The 4 misconceptions hurting your email marketing campaign

There are lots of ways to design and implement a marketing campaign and you can endlessly argue over the “do’s and don’ts” of getting your message out to consumers. However, in email marketing, there are a few myths that are often repeated that you shouldn’t believe. Don’t listen to anyone who insists that...

If a brand sends more emails, consumers will simply ignore them

Marketers often think this way. However, research shows that this simply isn’t true. While it is never good to bombard a consumer, according to research, sending four emails a month instead of just one doubles the open rate, significantly boosting ROI. You’re right to think about the consequences of sending too many mails but you should also be concerned about sending too few.

Subject lines need to be short

Subject lines matter, and they matter a lot. One in three consumers will open an email based on the subject line alone. You may have heard that the key to a successful subject line is keeping things short.

However, this isn’t true. Award-winning email marketing firm Alchemy Worx analyzed more than 200 million marketing emails and found that while short subject lines do increase open rates, they don’t facilitate engagement. Consumers were actually more likely to engage with content (clicking and opening it) when subject lines were more than 70 characters. This isn’t an invitation to write a novel in your subject line but you don’t have to be obsessed with with keeping characters to a minimum.

Personalization isn’t important

Customers respond well to personalization and customizing subject lines or email greetings with a customer’s name can dramatically boost ROI. For example, personalized subject lines are roughly 22 percent more likely to be opened, while personalized emails boost click through rates by 14 percent and conversion rates by 10 percent. The numbers don’t lie and the story they tell is pretty clear - personalize your campaigns as much as you can.

There is a perfect time to send emails, and it’s 3 p.m. on Thursday

One often cited study asserts that the absolute best time to send an email is 3 p.m. on a Thursday. There are a number of things wrong with the assumption that there is one single “best” time to send an email, whether that time is 3 p.m. on a Thursday or 9 a.m. on a Saturday.

First and foremost, the “best time” theory erroneously assumes that consumers are just sitting around waiting to receive an email from your brand, and that they will act immediately on every single email your brand sends them. The reality is that no consumer is sitting around twiddling his or her thumbs waiting to receive an email from any brand, not even yours. Furthermore, research clearly illustrates that the vast majority of consumers do not immediately act on an email they have received. While it is true that roughly three out of four email opens occur within the first two days, close to four out of five purchases take place after that two-day period. Furthermore, one out of three purchases take place more than two weeks after the consumer has received the email.