No matter how complex your tech stacks are, all businesses have the highly needed email marketing tool. However, regardless of which tool you use, email marketing isn’t the easiest of disciplines.
Getting someone to read an unsolicited email in this day and age is a difficult task since not everyone is willing to pay attention to an extra notification they most likely didn’t ask for. In fact, most people aren’t.
Typically, outbound email campaigns have an open rate that ranges from 15-25% – which isn’t bad but also means that a large portion of email campaigns are never read.
Most outbound marketing emails are either flagged as spam or junk, some are briefly read, while others get no attention at all, and there are various reasons for this. Let’s explore what outbound email campaigns are and what you might be doing wrong in yours! Outbound Email Campaigns
What are Outbound Email Campaigns?
Outbound email campaigns are a marketing technique that helps businesses promote their products or services to potential customers through emails.
The difference between outbound and inbound email campaigns is that with inbound, customers contact the business and show interest in their products or services and then the business sends them more information regarding their products or services through emails.
Outbound campaigns are those emails in which the business contacts potential customers – often unsuspecting customers who may not even know about the business. Another name for some outbound campaigns is “cold email campaigns.”
Outbound email campaigns are a great way of gaining visibility with new audiences but that is only the case if the message is sent across the right way. Outbound email campaigns are also cost-effective and can have a massive impact.
While people may mindlessly scroll social media, they are more focused when checking emails – if the email seems interesting. Email is still the primary form of communication for any profession. For this reason, 38% of brands are increasing their email budget.
So why exactly are you unable to strike a chord with your email recipients? There are multiple reasons why potential customers are ignoring your outbound emails.
Spam Filters Catch Your Email
Most email hosts filter incoming emails so that users are only checking emails that are relevant to their personal and work lives. This includes filtering out promotional content, which can often be part of Outbound Email Campaigns. By doing so, email hosts improve the user experience and help users access emails that are of high priority, allowing them to stay focused.
Apart from this factor, emails are also filtered so that recipients are not overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emails. According to Hubspot, nearly 14.3% of all emails are caught by spam filters, which is why they never make it to the recipient’s inbox.
The primary reason why most outbound emails don’t make it to the targeted person’s inbox is because you may be using certain words in the email that often get it flagged as spam. These words include “free,” “% off,” “save money,” “deal of a lifetime,” etc.
You are Writing General Messages
Another reason why the efforts of outbound email campaigns often fail is because of the lack of personalization in the messages sent out. Generalized emails can be very off-putting since these show that no effort was put into customizing the message or making it more conducive to a prospect’s needs.
Personalization entails addressing the recipient with their name and crafting the message to reflect that some research was done before reaching out to them. Not knowing the recipient’s name or profession can leave a bad taste which can prevent them from engaging with the message sent to them.
Personalization can help with getting noticed, and if the odds are really in your favor, you might get a response too.
Personalized emails have open rates, which are 29% higher, and unique click rates which are 71% higher as compared to non-personalized emails. 72% of consumers revealed that they only engage with personalized emails.
You are Targeting The Wrong Audience
When it comes to outbound email marketing, some might think that quantity trumps quality, and the focus should be on the volume of emails and not their content. Sending mass cold emails may slightly increase your chances of getting noticed since out of a large number of recipients, chances are that a small percentage might get back to you – if you don’t land in spam.
However, if emails are sent to a target audience, chances of getting a response increase exponentially since the recipients may genuinely require the product or service they are being emailed about.
Sending emails out senselessly creates a bad sender reputation and also prevents the email from landing in the inbox of the right audience as the email provider begins to divert your email campaigns to spam.
Your Emails Lack Research
Even after putting in a lot of effort to shortlist the right audience for your outbound email campaign, it doesn’t get you the response you want. This may be because of the lack of research into the recipients themselves and what they do.
Personalized messages may seem like the hack to engagement for these email campaigns but what really does the trick is if you show you know exactly who you are addressing.
Identifying how your product or service can really add value to the projects of the company or individual you email can get you a call, as the recipient would be intrigued by the compelling offer and would know that they won’t waste their time by engaging with your message.
