5 Email Marketing Problems and How to Solve Them

The Main Problems with Email Mailings

Email marketing is here to say. In fact, roughly 293.6 billion emails are sent and received every day and are projected to increase to 347.3 billion in 2023.

For a long time, emails have been a direct channel to customers and prospects, but it’s not perfect. In this article, we list the main issues with Email mailings, plus, tips on how to solve them.

1. Getting Subscribers. There are plenty of roadblocks in gaining subscribers and keeping them.
2. Low Deliverability Rates. Global deliverability is 75.9% where 25% of emails get redirected as spam. If you’re not careful, your email may be one of them!
3. Low Open Rates. According to Campaign Monitor, email click-to-open rates average at a dismal 15.2%.
4. Low Click-through Rates. The benchmark for all industries is only 2.6% click-throughs from email subscribers and readers. Yikes!
5. Low Conversions. This can be due to a combination of your open rates, click-throughs, and your landing page content.

Email marketing is a competitive environment. Not only must you compete with rival companies, but also with the email system itself, to hit your key metric goals.

The following are five solutions to overhaul your email marketing strategy.

Five Email Marketing Solutions

1. Obtaining and Retaining Email Subscribers
2. Spam Checking
3. Effective Subject Lines
4. Call to action
5. Landing Pages

Let’s take a better look at each solution and the issues they address.

1. Obtaining and Retaining Email Subscribers

If you want to actively grow your email list, it isn’t enough to keep a signup form pasted on your website.

Today, it is vital to focus on quality opt-in prompts that target the right kind of prospects. Specifically, you want prospects that will engage with your emails.

As you form a strategy to build your email list, consider the following.

Create a Compelling Offer

What kind of value should subscribers expect when they sign up for your emails? Your offer should be clear and compelling.

Most importantly, you should strive to solve an immediate problem that brought your visitors to your site in the first place.

Consider your expertise and market to craft an incentive for visitors. This might include discounts or exclusive access to resources, such as reports, e-books, and how-tos.

Make Signup as easy as possible

Signing up to receive your emails should not require any guesswork from visitors. Make the option to join your mailing list easily visible.

For instance, using pop-up forms makes email signup the center of attention. AWeber performed an experiment that yielded 1,375% more signups using pop-up forms, compared to a static sidebar.

In other words, more visibility equates to more subscribers.

Additionally, your sign-up form should make subscribing as easy as possible.

Neil Patel argues that removing all fields except for the email address can grow your email list faster. Read more from his article: Effective Ways to Get More Email List Subscribers.

Leverage your Social Networks

Using social media to host web events is a great call-to-action for subscribers. Furthermore, special incentives and landing pages for social media followers can help you to reach beyond your website visitors.

There are a lot of tools that social networks provide to help you build your mailing list.

For instance, Optinmonster’s post on ways to grow your list with social media outlines specific tools you can start using today.

Allow Customers to choose their Email Marketing

Retaining your subscribers is just as vital as obtaining them.

Campaign Monitor offers the two biggest reasons people unsubscribe from emails:

1. the content was irrelevant (64%) or
2. received too frequently (60%).

The solution? Give users control over their content.

Offering various levels of subscription plans that dictate the frequency of emails a subscriber gets and the type of emails: Monthly, weekly, daily, and so on.

As Neil Patel puts it, “It’s better to have an engage[ed] subscriber with little volume than a subscriber who gets every email, but never reads them.”

Segment your Email Marketing List

Segmenting your mailing lists is another way to retain subscribers. You can ensure that subscribers will always find your content relevant by segmenting them based on their interests.

Here are some methods to segment your email mailings:

1. Email Sign up form. The information captured in your sign-up form can be used to segment your list. However, the drawback of additional steps can deter potential subscribers. Consider other ways that might make the process quick and easy for your prospects.
2. Using quizzes and surveys. Likewise, sending out surveys and quizzes provide plenty of insight on subscribers. In turn, you may segment them based on their responses.
3. Tracking website behavior. You can track specific pages subscribers have visited or even the page subscribers decided to sign up for emails.

