Email = Revenue.
We say that a lot at Sigl Creative, and with good reason. Email marketing has an astounding ROI of $36 for every $1 spent, and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down.
So it follows that more email = more revenue, right?
Not exactly. There are a few situations when you shouldn’t email your customers—and if you do, you could end up losing money.
Let’s take a look at 4 reasons you shouldn’t send out promotional emails.
1. Someone has unsubscribed.
If someone has unsubscribed, or they have never opted in to your emails in the first place, you should not be emailing them.
This should be obvious, but we cannot overstate how important it is to honor your audience’s subscription wishes. If you continue to email them after they’ve attempted to unsubscribe, they will think of you as spam and not a brand worth engaging with.
Not only does honoring their subscription wishes show you respect potential customers, it also keeps you out of legal trouble. Legislation like the EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA protect consumers from receiving emails they don’t want. Only email people who have opted in, and you shouldn’t run into any problems.
Do: Include an easy and obvious unsubscribe link in all of your emails. Make it a straightforward process, so only people who want to hear from you stay on your list.
2. Someone has just made a purchase.
Have you ever purchased an appliance and started receiving targeted ads for more of the same appliance?
It’s a little frustrating, right? Very few people need to purchase two ovens or washing machines, one right after the other.
Or imagine you’ve made a sizable donation to a nonprofit. Instead of thank-yous for your gift, they send you more and more requests for money, as if they never received your donation in the first place.
Ouch. You might even regret giving to that particular nonprofit because they don’t seem to notice you.
One simple way to show your customers that you care is to respect where they are in their customer journey and exclude them from promotional emails. Someone who has just made a large purchase or given a gift probably isn’t ready to do that again.
The customer journey is different for every business model, so there’s no standard rule for how long you should wait. Look at what your competitors are doing, and check your email service provider (ESP) for their recommendations. Your ESP may have settings that allow you to exclude recent customers with just the click of a button.
Do: Send transactional emails keeping them updated on their purchase, educational emails to help them make the most of their product, and requests for a review, feedback, or referrals.
3. Sending an email would be rude or tactless.
Not all email send times are created equal. There are some occasions when making a sales pitch to your customers can seem disrespectful or tone-deaf.
Try to avoid emailing your customers on holidays. If you wouldn’t check your personal email that day, don’t expect your customers to.
If a major emergency or tragedy strikes your business’s community, pause your scheduled emails for a time out of respect. You can’t predict these kinds of events, but you can respond to them appropriately.
In addition to holidays, be careful about sending emails on weekends. It’s well-documented that marketing emails perform worse on the weekend, as people are less likely to check their inboxes. Sending emails on “off” days can do more than seem rude—it can hurt your bottom line.
Do: Keep your target audience’s schedule in mind when picking a send date. Refer to your past email stats to see which days get the best performance.
4. Your content doesn’t speak to that recipient.
Not all products and sales will appeal to all customers, and that’s ok.
If your business only offers one or two services, you might not need to segment your communications very much. But for businesses who have several product lines or tiers of services, segmentation is key to getting better results from email marketing.
Your customers have signed up for your email list because they believe your emails can offer them something of value. And it’s critical that you follow up on that expectation by emailing them with relevant content.
Here are a couple of ways to segment your email list:
- Geographical restrictions. Maybe you have a local event coming up, and you want to invite your email list. Only send out emails to people within a 50-mile radius.
- Past purchase history. Consider your typical customer’s journey. Do you have a product that they often purchase over and over? Try sending exclusive promotions to people who have purchased that product, encouraging repeat purchases.
- Personal interests and survey responses. Some ESPs allow you to survey your customers when they sign up for emails, letting you know which kinds of communications and products they’re interested in.
(For more on the importance of segmentation, check out this blog post.)
Do: Tag your customers in your ESP with important information, segment your emails, and nurture your customer relationships by sending relevant promotions.
Need a hand with email marketing? Let Sigl Creative be your guide. Schedule a call, and our team of digital marketing experts can help you find the best times to send (and not to send) emails, segment and personalize your promotions, and help your business grow with that 3600% ROI.
