In this article, we will dive into email marketing pain points and proper ways of avoiding them. With our guest expert, we’ll show you valuable tips and tricks to make your email marketing life easier.
Creating emails and running email campaigns are a constant race, with obstacles that must be overcome. These processes involve many steps and nuances, creating constant headaches for email marketers. We decided to delve into the main pain points for email specialists and, together with a guest expert, find solutions to them.
Top email marketing challenges
We have collected six of the most important difficulties that can spoil the set-up process for email marketing for many marketers. For each problem, we will attempt to advise you regarding how to solve it, as well as providing advice from an experienced email marketer to give you a path to more solutions.
Keeping the spam rate low
The first paint point, which is a major one, for email marketers is the spam rate of email newsletters. An email that flies into the spam folder can be considered a waste of resources, time, and creativity.
According to statistics for 2023, almost 46% of the world's email traffic is spam. As a result, many email marketers must face the fact that emails fly into spam and spoil both the overall performance of campaigns and the domain’s reputation.
To keep email newsletters at ​the average acceptable spam rate of 0.1% or below, follow these tips.
(Source: Statista)
Clean your email list
Regular email list cleaning is one of the main keys to reducing the spam rate. This helps remove inactive or bounced email addresses from your list, after which they will no longer be able to affect the "healthy" part of your audience, the domain’s reputation, and overall deliverability (we will discuss deliverability below).
Provide an easy unsubscribe solution
As much as you would like a subscriber to stay with you forever, this is something out of science fiction. Sooner or later, subscribers will want to unsubscribe for various reasons (they no longer need your services or find your content uninteresting). If you do not provide a convenient and intuitive way to unsubscribe, the subscriber will take the easiest way to remove your emails from their sight by adding you to their spam list so that your further email newsletters will end up there.
Respect your audience's choice and provide a link to unsubscribe from the email newsletter that can be found quickly and easily.
(Source: Stripo template)
Send relevant email content
Relevant and personalized content will keep your audience engaged and prevent an increased spam rate. Subscribers have various interests, needs, and problems they want to solve. Only content that is relevant to them will catch their attention and take your email marketing to new heights. Analyze your audience and their preferences and, based on that analysis, provide relevant and personalized content in your email newsletters (we will also touch on personalization later in the article).
(Source: Stripo template)
Spam filters are constantly updated, and the list of influence factors remains opaque.
However, in general, here is what you should pay attention to:
- Properly configure technical domain signatures and mandatory DMARC.
- Check all links because they should work and not be very long, and you should pay attention to where you save the images you use in the newsletter.
- Low user engagement in the first stages indicates that people are not interested in the content, and this can lead to such emails being assigned to the spam folder.
- Do not try to extract promo emails from the promo folder, because if you do, the indicators will drop, and the increase in success may be very temporary.
- One-click unsubscribe is the foundation of the basics. Don't neglect it.
- Do not send emails to those who have not interacted with the brand for more than 2 years.
- Add clear and visible links to the rules of use for your website and work out the design of your email footers (why the person received this email and how they can unsubscribe.
- Do not neglect the domain warm-up and pay attention to the behavior of subscribers in individual email clients, particularly regional ones of the https://www.seznam.cz/ type.
- Control the quality of the content, particularly the use of spam words and links to external resources other than social networks.
- Implement mobile layout and dark theme validation for popular devices.
- Atypical actions on the sender's part that can be considered manipulation, such as sending a promo from the trigger domain or using RE: in the subject line.
Any of the above careless actions can lead to spam, but the rule of thumb is to only send email to those genuinely interested in your information.
Galina Panasyuk,
We've also created a separate article with additional email design and content tips to help you avoid the spam folder. Check it out to keep your spam figures low.
Low deliverability
Email deliverability issues are closely related to the previous point, as they determine whether emails will reach recipients' inboxes, be lost in spam folders, or be blocked completely.
According to statistics, among the most popular ESPs, the average deliverability percentage is 37.38%. Depending on the ESP of your choice, this figure may differ, but you can always make it higher using certain approaches.
SPF and DKIM authentication
A sender policy framework (SPF) and domain keys identified mail (DKIM) are essential in increasing the deliverability of your email marketing campaigns. SPF and DKIM help authenticate email senders by verifying that the emails come from the domain they claim to be from. These authentication methods are important in preventing spam, phishing attacks, and other email security risks and are aimed at protecting regular subscribers from malicious email content. By applying these authentications, you demonstrate that your emails are not spoofed.
