Did you know that roughly 45% of emails sent are considered Spam?

Yes, that number sounds bad.

Maybe your marketing emails aren’t spam, they can be treated as one by your recipient.

Note: This post was originally published in June 2015, and updated in November 2021 to include new tips and data.

For some people, email marketing is the best way to go, but others commit huge mistakes in their marketing emails and think that it doesn’t work.

So before you leave email marketing behind, why don’t you analyze your marketing emails first? Maybe there are things you can improve that you haven’t seen yet that’s why your efforts are failing miserably.

So, without further ado, here are the top 10 things you should stop doing in your marketing emails to increase open rates and conversions.

Generic subject lines

Serious question. How many emails do you receive every day? Maybe too much that you can’t read every single one of them.

According to TechJury, the average office worker receives around 120 emails per day.

What are the odds that your email will be one of the few opened? Or even just noticed?

Too low if your subject line is not as brilliant as Buzzfeed’s email subject lines.

Subject lines are one of the most crucial parts of an email, that’s why you have to be very careful when creating one.
Good thing there are ways you can follow to make sure that your emails will go directly to your recipients inbox—meaning higher chances of being opened!

1. Avoid spammy words like “free,” “limited time,” “buy,” and using all caps, such as “REMINDER,” and “CLICK.”
2. Be clear. Being witty or super creative with the subject line is fine, but be sure that you’re not compromising clarity. Be clear with your message and intention, and avoid disappointing your recipients by putting up a subject line that will not be further explained in the content.
3. Be concise. Subject lines that work have 50 characters or fewer. Concise subject lines are recommended if you want it to be fully displayed in the email pane—especially for mobile devices.

A good subject line is not too generic that it doesn’t really speak with your recipients, rather, it should urge them to do something or show that they will benefit from reading your email.

Tip: A/B test your subject lines

A/B testing is when you change certain parts of your email, whether it be the subject line or body copy, to see how the changes impact your results.

By A/B testing, you get to see what works with your audience and what doesn’t. For example, if your subject lines with puns get consistently higher open rates, then moving forward you know it’s better to have punny subject lines.

Images that don’t display properly

We’ve all experienced receiving marketing emails with broken images.

I know… that’s frustrating.

Although you can’t always blame yourself or your email marketers for instances like this, because not all recipients can receive visual elements—some can only receive in plain text.

What you can do instead is to limit the usage of images, and make sure that you have proper alt text for all your images to keep your readers away from being clueless on what your images are all about.

Usage of “no-reply” emails

Generic addresses, especially ‘no-reply’ ones prevent your readers from engaging with your business. And we don’t want that.

We want to receive emails with email addresses that we can reply to—where we can ask questions or give feedback.

‘No-reply’ email addresses have also been proven to decrease open rates, and increase unsubscribe and complaint rates.

If you’re not yet convinced that you should give up using ‘no-reply’ email, perhaps this guideline will finally persuade you.

The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business

According to the first item in the CAN-SPAM Act, “Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.”

Generic salutations

Personalization is a very important part of email creation. We give value and attention to emails that we know is made especially for us. And how do we know it’s for us?

When it’s addressed to us—when names are mentioned.

So stop that “To whom it may concern,” “Dear Sir,” or worse, “{INSERTFIRSTNAME}” salutation and start using actual names.

“…years and years of sifting through emails has conditioned people to discard anything that doesn’t come from a recognizable friend or family member and/or doesn’t open with a personalized greeting. Any message that doesn’t refer to the recipient by name is getting discarded—period—never to be pondered again. You have to be on a first-name basis with your recipient. That’ll get you in the door, so to speak, and leave the recipient open to reading your message.” -Dan Forootan (How Important Is Personalization To Your Email Marketing Campaign?)

If you’re using an email marketing software, check if you’re typing the correct personalization shortcodes. You wouldn’t want your subscriber to end up with a “Dear    ,” or again, {INSERTFIRSTNAME}.

Misleading content in marketing emails

You promised something good in your subject line. Now you make sure that the content justifies it.

I’ve been subscribed to HubSpot for quite sometime now, and they never fail to keep their promises. When they say that a free guide or eBook is included, expect that a download link is included in that email—and expect that it’s really free.

Just like the subject, avoid using spam trigger words like “prize,” “free,” “bonus,” “buy,” and “order.” Instead, use persuasive words like “because,” “you,” and “imagine.”

You can use HubSpot’s The Ultimate List of Email Spam Trigger Words to know what to avoid.

No call-to-action

Unless you’re doing a personal email and just want to say hi, you need a call-to-action.

The very reason why you’re marketing through email is because you want to sell something, or perhaps you want your readers to benefit from you. The point is you either want to give, or you need something—usually both.

Make your intentions clear by putting call-to-action. And guide your audience on what to do—until the very last step.

