6 Email Marketing Challenges and Tips to Master Them

Being one of the oldest forms of marketing, email has a strong background and produces a whopping ROI of 122% and that is four times higher than any other mode of digital marketing. It is the most convenient and has an efficiency of 54% which is the highest among all other forms of marketing.

Everything has its pros and cons, the same goes for email marketing too. Opting for email marketing helps you target the required audience, increases efficiency by tracking results, proves cost-effective, provides greater flexibility, and drives a greater ROI. However, it throws some challenges that you could face while choosing it as your daily driver for your business and they are as follows:

• Low open rate
• High unsubscribe rate and spam complaints
• High bounce rate
• Difficulty in attracting and retaining subscribers
• Optimization of emails for mobiles
• Low-quality data available

Every problem comes with a solution and we have got it all covered for you. Let’s dive in straight away and find tips to overcome all the above-mentioned challenges.

1. Low Open Rates

The open rate refers to the number of people opening your emails. It is highly anticipated that the rate depends on the subject line and preview text of your emails. A study shows that33% of the people decide whether to open an email or not just by judging the subject lines.

Open rates can be improved substantially by personalizing your emails according to your subscriber’s likes, needs, and preferences.

One of the best ways of improving your email opening rates is to add the subscribers’ names in your email and add a catchy subject line to gather their attention in the first instance.

You can always look up to some free HTML email templates on the web to improve the effectiveness of your emails. The point to remember here is to make the email look much funnier and less business-oriented.

2. High unsubscribe rates and spam complaints

Subscribers hit the unsubscribe button when they feel like getting spammed by too many or useless emails. Here, the double opt-in method of getting permission comes in handy. By this method, you can get to know that the customer is genuinely interested in hearing from you. Moreover, you can even include the link to a preference centre so that you can understand the frequency at which the subscriber prefers to receive the emails. The trick here is to send the right email at the right time.

3. High bounce rates

The failure of emails in reaching the subscribers’ inbox is called a bounce. It usually happens when the subscriber’s inbox is full or the subscriber’s email address has changed or it is no longer available.

The key to minimizing high bounce rates is to maintain a clean email list by using the double opt-in method for acquiring the permission to send emails. Have the redundant subscribers removed from your database regularly and keep only the ones that engage with your emails and provide you with some profit.

4. Difficulty in attracting and retaining subscribers

The biggest challenge of email marketing is to retain and add new subscribers to your email list. There is one thing you must always remember that it should never be about just adding subscribers rather it should always be about adding loyal subscribers to your kitty.

You can acquire new subscribers by considering the below points:

• Have a high-converting sign-up form
• Provide the subscribers what they need
• Do not spam the subscribers
• Give freebies
• Send personalized emails

For retaining the subscribers, the points to be kept in mind are:

• Make the subscriber feel how important they are to you
• Recommend them with the best services you can provide them
• Provide loyal subscribers with some added advantages from time to time
• Encourage word-of-mouth or referral marketing strategy

The important trick in this process is to keep on testing what works best for you. This can be done by sending different emails to different people and see what gets your job done. You can take help of Mailchimp free templates to design a high-converting email that keeps your subscribers hooked to your brand.

5. Optimizing emails for mobiles

Nowadays, most of the emails are opened on mobiles and that makes optimizing emails for mobiles a must.

The users must not face any difficulty in opening the mails. They must be able to view the email without having to zoom in and zoom out. The best solution is to hire an email template developer that would take care of all your optimization processes.

6. Low-quality data available

Having correct data of the subscribers plays a vital role in email marketing. As it all comes down to the subscriber’s likes, dislikes, needs, and preferences, it is crucial to obtain the correct data to engage and make profits from the users.

Often, marketers tend to do a terrible thing of buying lists. Buying lists does no good for your business as it only adds extra expenses to your bills. Lists bought have no guarantee that they would provide you with subscribers that your business is going to benefit from, rather it makes sense to have 20 active subscribers than having 1000 subscribers that are of no use to you. So, it is always great to build your own lists organically as per your business needs.

Wrapping it up

Challenges itself pave the way to solutions, so is with email marketing.

You can always reap huge benefits by understanding the challenges of email marketing and work on them properly to fetch the desired results. If done right, it can take your business to great heights without burning a hole in your pocket.

Author Bio

Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Pardot Email Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.