Email Marketing and Five Killer Mistakes to Avoid

Even with all the technological advances and all the new ways and methods of marketing, email marketing remains the most used and most effective marketing channel used by companies of all sizes and industries. Despite email marketing being one of the oldest ways established, companies still make the same mistakes over and over again, resulting in the same outcomes. In this article, we will discuss all the email marketing mistakes that your company needs to avoid in order to ensure its success.
 

What Is Email Marketing?

In simple terms, email marketing is when you send commercial emails to a list of contacts comprised of existing customers and potential buyers after having taken their express permission to receive such emails from your company.

Usually, email marketing is used to inform these contacts of any sales-related matters, drive traffic and convert more leads into sales, establish the presence of your business in the local and international market, build a community around your own brand, and more.

When in the past email marketing was all about a standard template in a one-size-fits-all mass way, companies have now moved away from that and are leaning more towards more personalized emails that focus on consent, customization, and segmentation. And while this may sound time-consuming, the truth is that technology has advanced and come up with tools of automation that can make the email marketing process easy and quick.

CRM software systems can help you manage your email marketing strategy efficiently and easily. With a robust CRM, you can streamline the whole process, customize emails, create drip sequences, and more. We will get into the best CRM software systems that can help in email marketing in the section down below. But first, we will explain more about marketing emails and some of the most common mistakes that you need to avoid.
 

Types of Marketing Emails

Marketing emails can be loosely classified into three types based on their purpose: promotional, informational, and those with a specific purpose based on the buyer.

Promotional emails

Promotional emails are usually referred to as email marketing campaigns. These emails are used to promote new product releases, special offers, any gated content like webinars, courses, ebooks, and many more offers. A campaign can be sent over several days or even weeks and can consist of 3-10 emails usually.

Promotional emails are clear in their purpose and often have a clear call to action or CTA, for short. This CTA will represent the action that you want the recipients to take when reading your email; the CTA can take them to your website, give them a coupon to use to make a product or service purchase, or anything else you wish them to do.
 

Informational emails

Informational emails can either be in the form of a newsletter or as an announcement:

Newsletters: This type of email usually shares information and news related to your business. You can share news about new milestones your business has reached, new accreditations and ratings earned, new product or service capabilities, studies made about your products by experts, or anything else you want your customers to see. Your newsletter can be sent at regular intervals that you set; this can be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or at any time interval that you choose. Newsletters help you stay in touch with potential buyers and existing customers who have subscribed to your emails.

And even better, newsletters can be customized and personalized. You can send each customer a one-on-one email with information and news that personally interest them. With that in mind, email newsletters can be a great way to help you share insights, tips, thoughts, achievements, and more, all to help you retain customers and drive more sales.

Announcements: If you have a new product, changes to your service or any kind of announcement you want to get through to your customers, sending emails is the best way to do so.

Emails are often used for important messages businesses want to send across. So for example, if your website is down for some reason, if there are shipping delays, a system or software outage, your best way of communicating that to your customers would be the email. Emails are secure, instant, and can be customized and made as formal as you need them to be.
 

Purpose-specific emails

Also known as re-engagement emails, this is a very important type of marketing email. As you can probably tell by the name, re-engagement emails aim to reconnect with customers or subscribers who have not been active lately, those who have unsubscribed from your service, or the ones who haven’t made any purchase in long.

In some of these emails, you can send customers a form or online survey in which they can provide their feedback on one of your products or services. You can also ask questions about why that certain customer has stopped using your services. This can help you get a better understanding of what your customers want so you can modify your services accordingly. You can re-engage contacts by sending them special offers, a unique discount, a free month to use your service, a birthday message with a coupon as a gift, and more.
 

Five Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

There are some email marketing mistakes that can put all of your emails to waste and leave them unread, have them sent to spam, or even have your contacts unsubscribe from your email service.

Sender’s name

Emails that start have No-reply@ or DoNotReply(@)yourdomain.com as the sender's email addresses are uninviting and are usually ignored by recipients. In fact, studies have shown that the number one reason for people to open an email would be the name of the sender, followed by the subject line, offer, the intro paragraph, and, finally, the expected length. So if you have an uninviting sender name, you can expect many or most of your emails to be ignored and left unopen.

And so, to avoid this mistake, you should always send your emails from an address to which your customer can reply. You should also make sure to include phone numbers, links to your social media profiles, in your email to help the recipient contact you, if they have any questions or inquiries.

For example, in most companies, the ones responsible for sending such emails are members of the marketing or sales teams, and not the owner of the company or the head of the department. However, emails should not be sent from a random sender and should rather have a recognizable name to gain the attention and trust of the recipients.
 

Not paying attention to mobile optimization

According to a study conducted by Constant Contact, 61% of emails are opened using a mobile phone. In addition to that, the study has shown that more than 40% of people check their emails using their phones four or more times a day. And so, having a mobile-friendly email structure is not an extra; it is a must.

