10 Things You’re Missing Out on by Using a Personal Email Account to Do Your Email Marketing

If you’re like a lot of small businesses and organizations, you may be using a personal email account — like Gmail, Outlook, AOL, or Yahoo — to communicate with a group of email contacts.
Chances are you’ve also noticed some limitations in what you can and can’t do with a personal email account.

One of the biggest limitations of using a personal account is in the design of your emails.

If you’re not a professional designer, it’s tough to create emails that actually match your brand and make your business look professional.

Other limitations include:

Problems getting messages delivered: Has anyone ever told you they didn’t receive your email? Sending mass emails from a personal account can result in more emails being sent to the spam folder.

Difficulty keeping track of your email contacts: Manually keeping track of new email addresses and people who have asked to be taken off your list can cause headaches and take up hours of your time.

No understanding of who opened an email or clicked a link: You hope your emails are getting opened and read, but personal accounts don’t provide that information.

Email marketing services like Constant Contact are built to make it easy to create beautiful emails that drive real business results.

They have the tools you need to manage your email contacts and provide in-depth reporting tools to track important metrics like opens, clicks, and shares for your emails.
They also provide tools and training to help you stay compliant with important email laws, which are 
easy to violate if you’re trying to do marketing from a personal email account.

One of the best ways to see how an email marketing service can benefit your business is to try it for yourself.

You can try Constant Contact free for 60 days.

Still have questions about why an email marketing service is right for you? Here are 10 things you’re missing out on by not using a service for your email marketing.

1. You’re not prepared to send bulk emails
Many email accounts and most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) limit the number of emails that you can send at one time. This means that as your email database grows, you could run into more and more problems with getting your emails delivered.

Email providers like Constant Contact work diligently to maintain strong relationships with ISPs and establish reputations for sending permission-based emails.  As a result, our customers see more of their emails delivered to their recipients’ inboxes, and less emails in the spam folder.

2. You’re putting relationships at risk
When someone joins your email list, they trust you to protect their information. They also trust that you’ll respect their privacy and give them the option to opt-out.

But as hard as you try to fulfill these obligations to your audience, when sending email using Outlook or another email account, mistakes can happen. Perhaps the biggest mistake is exposing your entire list in the To: line of your email.

Another mistake is failing to offer an easy way to unsubscribe. This can not only damage your reputation as a business, but can also put you at risk of violating email laws, which require an unsubscribe link in every message you send out.

3. You can’t host and manage your list from one location
An email marketing service hosts your email list and automatically performs critical list management functions. These functions include sign-up for new subscribers, editing capabilities so that subscribers can edit their own profiles, and the ability to unsubscribe with one click.

An email service will also manage bounced emails for you, differentiating between reasons for the bounce (including full mailbox, vacation message, non-existent address or blocked).

4. You’re on your own
Email marketing services like Constant Contact are built to make it quick and easy to do email marketing for your small business.
If you’re switching from a personal email account, we’ll give you the tools and training to help you get started — from uploading your existing email contacts to setting up your first email campaign.

If you do run into any problems or have questions about how to improve the look of your emails, simply pick up the phone and give us a call. Our award-winning support team is committed to your success.

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5. You’re unable to deliver emails in the right format
Emails can display differently, based on the email client and device a recipient is using.

With an email service like Constant Contact, you’re able to send both a text and HTML version of each message you send out. This means that your emails will be delivered to your subscribers in the correct format every time.

In comparison, your email account can’t tell which email format each recipient is able to receive — which can make your email unreadable or send it to the spam folder.

6. You can’t create professional-looking emails that match your brand
With an email marketing service, you’ll have access to hundreds of professionally-designed email templates that make it easy to create great looking emails.

We handle the design work for you — you just need to customize the template with your colors and branding, choose the images you’d like to include, and add your content. These templates will make your message look great in any inbox, whether someone is reading on a desktop or a mobile device.

7. You can’t protect yourself from delivery problems
A good email marketing service maintains strong permission policies and has an active anti-blocking team working with ISPs on your behalf to ensure that your email is delivered.

At Constant Contact, we monitor all outgoing email to ensure that all major ISPs and corporate domains are successfully accepting your email. If there is a “blip” on the receiver’s end when your email campaign is being sent, an email marketing service makes continued attempts to send your email while quickly addressing the problem with the ISP.

8. You can’t see who opened or clicked
Using an email marketing service like Constant Contact gives you access to in-depth reporting to see key metrics like emails sent, opened, who opened, who clicked through, and which links they clicked on. You’re also able to see important details like spam reports, bounces, and opt-outs.

