There is no doubt that email marketing is still a great way to connect with your customers – but this is only true if it is used correctly. This article highlights several key challenges of email marketing in 2018 for marketers to continue to optimise to make email communications relevant.
Unstructured Email Subscriber List
For businesses and agencies that have been practicing email marketing, one of the most important challenge is often neglected – having a complete and organised email subscriber list or database. This is essential in order for one to be able to send relevant emails to your customers. One may realise that existing enterprise or cloud solutions are not built with sufficient features to achieve this. Something as simple as identifying duplicates and invalid emails are often omitted when sending out emails.
For larger organisations with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platforms, it is essential that the customer information on the CRM can be integrated to the chosen email marketing platform. This is commonly done using APIs (Application Programming Interface) that will allow seamless integration of email subscriber database and execution of email marketing campaigns. For smaller businesses without a CRM backend, it is recommended to use an email marketing system that has built in customer database management functions as this will provide a foundation to quickly and easily structure your customer databases.
The lack of planning and focus into organising a customer database often lead to poor results as email marketing relies heavily on data. If your database is not been updated for some time, the analytical results from your campaigns might be inaccurate and inconclusive – making it difficult for many to justify the effectiveness of email marketing.
Email Marketing Strategies Need to Adapt
Learning how to adapt your email marketing strategies increases the likelihood that your subscribers will stay loyal to you. In order to achieve this, your email marketing strategy needs to tick all the boxes that ensures that you are not sending spam to your subscriber base.
Responsive design, catchy subject lines and personalisation are some of the fundamentals to increase the likelihood of your emails being opened. The best way is to review your email campaigns and identify what elements you can alter to garner greater results.
It is important to review this strategy on a periodic basis. If your current strategy achieves the same or higher results, then stick to it. Otherwise conduct a review and research on new email trends and implement it to your next email campaign.
Less Spam, More Relevance
The era of mass emails has diminished while the era of 1-to-1 targeted and personalised emails takes precedence. Consumers do not want just another “Here It Is” or “Promo” email. It’s all about sending the right content at the right time.
It is simple enough to execute that “just one more” email and send it out to your email subscriber list. But without a clear targeting strategy in place, that one more email may fall through the cracks and you may not get the results that you’ve hoped for. This also increases consumer opt-out rates in the long run.
Many email service providers have a robust email reporting system that helps businesses analyse what works and what doesn’t. Understand these elements on a holistic level and you’ll able to identify what content works. The best way to test this is to conduct A/B testing and alter your content based on the results.
Overcoming these email marketing challenges may seem simple, but it takes effort and deep understanding in understanding what tools and solution is best suited for you. We will be happy to help you address the above challenges.
