What do you do if your email marketing campaign is not getting results?
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach and engage your audience, but what if your campaign is not delivering the results you expected? Maybe your open rate is low, your click-through rate is dismal, or your conversions are disappointing. Don't panic, there are some steps you can take to diagnose and improve your email marketing performance. Here are six tips to help you get back on track.
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Mardien DrewPMA Certified Product Marketing Director | Cross-Functional Aligner | Product Strategy & Market Research Expert
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Gohar Hassan DarLinkedIn Top 1% Voice | Helping Brands 10x Growth | Product Marketing Manager | Gen AI | Blockchain, Web3 Specialist |…
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Praveen PutrevuProduct Enthusiast | MBA- Masters' Union-Co'24 | Product Marketing | Consumer Analytics & Insights | Growth & Strategy
The first thing you need to do is to look at your email marketing metrics and identify where the problem lies. Is it your subject line, your content, your call to action, or your landing page? Compare your data with industry benchmarks and your own goals, and see which areas need improvement. You can also segment your data by different variables, such as audience, device, time, or location, to see if there are any patterns or trends.
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Dive deep into your analytics. Test different subject lines, send times, and formats to maximize engagement. Make sure to leverage automation and segmentation for hyper-personalized, timely messaging.
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Take a funnel-led approach to dissect the e-mail marketing data. Right from sending to converting, these are the flow of metrics: 1. Delivery Rate: Total E-mails Delivered/Total Sent 2. Open Rate: Total Opens/Total Sent 3. Click-Through-Rate 4. Bounce Rate 5. CTA Rate (For example: Add-to-cart) 6. Conversion Rate Each of these metrics has to be dissected to understand the reason behind the results.
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Before refining your email marketing, ask: ➤ Who's reading your emails? ➤ What are their key issues that your emails could solve? ➤ What parts of your emails underperform? ➤ What do your recipients expect from your messages? ➤ How do your metrics compare to industry standards? Pro Tip → Understand your audience deeply. Envision your emails as one-on-one chats. ↳ Are you talking to a casual reader or a decisive action-taker? Remember: ↳ Pinpoint issues like subject lines, content, CTAs, or landing pages. ↳ Benchmark your performance against industry norms and your objectives. ↳ Segment your data for insights on audience, device, time, or location. → Craft every email to engage effectively and drive meaningful actions!
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Review key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates to identify patterns or trends. Analyze audience demographics, behavior, and engagement data to understand how recipients are interacting with your emails.
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To analyze underperforming email marketing campaigns: 1) scrutinize metrics like open, click-through, conversion, and unsubscribe rates; 2) assess audience segmentation to ensure relevance; 3) evaluate content quality, including subject lines, visuals, and CTAs; 4) analyze timing and frequency of sends; 5) clean up email lists to remove inactive or invalid subscribers; 6) optimize landing pages linked from emails; 7) study competitors' strategies for insights; 8) gather customer feedback to understand preferences; 9) integrate email marketing with other channels; 10) continually experiment and optimize based on data-driven insights.
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It's crucial to scrutinize your database. The quality of contacts is very important. Start by asking key questions: 1. Are you targeting the right audience? 2. How the data was collected? 3. Determine if your approach is push (sending unsolicited emails) or pull (responding to inquiries or opt-ins) 4. Identify common problems among your audience 5. Segment your data further to tailor messages for better resonance. Crafting a well-designed email drip campaign, personalised to resonate with your target audience, can yield remarkable results. With the abundance of email marketing tools featuring powerful AI capabilities, understanding your product, services, and your audience (the "Who" and "Why") is more critical than ever.
Once you have identified the potential causes of your poor results, you need to test your emails to find out what works and what doesn't. You can use A/B testing or multivariate testing to experiment with different elements of your emails, such as the sender name, the subject line, the design, the copy, the images, the links, or the buttons. Make sure you test one variable at a time, and use a large enough sample size to get reliable results.
