6 Warning Signs Your Email Marketing Is Scaring Away Subscribers

Email marketing has been around for more than two decades now, and it’s here to stay.

In fact, its stake in the success and failure of an online business is growing larger every day. That’s why every online marketer is focusing on building a large email list. After all, the bigger the list, the more the conversions, given that you are not spamming your customers.

But adding new subscribers to your list won’t help if the old ones keep leaving your list quickly.

So here’re six brutal mistakes that are scaring away your subscribers.

1. Sending too many emails

It’s tempting to assume that sending more emails will increase the chances of subscribers buying from you but that’s actually not the case. The more, the merrier doesn’t always hold true.

According to a survey by Technology Advice, 43 percent of email subscribers want businesses to email them less frequently.

Source: Chadwick Martin Bailey

But to avoid over-mailing, you shouldn’t sacrifice your conversion rate by under-mailing either. The best way to decide the optimal number of emails your business should send is through A/B tests.

Further, you may find that different segments prefer emails at a different frequency, in that case, you can tailor your send volume for each segment accordingly.

Also, here are some specific questions to ask yourself before sending an email:

Is your email providing any real value to your subscribers?

Is it tailored to your subscriber’s email preferences?

How does the email response rate vary for your previous emails for different lists?

Another best practice to consider before implementing a frequency capping, is giving your subscribers an option to pick how many times they want to hear from you.

Remember, there’s no rule regarding the number you can send. Just be mindful of the customer journey and make sure your emails are enhancing the customer experience rather than hindering it.

2. Using clickbait subject lines

When it comes to email, subject lines play a crucial role in determining your open rates. No matter how good your emails are, if your subject lines are boring, your open rates will suffer. So, it goes without saying that they need to be catchy and creative to capture your recipient’s attention.

Now, don’t be tempted to over sensationalize your subject lines or add keywords that aren’t related to your message to induce more opens.

Why? Because catchy subject lines are good at grabbing your recipient’s attention and increasing your open rates, but they’ll only take the desired action if you offer them what they’ve been promised. Nobody likes to feel deceived.

So avoid using misleading subject lines to retain your subscribers on your list.

Here’s an example of a clickbait subject line:

Losing your subscribers trust to increase your email open rate isn’t worth the risk.

3. Treating every subscriber in the same way

One size never fits all, but when it comes to email marketing, most marketers are still sending the same messages to everyone on their list. Though batch and blast is the quickest and easiest way to earn money from your emails, it can erode your email marketing conversions very quickly, as too many generic emails force subscribers to jump off your ship.

Instead, send personalized emails based on a subscriber’s preferences and behavior on your site. Also, segment your list based on all the data you have about your subscribers.

Most marketers are only doing basic segmentation based on the geography, gender, or the acquisition source. To personalize effectively, you’ve got to segment on deeper levels. So leverage all the data you have about a user to craft hyper-personalized messages.

Given below is a study conducted by us. We sent 1000 plus emails, a non-personalized mailer to one batch and a personalized one to another batch, the personalized version received both better open and response rates.

4. Focusing only on promotion

Marketers consistently ranked email as the single most effective tactic for awareness, acquisition, conversion, and retention says a Gigaom Research.

Rather than using email marketing to increase your bottom line, use it as a medium to engage your customers and build customer loyalty. Yes, your ultimate goal is to promote and sell your product, but if you want to get better results from your email-marketing program then take a step back and focus on engaging your customers.

Why it matters?

When you keep your subscribers engaged, they’re much more likely to open each and every email (including promotional ones) they receive from your brand. And once a subscriber starts engaging with your emails they’re more likely to convert through them.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to engage and ultimately convert prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers. Provided you’re not taking it for granted by simply sending batch and blast emails.

5. Not giving subscribers what they wanted

People will join your list and they will unsubscribe too, some churn is unavoidable. But it’s your duty to ensure that they aren’t leaving because they are merely being treated as an email address.

In order to retain them with your business, you need to send them the right message at the right time and with the right content.

Give people what they’re looking for, or get ignored.

If you have a high unsubscribe rate, find ways to fix it. Here are some of the reasons, which are responsible for driving your subscribers away.

• Unmet expectations
• High email frequency
• Poor email design
• Lack of personalization
• Poor email copy

6. Lack of intelligent email remarketing

The quickest way to annoy customers is to ask them to do something, which they have already done. And, with remarketing emails, this happens most of the time. Why? Because today, your customer touch points are spread across multiple devices, and a lack of coordination between various marketing channels can sometimes lead to loss of marketing opportunities and customer churn.

At times, poor segmentation is the reason that leads to a higher churn rate. If you don’t get your segments right, then you will end up sending irrelevant emails to your subscriber base. For example, sending an email with a discount on a product that customer has just purchased. It happens all the time.

Email remarketing is very powerful. But if you are not using it strategically it’ll sink your boat. Invest in a marketing automation platform that gives you access to a single customer view so that you have a complete picture of your customers.

Email marketing wrap

Building a large email list takes a lot of time and resources. So, if you’re making any of these mistakes mentioned above, it’s time to fix your leaking funnel.

Guest Author: Reshu Rathi is the Digital Marketing Manager at Betaout, a customer segmentation and marketing automation platform for e-commerce. Her job is to create content & marketing campaigns to help e-commerce marketers personalize their marketing & increase conversion. When she’s not working she spends her time in reading and running not simultaneous although that’d be very impressive. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on Linkedin

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