This will allow you to see what’s working and identify opportunities to make improvements, or identify potential issues that could put your business at risk.

9. You don’t have the newest tools and features
Here at Constant Contact, we have a team of people who are focused on staying on top of the latest trends in the industry. We provide regular updates and new features to enhance functionality, comply with the law, and optimize email delivery though ISPs.

In addition, we are members of groups like The Email Service Provider Coalition (ESPC). The goal of the ESPC is to provide unique and effective spam-fighting solutions that will optimize your email delivery and response and minimize the spam in your subscribers’ inbox.

10. You could be breaking the law
You don’t have the time or resources to stay up-to-date with the latest email laws and regulations. Unfortunately, if you’ve been using a personal email account to send your marketing emails, there’s a good chance you’re already in violation of some important laws like Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM) and the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

Email marketing services like Constant Contact are responsible for ensuring that your emails are compliant with these legislations. We provide the tools you need to follow the laws, and let you know when there’s a change that could impact your business.

Don’t wait to make the switch.

Email marketing is the most effective marketing tool available to small businesses today.

Consider the following:

• 91 percent of U.S. adults like to receive promotional emails from the companies they do business with. (MarketingSherpa)
• 66 percent of consumers have made a purchase based on an email marketing message they’ve received (Direct Marketing Association)
• Email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined in helping your business attract new customer (McKinsey)

Source: https://smallbiztrends.com
Image Credit: Constant Contact



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11 Reasons Your Email Marketing Sucks — and 41 Ways to Fix It

Today’s inboxes are hammered with digital marketing messages, spam, forwards, newsletters, and notifications. People check email at red lights and while watching TV. (Don’t get us started on the ones checking mail at the movies.) While email marketing remains the best way to reach leads and existing customers, it’s harder than ever to cut through the clutter. Avoid these common email marketing mistakes and you’ll come out on top.

1. You’re not segmenting your email list.

Who are you talking to? Picture your Netflix account. You probably have profiles set up. You, your wife, your kids. Maybe you share an account with your parents. Each audience has unique tastes. The viewer who loves car chase movies doesn’t want to watch British period romances. The viewer who watches Pokemon doesn’t want to catch up on Game of Thrones.

Show people what they want to see. Your email marketing list consists of just as many audiences. College-aged kids looking for a fun night out. Sales professionals trying to make a big win. Retirees who have put off their next doctor’s appointment and want to feel better. The days of spray and pray marketing are over and today’s consumers expect highly-targeted messages that give them what they want, when they want it.

Want another reason to segment? According to MailChimp, segmented campaigns see over 100% higher open rates than non-segmented campaigns. They also have higher open rates, lower spam reports, and lower instances of unsubscribing.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Segment your email marketing contacts into lists and sublists based on customer data.
• Don’t forget to create suppression lists. These are people you’re not marketing to at the moment.
• Add checkboxes to forms to gather additional information—zip code, birthday, interest groups—from your visitors.
• Don’t forget to be GDPR compliant.

2. You’re not A/B testing.

This isn’t time for instincts. When it comes to email, the only thing you should trust your gut for is digesting your food. Clever marketers don’t try to predict whether or not an audience will love a call to action, subject line, or image. They use A/B testing.

Go to war. Think about it as a battle to the death. Using the email automation software of your choice and a robust recipient list, test your content to see what performs best. Solid programs will send your test emails to sample audiences, and automatically send the winner to the bulk of your contact list. No more guesswork.

This is a rare opportunity to know exactly what’s working and build on that. A/B testing helps you determine what your audience is connecting with (and what they’re not connecting with.) Your emails will consistently perform better when you optimize them regularly.

Here’s how to fix it:

• A/B test the subject line of your next big email promotion.
• Test the next email’s image, offer, or CTA. Only test one thing at a time. This is a science experiment.
• Keep your variables to an absolute minimum to know which changes mattered.

3. You’re not automating your email marketing.

You have a lot to say to your prospects and current clients. But, you probably don’t have time to manually send all the emails you know you should. Reminders, newsletters, thank-yous, promotional offers, and so on. Email marketing could take you all day …. That’s where email automation comes in.

Get your finger on the trigger. The key to a successful automated nurture campaign is to first know what actions or behavior should trigger the email workflow. Triggers are actions or behaviors on your website or at your location, such as filling out a form, downloading a coupon, or abandoning a cart.

