This question has been going the rounds for quite some time, thanks to the enormous success of social media marketing. However, email marketing is anything but dead, and if done correctly, it can be a valuable lead generation and customer engagement tool.
Let’s look at some of the stats which prove that email marketing is here to stay for good:
- 64% of small businesses send emails to bring in leads (Campaign Monitor, 2021).
- 58% of people check their inboxes first thing in the morning (OptinMonster, 2020).
- Every $1 spent on email marketing brings back an average of $36 in return (Litmus).
Even in this day and age, prospects would still choose cold emails over cold calls any day. With the right email strategy, you can influence their purchasing decisions and also keep cultivating new leads.
So, if email marketing can be so beneficial, why do people still say that it’s time to put a lid on it? Well, to make things clear, it must be stressed that while email marketing is still going strong, it’s time to bid farewell to a few emailing practices that have been extremely common in the past decade. For instance, spammy emails get a lot of downvotes from Google. Its spam filters are highly advanced and immediately spot signs of fraudulent messages, scams, and emails of commercial nature that violate the CAN-SPAM Act.
To alert you against it, this piece walks you through a few outdated email marketing strategies that don’t work anymore:
Generic subject lines: If your campaign involves writing emails that are extremely generic and impersonal, then there is a high chance that it won’t work. Personalization is the order of the day, and businesses must attempt to connect with the receiver from the first line itself. To make this happen, you must have an impeccable understanding of your average customer’s lifestyle, needs, and expectations.
Not paying attention to GDPR and CAN-SPAM Act: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the CAN-SPAM Act revolves around digital privacy and cybersecurity. One of their most important tenets revolves around data collection and correspondences which are of commercial nature.
Among the many crucial guidelines, the act, in particular, also requires businesses to offer their prospects the option to opt out of receiving future emails. Failure to do so may result in penalties and frustrated customers.
Bad email design: A huge chunk of internet users access their email accounts through their mobile devices. If your emails aren’t formatted for reading on smaller devices, then your messages simply won’t get across. All of the elements, be it text, images, or links, should be optimized for mobile viewing. Text, in particular, must be broken down into smaller chunks to make it more readable.
If the results are not what you had hoped for, it’s time to revisit your email marketing strategy. Big brands are making a bomb by reaching out to their customers via emails. With the right tricks up your sleeve, you can do it too.
Faisal Abidi
