the challenges of e-mail marketing. Below are some of the problems that retard e-mail marketing growth.
Poor Data Integration
Data is precious. It is the internet’s version of precious stone and without data, companies would more or less be lost. Data provides direction which a company would follow. You can now see why marketers can go a little bit crazy when they are gathering e-mail data. They simply want enough material that can help them stay ahead of the curve in creating sensational marketing messages that will resonate with existing and prospective customers.
The issue is that too much data is taken on and integrating them with other data systems becomes a chore. The eagerness to gather data has now become a major obstacle to business operations. You do not have to be hampered by this though, there are ways you can wriggle out of it.
How to overcome this challenge:
- Do not be Greedy: Normally, you want to gather as much data as you can but doing so will be counterproductive. What you want to do is gather as much data as you can confidently integrate and then build on it. With this method of ensuring efficient data integration, you must be prepared to make compromises.
- Follow Data’s Truth: Through your regular compilation of data, you should already be sure of the kind of content that your customers and prospective customers favour. With this, you can tailor subsequent content along that line with changes in the expression and creativity that will resonate with your conversions.
- Using Data integration tools and service: These tools can give you what you need in your data collection process. These tools would help you gather your needed data from different designated data hotspot. There is an online service that would even help you declutter your email data by removing bad data, keeping your data fresh, and preventing invalid mails from taking space in your email.
Spamming Complaints
Your data integration game is great but it won’t mean much if you are overloading your customers with too much mail. If customers get too much mail from you, they can be put off by that and unsubscribe from your mailing list, no matter how much they resonate with your content. Spamming can be quite distasteful.
To solve this problem:
- Let customers know beforehand your subscription plans and make it easier for them to choose by making the options crystal clear.
- Be ready to readjust your plans from time to time.
Mail Deliverability Problems
This happens when you have a customer base but your mail isn’t getting to their inboxes. This could arise because the customer's inbox is full or the email they supplied is not correct. If your deliverability is low, you could lose face with your internet service provider and all your marketing efforts are null. Content won’t matter if you can’t reach your targeted audience
To solve this problem:
- You have to maintain your contact mail list regularly
- Send e-mail confirmation links to customers or prospective customers to improve your rate of getting existing and real mails.
- Also, provide links for your customer to use to register their new mails should they for their peculiar reasons, change mails.
Retaining Customers.
You have improved your mail deliverability rate but you still find yourself losing customers? You are sure your content is spot on but this keeps on happening? The major cause of this could be that you have robotic customer relations. What this means is that your mails are probably too generic and while the content is superb, the customer may feel detached from it.
In order to overcome this challenge, you need to make your customer feel special. To achieve this, do the following:
- Add your customers' name to the mail subject line.
- Greet them on their birthdays and if you can, craft promos and discounts for them on their birthdays
- You can occasionally send a mail to check up on them and make them feel that it is not just business and money you want from them.
Keeping Off Competitors.
You have solved the above challenges but you just need the cherry on top that will allow you to compete favorably in the market and keep off the competitors. That cherry is achieving the development of your e-mails for phone access. This would put you ahead of your competitors as most people access their mails through their phones.
To be able to do this, keep the mail brief but impactful. Achieve this by testing different devices and see how it would appear.