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How to Avoid Email Marketing Fatigue and Charm Your Subscribers
Email marketing has the highest ROI of any digital marketing strategy. The channel is so successful that it has a median ROI of 122%, according to a survey conducted by the Data & Marketing Association.
With this level of return, it’s easy to think that sending more emails is better, no matter what. However, while subscribers may love your brand and want to hear from you, they can also grow weary if you overdo it.
When a subscriber gets tired of your messages and stops responding, it’s called email marketing fatigue. The good news is, you can save your subscribers from email marketing fatigue by implementing a few smart marketing strategies.
Here are some tips to make sure your audience stays engaged with your content.
1. Pay attention to your analytics
Interestingly enough, over 45% of businesses have no clear strategy regarding how much email communication they send. There’s no reason for this. After all, with the help of a good email service provider, you have access to analytics that can help you figure out the right frequency.
By monitoring your analytics, you can see how subscribers are responding to your messages. For example, if you see a surge in unsubscribes, fewer opens, and less clicks on certain emails, then it might be time to re-evaluate how often you’re sending emails, what type of emails you’re sending, and whether or not your content is relevant.
On the other hand, if you see a boost in interest, more clicks, and a higher ROI, you know you have officially hit the sweet spot can optimize what you are doing until it begins to plateau or change.
2. Give subscribers more control
You can also fight off email fatigue by finding ways to put subscribers in the driver’s seat. You already provide them with the basic opt-in and opt-out features, but you can take it further by letting them choose their preferences.
For example, you can offer subscribers the ability to:
- Subscribe/unsubscribe to different lists
- Select email frequency (daily, monthly, yearly, etc)
- Customize preferences
- Pause communications
- Change email address
For example, West Elm offers a number of choices to subscribers. Subscribers can choose which emails they want to receive, as well as how often they want to receive them. When it comes to frequency, West Elm offers four different options.
Remember, subscribers may change their minds over time and decide to become more (or less) engaged with your brand. As such, give them the opportunity to update their preferences to reflect where they stand.
3. Strategically test your emails
If you want to find out what resonates with subscribers, why not test your emails to a small segment before sending it out to your entire list? This strategy works especially well if you test your emails on your most highly engaged audience, those who are unlikely to tire of you.
Once you have conducted an A/B test on a small group of subscribers, you can use that data as a predictor for a larger audience.
To construct emails that resonate with your subscribers, it’s important to test all aspects of your email. You can test:
- Subject line
- Preheader text
- Call to action
- Personalization
- Headline
- Body text
- Images
- Closing text
- Testimonials
- Offers
- And more
If you have a large list, then consider conducting A/B tests among several different groups of subscribers. Similarly, if your lists are segmented, test your emails in each different segment. You may be surprised to learn that what one segment prefers is different than what another group of subscribers prefers.
While A/B testing is a surefire way to align your messaging with subscriber interests, it’s shocking to know that only 47% of marketers say they sometimes test alternate subject lines to optimize performance, and only 18% test different email layouts and templates.
Take the time to test your emails, because it could make a big difference in customer engagement.
4. Segment your lists into groups
Segmenting your lists is one of the best ways to avoid email marketing fatigue. Rather than sending all of your promotions to all of your subscribers, you are instead sending relevant messages to subscribers who are likely to engage.
For example, if you offer a variety of training courses, you can send emails to subscribers based on their knowledge. If you know someone is a novice, you can send them emails that promote your beginner courses. If they’re more advanced, you can direct them to content that suits them better.
Adidas is a great example of a brand that segments their lists well. Of course, Adidas has a women’s line of shoes and a men’s line of shoes, so they segment their customers by gender.
That way, when a new collection comes out, they can send an email with the new men’s shoes to male customers, and an email with the new women’s collection to female customers. It’s simple, but it is just another way to deliver the right content to the right customers at the right time.
5. Use dynamic content to personalize messages
Dynamic content is another way to keep your emails relevant and interesting to specific subscriber groups.
With the help of a CRM, you can leverage data to find out certain information about your subscribers. For example, you can learn their gender, purchasing behaviors, location, preferences, and more. Then, you can create content based on the data.
For example, let’s say you own a chain of restaurants and like to offer a special, but different, promotions for different locations. With the help of dynamic content, you can customize your offer and select different content to show up to subscribers in different locations.
This way, you don’t overwhelm your customers by sending information about all of your promotions to all of your customers, whether or not it’s relevant.
6. Combine your offers and limit the number of emails you send
If you notice your open rates are starting to decline or your unsubscribe rate is higher than you’d like, consider combining your offers. That way, you can rest assured your subscribers have access to your promotions but aren’t growing tired of how often you are sending emails.
Along the same lines, only send emails when it makes sense. This past year, you may have been the recipient of Pre-Cyber Monday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Tuesday, Cyber Wednesday, Cyber Thursday, etc. deals. While it’s great to provide offers to customers, there is a point when multiple emails with the same deals become disingenuous.
Instead of overloading your subscribers, work on testing your emails, using proven templates, and crafting emails that hit the mark every time.
Wrap up
Email marketing has the highest ROI of any digital marketing strategy, but email marketing fatigue is real. Email marketing is an art and a science, but you can easily stay ahead of the game by following the suggestions above to keep your content relevant, engaging, and charming.
