Online marketing constantly evolves, but email remains a cornerstone for attracting leads, boosting traffic, and optimizing conversion rates despite each trendy iteration. In 2024, the global revenue for email marketing will likely reach $12.33 billion, firmly establishing it as one of the most effective tools to communicate with your target audience.
The average ROI from this channel is around $36 for every $1 spent, so in other words, if you invest one dollar in a successful email campaign, you’ll receive 36 times this amount in return. But what if your emails aren’t turning out those expected results? Don’t sweat it—here are four actionable ways to breathe new life into underperforming email campaigns.
Identify and Resolve Common Mistakes
Before you write off a lackluster email campaign, search for any distinctive issues that could hurt its performance. Below are some of the most common email marketing pitfalls that turn customers off—fortunately, these mistakes are simple to resolve:
- Audience Segmentation: Consumers will likely unsubscribe if you send a generic mass email that doesn’t resonate with their specific needs or interests. To avoid this, segment the audience into categories that reflect their locations, age brackets, online behaviors, search and purchase histories, or other demographic features. From there, you can craft an email campaign that’s relevant and personal to them.
- Mobile Optimization: In today’s mobile-first era, format emails for tablets and smartphones. Audit the design of your email campaign to ensure the text, visuals, and other elements are visible on a mobile screen, then test the display time to confirm the entire message loads quickly.
- Send Rate Frequency: The right email cadence is essential for nurturing and retaining customers. If you send emails too often, the recipients might start to view them as spam. However, sending emails too rarely could completely erase your business from the top of their minds. To strike an ideal balance, experiment with email frequencies until you find what aligns with the audience’s preference.
Audit Your Design and Content Strategy
Over 120 emails accumulate in the average person’s inbox daily, so ensuring that your emails stand out from the competition is crucial. Evaluate both the aesthetics and substance of your campaign. Do all the design elements look sharp, cohesive, and aligned with your brand image? Is the layout clean and easy to read at a glance? Are there visible calls-to-action (CTAs) that guide your recipient toward a clear next step?
Next, scrutinize your content. Is the message concise and compelling? Is it tailored to the right audience? Will it hold their attention and incentivize them to learn more? Weave in storytelling techniques to make the content authentic and relatable. Use persuasive words to incite action (purchasing an item, downloading a resource, or subscribing to updates). Finally, avoid complex jargon and focus on creating value for the consumer.
For a more precise, data-backed analysis, run A/B testing on various email components such as the subject line, visuals, text, and CTA to identify what resonates best with your audience. This practice will help you fine-tune the design and content for maximum impact.
Monitor Your Email Deliverability Metrics
Even the most brilliantly crafted email is only effective if it lands in the recipient’s inbox. According to a new report, the average email deliverability rate is 85.7 percent—14.3 percent of emails never reach the targeted consumer.
Issues like a high bounce rate or spam flags will hinder success, so you should track how often recipients open your emails to increase the overall performance of each campaign. First, examine your subscriber list, then purge any invalid email addresses from the database. Next, create a double opt-in form on your website and other channels so new leads can explicitly confirm whether or not they want to subscribe.
Finally, encourage subscribers to enable emails from your organization with clear, friendly instructions on how to do this. For instance: “To continue receiving emails from [insert your business name], please include us in your address book.” These strategies will improve the quality of contacts and minimize the spam flags your emails receive.
Adhere to Rigorous Security Compliance
In February 2024, email providers such as Yahoo and Google will implement new authentication policies that bulk senders must follow. These changes will increase email security, enhance the user experience, and filter out any messages that are irrelevant or suspicious. To gain your subscribers’ trust, adhere to the regulatory compliance measures below:
- Authenticate the source of your emails. Leverage email authentication methods like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to ensure that spammers can’t infiltrate your business domain or send unsolicited messages to your contact list.
- Make unsubscribing easy and effective. Allow consumers to unsubscribe to an email campaign anytime with one click. Also, honor that request and take them off the list of automated recipients within two days.
- Deliver content that users want. Ensure your spam complaint rate is under .1 percent—the more often your content is marked as spam, the more difficult it’ll become for future campaigns to reach user inboxes. The simplest way to avoid this is to monitor their preferences and tailor the emails accordingly.
Breathe New Life into Your Underperforming Email Campaigns
To revitalize an underperforming email campaign, you’ll need a holistic plan focusing on audience segmentation, email frequency adjustments, visual design, content optimization, deliverability metrics, and online security compliance. Successful email marketing tactics will lead to strong and sustainable connections with your target audience.
