Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to engage with customers. However, emailing too often, and sending irrelevant content, are top causes of brand fatigue — and they can place perfectly pertinent emails smack inside the spam folder.
How do you stay in front of customers without being overbearing or annoying? Here are three tips to ensure your email campaign won’t get ignored.
Ask Your Customers
A crowded inbox is the most common reason customers choose to unsubscribe from an email program. To avoid cyber traffic jams, simply ask your customers what they want. Let them choose the type of communication they want to receive, and how often.
Once the customer clearly shares his or her preferences, keep the brand promise to only deliver the requested content.
Sideline Spam by Telling an Interesting Story
Engagement is a strategic part of optimal inbox placement. To keep emails from being labeled spam, brands must understand how customers interact with the messages.
When the subscriber opens an email, he or she decides in a matter of seconds whether to click on the content. Those who are interested in the story or message will consume the information. Those who aren’t hit delete.
It’s not that subscribers are finicky; it’s just that their circumstances, needs, and interests evolve over time. This is why a commitment to the brand might only be temporary — or why they may only read emails for a short period of time.
For subscribers who opted in but didn’t click, there’s likely something missing from the content. Maybe it’s the timing of the message, or perhaps the offer wasn’t of any value. Leverage data and consumer-selected preferences to drive engaging content.
Tread Carefully to Reengage
If the brand has an unengaged subscriber group that doesn’t open or click, it may be time to launch a reengagement strategy. Tread carefully, though. Because this group is already losing interest in the brand, they should receive fewer email communications than engaged subscribers.
A reengagement program can benefit the brand, but if you’re not seeing results, remove the subscribers. That may seem counter-intuitive, but a large portion of unengaged subscribers poses more risk than benefit. As the percentage of unengaged subscribers grows, internet service providers (ISPs) assume your email is not valuable. That means it will quickly become spam.
Brands should carefully monitor email activity and optimize the communications for every email group. Staying on top of deliverability and content consumption puts the brand in the best position to realize a return on their marketing campaigns.