Remember: email marketing is about nurturing, not selling. Dig deep into what your recipients want and need. How can you help them solve a pain point? Remind them how good it feels to actually enjoy their destination wedding rather than agonize over all the planning. Offer tips that help them apply for a law degree with less stress. Close with a helpful promo code, or the opportunity to book another experience.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Map your customer journey to find the “triggers” for your email marketing.
• Set up automated workflows that move guests through the funnel by delivering the right message (and the right deal!) at the right time.
• Make sure workflows move customers out of one list and into a new one as they evolve from a lead to a new customer to a loyal one.
• Add helpful reminder workflows. Shopping holiday coming up? Remind them to grab that gift.

4. Your newsletter is selling something.

Don’t send a crappy newsletter. People sign up for newsletters because they anticipate value in their inbox. While that value may come in the form of exclusive discounts and opportunities, it should also make them smile. It shouldn’t waste even 30 seconds of their time with content that’s all about how great you business is.

Short. Sweet. Helpful. Your newsletter should be genuinely fun to read. (Not just fun for your mom to read.) That means limit “news” unless it’s truly interesting, don’t toot your own horn, and keep it nice and short. Think brief tips, at-a-glance event schedules, and exclusive coupons. The end.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Revise your current newsletter. (You do have a newsletter, right?) Would you read it?
• Review delivered, open and click-through rates.
• Establish benchmarks and share more meaningful content to increase those numbers.
• If it isn’t working, A/B test different subject line styles, delivery days and times, images, and content.

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5. Your emails don’t work on mobile devices.

Be responsive or go home. Around 80% of your contacts will open your emails on their phones. To get the full picture of what that means, imagine what most people are doing when they open their email on their phone. (Hint: They’re often at a red light.) Your email marketing needs to speak to those people, even if you think they should put their phones down while driving.

No more squinting. Responsive emails adjust instantly and elegantly depending on the screen size of the viewer. Every single email you send should be coded to be easy to read and scroll on a cell phone screen or on a tablet. Emails that aren’t mobile-friendly get deleted because no one has time to try to read microscopic fonts or click on tiny calls-to-action. (What is this, an email for ants??).

Here’s how to fix it:

• Start using a responsive email template.
• Email code is notoriously finicky across platform, software and screen combinations. Use your email software testing tool on every email you send.
• Remember the red-light reader. Put the most important information up front and make it large enough to understand in a 5-second scan.
• CTAs should be big enough to tap with a finger. And not too close together.

6. There’s no call to action in your emails.

Make something happen. Every email you send should have a purpose. (A strategic purpose, not an existential purpose.) Even helpful, non-salesy emails should have a call to action. Book a consultation. Attend an event. Read a blog post. Download a coupon.

Emphasize the action part. There’s nothing wrong with falling back on the old stalwart Learn More as long as you’re asking your reader to do something. Stick to action words. Be as concrete as possible. Book a Massage is better than Start Relaxing. Email marketing calls to action are not an exact science, and you should anticipate tweaking and optimizing them on an ongoing basis to get the results you want.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Review all of your marketing and nurturing emails. Make sure they have a call to action that aligns with the appropriate stage in your customer’s journey.
• Set up tracking links using bit.ly or a platform like HubSpot so you can test the CTAs across a variety of campaigns.
• Test and test and test again. Colors, copy, sizes, and placements can all affect CTA performance.

7. Your emails have too many calls to action.

Whoa, slow down. People don’t like too many choices unless we’re talking about those amazing soda machines that let you make peach ginger ale and grape sparkling water. Many marketing emails have failed by containing too many links, effectively paralyzing the reader.

Focus. It’s normal to have an impulse to offer your readers lot of options. For family entertainment center marketing, it might make sense to pull out all the stops. Pizza. Rides. Escape rooms. Drink deals. Cool events. But to get the best click-through rates on your emails, you must narrow it down to one, or maybe two, calls to action. You can always send more emails, and each one will perform better if you focus your call to action energy on one invitation to click.

And while you’re focusing, make sure that you send your reader where they think they’re going. Don’t bait and switch. That makes people angry, and angry people don’t schedule fun into their agendas. (Even though they probably should.)

Here’s how to fix it:

• Audit your emails and double check for too many links. Narrow it down to one impactful, compelling call to action.
• Newsletters get a bit of a pass here, if done right.
• Use text-based links and a few choice buttons, and keep it as easy to read as possible.
• Check the language of your call-to-action against the link destination. Are you delivering on the CTA’s promise?

8. Your emails are too long.

The clock is ticking. Remember that person reading the email at a red light? Well, that red light just turned green. And your email is marked as read, and they’re never going to open it again. Your email was too long.