Sending personalized messages is necessary, but sending well-researched messages is a different ball game. You are appealing to a recipient’s particular purchase history, preferences, and pain points.
For example, if you are selling a fast-moving item, perhaps some personalization would work, but if you are selling something as complicated and specific as an IT asset management tool, you need to do deep research into your prospect.
A lack of research is easily shown in the body of the text and this can put off prospective customers, which is the worst thing for the rapport your company or business needs with your customers.
You Write Very Long Emails
It may be enticing to put all the information in one email, but this is counterproductive as readers get overwhelmed very quickly and forget what the message was about in the first place.
Announcing everything at once leaves little to the imagination and takes away the recipient’s desire to contact the sender to understand the message better. According to a survey by ZeroBounce, 66% of respondents preferred shorter emails whereas only 6% of respondents read long emails.
Sending shorter emails with breaks allows the reader to read the email at their pace and take their time to understand the contents of the message, which is particularly important in the context of outbound email campaigns
The point of marketing is for customers to notice and remember. Shorter emails with more meaningful or appealing content help with retention and staying in the thought process of the potential customer. It doesn’t matter if they reply back almost immediately or not but it is important for them to have you on their mind from time to time.
Source: SalesFolk
You Don’t Follow Up Consistently
Outbound email campaigns may seem clingy, but consistency is key. All efforts are in vain if you do not follow up with customers on time. One-off emails do not generate much activity and stagnate communication between both parties. This is why it is important to stay consistent with following up.
Customers already have a very short attention span and prospective customers have no incentive to engage with you if you leave them hanging without communicating with them consistently.
It is better to come off as persistent at times instead of not being remembered at all. This also opens up the door for competitors to squeeze in and catch the customer’s attention unscathed.
Source: Really Good Emails
You are Sending Too Many Emails
Where not following up consistently is a weak point, spamming customers too much is also something that fails outbound email campaigns. It is better to end up in the list of unread emails as opposed to one’s blocklist.
Customers only have so much patience and if they see a message popping up with your name too many times, they will block you without any hesitation.
This is worse if the prospective customer is genuinely in need of what you offer as 44% of people unsubscribe from emails if they start receiving too many of them.
You are Too Impersonal
Focusing too much on making a sale may help with generating profits to some extent but this is not the case all the time. Being too assertive and centring the email around the sales pitch can annoy the customer and make them feel like a commodity.
The end point of the entire email campaign may be to make a sale, but it is also to form personal relationships with prospective clients.
Business dealings are both predictable and unpredictable at the same time. Everything is extremely fast paced, and deals fall through within seconds. In this case, personal relationships help as customers can vouch for you and market you the right way in front of people they may trust, who in turn may also end up becoming customers.
Source: HubSpot
You are not Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
A part of marketing is focusing too much on gaining visibility which makes it very easy to lose sight of the quality of service or products that are promised. In outbound email campaigns, customers are promised the world but are not given even an ounce of it when the time comes.
This prevents you from getting the response you actually need and causes you to lose customers.
This is very similar to the boy who cried wolf. Sending email after email with all sorts of assurances but not delivering when actually required can cause people to run away from you. This is why the emails you send out should not be overly promising and should be fully reflective of all that you can do for customers without any exaggeration.
You Don’t Understand Consumer Behavior
Trends change fast but the minds of customers change faster. People only take interest in topics which relate to their purchasing behavior, technology, or their hobbies. Competitors are always looking for ways to look more appealing and they do so by staying in touch with evolving trends.
This is another reason why most email campaigns fail. Not enough research is done to look at market trends and the emails sent out are full of outdated content. Customers are drawn towards content that is trendy and chances of them responding to it are high as well.
You need to understand how the consumer thinks, their needs, and what they want to read – form the analogies you make, the language you use, the time you send emails all specific to the customer’s preferences and you’ve got a winner!
Outbound email campaigns may not be as enticing as ads on social media as they are very low maintenance but the chances of being noticed by a customer are increasingly high as emails can never be replaced as a mode of communication in the professional world.
People pay close attention to emails if they find them useful. In short, using the right content, shortlisting the correct target audience, and following up with prospective customers is what will help with getting noticed and make outbound email campaigns more successful. Give it another go and see results!
