Regular communication with your customers is a great way to keep them informed and to keep your name firmly etched in their minds.
One of the most effective ways of doing this is through email marketing.
New subscribers will eagerly await your first email to land in their inbox. They will probably continue to welcome them until, one day, the honeymoon period is over.
You will begin to realise your emails aren’t being opened as often (or at all); your messages are now unloved, unopened and unwanted.
What do you do?
Panic?
Send flowers?
It’s time to take action.
Fighting email marketing list fatigue
1. Frequency
Are you still sending the same number of emails? When your subscribers opted-in, you would have made it clear how often they would hear from you. If you’re sending more it could be time to scale back a bit.
2. Stale content
Are you starting to cover the same old stuff?
Perhaps the layout and content is becoming too predictable? If so it’s time to inject some life into them.
3. Incoming!
Bombarding your customers with news and new offers will get wearing. If you have new products to announce stagger your emails so they don’t receive 4 or 5 from you within one month.
4. Subject line
These are never easy to write and although you may have been buzzing with great ideas initially there’s a chance they’re becoming mundane and ineffective.
People will only open an email if the subject line catches their attention so perhaps it’s time to have a rethink about your subject line approach (or call in a copywriter to help you generate fresh and appealing content).
5. No one’s home
Email addresses change so if one of your recipients hasn’t engaged with your mailings (i.e. they haven’t opened it) for 6 months or more, send out a ‘reengagement’ email. This would be an email that asks them to take an action if they want to remain on your list.
If you don’t hear anything it’s safe to say that either:
- The email address is no longer active, or
- They no longer want to receive your emails
So it may be time to remove them from your list.
6. Spam
Spam filters may be stopping your emails getting through so make sure you test them.
To make sure your email marketing continues to be successful, regular list maintenance is essential to ensure that:
- Your readers are happy with their content
- All email addresses are active
- You are avoiding spam triggers
- Your subject lines are being effective