Constant sender reputation monitor
Your domain reputation score plays a major role in email deliverability. High scores provide better deliverability, while low scores can result in a system automatically marking emails as spam. Your reputation can be negatively affected by the following:
- Sending many emails in a very short period of time.
- A high spam rate or bounce rate.
- Poor content and email list quality.
- Being blacklisted.
When solving problems of email deliverability, the technical aspect comes first — the reputation of domains and IP. Then comes the legal aspect, which involves all regional features of data collection and use, as well as work with the database and content. It is necessary to approach the problem comprehensively, and constant monitoring will help to identify problem areas.
Galina Panasyuk,
Open rate and the constant race to make it high
Of all the pain points in email marketing, this may be the most frustrating. A low open rate (OR) occurs when a significant portion of the emails sent fail to attract recipients' attention and remain unopened in their inboxes.
The OR in most industries ranges from 15 to 25%, with the average being around 21.33%. To stay within these numbers (or set an industry record if you try very hard), you should implement the following tips.
A/B test your emails from header to footer
Finding the perfect email marketing formula for your industry is a process of constant experimentation. A/B testing is the ultimate tool for testing theories and hypotheses, and by using these tests, you can investigate any element of email marketing that can impact its effectiveness. Test subject lines, visuals, content, tone of voice, color palettes, and more. Collect data, analyze them, and find out what works best for your email OR.
Consider the proper send time
You send an email at 1:00 PM in your time zone, and the recipient on the other side of the world has long since wrapped themself in a warm blanket and gone to sleep at 3 AM. When they wake up, there will most likely be more email newsletters in their inboxes, which will bury your email. Sending time and time zones are important factors in email ORs that many marketers may not attach much importance to.
We analyzed this factor in detail in our white paper, together with GetResponse, and identified the ideal sending time that will launch your OR to the moon.
Create a mobile-friendly email design
The mobile phone has long been the ultimate tool for consuming content, and email is no exception. According to surveys, 47% of all people across all demographics use a mobile application to check their email. This figure shows that adapting email design to mobile devices is a requirement rather than an option.
Recently, there has been more and more talk about the fact that OR is no longer an indicative metric, because it is difficult to recognize whether a bot or a real user opened a given email. In addition, given low engagement and domain trust, Google announced that it could block the tracking pixel in some emails. Thus, I would advise you to pay more attention to success metrics other than OR because very often, it does not reflect anything about your email.
However, like almost all metrics, it can be manipulated, and there are two ways to improve its usefulness:
- Experimental — test topics, time, and name of the sender; promo Google annotations; add the sender's logo and emoji; segmentation and personalization; and send to those who read this type of email.
- Manipulative — implement topics that do not reflect the content of the email, clear inactive followers to raise the overall OR (this is a good practice, but on the other hand, if you use it only to increase your metrics, then this is data manipulation, so be advised).
If you are stuck on one result, I would advise you to segment your email list and change your approach to newsletters in general. Maybe, it's time to say goodbye to those who haven't read any of your emails for X days, change your approach and begin working with both active and inactive users, and generally examine how your OR affects other, less biased metrics.
Galina Panasyuk,
We also conducted our own experiment on ways to increase OR, and based on its results, we created a case that will add another effective marketing strategy to your collection.
Click-through rate issues
This problem occurs when recipients open emails but do not perform the desired actions. Low click-through rates (CRTs) indicate that the email's content or design can't sufficiently engage recipients and convince them to interact further with the email or take the needed marketing actions (subscribe, make a purchase, register for an event, and so on).
According to statistics, the optimal CTR for emails is around 2.6%, but there is always room for improvement. Check out these tips to improve your CTR.
Do your homework with CTAs
Calls to action (CTAs) are the main source of clicks. Your CTAs should be action-oriented and convey what you want the recipient to do. Create visually appealing buttons that will stand out in your email. Play with the choice of words and make the CTA catchy and visible to collect those precious clicks.
Eye-catching visuals are a must
Visuals are also your click-generating tool. A high-quality banner that is clickable, supports your message, and resonates with your audience can greatly improve the effectiveness of your email.
(Source: Stripo template)
Buttons instead of text links
Let's face it. Blue text links in emails are boring. However, if you wrap that link in a beautiful button that combines good design and a catchy CTA, the effectiveness of the link will increase exponentially.
The main reason for low click rates is the constant changes in channel usage patterns, audiences, devices, and the role of email marketing as a channel. For many types of businesses, email marketing becomes not only a source of traffic but also a channel for brand interaction.
