Column: The most common email marketing mistake

Many people complain about email. Many critics say it is past its prime. And yet, the number of emails being sent on a daily basis has increased astronomically.

According to MadisonLogic, more than 122 billion emails are sent on average every hour. That”™s more than 2 trillion emails a day. Most tellingly, a 2013 Experian study reported 99 percent of the businesses it surveyed use email. Although this overwhelming number obviously reflects the need for email, does it also include the usefulness of email marketing? The numbers say yes. The average open rate for business-to-business marketing emails is 11 percent to 15 percent with a click-through rate of 1 percent to 4 percent. Many factors can positively or negatively affect these rates.

I discovered one of the simplest factors affecting these two sets of numbers by chance a few years ago when by accident we sent out our newsletter on a Friday afternoon in the summer; the open rates were less than half of their usual number. Even over a period of several days, it never approached its normal level. (Fortunately, our rates bounced back with our next newsletter.) Our mistake emphasized two key points: First, the day and time of an email release is very important, and second, emails usually have a very short lifespan.

The most common mistake is not the frequency of the emails, either. True, you can lose subscribers if you send out too many emails but that”™s fairly easily corrected. Nevertheless, frequency is a commonly asked question and one that does not possess a clear answer. It depends on many factors including the responsiveness of your target audience, the duration of the sales cycle or even the intent of your newsletter. An educational newsletter is perceived very differently from one constantly promoting products.

There is also no mistaking the importance of great content. Without great content, any newsletter or email marketing campaign will fail. Great content must support the intent of your newsletter. If your intent is to inform, then your content must contain information that will educate your target audience. You can temporarily lose subscribers if you send your email at an inopportune time (as I previously mentioned), but if your content is lousy, you will permanently lose them.

Content does, however, indirectly relate to the most common email mistake that people make: marketing themselves. It”™s the distinction between product characteristics and benefits. I may have the greatest product in the world and want to tell you all about it. However, all you care about is how it can benefit you. Rather than emphasizing its characteristics in my email, wouldn”™t you rather learn about how these characteristics can help you?

Working backward from this critical point, we now must create content that will address the benefits our target market seeks. Although these benefits can vary widely ”“ from increased sales to better process management to improved branding ”“ they must follow this bottom-up approach and in so doing will generate useful and targeted content.

Ensuring your emails don”™t appear like sales pitches will also help drive open rates and results. You can ”“ and should ”“ always include a “call to action” with your text. There”™s a reason why the most frequently opened emails are the ones designed for brand management. They”™re educational and nonthreatening, and they demonstrate expertise to a targeted niche. They”™re also the most productive.

To initially attract our target audience, you must have a captivating headline ”“ one that literally contains capital letters. Beginning each word in a targeted title with a capital letter will increase the number of opens, as will a character count of fewer than 60 letters. This is the first and arguably the most important time when you can influence your target audience.

The email naysayers have it wrong. Almost every business and person reads, writes and uses email. What the naysayers can”™t comprehend ”“ particularly within the increasing volume of email ”“ is why it is so effective for some companies and a waste of time and money for others.

Bruce Newman is vice president at The Productivity Institute L.L.C. and a regular contributor to the Business Journal. He specializes in content creation and digital marketing. He can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.