Nonetheless, many companies tend to ignore these points, as many of them do not have a mobile-friendly template, which can be very uninviting, and can lead recipients to close the email as fast as they have opened it. So regardless of how important or tempting your message is, or how many offers you have, if your email is not mobile optimized, you will not have the result that you are wishing for.
 

The ‘One Size Fits All’ Emails

The most important thing about your marketing message is how relevant it is to the recipient. That being said, your message needs to be personalized to fit the customer’s needs. Even though the one size fits all approach is easier and more practical for bulk emails, it is now a thing of the past.

Your email recipients will want to feel like the message addresses them personally rather than feeling like they are reading a robotic message meant for no one in particular. This means that when writing your message, you need to think of who your audience is in general and who your recipients are in particular.

Most companies do not segment their emails, which leads to their messages being left unread. You can either resort to simple or complex segmentation in your emails. And the more you segment your list into different categories and groups and customize each message to its reader, the higher the click-through rates will be, as your message will engage more customers and potential buyers.

Email segmentation can be done in many ways, and below are some of the groups to which you can classify your emails:

• Interests
• Location
• Job title
• Industry
• Company size
   

Complicated emails

Your main goal in your email is usually getting the reader to press your call to action link or button. You should make sure to deliver a clear message, with a clear call to action, and not leave room for your reader to start wondering what you meant or try to decipher your words. Your readers will either take the call to action if it’s clear in front of their eyes, or they will get impatient and leave your email.

If you avoid mistakes number 1 & 2, then you can expect your readers to give attention to your email and start reading it. If you avoid mistake number 3, then you will have succeeded in interesting them with your offers. You don’t want your readers to leave the email now after working so hard on it. And so, you need to have a clear call to action button, link, coupon, and so on. This will help you drive more traffic to your website, give you more sign-ups, convert more leads, and more.

Another helpful tip is that you should try to avoid including multiple offers with multiple call-to-action buttons, as this may distract your reader and stress them out. If your readers do not see a clear and easy-to-read message, they may not want to buy your product or use your service. This, in psychology, is called the paradox of choice, which may leave your readers unable to decide and can result in their leaving the email.

Some companies do not include any call-to-action links, which is a huge mistake; as interested as your readers can be, they might not take the time of their day to go search for your website themselves; they need a quick link from within the email itself. On the other hand, some companies include around three call-to-action buttons, and in both cases, traffic and click-through rates are not as wished for.
 

Trying to hide the unsubscribe link

No matter how hard you try to make your emails inviting and interesting, some people will want to unsubscribe, and you should not make that an impossible thing for them.

You can either present your readers with a clear unsubscribe link or you can try to hide it to force them to keep receiving emails from you. The truth is, both ways if they want to unsubscribe, they will. So you can either make it easy for them, or you can make them frustrated with you.

If someone receives multiple emails from you and decides that they are not interested in your product or service, hiding the unsubscribe link is not going to make them want to make a purchase, it is only going to frustrate them. And they might even tell others about this and you may start losing customers and potential buyers, all because no one wants to feel obligated to receive commercial emails.
 

Choosing a CRM Software for Email Marketing

As mentioned before, CRM software systems can help you improve your email marketing, which in turn can drive more traffic to your website, bring more leads, and convert more leads to actual sales. If you pick a good CRM, it can help you in many ways, including the following:

1. More effective segmenting
2. Third-party software integration
3. Email personalization
4. Alerts for more useful follow-ups
5. Improved lead nurturing
6. Customizable email marketing templates
7. Social media integration
8. Email marketing automation
9. Mass email-sending
10. Detailed analytics

The great thing about using a CRM software system for your business is that not only will it help with email marketing, but it will also improve your overall customer experience, bring you more sales by managing your leads, and much more. To help you find the right CRM, we have done our research and compiled a list of the best CRM systems on the market:

Monday.com

Monday.com offers an all-inclusive customer relationship and lead management software system that will help you manage your email marketing process. The software offers a long list of features that can help you grow your business and boost your sales. In addition to email marketing, below are some of the features Monday.com CRM software provides:

• Lead/Pipeline Management
• Prospect Tracking
• Mobile CRM
• Project Management
• Integrations

Monday.com CRM offers four paid subscription plans and a free version for personal use with basic and limited features. The four plans are:

Individual plan: Free

The Individual plan is free to use forever with no obligations. Its best for tracking personal work; it offers two users and the following features:

• Unlimited boards
• Unlimited docs
• +200 templates you can choose from and can be customized to your needs
• Over 20 column types
• Android and iOS apps
• 500 MB file storage

The Basic plan: $8/user/month

The basic plan offers necessary basic features, which include everything in the Free plan plus:

• Unlimited boards
• Unlimited docs
• +200 templates
• Over 20 column types
• 500 MB file storage
• Lead, contact, and deal management
• Unlimited visual sales pipelines
• Unlimited contacts
• Unlimited custom fields
• Unlimited free viewers
• Full mobile CRM
• Document management
• Full API access
• The Standard Plan: $10/user/month
• The Standard plan includes everything in the Basic plan, plus:
• Timeline view
• Guest access
• 2-way email integration with Gmail or Outlook
• Sales analytics
• Mailchimp integration
• Sales goals and forecasting
• Calendar view
• Automation
• Integrations
• 20 GB file storage