Currently, the average time spent reading an email is less than 2 seconds, so it is worth paying attention to the content of the first screen and testing the mobile layout of emails.
How can you avoid low click rates? Test templates and increase the value of each email using maximum personalization and segmentation, test CTA, and clearly define the purpose of each email.
Galina Panasyuk,
Personalization implementation difficulties
According to surveys, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized experiences.
However, while personalization is an effective way to increase engagement and relevance and is expected by recipients, it requires access to and the analysis of subscriber preferences, behaviors, and demographic data, which are headaches and require a proper time/resources ratio.
To help in this regard, we’ve gathered some tips and approaches to move you closer to more personalized email newsletters.
Gather and segment audience data
Simply sending emails to everyone will not get you very far. You must know who your audience is and what their problems are and, based on these data, understand how your emails can solve them. Collect information about your audience, such as information on gender, age, location, recent actions of website visitors, potential preferences, and purchase history. Then, segment the audience into the necessary clusters, after which you will see which are the most promising, and ideas for ideal email content for each cluster will begin to appear on their own. You will be on the path to a more personalized approach to email newsletters.
Use dynamic content
Dynamic content is also a good tool for personalizing your emails, and it also relies on the data you collect and segment. How might dynamic content look? For example, you sell shoes, and your email contains a selection of collections at delicious discounts. Men who receive the email will only see men's shoes, while women will only see women's shoes. At the email creation stage, both content options are included in the design and swapped depending on whom the email is sent to.
Implement recommendations based on past actions
When you receive promotional emails from various retail chains and brands, you can often come across blocks with the title "You might like this" or something along those lines. These are your recommendations. However, the secret of good recommendations is not mindlessly bombarding the recipient with products but, rather, providing verified recommendations based on recent purchases and wishlisted products. This is truly desirable and useful for the recipient.
(Source: Stripo template)
I like to use the personalized email sender approach, for example, communication on behalf of a personal manager.
The use of product recommendations and personalization based on a client's history of views and requests, or dynamic content tied to the interests of the user, should be indicated via a personalized banner.
In addition, summaries of the year and statistics have long been a good tradition, but every year, it is clear that marketers like them more than users, so you have to be more careful with them.
Personalized discounts work well, and personalization or at least segmentation by time zones, geography, and culture is important. For example, if the name of a product or the colors of your identity have a negative connotation in a given country, then for such recipients, it is better to develop with something new.
Galina Panasyuk,
Interactive content rocket science
Here, we are entering a complicated area many marketers are afraid of. Even though, according to surveys, 60% of email recipients said they are likely to engage with an interactive email, marketers are in no hurry to make their emails interactive. There is a good reason for this.
(Source: Stripo template)
Adding interactive content is a complex task that often requires a great deal of creativity, technical knowledge, or specialists on the team who can help with it.
However, fear not, as we have a few tips to make your interactive content adoption as smooth as butter.
Use tools to make your life easier
As mentioned above, creating interactive content requires technical knowledge on the part of marketers, but there is always a solution for non-tech-savvy specialists. We strive to make interactive content accessible to everyone. Thus, we created the Interactive module generator.
This free tool allows you to generate various engaging interactive mechanics in a convenient interface, such as carousels, quizzes, scratchers, NPS questionnaires, and much more. No technical knowledge is required.
Having created your game, you get all the necessary code, which will be supported by all popular email clients and which you can easily save as a module in Stripo.
You can read more about the generator's capabilities in a dedicated article.
Wrap your interactive content into modules
Modules and modular email design are a separate approach to creating emails. In short, modules allow you to save any element of an email as a module and reuse it in other emails. For example, you have been working hard on a banner with a button and don't want to do it again in your next email. Just save the email as a module and add it to your next email.
The same approach applies to interactive content. Once you make a game, you will have a ready-made module for further use, allowing the implementation of necessary tweaks without creating a game from scratch each time.
To make your email marketing life easier when implementing interactive content and gamification, we recommend checking out our special guide to email gamification. We've gathered all the ins and outs of this process, as well as the wisdom of respectful email marketers in the industry.
Wrapping up
Success in email marketing does not come easy. It requires constant email marketing campaign work, regular creative brainstorming, improving results, and overcoming problems. The pain points mentioned in this article may keep some marketers awake at night, and we hope that our advice and our guest expert's wisdom will help you overcome these difficulties and achieve the necessary results.
