5 myths about email marketing

You know how there’s a holiday for everything these days? Well, leave it to the digital age to create Email Week. Yep, a whole week devoted to email… from June 14th through June 20th this year.

Whether you’re an email-marketing veteran or just getting started, you may be operating under certain misconceptions about email marketing that have been disproved by research.

If you are a pro at email marketing, your emails may be getting dull due to a lack of experimentation or inspiration. Maybe you’re aware that it’s time to switch up your email marketing, but it can still be hard to know where to begin. Knowing these myths before you start your next email campaign can help you improve the effectiveness of your emails.

MYTH #1. Millennials don't subscribe to marketing emails.

Adobe found that millennials check and use their emails more than any other age group. If your target audience includes millennials but you aren't implementing an email marketing strategy, you may be missing out on a way to build customer relationships from a different channel.

The key to successfully marketing to millennials through email is focusing on quality over quantity. Though millennials prefer to engage with brands through email, too many emails may lead to fatigue from the age group.

You can always emails to see if it would be an effective move for your campaigns. Additionally, you can gauge the type of emails your millennial audience prefer as a result of testing.

MYTH #2. Inserting video is an automatic engagement booster in email marketing.

While there’s a lot of buzz about how videos increase engagement, including an actual video file in an email can negatively impact the email’s deliverability. Videos are large files and clogging up someone’s email with a large file can be frustrating for the user.

However, this isn't to say that you should never add videos. You can easily share an image that links to the video on a web-based platform, or use an email delivery service like Mailchimp or Convert Kit that allows you to link your video to the email without embedding the entire file.

In this way, the email's formatting won’t suffer for the sake of a video and will allow your reader to interact with the content without deliverability being impacted.

MYTH #3. Email marketing is a 'dead' practice.

Sometimes, it may seem like low engagement from subscribers points to the phasing out of email marketing. However, it has been found that 78% of marketers have seen an increase in engagement over the past year. This data from HubSpot suggests that email marketing is still an effective marketing tactic.

If you're finding that email marketing isn't providing as much ROI as you're expecting, it may be time to redesign your strategy. Personalization is the growing trend in successful email marketing campaigns, as well as emails that are responsive.

When you design emails to be highly targeted and optimized for multiple devices, you are increasing the chance of subscribers being delighted by your messages. Your subscribers will begin to look forward to these emails and the value your email brings.

MYTH #4. Email subject lines have to be short and straightforward.

It's become tougher to keep the busy mind of a subscriber engaged with marketing messages. But your subject lines don't have to be short in order to keep your reader occupied.

It's good to be concise with your wording, but it's better to inform readers of what will be inside your email to avoid misleading messages.

Consumers prefer to interact with their favorite brands through email, so be sure to communicate the impact of your message using as many characters as necessary. Chances are, those who subscribed to your emails generally enjoy the messages you're sending out, so you can be a little more lax with how you use subject lines.

MYTH #5. A spam email is just a poorly designed email.

When you think of what a spam email is, what comes to mind? I think of a sketchy-looking message that looks like it was made in the 1990s. However, that's not entirely the case. "Some people think spam is super badly formatted garbage mail, but spam is any unwanted bulk marketing email," explains Allpomonia Roman, email deliverability consultant at HubSpot.

The reason email can be marked as spam is because the receiver never subscribed to the email list from the sender in the first place, not because it's not great to look at. As Roman notes, "I could get an exceptionally targeted email from T.J. Maxx, for example, but if I didn't sign up for those emails, it's spam."

When you're constructing your email list, check it twice, and make sure all subscribers chose to opt-in to your emails. Otherwise, there's a good chance that it will be marked as spam.

TRUTH: Email marketing is worth your time and effort

It seems that email marketing is here to stay, and it’s a great way for you to not only communicate with your subscribers but to deepen the relationship. Choosing to offer consistent, value-packed emails will leave your subscribers wanting more and looking forward to getting your email on whatever frequency you provide it.

Do you have questions about email marketing? Need some help navigating the technology or linking up to your website? Let us know! We’re here to help! You can reach us at the office at 260-255-4694 or emailing christie@christiebrowning.com