“Be clear and direct with your users, telling them exactly what you’d like them to do.” –Conversion Rate Experts

Including a short explanation or bullets of your product’s features with call-to-action button is also a good way to convert.

Multiple marketing emails with the same content

Weeks ago, I committed a mistake that nobody should ever follow.

I published a post in SEO Hacker, and later on decided to modify the headline and slugs. There’s nothing wrong with that—you can always change your title and slugs if you feel that it’s necessary to do so. However, when your published post is automatically being sent to thousands of subscribers, then you have to be careful.

I use an email marketing software called AWeber, and every time we publish an article, it automatically sends an update to our subscribers like this:

Once it’s sent, and you modified the slugs of your post, it will generate a new email—regardless if it’s the same post or not. That’s what I did, and that’s the dangerous part.

Just by modifying the slugs, I have sent two emails (in the same day) containing two different titles but the same content and is directed to the same article.

Not a very nice move!

It can confuse your readers, or they may not give importance to your emails at all, because really, who wants to be bombarded with multiple emails with the same content?

No option to unsubscribe from marketing emails

Admit it, even if you have compelling content, there will always be people who won’t like (or will stop liking) receiving marketing emails. That’s why you need to give them the option to unsubscribe – and make it visible.

A while back, Gmail started displaying the unsubscribe links at the top of messages.

But you should still include an ‘unsubscribe’ button. For example, my Leadership Stack Podcast emails have this option at the footer.

Not segmenting the customers for marketing emails

Another major mistake that you may be committing is forgetting to segment your customers. Customer segmentation is the process of grouping customers based on various factors such as age, gender, industry, and others.

It’s important to ensure your customers are segmented properly so that the emails they get are personalized. For example, some of my customers work in marketing, some work in SEO, and others are entrepreneurs. If the emails they get don’t fit their demographic, they would just unsubscribe because I’m not adding value to their life.

Besides, receiving the kind of content everyone else receives doesn’t feel good. As a customer, you want to be spoken to. Segmenting customers helps with that.

Having generic content

I already touched on it a little earlier: Having generic content doesn’t do anyone any favors. Your customers don’t want to receive the same content as everyone else. They want you to speak to them.

Let’s say you’re asking for a donation, and you’re just asking the same amount from everyone. What if a third of the people you sent that email to are living paycheck-to-paycheck, the other third are living comfortably, and the final third are rich? Expecting all of them to give $50 will be unreasonable, and your email will show them that you don’t care about their situation.

You can avoid that by personalizing your email using dynamic content, where certain parts of your email are filled in by the data your customers provide you. This makes the email – you guessed it – personal for the customer. According to Keela, “When compared to non-personalized email campaigns, personalized emails yield 29% higher unique open rates and 41% unique click rates.”

Key takeaway

Sometimes we get so excited, we want to jump right in and just do things for marketing’s sake, leaving no chance for proper planning and execution.

But, that’s not how it should be – even in email marketing.

Once in a while, you need to do an audit of your email marketing. Ask yourself, “How is it working for me?” and “What are the things I need to improve?” Then you can try different styles, different approaches, perhaps different tones, but never ever commit these 10 email marketing sins. Unless you want to end up in the spam folder of your recipients.

And of course, if you want to be absolutely sure that these 10 deadly sins won’t be committed, we have an email marketing service you can check out.

Happy email marketing, and let me know what you think!

The post 10 Email Marketing Mistakes You Need to Avoid for Better Deliverability appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Being successful in business is all about building relationships and one way to do this is to delve into email marketing. The digital age evolves as we go along but you cannot deny that Email has a stronghold in their position as an effective communication tool.

Taximail recognizes this and this is why they make it a point to help businesses grow through email marketing. Our team at SEO Hacker decided to jump from one email marketing tool to Taximail because we have seen how powerful its features are after taking it for a test drive. Take a look at our comprehensive review here!

Why Email Marketing?

When it comes to online leads and conversions, nothing beats a simple email to reach your ROI. Oftentimes, we look at different digital marketing tactics for this goal but it is very important that we remember that we have email marketing at our disposal. Emails are a great way to reach out to your target market and it does not even matter what their demographic is, as long as they have access to an email account then everything should be in place.

Prospecting and nurturing leads can start with a great email marketing campaign. If you are providing insightful information for your market, having a campaign in place can be your best bet in making sure that you are reaching quality leads. Better yet, you can automate your email campaigns so you wouldn’t have to resort to the tedious task of making sure that the bulk of your subscribers receive your message.

Simply put, email marketing still works even if there are people who are skeptical of its business value. This is the same vision that Taximail has in encouraging businesses to drive their ROI forward.

Taximail for Growing Businesses

Transitioning to Taximail has been a great experience for SEO Hacker. We have seen how easy it is to start email marketing campaigns even for an email database of 1.8 million subscribers. Its user interface can be well-understood at a glance. The beauty of Taximail is that you don’t have to switch between apps to start your email marketing because they do it all for you.

