5 Reasons Why Your Email Marketing Isn’t Working

With direct mail becoming more of an outdated marketing tactic, due to cost and effectiveness, email marketing has become more prevalent in today’s society. How many emails, for instance, do you receive per week from your favorite retail store? Compare that number to the number of snail mail you’ve received from them and you get the picture—direct mail is out, email is in.

The good news about email is that we get great insights to the effectiveness of our campaign through the open rate and CTR (click-through-rate). Unfortunately, many emails are left unopened, and those that are opened are often neglected before even scrolling down through the message. If you’ve noticed these trends, here are 5 reasons why your email marketing isn’t working.

Bad Data, Bad Results
Your email will only be as effective as the quality of contacts that are receiving them. If you’re still using a list created in 2010, it may be time to organize a new tactic to get high-quality contacts that are interested in your content—and you can do this in several ways. For example, gather emails from current customers when they check out, or create an opt-in form on your website. Give them a special offer for providing their email, as some may be hesitant if there is nothing in it for them.

Lack of Personalization
Do you send personalized emails to your subscribers? Or do you simply blast a message to them all? While it can be time consuming to organize your email list, it is worth it in the long run. If you keep sending unwanted messages to your entire list, you will start to see the opt-outs add up. Instead, pay attention to how you received your email addresses and organize them accordingly. Those who signed up through your website under your newsletter sign-up are most likely interested in your news. Those who requested materials from you are most likely interested in your service(s).

Old School Formatting
Last year, mobile surpassed the 50% mark of email opens. This information is vital for email marketers—how do emails look viewed from a mobile device? If it is distorted—or even worse, unable to open—your message is not getting across successfully to a good portion of your recipients. Make sure you check this feature by opening your test emails on mobile devices. If you have an iPhone, have another person in the office with an Android device open the email as well.

Test, Test, and Test Again
It is hard to pinpoint exactly what goes wrong with an email campaign to decrease open and CTR. Was it the subject line? Or was it the color of the call-to-action buttons? What about the time of day the email was sent? All of these questions can’t be answered simply, that is why A/B testing can help. A/B testing involves creating two versions of the email, control version A and variation version B. You then change one aspect of the B version that you would like to test for, such as the subject line. With everything else constant, you test to see which version has the better response. A/B testing helps you identify what works and what doesn’t, which can save you valuable time and money in the future.

Make Them Fall in Love with Your Content
If your emails are constantly selling to your audience, but not providing any value, there is something wrong with your approach. Just as providing special offers can entice people to sign-up for your emails, it is important to continue these offers to keep recipients from unsubscribing. Here you can also us A/B testing to see which offers resonate well, and which are not as appealing to your audience. While it isn’t unreasonable to promote your products, make sure there is value in your message that will make readers appreciate your email.

People are likely receiving dozens of emails per day from businesses they’ve once shown interest in. If your emails are blending in and returning a very low CTR, try examining your approach to see if one of these reasons is why your email marketing isn’t working.