I recently had a Zoom chat with a client.

They were struggling to monetize their email list and were looking for some guidance and support. Now, this client has been in business for over 20 years, has an incredible product, and is a very caring person. So, I locked in. I wanted to really help them.

During the call, they asked me if I could review one of their previous email campaigns.

After going through it, I realized several glaring mistakes, which I will reveal in a moment. But first, this got me thinking of the challenges of email marketing that businesses often face. In fact, many businesses run into the same email marketing challenges again and again.

So, in this blog, we’ll cover the 4 most common email marketing challenges, and how to quickly resolve them.

1. Being Too Pushy

Yes, your business needs to drive revenue.

No, you don’t need to assault email recipients with sales campaigns to get that revenue.

In fact, that’s one of the quickest ways to turn people off. Now, of course, there are businesses out there that do use this approach. However, if you care about your audience and are interested in the quality of their experience with your brand, I wouldn’t recommend this for future campaigns.

Instead, it’s far better (and more profitable) to build a relationship with your list.

This requires time, effort, and consistency. However, trust me when I say it’s well worth the effort when you have a list of engaged customers. Your email list essentially becomes an ATM at that point.

The Solution

This is why email content is so powerful.

All you’re doing with these emails is building goodwill by sharing tips, information, education, and other value-based forms of content. You want to show up in your audience’s inbox as a trusted and authoritative source of helpful information.

When you do this consistently, you build goodwill and credibility.

As a result, when it comes time to promote an offer, you’ll have an engaged list that is far more likely to buy what you have to sell. Yes, this is a process that will take time. But once it’s been established, you’ll have mastered one of the most powerful revenue-generated assets a business can possibly have!

2. Keeping Your List Engaged

Improving engagement rates is one of the most common challenges businesses have when it comes to marketing emails.

Here’s the thing… Having a large list of email addresses means nothing if it’s full of inactive subscribers. The good news is that you have an advantage that can keep people from hitting that unsubscribe link.

And that advantage is that your current subscribers are on your list because they’re interested in who you are.

And that makes the solution easy…

The Solution

The solution is to infuse every email you send with two things: Your unique personality and relevant high-quality content.

So, create a content calendar for your email list. And ensure you keep up with the email frequency you’ve chosen (that’s important!).

Decide the month before the content you will send to your list. If you’re emailing them once a week, prep those emails prior to the start of each month. This strategy will make you tremendously efficient in your email marketing.

And if you’re really savvy, you can plan a lot further ahead.

At the end of each year, take a month to plan out your entire email campaign for the following year. This will save you massive amounts of time and money, and will also give you a massive jumpstart in your marketing. So, it’s worth considering (and strongly recommended).

This email strategy is how you create a quality email list and will put you miles ahead of most email marketers.

3. Improving Performance Metrics

Another one of the challenges of email marketing is performance metrics.

However, there’s good news here. Email is the quickest, easiest, and most cost-efficient marketing channel to test and improve your metrics. As a result, it should be your primary focus prior to branching out to Facebook, Instagram, or Google ads.

The Solution

Here are the metrics to be aware of and how to improve them:

• Open rates: This refers to the number of people (on your entire list) who open your email. Open rates are critical because let’s be real, if no one’s opening your emails, then no one’s making it to (or buying) your offer. You can improve open rates by improving the quality of your subject lines.
• Click-through rates (CTR): Your CTR is the percentage of people who click through from your email to your landing page. This metric is mostly affected by the quality of your content in the mail. So, if you want to increase your CTR, then you have to improve your content quality.
• Conversion rates: Your conversion rate is the percentage of people who take the action you want them to take on your landing page (e.g., they buy your product or service).
• Bounce rates: The percentage of people who leave a page immediately after landing on it.

These metrics can be improved by simply improving the copy at each touch point. That’s why having an expert copywriter is invaluable to your business.

4. Sending Impersonal Emails

Many businesses don’t realize just how critical their email list is.

If you do it right, it can be one of your biggest revenue-generating assets that you have. One challenge in email marketing is to respect each person who trusts you enough to give you their email. And you do this by sending helpful, value-based, and most importantly, personable emails.

Most businesses (unfortunately) use their email communications to send terrible self-serving promotions.

To add another layer of complexity…

These kinds of impersonal emails can create email deliverability issues and can compromise customer engagement and customer relationships.

As a result, businesses often get poor sender reputations, bad delivery rates, rendering issues, and many of their emails end up in the junk folder. And then they wonder why they get one disinterested subscriber after another. These are predictive analytics.

One of the biggest challenges of email marketing is businesses simply lack that personal touch. Personalized emails build customer trust and loyalty.

The Solution

The solution is simple: Think in terms of relationships instead of transactions when it comes to email.

Effective digital marketing (or effective marketing strategies in general) requires a human touch. You’ll increase the likelihood of engagement with subscribers by sending personal, value-based, and relevant content in your emails. These can be stories and anecdotes, industry insights, advice and education, or even inspiring messages to motivate them on their journeys.

Whatever you’re sending, you want to lead with value.

And then, once you’re ready to launch email marketing campaigns in the future, your list is primed and ready. Your sales campaigns will be more likely to be successful if you’ve built enough goodwill through proper nurture sequences.

Got A Question? Schedule A Call Today

With all the challenges of email marketing, it’s a frustrating experience to untangle all those kinks. That’s why a copywriter is critical.

They can help you find the bottlenecks and unjumble those backend knots that stamp out efficiency in your business. And that’s what I’m here for. I work with businesses big and small, from budding solopreneurs to large organizations and everything in between.

So, if you’re ready to take your email marketing to the next level (or even if you just have a question), contact me today to see how I can help with your email marketing efforts.