Taximail hails from Bangkok, Thailand and it is led by founder, Phaiboon Trikanjananun who specializes in online campaigns and website development. His connections with professionals have validated the digital advertising age as a playing field for businesses. The face of Taximail recognized that email marketing is a flexible digital marketing tactic because it offers numerous benefits such as a trackable campaign and further enhancements to user experience as well.

The idea was to create an email marketing and automation solution that would be tailor-fit to businesses from SMEs to Enterprise-level companies. This is how Taximail was launched in 2012 and since then, they have built a large network of clients who trust that this email marketing platform can achieve great heights for them.

The team of email marketing experts promotes powerful email technology for Taximail client satisfaction, which allows clients to build simple email experiences with a powerful impact. Taximail is continually growing and this is why its clients continue to rave about their impactful platform and exceptional customer service.

Getting Started with Taximail

Three steps. That is all it takes to create a campaign. With many readily-available templates from their end, you can choose to drag and drop your details to get started with your email marketing campaign.

Here is a preview of getting started on the account:

Here is a quick preview of the features that they offer:

• Drag-and-Drop Email Editor
• Customization and Segmentation of Emails
• Multi-Screen Resolution Test and Device Simulation Preview
• Real-time Reports
• Email Templates
• Automated Email Marketing Tool
• SMS Marketing Campaigns

With these features, you can also be assured that you can also import lists, do A/B Tests, and schedule sending of emails.

What I find the most useful in the app is its automation feature. Although they offer a lot of benefits for businesses, this is what I’m going to highlight here.

You can start by entering a trigger so your email marketing campaign can take off.

Once you have determined how your contact should be counted through their activity, then you can start your email marketing campaign. Here is the list of actions that Taximail supports from their features:

Here is a sample of their pre-designed templates that you can choose from if you don’t want to start from scratch for your campaign. You can achieve the process in just a snap.

Taximail gives you the freedom to choose between a template or inserting a code if you want to follow this for the design of your email campaign. If you are going to go with the former, then you are well on your way to a great email marketing campaign. You can just drag and drop the necessary elements for your email which saves you a lot of time in creating this campaign. 

What’s next for Taximail?

Taximail is one of those apps that you have to try for yourself to see how it can significantly change the way you do things. It has helped the biggest companies in Thailand such as AIS Business, Bangkok Airways, Yves Rocher and many others. 

These companies enjoy the same benefits that 5,000 other companies experience with Taximail. And SEO Hacker is proud to be the one to bring Taximail here to the Philippines to help businesses engage better with their customers. 

Let me just end with this: whatever email marketing platform you have now, drop it. Taximail is one of the best partners you can have for your digital marketing efforts. 

The post Getting Started with Taximail: Simplifying Your Email Marketing Campaigns appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Email marketing works, that’s for sure. You won’t get tons of emails everyday if companies didn’t find it effective. In fact, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than social media.

Yet, you fail to see its beauty; you think that doing it is only a waste of time. Why? Because your open rate is low – perhaps too low that you don’t consider trying it again.

In this article, I’ll enumerate 5 sure ways for your email to be noticed, opened and your message to reach the right people.

1. Start it with a good subject line.

33% of email recipients open email based on subject line. Subject line is basically what your readers will first see. You need to make it catchy, and at the same time, in line with your real message, because your real goal is not just to have your email opened, but to make your readers engage with you.

Best email subject lines are short, descriptive, and provide readers with a reason to explore message further.
In an email subject line study conducted by MailChimp, they found that their old recommendation which is to keep it simple and to the point still stands.

Avoid words such as “free” because they tend to trigger spam filters, and “help”, “percent off” and “reminder” because they negatively affect open rates.

2. Personalize your emails by conducting surveys.

You can use Qeryz to put up a short survey in your website. You can ask for their needs, views, and opinions, and these information will help you come up with great newsletter, these will also serve as a guide for you to improve your products, services and even your marketing strategies.

On the other hand, you can also use your email as the actual survey form. Email your audience about customer satisfactory levels, potential product ideas, interests and needs – encourage customer engagement.

3. Manage your list.

Checking and managing your email list will improve your open rates. Don’t make it a habit to send emails to inactive subscribers, or email addresses that do not exist at all. It’s important that email recipients know who you are and expect to receive emails from you, or else they will treat your email as spam.

43% of email recipients click the spam button based on the ‘from’ name or email address.

• Include a checkbox in your email that encourage readers to opt in to your mailing list. This will help you get the right people – those who are really interested with you.
• Ask email subscribers to confirm their email address before you add them to the list to avoid sending emails to those who aren’t interested with what you’re offering. This will also show them that you respect your subscribers.

