7 Reasons Why Your
e-Mail Campaigns Aren’t Working
At Your Payroll Service

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After sending more than 65 million e-mail campaigns on behalf of our clients, I have listed below the top e-mail marketing mistakes I see most people make.

Reason #1: No Follow-Up Call By You Or Your Sales Team – The #1 reason why an e-mail marketing campaign(s) fails is the lack of a follow-up call. My suggestion:

• After an e-mail marketing campaign has been sent, call the contact associated with the e-mail address. Do this and you will see sales magic happen (I prove it all the time to our clients). 

Reason #2: Poor Marketing Copy/Subject Lines – Another top reason why your e-mail marketing results are lackluster is this: Poor marketing messaging/copy. And yes, your subject line falls into this category as well. My suggestions:

• Create a subject line that engages a reader.
• Send e-mail campaigns that are educational in nature (versus selling something). 
• On mass e-mail blasts, use your company name in the “from” e-mail address field.
• Use headlines and sub-headlines in your messages.
• Add a high visibility low-risk offer or call-to-action.

Reason #3: Sending Too Many Or Too Few e-Mails – Were you ever placed on someone’s e-mail system and then proceeded to receive 3 to 4 e-mails in the first 72 hours? If you have, you know it does more harm than good.  My suggestions:

• Send the right frequency of e-mails by looking at past e-mail campaign results.
• Most marketing pros in the B2C arena send 2 to 3 e-mails per week. In the B2B environment, send 1 to 2 e-mails per week.
• Keep in mind that you can send more e-mails to your database of past customers/active customers than a purchased list of e-mail addresses. 

Reason #4: Not Segmenting Your Databases By Target Audience - Many e-mail marketing campaigns fail because the information is generic in nature, i.e., company newsletter.  My suggestions:

• Segment your e-mail list by clients, prospects, chamber members, past clients, referral partners, etc. After that has been done, develop a series of e-mail marketing campaigns for each database on file.
• Personalize your e-mail campaigns by using someone’s first name, last name and company name.

Reason #5: Not Using A Low-Risk Offer – By not having a highly visible low-risk offer or call-to-action, you are missing out on some potential sales leads.  My suggestions:

• During the design stage of a campaign, write down five low-risk offers to use (keeping it relevant to your target audience).  This could be a special trial offer, whitepaper download, special purchase price, etc. 
• Add a coupon or headline offer within the body of a campaign.

Reason #6: Not Reviewing Past e-Mail Campaign Results Or Conducting An A/B Test - One of the top reasons why your e-mail marketing efforts fail is this: Not having an e-mail marketing strategy. My suggestions:

• Plan a campaign’s message/low-risk offer based on its target audience.
• Review your open and click-through rates on past campaigns.
• Run an A/B test using different subject lines, copy, low-risk offers, send times, etc.
• The time of the day and the day of the week will greatly affect a campaign’s “open and click through rate.”

Reason #7: Not Constantly Building A Database Of Prospect e-Mail Addresses – If you are not constantly building your database of e-mail addresses, your “prospect” open rates will flatten to a single digit number. My suggestions:

• Make it a priority to build your e-mail database of prospects, referral partners, past customers, dealers, etc.
• If you have a sales team, make sure each salesperson is expanding their database of prospects, referral partners, chamber members, etc. 

Executive Summary: Your e-mail marketing results will dramatically improve just by having some type of strategy in place.  As I tell all our clients, “The days of blasting a generic, one-size-fits-all newsletter to everyone in your e-mail database and expecting a sales lead are over.”  Be smart and create a plan of action, including a follow-up plan, and you will definitely see a dramatic improvement in your results.