5 Myths About Email Marketing Debunked
When it comes to email-marketing best practices, many myths abound. Here, we debunk 5 common myths, as well as provide advice to help you improve your email-marketing strategies and results.
Myth #1 — There is an algorithm to determine which of my recipients are email friendly.
Although there may not be an algorithm to let you know which of your subscribers are email friendly, you can track and assess email campaign analytics to identify your most loyal customers. This group of subscribers is the most engaged and also likely to be the most responsive to your marketing messages.
In addition, you can use email analytics to go a step further and get insight into your subscribers’ preferences. With this information, you can then segment your email list to create more targeted email campaigns, ultimately boosting sales and email-marketing return on investment (ROI).
Myth #2 — Emails sent at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday are guaranteed to reach the most clients.
Some organizations may find that they get the best open, click-through, and conversion rates by sending emails on Wednesday at 1 p.m. However, it may not be the best day and time for your industry or group of subscribers. Setting up optimization tests is the best way to determine the time and day that will motivate the most response from your specific target audience.
Myth #3 — If I increase the amount of emails I send to my customer list, this is just giving them more opportunities to ignore them.
It’s true that sending too many emails can result in subscribers ignoring your emails and unsubscribing from your list. Undermailing, however, can significantly hurt your ROI. Not only does sending too few emails increase your chances of missing out on sales from subscribers who are ready to buy, but undermailing can mean fewer impressions for keeping you top of mind with prospects and customers.
At FulcrumTech, for example, we ran a frequency test for a client to see whether sending more emails would 1) increase engagement, and 2) if the additional revenue generated would outweigh the cost of list saturation. We sent the same email to the same list of subscribers for 5 consecutive days and got dramatic results: Open rates increased by 103% and the number of paid subscription sales increased by 269%. Learn more about email send frequency and how you can determine your ROI sweet spot.
Myth #4 — The smaller the subject line, the better results we’ll see.
We delved into the topic of optimizing subject lines in a previously published NewsLever feature: The Key to Subject Line Success — Testing, Not Guessing. Because subject lines drive open rates — and your recipients to the top of the sales funnel — you should invest time and effort into testing and optimizing them for your specific target audience.
Length may play some role in determining a subject line’s performance results; however, it’s not the only factor. The actual wording and personalization, for example, also can have an effect. In fact, a recent study by Phrasee (a company that develops software to automate and optimize email subject lines) showed that the length of subject lines has little impact on email open rates. When optimizing subject lines, click-through and conversion rates are other metrics that also should be considered because they can help indicate a subject line’s ability to catch the attention of more qualified subscribers.
Myth #5 — Greymail is just as bad as spam.
Whereas spam is unsolicited email, greymail (or graymail) is defined as email that recipients have opted in to receive, but no longer want. There isn’t a way to measure exactly what percentage of your email messages fall into the greymail category; however, open rates and inactive subscriber rates are good indicators of whether your email content is still engaging subscribers.
How does a high percentage of greymail impact your email-marketing performance results? Some email clients will automatically route email messages that fall into the greymail category to spam folders due to a lack of response. The best way to prevent your emails from becoming greymail is to continually create content that is valuable to your prospects and customers.
Be sure to check out this previous NewsLever article for tips on how to prevent your emails from becoming greymail. In addition, read the article What You Need to Know About the CAN-SPAM Act for more information about the key requirements for ensuring that your emails are indeed CAN-SPAM Act compliant.
Do you have questions about which are the best tactics for optimizing your email-marketing campaigns? That’s an area in which FulcrumTech excels! Email us or give us a call at 215-489-9336, and we’ll help you develop and implement strategies to maximize your email-marketing ROI.