Why 7 out of 10 email campaigns fail

It’s a known fact that email marketing has become a popular, cost-effective and quick method of communicating with customers over the last few years. But the question is how successful is your email campaign? One of the key reasons email campaigns fail is because of low open rates – that is, how many people see the email in their inbox and want to click on it to read more.

Some mistakes that can be avoided to help increase the ‘open rates’ of your emails include:

1. Not Prioritising

We at ease make the mistake of focusing more on the actual content of the email, rather than the subject of the email. I won’t disagree with the fact that content is equally important to that of the subject, but the content comes into play once the customer has decided to open it. It’s a fact that if you don’t have a compelling subject line, the chance of your email getting opened is slim to begin with. Just like a Newspaper headline, the headline has to grab you or you don’ty buy the paper, it’s the same with emails – they have to entice enough interest and curiosity to make someone click to open it.

2. Less is not always bad

The general rule of thumb in the email marketing campaign is to keep the subject line to 50 characters or less. It’s a true fact that emails with a shorter subject line will have a higher open rate over the longer ones. Why? Well depending on what email client the user has, subjects don’t always get shown in their entirety. See the next point also for this.

3. Not prioritising the position of the words in the subject line

An important reason why people don’t open the emails is when the subject line fails to grab the reader’s attention. For e.g. let’s consider the subject line:

“Huge Stock Clearance on selected kitchen and home appliances, and get free delivery if you spend over £50”.

How many people will open the email? Probably not many. This is because the most ‘grabbing’ words in the subject “free delivery if you spend over £50” will fail to grab the reader’s attention as it is at the end of a lengthy subject line. But alter the order of the subject to:

“Spend £50 or more For Free Delivery on Selected Stock Clearance Home and Kitchen Appliances” will have a higher open rate as the ‘enticing’ words are positioned dependant on its priority.

4. Using the same subject lines for all the customers

We often consider A/B Split Testing as a tool to identify which subject lines have a better open rate ratio. It’s a true fact that the split testing gives you the percentage of which subject line has a higher open rate ratio out of the two. From these, you can then start analysing the reasons behind why some emails are opened more than others, just based on small differences in the subject lines.

Example:

Let’s consider a job agency is advertising all their available job vacancies in an email campaign. Let’s also say there are two types of job seekers. Type A, looking for temporary positions only and Type B, who are looking for any type of contracts. Now consider the different subject lines:

Subject Line 1: “Find out the temporary opportunities for an immediate position.”

This subject line should target audiences who are looking for temporary positions only. But if we use this subject line for the jobseekers looking for a permanent position it will not have expected high open rates and the person in the long-run may even unsubscribe from the list.

Subject Line 2: “Apply for positions where there is less competition.”

This subject line should target audiences who are looking for any contracts (permanent or temporary). Segmenting the subject line according to the customer’s need increases the open rates which further helps in increasing the conversions.

5. Not Filtering Spam Keywords

It’s advisable to filter out the spam keywords to ensure that it gets delivered in the inbox successfully. Though there is no quick fix or rule to avoid it, certain tips are:

• Don’t use all CAPITALS
• Don’t use terminology: ‘Go here’, ‘click here’, ‘Life time opportunity’, ‘visit here’
• Don’t use spam-triggering symbols and phrases: !, $ or 100%, 50% off, ‘Save up to’
• Try to find alternate words to: ‘Proven’, ‘certain’, ‘tested’, ‘affirmed’
• Definately don’t use typical spam wording: ‘Winner’, ‘You have been selected’, ‘Congratulations’
• …Or these: ‘Special Invitation’, ‘Invitation’, ‘You are invitied’

6. Frequency not being maintained-

Open rates don’t depend only on how good your subject line is. It also depends on how frequently they receive emails from you. Customer engagement is one of the key factors which determine how frequently they should receive an email. Segmenting the customers according to their engagement not only helps to determine how frequently they should receive emails but also enhances the percentage of open rates of the emails. Again, test over a few months with different frequencies – not too many that they feel bombarded, but not too little that they forget all about you.

7. Not Triggering curiosity

We often tend to include subject lines that show urgency. But that’s an old trick to make people open the emails and they are wise to this technique, it simply doesn’t work anymore. It’s believed that subject lines that trigger curiosity have better open rates and results into a higher conversion. For e.g:

a) “Find out the new jobs added recently”

b) “Apply for positions where there is less competition”

The second subject line will usually have a higher ‘open rate’ as it triggers higher a curiosity among the job seekers with respect to the first one. Less competition = increased chance of getting a job = open this email

8. Not emphasising on the three keywords

Test, Test, Test. How many of us test the subject line before sending out the campaign? Do you? It is a good idea to test different variations of the subject line not only for better open rates but also to ensure that it reaches the inbox and not in the spam box. Ask family, friends, co-workers or strangers for the honest opinion.

9. Not focussing on the ‘From’ Line

The ‘from’ line is equally important to that of the subject line. The ‘From’ Line should communicate who you are as a sender. It’s a good idea to keep this entry unchanged as any misleading terms used in this entry will lead the email to the spam box instead the recipients inbox.