9 things they don't tell you about email marketing
9 things they don't tell you about email marketing
1. Send button stress
There's something unique about that moment of disquiet, hesitation and even fear as your cursor hovers over the "send" or "confirm schedule" button.
And it doesn't matter how many email newsletters or promotions you have under your belt, you'll still feel it. I'm up to four figures on lifetime e-newsletter issues, and my publication timeframe looks like this...
Friday: write and schedule newsletter for Monday.
Monday morning: panic, cancel the send, preview the email (again)...change nothing...set up the original schedule again.
Is there a solution to send button stress? There's no getting round diligence and attention to detail when setting up the outgoing email. It won't reduce the pain, but at least nothing bad will happen to you later.
2. Conflict in bars and at parties
If you do so much email marketing that you define yourself as an email marketer, you may have to turn down party invites. When people find out what you do, some will hold you personally responsible for spam. All of it. No amount of explaining about permission-based confirmed opt-in house lists will help.
Expect to field inquiries about stockmarket tips, cheap watches and purple pills.
3. You will "spam" at some point
No matter how careful you are to ensure your list of addresses is pure and clean and opt-in, you will always have readers who think you are a spammer.
Few people on the other end of email marketing (the recipients of the emails) give due thought to the differences between UCE and legitimate commercial email.
For some, the two are the same. For many (most), spam isn't stuff they didn't sign-up for. It's simply stuff they don't want. You can have all the permission in the world, but if you don't keep on pleasing the recipients, you end up in the junk folder.
4. Annoying questions are inevitable
Once you're up to speed on key email marketing tactics and issues, remember other coworkers and bosses aren't. Prepare for questions like...
>> If we send one email a week and make X, we should send one email a day and make seven times that amount?
>> I picked up this list of email addresses off eBay: can you please send them an email about our new product?
>> Email marketing? How hard can that be?
5. Some targets are out of reach
Occasionally you'll see case studies where some e-newsletter gets obscenely high open rates, clicks and orders. They are the exception. They do a lot of things right (which we can learn from) but they usually have a head start in terms of a hugely loyal customer base and an engaging subject area.
Most of us do not have the customer loyalty of a Harley Davidson to work with. We are never going to be an integral part of our readers' lives and they will not lose the will to live if they stop getting our emails.
Obviously we need to optimize and do all we can to build and sustain our impact and influence through email. But there are upper limits. Don't be disheartened. You can do very well without beating the best.
6. Your delivery rates are lower than you think
Your real delivery rates are lower than your reports suggest. After you send out an email, your service or software produces some nice numbers telling you how you've done: number of emails sent, bounces, opens, clicks generated etc.
Many people assume the number delivered is the number sent minus the bounces. Bounces are messages from a destination saying the email can't be delivered. For reasons like a mailbox is too full or the address doesn't exist anymore.
But you don't get a bounce, for example, when an email is delivered and filtered into the junk file for automatic deletion.
You rarely, for example, get a bounce when an ISP decides to send your email to a blackhole, never to be seen again by man or computer.
So your "true" delivery rate is lower than the number you see on your report screen.
7. Vendors give you a skewed view (and not just the way you think)
A rough guess says 95% of articles on email marketing are written by vendors. On the one hand that's a good thing. These are professional folk who sit at the sharp end of the industry. They deal with email marketing all day and every day. Their expertise and experience is enormous.
On the other hand, there's the issue of bias, where you'll need to use your common sense and intuition. And there's the zealot factor.
People (including me) who spend a lot of time with email marketing tend to forget that most others don't. They focus on cutting-edge techniques and may even cast scorn on those not yet availing themselves of the latest and greatest tools and methods.
Do not be disheartened if you're sending out a small customer newsletter and are not yet running a multi-channel, integrated, segmented, personalized, customized, dynamic email marketing program. You can still make email marketing work for you.
Many best practices or funky tactics are not realistic for most people marketing with email. They demand resources, skills or time that just aren't available. In the rush to keep ahead, we sometimes forget to make sure we've got the basics right, first. Walk, then think about running.
8. The other emails are (more?) important
The focus in email marketing is always on broadcast newsletters and promotional emails. But the other emails your readers get from your business play a key marketing role. Why? Because...
A. They arrive at a time when the recipient is most engaged with your business or website (think list welcome messages), or...
B. They contain information the recipient really, really cares about (think customer service emails and order dispatch confirmation emails).
Make sure you pay attention to those, too.
9. I'm not a number, I'm a human being
As part of our obsession with numbers and technology, the human aspect of email marketing often goes missing in action. Our emails get read by individuals. People who aren't concerned about our conversion rates and whether the third link down got the most clicks. They just want a good reason to get your emails. Give them that reason, and the right numbers will follow.
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