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Remember that the most important element of an email that you send people is the sender name. People look for emails from people. Sending it from a no reply email address is a one-way ticket to spamville. Only when someone has decided they want to read a subject line from a sender will they actually read it. Make sure it comes from a human, then start optimizing things like subject, lines, preview, text, and other elements to get the open.
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Experiment with different email elements such as subject lines, sender names, email copy, visuals, and calls-to-action (CTAs) using A/B testing. Test variations to determine which elements resonate best with your audience and drive higher engagement and conversions.
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As you refine your email strategy, follow this roadmap: 📊 Identify Issues: Check if problems are with the subject line or design. 🧪 A/B Testing: Test different sender names and subject lines. 🔄 Multivariate Testing: Change copy, images, and buttons to find what engages. ✅ Single Focus: Test one variable at a time for clear results. 👥 Adequate Sample: Ensure your sample size is large enough for reliability. Pro Tip → Effective testing enhances email campaigns. Test Intentions: ↳ Are changes genuinely improving engagement? ↳ Adapt based on effective elements; remove ineffective ones. Make sure each test meaningfully improves your strategy, aiming to surpass expectations.
Another reason why your email marketing campaign may not be getting results is that your emails are not reaching your subscribers' inboxes. This could be due to spam filters, bounce rates, or low sender reputation. To optimize your deliverability, you need to follow some best practices, such as using a verified domain, avoiding spammy words, maintaining a clean and updated email list, sending relevant and personalized emails, and asking your subscribers to whitelist you.
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Optimize your email deliverability with these key steps: 📬 Verify Domain: Ensure your domain's authenticity. 🚫 Avoid Spam Triggers: Skip words that trigger spam filters. 🧹 Clean Your List: Regularly purge and update your email list. ✉️ Personalize: Send relevant, tailored emails. 🛡️ Encourage Whitelisting: Ask subscribers to whitelist your emails. Pro Tip → Effective deliverability tactics enhance inbox success. Checklist: ↳ Are emails avoiding spam? ↳ Fine-tune based on subscriber interaction. Ensure every measure not only keeps but boosts your sender reputation, securing your emails' path to the inbox.
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Check your sender reputation and email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to ensure your emails are reaching recipients’ inboxes. Cleanse your email list regularly to remove inactive or invalid addresses and minimize the risk of being flagged as spam.
One of the keys to successful email marketing is to send the right message to the right person at the right time. This means that you need to segment your audience based on their characteristics, preferences, behaviors, or needs, and tailor your emails accordingly. For example, you can segment your audience by their stage in the buyer's journey, their product usage, their purchase history, their interests, or their feedback. By doing so, you can increase your relevance, engagement, and conversions.
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Divide your email list into smaller, targeted segments based on criteria such as demographics, purchase history, engagement level, or interests. Tailor your email content and messaging to each segment’s preferences and needs to improve relevance and engagement.
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While it is important to segment your audience, you should not forget that an incorrect segmentation can result in zero results. You should be careful while doing this step. Pre nurturing the contact helps in doing this better. You segmentation should focus on: 1) Customer profile - like if the email you are targeting is meant for technical or business leader. 2) There existing setup - this will help you analyze the pain point and send relevant emailers 3) Demographics 4) Purchase plans or history may be
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Boost your email marketing success through smart segmentation by following these key steps: 🎯 Buyer's Journey: Categorize by their purchasing phase. 🛠️ Product Usage: Segment according to how they use your products. 📊 Purchase History: Differentiate by their buying patterns. 🤔 Interests: Group by their preferences or interests. 📝 Feedback: Organize based on their responses or suggestions. Pro Tip → Tailoring your message per segment amplifies relevance and engagement. Checklist: ↳ Are your emails hitting the mark? ↳ Refine your approach based on segment-specific data. → Effective segmentation ensures your communications are timely, relevant, and personalized, leading to higher engagement and conversions.
