Many years ago, email marketing started out as a great marketing weapon. It was low-cost (or even free) to use. Even better, email made it incredibly easy to get response rates that would make an offline marketer drool with envy.
Now, email marketing has taken a lot of bumps and bruises along the way. And unfortunately for marketers, email is slowly losing its effectiveness.
It's a slow painful death like the old saying 'a death by a thousand paper cuts'. While one cut by itself isn't enough to really hurt you? the more cuts you suffer, the more dramatic the effect until eventually it's too much to overcome.
In my opinion, email marketing suffered three major strikes blows that have turned out to be really bad news...
Strike #1: SPAM
As more and more unwanted emails (also known as spam) are sent out, all hosting companies are forced to set up more and more barriers to block it. Those barriers make it even harder for emails from people that you want to talk to get through.
What do you do as a marketer trying to get his marketing email to as much of his list as possible?
Good question.
For starters, you try to improve the chances of your email being delivered to your subscribers inbox and not their junk folder. Maybe you add extra characters in 'red flag' words like 'free' or 'money' and other normal marketing phrases don't trigger a spam filter.
Maybe you tone down your email subject line... or whatever the latest 'tricks' you've heard to boost email delivery rates.
You do all of this stuff with email marketing because your subscribers' junk folder is the one folder you don't want your emails landing. Heck, if your subscribers are like me, they just empty their junk folder without even opening it. (Talk about killing your marketing's chances of success!)
You might even try to doing things like using a well-respected email delivery service getting your website white
listed with all of the major internet service providers.
That's because spam filters can take your latest marketing efforts... and completely flatten your response rates.It's hard to make more sales if your subscribers' spam filters are refusing to let your email through.
Add in everyone's frustration with seeing their email inboxes filled with junk email and is it any wonder why so many people talk so badly about spammers?
Unfortunately, that's not the only mortal blow to email marketing?
check
Strike #2: Free Email Accounts
Do you have a free email account with Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail or another service? You're not alone. Most internet users do some people have more than one free account! (Can you blame them? The accounts are free!)
Now free email accounts can be wonderful but they come with their own set of terms and conditions. Many times, they have less storage space than a paid email account would offer. Even an email account on your own website has more storage capacity a couple clicks of the mouse and your own website's email boxes are instantly bigger.
Not so with a free email provider.
Since many people don't check their free accounts regularly, it's only a matter of time until their email box is full. And when an email account is full, all of the new emails coming in are bounced back to the sender. So your customer who gladly asked for you to send product update alerts won't get them if their free email box is full.
As a marketer, you have no control over what the free email account providers consider to be spam. They won't tell you either believe me I've tried and have never gotten a straight answer from them. Of course, what one free email provider says is spam another provider says is perfectly fine. (Talk about confusing!)
Here's the part that is really painful to hear.
Many of the free email accounts put their 'report spam' button right next to the delete button! If one of your subscribers accidentally hits the spam button, your double-opted in email gets reported. Your email might be 100% content and pitch-free? but it still gets reported as spam.
All of the hoops and hassle every free email provider makes an honest marketer jump through are a major hassle.
But that's not all. There's still one more thing which literally ends the effectiveness of email marketing 'maybe even for good'
Strike #3: Keeping customer email addresses up to date.
Thanks to the constant barrage of spam and overflowing full inboxes, many people have stopped checking their free email accounts. They just go and open a new email account somewhere else instead. The problem is, they rarely contact you and give you an updated email address so you can keep in contact with them like you do with all of your customers.
Unlike the mail delivered to your home, there are no forwarding addresses for email.
Nope.
You have to do all of the email changes yourself. That is unless you are 'lucky enough' to have a customer who updates their email address on your list for you.
Unfortunately, the people who will change their email address themselves are just a small fraction of your list. You can expect to slowly lose touch with a big chunk of your customer list over time simply from changing email addresses.
It's enough to discourage any marketer from wanting to send any emails to their lists!
Please don't get discouraged
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3 Painfully Honest Reasons Why Email Marketing Is In A Downward Spiral...
