3 Email Marketing Fails You Can Transform Into Wins

Email is still one of the most valuable resources marketing teams have. Even in an age of social media, email remains an incredible way to connect with, engage, and nurture audiences, both in the B2B and B2C landscapes. In fact, email delivers the best average ROI (Return on Investment) of virtually any marketing channel, producing $36 in profit for every $1 spent.

The trouble is, that succeeding in the world of email marketing can be complex. As email inboxes become increasingly cluttered, and consumers deal with rising levels of “content overwhelm”, many companies are discovering that their messages are either ignored or sent straight to spam. 

Sometimes, looking at your marketing metrics can reveal a series of “failures” that make it seem like email just isn’t the right resource for your team. However, the reality is that many potential “email marketing fails”, can actually give you the insights you need to improve your email results. 

Let’s look at just some of the ways you can use data from “email marketing fails” to unlock new opportunities in 2024, and improve your marketing budget. 

Fail 1: Increasing Unsubscribe Rates

Companies often invest significant time and effort just trying to convince customers to share their email addresses and join their mailing lists. The more potential leads you can connect with, the more you can capture, nurture, and retain loyal customers. That means when you start to see an increase in your “unsubscribe” numbers, it often feels like a major blow. 

However, people “unsubscribing” from your email newsletter doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If consumers genuinely aren’t interested in your products or services, then you don’t want to waste your marketing budget constantly bombarding them with emails. Remember, email automation platforms often charge you monthly fees based on the number of contacts you have. 

Additionally, diving into the reasons why people unsubscribe from your emails can give you more insights into how you can improve your relationship with customers. You can use your email analytics to determine whether people unsubscribe when you:

• Send them certain content: If your unsubscribe numbers go up after you share a specific type of content for an extended period of time, this shows you that your customers aren’t actually interested in the topics you’re covering. 
• Increase your email cadence: Gartner found too many emails are the number one trigger for people to unsubscribe from an email list. If your unsubscribe rates increase with your message frequency or cadence, this indicates you might need to slow things down. 
• Change your email strategy: Simple things, like your subject lines, the amount of content in your emails, and even your “sender” name can all make a difference to your unsubscribe rate, Assessing your analytics will show you which elements to A/B test.

Fail 2: Falling Open Rates 

According to HubSpot, the two top metrics every email marketing team tracks are “clickthrough rate” (34%) and “open rate” (31%). Arguably, your open rates have the most significant impact on whether your email marketing campaigns actually pay off. Even if you have the best content to share, you won’t drive engagement and conversions unless people actually click on your emails. 

If your email open rates start to fall, it can be easy to panic. However, this issue actually gives you an excellent opportunity to do some important research. There are various factors that can influence your open rates, all of which can be A/B tested by your marketing team. For instance, you can look at:

• Your subject lines: Do certain subject lines get more clicks and opens than others? Do you see better results when you use a customer’s name in the subject line, or leverage emojis? Are people more likely to click on emails about a specific topic? For instance, welcome emails generate about 4 times more opens than other email types. 
• Deliverability rates: If your customers suddenly stop clicking on your emails, and you haven’t changed your subject line strategy, the problem could be with deliverability. Check your sender and domain reputation to see whether your emails could be arriving in the “spam” folder, rather than your customer’s inbox. 
• Timing and cadence: Sometimes, the only reason your customers don’t click on your emails, is because they don’t arrive at the right time. If your emails land in your customer’s inbox when they’re busy with work, or they’re sleeping, you’re less likely to get any real engagement. This could mean you need to learn a little more about your target audience, so you can schedule your messages accordingly. 

Diving deeper into the data you have about which customers open your emails, when, and why, will give you useful insights into how you can optimise your campaigns. You might learn you need to segment your customers into different groups based on the type of content they like to see, or the times they’re most likely to be available. 

Alternatively, you may simply discover that you need to invest more effort into improving your sender reputation and earning the trust of your target audience. 

Fail 3: Diminishing Audience Engagement

Once your customers actually open your emails, you don’t want them to simply read through your content and then delete the message. The overall aim of any email campaign is to drive customers towards an action, whether it’s convincing them to visit your website and check out your latest blog posts, attend an upcoming event, or purchase a product. 

If “engagement” metrics for your email campaigns start to fall, such as click-through rates for your call-to-action buttons and links, this tells you something is going wrong with your campaigns. The good news is that if you have high open rates already, you know the problem probably isn’t that you’re sending messages at the wrong time or using the wrong subject lines. 

Rather, there’s more likely to be an issue with the contents of your email. This means you can start experimenting with things like:

• Email design: Is your email template responsive, so consumers can click on buttons regardless of whether they’re using a desktop or smartphone? Is it easy to see call-to-action buttons without scrolling through large amounts of content? Do images load quickly, or are buffering videos, visuals, and long segments of text harming user experience?
• Segmentation: Diving into your email engagement statistics can give you useful insights into whether you’re actually segmenting your audience in the right way. You might discover that certain groups of customers are more likely to interact with specific types of content than others. This drives the way to better email personalisation. Remember, well-segmented emails drive up 50% more click-throughs than generic messages. 
• Campaign offers: What do you offer your customers to encourage them to visit your website or engage in a transaction? Do you see better results when you use certain call-to-action statements? Analysing which of your campaigns delivers the best outcomes will help you to utilise your email marketing budget more effectively. 

Turning Email Fails into Wins

It’s easy to be discouraged when your email marketing campaigns don’t seem to be going to plan. If your unsubscribe rates increase, your open rates drop, and your conversion or engagement rates seem to dwindle, you might assume email marketing just doesn’t work for you. 

However, the truth is that most “failures” in the email marketing world actually give you an opportunity to learn more about your customers and find more effective, data-driven ways to improve your email ROI.