Reengagement campaigns

Reengagement campaigns are a great way to retain less engaged subscribers. That is, email campaigns can remind subscribers of the value and frequency they should expect to receive from your emails.

Of course, this requires proactive monitoring of subscriber activity to predict possible unsubscribes. Be sure to track recent activities, purchase histories, and other metrics to determine who are your most inactive subscribers and why.

Then, take the opportunity to reengage with them for their feedback. Are your emails still offering the value they are looking for?

Adobe research shows that out of the 67% of customers looking for personalized content from brands, half of them are annoyed when they don’t get it.

How can you make your emails more relevant to these subscribers? Take the opportunity to find out!

If you want to learn more about creating an effecting re-engagement email campaign, check out Campaign Monitor’s blog post for some best practices.

2. Spam Checking Your Email Marketing

Buckle up, because the following section is important!

CAN-SPAM Act

Your spam checking tactics should start by getting familiar with the CAN-SPAM Act. The CAN-SPAM Act provides that commercial emails should adhere to ethical practices such as:

• Avoiding misleading header information
• Avoiding deceptive subject lines
• Always include a way to unsubscribe from emails
• Including your company postal address
• Identifying your email as an advertisement or solicitation

Avoid Spam Words

Next, avoid using any spam trigger words that may trigger spam filters. The following list provided by Mequoda gives specific buzz words often marked as “spammy”.

Avoiding spam trigger words isn’t always practical in the context of your email.

For instance, if you are offering something for free to your subscribers, it can be hard to avoid the word “free.”

However, personalization and context can help to legitimize your offer and avoid the spam folder.

Use Spam Filters

You can use spam filters to test your emails for deliverability and quality. Moreover, keeping up with how spam filters work will help you avoid getting blocked by one.

Try these free spam checkers to scan your emails:

• ISnotSpam
• Glock Apps
• Mail Tester

These sites provide an email address for you to send test emails to and provides reporting on any spam issues.

Secondly, spam checking your email marketing should also include blacklist checkers.

A blacklist is used by Internet service providers (ISPs) to identify IP addresses or domains known to send spam. They will, then, block emails from these locations.

So, trust us when we say, you do NOT want to be on this list!

That being said, here are a couple of Blacklist checkers to check your domains and IP addresses:

• Ultra Tools
• MX Toolbox

You may be blacklisted if you send large quantities of emails to users without permission and are reported.

Additionally, blacklisting can occur from third party entities such as tracking services using specific URLs or short links.

Indeed, this makes opt-ins that much more vital in email marketing.

Lastly, spam checking your email marketing should address low deliverability issues. Spam check tools serve to scan emails for quality content to ensure that your email makes it to the inbox.

3. Creating Effective Subject Lines

The performance of your open rate is directly correlated to the effectiveness of your email subject lines. Some would argue that your subject lines are more important than your email content.

As a matter of fact, your email marketing efforts mean nothing if no one bothers to open your emails.

The following tips can help you write effective subject lines for your email marketing:

Use numbers in your subject line

According to research by Yesware, which investigates 115 million emails, adding a number into your subject line yields higher than average open rates.

For instance, their observation shows a 53.2% open rate with a number in the subject line compared to the average 51.9%.

You should leverage your company performance data as a powerful persuasive tool for your email marketing.

Personalization

Subject lines personalized in some way to the readers have shown a 10-14% increase in open rates. So, when writing your content, imagine you are writing to a friend.

The easiest personal touch you can add to your subject lines is your recipient’s name. Notably, it can make a whopping 14% difference in your email mailing performance!

Adding a personalized tag or label can vary between email marketing services. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the process.

Another tip to personalize your subject lines is to learn who your audience is. In other words, learn about their interests, language, and style to better communicate with them.

For instance, if you know where your market lives or shops, try including that in your subject line.

Leverage your customer data to make your email marketing efforts personal.

Use Emojis

Emojis in subject lines have shown to increase unique open rates by 56% and is continuing to gain popularity. They do an excellent job to grab reader attention quickly.

It’s recommended that emoji use should be limited to 1-4 to boost your email open rates. For more best practices, check out Campaign Monitors article on Using Emojis and Symbols in Your Email Subject Lines.