Streamline every email marketing communication. When you compose your emails and your newsletter, imagine your reader in line at the grocery store or about to be called back from the waiting room at the dentist. You have mere seconds to get your message across. Use quick, snappy headlines. Don’t oversell or over think or over describe anything.

Emails should be visually appealing and simple. Small chunks of text with easy to read buttons and plenty of color contrast. Think mobile first at all time and you’ll produce marketing emails that your guests can digest and act on no matter where they’re reading. (Because yes, they could very well be on the toilet.)

Here’s how to fix it:

• Fall out of love with your words! Keep it simple and to the point.
• Read your emails out loud and make sure they’re conversational and quick.
• See if you can shorten your message by at least 30%. Now do it again.
• Does the design of the email help a reader scan for information. Colors, icons, and buttons help guide readers quickly.

9. Your emails have the same old subject lines.

Subject lines are the gatekeepers. If you can’t get a reader to open, you’ve lost the battle. Your thoughtful call to action, beautiful images, and elegant words will go to waste. So how do you cut through the clutter of an inbox? Very carefully.

Surprise them into opening. Plumbers around the country send very similar emails. Your industry is no different. You’re working against a flood of information that people are becoming increasingly numb to. Subject lines are your chance to stand out.

Consider personalization, emoji, and surprising language. This is where the A/B testing you’ve decided to embrace comes heavily into play. Try testing literal subject lines against very short, baffling subject lines. Test giving away the contents of an email versus offering no insight into the content of an email. Your recipients will show you what works and what doesn’t, and you can build on that — without growing complacent. This is ongoing work.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Pay attention to what gets you to click. Pay attention to what gets your leads to click.
• Test a wide variety of subject lines.
• Avoid the Promotions tab and the SPAM folder by keeping salesy exclamation marks and percentage symbols out of subject lines. Also, emojis are fun, but too many can trigger the SPAM police.
• Try A/B testing with short, long, personalized and generic subject lines.

10. You’re not tracking email marketing analytics.

Do the (fun) math. Email analytics are useful. They’re also addictive once you start looking. Don’t shy away from these numbers. They’re there to guide you and steer you away from judging the success of emails based on your instincts or feelings. Data doesn’t lie.

Optimize emails based on past performance. Any email automation software worth its price will give you a ton of insight into email performance. Never send it and forget it. Schedule time to regularly dig in and monitor the performance of your emails. Pay attention to open rates and click-through rates. Track how often you lose subscribers.

Data is only valuable with context, so compare against average industry performance and keep in mind that segmented, targeted emails will always perform better than emails you throw at your entire audience. Both have value in their own right. There’s no magic number that indicates success, but you should strive to improve the numbers you see and ensure that they don’t consistently drop.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Get familiar with your email software to see what you can measure.
• Set benchmarks based on your average open rates and click-through rates.
• Experiment with various elements to try to improve those numbers every time you send an email.

11. Your emails are all about you.

Don’t be the annoying guy at the cocktail party. Ultimately, people don’t want to hear about how great you are. They want to know what’s in it for them — or better yet, they just want their lives to be improved in some way by the media they engage with. Sometimes that’s a major perspective shift when you’re the person in charge of crafting marketing emails. But you can do it.

Provide value at every touchpoint. Value is a big, vague notion. In order to know what your guests find valuable, talk to them. Pay attention to how they interact with your emails. Survey them. Treat readers like humans, not pieces of data. Give them something useful in your emails, and the ROI will follow.

This can feel counterintuitive when you’re trying to move the needle and grow your business, but it comes down to this: If your emails read like advertisements, they will be ignored. Consistently. It takes more effort to send great emails, but the return is tangible if you nail it. You’ll convert contacts to leads, and you’ll delight existing guests who will mention you in car line, and in the break room, and via text — in all the places you can’t track. (Yet. The future will most certainly be increasingly creepy.)

Here’s how to fix it:

• Figure out what your guests truly care about. (Open and click-through rates are a good place to get that information, or you can ask them!)
• Make sure that every email you send focuses on the needs of the recipient, not the needs of your business. What value are you bringing? How are you making their day brighter?
• With every email, ask yourself: Is this for me, or is this for my customers?

You can fix your email marketing. 

Testing frequently, nailing your frequency, providing value in the content you send and personalizing your messages are important, but it all comes back to respect. Respect your contacts and much of this will fall into place naturally.

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Source: https://www.business2community.com
Image Credit: N/A



ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!