3 Reasons Your Email Isn’t Driving Sales — And How To Fix It

Email marketing works – it’s one of the highest revenue generators for businesses among marketing channels. But there’s often a disconnect between what the stats say and what you actually get from this marketing channel.

But at the same time, when you do a deep dive into why email marketing is not driving the sales you expected, you often discover small mistakes are the cause. These simple errors are easy to fix but can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

Here are three common e-mail marketing missteps to avoid.

Subject Line Problems

An average American adult receives 123 business emails each day. Most people aren’t going to open each and every email every day – you need to give them a reason to open yours.

Here are some quick subject line fixes that can help boost your open rates.

Add personalisation: In real life, people like it when you address them by their name; the same rule applies to email marketing too. If you want to improve your open rates include the recipient’s first name in the subject line. Remember, better open rates are the first step to increasing your conversions.

At Betaout, we conducted a study; We sent 1,000 plus emails, half with the personalised subject line, and another half with a non-personalised one, the personalised one received both better open rate and response rate.

Use segmentation: The more relevant your subject line is, the more the chance your emails will be opened.  And, it isn’t possible to be relevant without list segmentation.

For example, if some of your subscribers are interested in male products, they probably won’t open an email with a subject line “The ten shoe styles every woman should have in her closet.” If you’ve information about your subscribers’ use it to create targeted subject lines.

Choose the right length: Nearly two-thirds of emails these days are opened on mobile devices. If your subject line is wordy, your recipients won’t be able to see it properly, as mobile devices display only a few characters of the subject line. Also, people scan subject lines quickly these days so your first few words should entice them to open your email.

Copy Problems

A common mistake most email marketers make is they pay less attention to the copy of the email. They forget that writing great copy gives you an opportunity to do more than just entertain your subscribers as they help you in converting them too.

Here are some smashing ways to improve your email copy.

Offer value: The copy of your email is as important as your offer. Use it to provide valuable information and engage your readers. Subscribers have become very smart these days if you’re always trying to sell them they’ll stop opening your emails, which ultimately will affect your conversions.

Align your email copy with the subject line: When writing your email copy makes sure it delivers what you’ve promised in your subject line. Ideally, you should write the subject line once you are through with the copy to avoid a mismatch between the two.

Include bite-size content: The majority of emails are opened on mobile devices these days. 75% of Gmail’s 900 Mn users access their accounts via mobile devices. –TechCrunch

When you write copy for your email, keep it short and concise to make it easy for your subscribers to consume your copy on small screen devices.

CTA Problems

Well, if you’re doing everything thing right and still your email isn’t driving sales it’s also possible that your CTA is responsible for it: It might just not be good enough to be clicked.

Here are some quick CTA fixes to improve your conversion.

Include a clear CTA: Don’t assume that just because you know what you want readers to do, they’ll know it too. Clearly tell them what you want them to do and don’t use some wording and formats you think will work. Test a variety of wording and formats and pick the one, which results in the highest click-through and conversion rates.

Great copy: The copy on your CTA button is as important as the subject line for an email, in fact, call to action is the reason you’re sending an email. So use language that is clear, succinct, and action-oriented to make it click-worthy.

Include single focussed CTA: Marketers often try to add too many CTAs in one email to encourage readers to click but, the more, the merrier, doesn’t always hold true. A single focused CTA makes it easier for subscribers to convert rather than too many CTAs.

 Now that you know the reasons that are stopping your emails from converting address these problems completely, to get better ROI from your email marketing.