4. Set expectation.

Setting expectation will not just increase your open rates but will also keep your readers from following your newsletter. When you include something to your email that should be expected from you, chances are they will keep subscribed, wait for your next letter, and read when it arrives.

Inform your readers on what type of emails you will be sending, and how often it will be.

5. Remind your subscribers why they subscribed to you.

Your users are probably signed up to tons of products and services, and it’s not impossible for them to forget about you. It’s helpful to include a line of text in your email, reminding why they signed up for your newsletter, and then give a short overview of your products or services.

A message from Ramit Sethi, author of the New York Times bestseller “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”, changed how Zapier handle their email marketing strategy.

“When you’re sending out an email, please refresh everyone as to what you actually do.” –Ramit Sethi

End note:

Email marketing isn’t dead. You just have to develop your strategies. Include all these key takeaways and tell me how your open rate is performing.

The post Overcoming Low Open Rates: 5 Sure Ways to Improve Email Engagement appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Here in the industry, the A-listers are the ones with the largest email addresses on their database, and mind you, the can range to a hundred thousand emails. Imagine you have that kind of number (or even just a portion of it) and then try to think of all the profitable possibilities of just sending an email blast to those people? That’s exactly why the big internet marketers refer to their email lists as their personal ATM machine. Sounds exciting right?

But yeah, I’m assuming while reading this, you’re just starting out with a few handful sign-ups (or just beginning to collect them). If you’ve just begun your journey to internet marketing (email marketing to be exact), then let me lay out to you a few basic foundations that’ll serve as your guidelines to efficient list building.

Get a Reputable AND Secure Email Provider

This is very important (I am actually tempted to write this in caps lock). You see, in an effort to maximize scarce resources (your capital), most budding internet marketers are bit tight on letting their money out and investing in good email providers (which may come with a hefty price). Guys, I realize money is a big concern, but if you’re putting in line the very tool you are using for your marketing, then you might wanna rethink before handing out your money to some random providers that charge cheap.

I’ve already heard countless stories on internet marketers building an impressive list and then all of a sudden losing it because of technical problems (or worse) a sudden disappearance of the email provider company. Imagine all that hard work and source of future profit too going down the drain.

Sean Uses Mail Chimp!

My advice? NEVER take risks. Go for the trusted and secure ones like Aweber or MailChimp (Sean’s using MailChimp!). If you study these companies closely, you’ll actually see how they give you a good run for your money. You are after all paying for quality, so it shouldn’t be a surprise if it doesn’t come cheap.

Target Niches and Create Catch Page

If you’re purely an internet marketer, then you’re strategy lies in being able to target niches by creating mini-sites or catch pages designed to entice people to sign up. There’s been much focusing building blog empires on different niches and using them as list-collecting pages. This is an exhaustive process, but there’s higher possibility for it to pay off (literally and figuratively) in the long run. My tip though is to focus on 1-3 niches at a time first. I mean, don’t spread yourself too thin all over a lot of niches. At least give some effort by concentrating for a few at a time.

However, if you’re a blogger or a specialist and want to use an email list to further your reach to your audience, then it’ll be a lot easier since you’d only need to convince your pre-existing readers to sign up your email list. This can be done usually through giving out free reports or special items as rewards if they sign up.

Use the principle of exclusivity to entice people. If the ones who’ve joined your newsletters keep on receiving exclusive or premium items than just your regular blog reader, then that’s something that could compel people to jump in too.

Keep Pumping Traffic Through Social Media and Advertising

Of course you need people. Of course you need to get the word out. Advertising is a bit tricky and most people building a list is reluctant to do this. If you do however, the best strategy is to focus on niches that has free offers like fashion, gadgets etc. You can, for example, do pay-per-click advertising and direct clicks on landing pages that has free offers (because people click on this) and then offer the free item through an email sign up and viola, you got the address.

If you’re more of a social media person, here’s the tip: never promote your list directly. I mean, you’re obviously crazy if you tweet something like “sign up in my newsletter”! Because:

a. people won’t and

b. they are not interested if that’s all you have to say

Instead, try to be more discreet by say, promoting a free item that’ll lead to your list sign up form. Free ebooks, reports, tutorials, coupon codes- you can absolutely use anything.

In Conclusion

To wrap it up, the approach may be a bit different depending on how you’d use an email list. If you’re into the real internet marketing biz, you’re absolutely free to go anywhere in any niche and capture people. But if you’re specializing, well at least you can concentrate your efforts into a specific list. Either way, you must always prioritize on choosing a quality email service provider. It’s going to be the core of your business so might as well invest in the best (rather than possible regret in the future). That and promote, promote, promote in every possible way (advertising and social media are just some of the methods you can start with).

P.S. Check out Ryan Haley’s Email List Building Ebook!

The post The Basics of Building an Email Subscription List appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.