When it comes to email marketing, breaking through the spam can be difficult. If you want to cut through the noise, your reputation can help you get the job done.
Email Marketing By The Numbers
Today’s e-mail marketers face many significant challenges. If you feel like you are struggling to reach people via e-mail, you are not alone. Did you know that more than 280 billion emails are sent each day? And that number is expected to climb to over 330 billion by 2022.
On top of this, about 20% of all emails never reach the intended recipient at all. However, boosting your reputation can give you better odds.
With numbers like these, it’s no wonder why many email marketers are feeling lost in the shuffle. If you are looking to improve your reach, it’s time to get serious about your digital reputation.
There is a wide range of things that can contribute to having a positive sender reputation. Let’s take a look.
Quality vs Quantity
This one can be tricky. While you want to keep customers aware of your promotions and products, you don’t want to flood them with emails all day long. So, where is the line between just enough and too much?
The main reason why US consumers unsubscribe from marketing lists is that they feel harassed, annoyed, or stressed by the number of emails they receive. If you cross the line, you could alienate your customers.
This is why quality is so important. Your content needs to truly sparkle since you are aiming to make strong connections with your audience, rather than annoy them with a flood of emails. This is why you want to monitor your engagement rates over time and see what is actually working for your business.
SEE ALSO: Use These 8 Web Design Principles to Boost Your Email Conversion
Master Your Domain
Often, having too many choices can make the decision making process harder. First, decide whether it makes sense to have one sending domain or a few. This will depend on who exactly you are trying to reach via email
Think strategically. Even though email marketing campaigns may be happening around the same time, they may have very different audiences. If you want to do this, using different sending domains can help you cater to more unique segments of your audience.
However, you need more volume for this to be worthwhile.
Different Emails Accomplish Different Things
Think about the kind of email you should be sending too. For example, your goal might be to build relationships with new customers. You can create a subdomain for that audience. Likewise, reigniting the interest of older customers via email marketing might benefit from its own focused subdomain.
You can discuss these options with your service provider to help your email marketing campaigns truly work for you.
SEE ALSO: How to Sell to People Who Stop Opening Your Emails
Do More For Your Reputation With Less
It’s only natural to want to make connections and promote your business and products. After all, you put a lot of work into them. However, just sending a lot of emails all the time is not a good email marketing strategy.
The content of the email, who you send them to, how many, and when they are sent can all play massive roles in their effectiveness. Once you know what to send and when to send it, you need to track your results. Know how often you send emails, how much you invest in creating them, and their impact to figure out how to get the most out of them.
Help Your Emails Get There
Many people don’t know that just clicking send doesn’t guarantee that your email will go where you intend it to go. This is why you need to test the deliverability of your emails for optimal email marketing.
Tried and true metrics such as the click-through rate can give you important insight into the performance of your emails, but it doesn’t give you much insight into inbox placement.
You need more specific metrics. For example, you want to find out whether your email was sent to a junk folder or blocked entirely by an ISP.
The Perfect Subject Line
Even your email subject line can impact your deliverability by affecting where your emails end up. The subject line is the first thing users will notice.
So, it will play a big role in whether they open up communications from you or not. The more people open your emails, the higher your engagement and the better your reputation will be.
Up your email deliverability by using subject lines that reflect your brand’s personality and values. Don’t just do things because they are on trend. For example, using emojis might work well for a fashion brand that caters to younger markets. However, they might look strange when used in an email sent by a financial consultant or law firm.
SEE ALSO: The Power of Copywriting in Branding
A Personal Touch
For some businesses, it makes sense to pair their brand with a face. This personal touch humanizes your brand and company. This can include listing a real employee as the sender of your email instead of your company. Or, you can include content from your CEO or CMO.
Remember, always be mindful and strategic when choosing a face for your brand.
Reputation Is Everything
Ultimately, it can be challenging to make sure your emails get read in such a flooded landscape. Making sure that once they get to the right place they are open and received well is a whole separate challenge. However, if you take the time to cultivate your reputation, people will be more receptive to receiving your emails. They may even be excited.
One way you can build your reputation is with the help of digital branding services.
Remember, if a customer gave you their email, it is because they are interested in your business and your offerings, and want to hear more from you. The hard work of generating that initial interest has already been done, and you are definitely doing something right.
You want to take advantage of their sparked interest with your emails. What you don’t want to do is alienate them by sending too many emails, or emails that don’t hit the right mark.
What are some other ways that you think a brand or business can build the right reputation?