Email marketing is not a one-time event, but a continuous process of building relationships with your prospects and customers. You need to nurture your leads with valuable and timely content that helps them move along the sales funnel. You can use email marketing automation tools to create and execute drip campaigns that send a series of emails based on triggers or actions. For example, you can send a welcome email when someone signs up for your newsletter, a product demo when someone requests more information, or a testimonial when someone makes a purchase.
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Develop automated email workflows or drip campaigns to nurture leads through the sales funnel with personalized and timely content. Provide valuable information, educational resources, and incentives to encourage continued engagement and move leads closer to conversion.
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Nurture your leads effectively with these steps: 🌱 Engagement: Treat email marketing as a continuous relationship-building process. 💌 Content: Deliver valuable content that moves leads through the sales funnel. 🔄 Automation: Use automation tools for drip campaigns based on user actions. 👉🏻 Examples: Welcome email on signup.✉️ Product demo for info requests. Testimonials after purchases. Pro Tip → Regular, impactful engagement deepens relationships. Checklist: ↳ Match content relevance and timing to each customer stage. ↳ Customize drip campaigns to user interactions. In short → Strategic, ongoing email nurturing builds strong connections and drives conversions.
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Nurturing leads is essential for guiding prospects through the buyer's journey and building relationships that lead to conversions. Start by understanding your target audience's needs, pain points, and preferences. Tailor your nurturing efforts to address their specific challenges and provide value at each stage of the buyer's journey. Segment your leads based on factors such as demographics, behavior, interests, and buying stage. Deliver more personalized and relevant content and messaging to each segment. Build trust and credibility by providing social proof such as customer testimonials and case studies. Continuously measure the effectiveness of your lead nurturing efforts and optimize your strategies based on data and insights.
The final step to improve your email marketing campaign is to measure and optimize your results. You need to track and analyze your key performance indicators (KPIs), such as open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, or return on investment (ROI). You also need to collect and act on feedback from your subscribers, such as surveys, polls, reviews, or ratings. By doing so, you can learn from your successes and failures, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your email marketing strategy.
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Divide your audience into smaller, more specific groups based on their preferences, behaviors, or demographic information. Also, you can tailor your messages more precisely as this personalization can significantly improve engagement rates. Use the data you have on your subscribers to create these segments, then craft targeted campaigns that speak directly to the interests and needs of each group.
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Refine your email marketing efforts with these final steps: 📊 Track KPIs: Monitor key metrics like open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, and ROI. 🔍 Gather Feedback: Collect insights from subscribers through surveys, polls, reviews, and ratings. 🔄 Learn and Adjust: Analyze successes and failures to inform your strategy adjustments. Pro Tip → Data-driven optimizations are crucial for enhancing campaign performance. Checklist : ↳ Review and interpret each metric's impact. ↳ Act on subscriber feedback to improve content and engagement. In short → Regular measurement and thoughtful optimization ensure your email marketing continues to evolve and succeed.
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Consider the days and times you are sending these emails. The best times and days will depend on your audience and industry as well as the purpose of your email. Think about when your audience will be likely to read your email. To give you some examples; - Product launch emails are best not sent on a Monday or Friday. - Surveys are best not sent on a Friday. - Newsletters that help people in their careers are often sent out on Sundays.
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Looking at data is effective, but receiving the emails and looking at them objectively as a customer is better. Don't assume - experience it for yourself. Take time to assess: - is the message rendering in my inbox (or being blocked?) - is it clear why I'm getting this email? - is it clear what it wants me to do? - If I click on a link in the email, am I going to a page that is expected, and does that page make sense of where I am in the journey? Taking a customer perspective will give you more information than just the numbers.
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Consider several things. 1) Are you set up for success? Do you have all qualified email marketing PRO or agency who understands and can use your email platform? Is your ESP robust with analytics? Make sure that you have set a clear goal for your email program. Set up automations/flows to move the targets through every stage of decision making. Don’t forget cart abandonment opportunities. There are many ways to keep your leads warm, so you should define each target, understand how they engage and how often you should contact them. Make sure your messaging and offers are clear and disruptive enough visually and promotionally to get attention!
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