The Standard plan: $10/user/month

This is Monday.com's most popular plan. It allows an unlimited number of users and charges $10 per seat per month. So if you have 5 users, you will be charged $50 per month in total. The Standard plan includes everything in the Basic plan plus the following features:

• Timeline view
• Guest access
• 2-way email integration with Gmail or Outlook
• Sales analytics
• Mailchimp integration
• Sales goals and forecasting
• Calendar view
• Automations up to 250 actions per month
• Integrations up to 250 actions per month
• 20 GB file storage

The Pro plan: $16/user/month

The Pro plan is great for growing businesses; it packs everything in the Basic plan, in addition to:

• Customized notifications
• Marketing activity management
• Advanced permissions
• Time tracking
• Workflow and approval automation
• Advanced reports (dashboards with up to 20 boards)
• Private boards and docs
• Formula column

The Enterprise plan: Quote-based

The Enterprise plan is the fully-featured CRM package from Monday.com. It packs everything in the Pro plan, plus the following:

• Enterprise-scale automation and integrations
• Enterprise-grade security and governance
• Advanced reporting and analytics
• Multi-level permissions
• Tailored onboarding
• Premium 24/7 priority support
• A dashboard that combines up to 50 boards
• 1000 GB file storage

Zendesk

Zendesk is our second top pick for a CRM software solution that can help greatly with email marketing. With Zendesk, you can expect your business to grow by converting more leads into actual sales through marketing campaigns and email. Some of Zendesk CRM's outstanding features include:

• Native dialer
• Sales email intelligence
• Integrations
• Sales prospecting
• Mobile CRM

As for its subscription plans, Zendesk offers you four plans with different features and prices:

Sell Team plan: $19/user/month

The Sell Team plan offers basic capabilities, which include:

• Email integration
• Up to 3 paid users
• 1 custom sales pipeline
• Built-in click-to-dial & call recording
• Fully featured mobile CRM
• Apps & integrations

Sell Professional: $49/user/month

The Sell Professional plan is great for growing businesses, and it includes everything in the Sell Team plan, plus:

• Email integration
• Unlimited paid users
• 1 custom sales pipeline
• Personalized bulk emailing
• Unlimited email templates
• Sales goals & forecasting
• Unlimited custom fields
• Advanced call analytics

Sell Enterprise: $99/user/month

The Sell Enterprise plan is best suited for enterprises and large businesses; it offers everything in the Sell Professional plan, plus the following features:

• 2 sales pipelines
• Unlimited custom fields
• Advanced call analytics
• Activity reports
• Advanced permissions
• Product catalog
• Lead and deal scoring
• Task automation
• Customized notifications

Sell Elite: $199/user/month

The Sell Elite plan is the fully-featured CRM package from Zendesk. It packs everything previously offered in the other plans, plus a few more features:

• Open API
• Rep performance reports
• Advanced sales insight reports
• Success insight reports

Salesmate

Salesmate is our last recommendation for the best CRM software providers on the market to help with email marketing. It supports a wide variety of business types and all sizes. Its CRM software is designed with inclusive capabilities and everything you may need to customize and streamline emails, drive more traffic, convert more leads into sales, and help retain customers. Its key features include:

• Contact Management
• Sales Pipeline
• Sales Automation
• Text Messaging
• Built-in Calling
• Marketing Automation
• Google Integrations
• Customizations
• Product management

As for its plans, you are offered four options, and each comes with a set of features that can help you manage your leads and grow your business. Below are their plans in detail:

Starter plan: $12 per user per month or $144 billed annually

Its features include the following:

• Contacts, Companies, Deals
• Email Sync, Tracking & Templates
• Multiple Pipeline Management
• Standard Dashboard & Reports
• Workflow Management
• Built-in Calling & Text
• Web forms
• Lists

The Growth plan: $24 per user per month or $288 billed annually

The Growth Plan includes everything in the Starter plan, plus the following:

• Product Management
• Goal Management
• Email Reminders & Scheduling
• Team Inbox
• Custom Dashboard & Reports
• Date based Workflows
• Custom Roles
• SSO/SAML integration

Boost Plan: $40/user/month or $480 billed annually

The Boost plan packs everything in the Growth plan, in addition to:

• Team Management
• Increased Team Inbox Limits
• Smart Activity Queue
• Power Dialer
• Voicemail Drop
• Smart Activity Queue
• IP Restriction
• Increased Workflow & Sequence Limits

Enterprise: Quote-based

The Enterprise plan is the fully-featured CRM package you get from Salesmate, and it includes everything from the previous plans plus:

• Dedicated Account Manager
• Personalized Onboarding
• Priority Support
• Dedicated Instance
• Dashboards - Unlimited
• Increased Workflow Limits
• Permissions - Unlimited
• Increased Sequence Limits