Also check out getemoji.com to start including emojis in your email subjects easily, using the quick copy and paste method.

Keep It Simple

Be clear and direct on what your email is about. Specifically, minimize marketing “fluff” and keep the most important information at the beginning.

To illustrate why simple is better, Yesware’s 2020 email template study found email open rates peak for subject lines with a word count between one to five.

Also, it’s important to note that email is more often accessed by mobile users rather than on a desktop.

Mobile users are accountable for 50% of all opens, as of 2019. The smaller smartphone screens warrant concise email subject lines.

Appeal to emotions

Using subject lines that appeal to emotions is a great way to cut through the noise of competitive email marketing.

For one thing, a study by Persado shows that emotional subject lines contribute to 54% of email performance.

Fear of missing out (FOMO), especially, accounts for 56% of social media users. Thus, including language to inspire urgency is one email marketing method to reach users who may experience FOMO.

Humor is also a great tool to appeal to your audience’s curiosity. Hubspot has a great list of funny subject lines to entice audiences to find out more.

Admittedly, a well-rounded understanding of your audience is required when trying to appeal to their emotions.

For example, applying humor to your subject lines can backfire if the joke is lost on your readers, or worse, can obscure your message. Avoid sacrificing clarity for cleverness!

Test, Test, and test some more!

A/B testing your email marketing campaigns, including subject lines, can give you serious insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Check out Seynd’s article on the importance of A/B testing and what you need to know to start testing your subject lines.

3. Using Call-to-action in Email Marketing

A call to action in your email can turn casual readers into active customers. Hence, an effective call to action can resolve low click-through rates.

Consider the following tips.

1. Write Persuasive Content. Use powerful copy to incentivize readers to take any action once they’ve opened your email.

2. Choose the Right Image. Campaigns with images can have up to 42% higher click-through compared to campaigns without.

For the purpose of choosing the right image for your email mailings, consider images that will fit your message and appeal to your readers.

3. Use Buttons Over Text Link. With regards to buttons or text links, Campaign Monitor found that CTA buttons help to increase click-through rates by 28%.

Buttons are likely to draw more attention from readers compared to in-line text. Still, use A/B testing to understand which CTA works best with your subscribers.

4. Don’t Forget Formatting and Placement. A study published in the Journal of Marketing Communications shows the positive effects of link placement and click-through rates in email.

For example, CTA’s placed on the left of an email can positively impact click through rates.

5. Get the Timing Right. Use testing to determine what time and day yield the best performance from your emailing list.

For a general idea, research done by Spaceship found that the best time for email engagement is between 8 pm to midnight.

Additionally, GetResponse finds that the highest click-through rates tend to occur on Monday and Tuesday.

4. Email Marketing that uses Landing Pages

Ultimately, the goal of your email marketing should be about converting subscribers into buyers. Your landing page is where your customer conversions happen.

So, your goal as a marketer designing a landing page is to keep it simple and direct.

Initially, your email should have already prepped subscribers to take a specific action that will convert them once they get to your landing page.

Your landing page should, therefore, be powerfully and persuasively designed.

Here are five essential items that your landing page must have:

1. Headline. Your headline should be bold, and benefit-driven.

2. Subheading. Your subheading gives more context to your headline.

3. Image. Likewise, a visual can function as both attention grabber and provide more information.
Make sure that whatever visual you include, whether its an image or a video, is relevant.

4. Explanation. An explanation of your offer might not always need to be a body of text.
Keep it simple with bulleted lists, testimonials, or a visual to quickly convey your offer.

5. Call to Action. The most important element on your landing page and email marketing.

Now that your readers have gotten more information on your offer your email, your CTA must be the final push to convert.

For this reason, you should use colors and action words to make your CTA as compelling as possible.

Conclusion
Addressing issues with Email marketing doesn’t have to be painful. With the right tools and knowledge, you can start seeing better results in your email campaigns.

Seynd Web Push Notification is a great tool to pair with emails and directly engage with your subscribers. Check out the sidebar to find out how Seynd can re-energize your email marketing efforts.