7 Ways to Create a Failing Email Marketing Strategy
Loosely define your audience
Imagine walking into a room full of strangers and trying to sell them luxury RVs. You’d be trying to convince people they need an expensive, extra, high-maintenance vehicle that they may or may not be able to afford, that they may or may not have an interest in, and that they may or may not care about. The chance of closing even one person on an RV will be next to zero.
After having a solid, high-value offer, the next crucial component in making sales is knowing who wants what you’re selling and connecting with them. Tightly defining your audience and gaining their trust through regular email contact is the magic recipe for gold.
Loosely defining your audience means not knowing exactly who your ideal prospect is. It means not knowing their age, their buying behaviors, their problems, and their market awareness. It means not knowing their hopes and fears.
If your email list is full of low-quality prospects and freebie-seekers, you most likely have a highly unengaged list with few sales and low open rates.
So, if your goal is to create a failing email campaign, make sure to loosely define your audience.
2. Create vague success metrics
A doomed-to-fail email marketing strategy includes vague success metrics like any of these:
Increase engagement
Increase ROI
Increase open rate
Increase click thru rate
Decrease spam rate
Grow list size
All of these metrics are impossible to measure. They do not include any way to determine success or failure. They are not S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). Although any of these outcomes would be excellent, they are not metrics that you can judge your campaign against to decide if you are on the right track or not.
Vague success metrics = Doomed to fail email strategy
3. Segment your list into only 2 groups
Segmenting your email list into only two groups, such as buyers and nonbuyers, is only taking advantage of the most basic benefits of segmenting. There are endless possibilities to specifically target members of your subscriber list to get the most ROI.
Some possible email list segments to avoid if you’re aiming for a failing email campaign would be:
Active versus inactive subscribers
Segment based on website traffic
Segment based on items purchased
Segment based on how long they visited your website
Segment those who abandoned their cart and never purchased
Segment men versus women
Segment based on when last purchased
Segment based on when last visited the website
Ignore the benefits of email segmentation and you’ll be well on your way to a failing email campaign strategy. You’re welcome.
4. Use AI to write your emails
For the past few years, business owners and copywriters, alike, have been swooning over the perceived benefits of using AI software to write copy faster. AI does have the capability to write a piece of copy for you based on the prompts you feed it.
However, AI is lacking in the very aspects of copywriting that make great copy great. AI doesn’t have stories to tell. AI doesn’t know your customers and only knows its pain points based on the data it has from the internet. AI sounds like an encyclopedia trying to fit in with the cool crowd.
Discerning readers today can smell AI copy a mile away. It lacks feeling. It lacks the ability to elicit emotions from within the reader. It acts like, well, a robot has taken over the writer’s desk.
So if you want sterile, elite-sounding copy read like it was written by one of our Founding Fathers, then AI is definitely the way to go. The problem is that readers today are craving authenticity. They want to hear the voice behind the business owner. They want to feel that human to human connection. And luckily, email has the capability to do just that. But, unfortunately, AI does not.
Relying on AI to write your copy >> Doomed to fail email campaigns
5. Email your list once a week
I hear it all the time. “But Nancy, I don’t want to bother my subscribers or SPAM them.”
Ummm….no.
However, if you’re trying to fail, then, yes, stay away from your subscribers and go to bed pleased with yourself every night that you didn’t spam them last week.
The truth is, your subscribers have asked to be invited to hear from you. They signed up to hear from you. They WANT to hear from you.
Stats show, year after year, that daily emails are the sure-fire way to have an active and engaged email list who buys from you.
Anyone who doesn’t want to hear from you will unsubscribe from your list (and you’ll remind them that they can unsubscribe anytime). In fact, we, as marketers, encourage subscribers to remove themselves from lists they no longer want to be part of.
So, ignoring the data showing that daily emails are the best way to engage with your audience, build trust and gain sales is the number one way to create a failing email marketing strategy.
6. Deprioritize personalization
People today are bombarded with advertisements. We’re seeing more advertisements per day than ever before. The outcome of this overwhelm is that people are now seeking and craving authenticity from the world around them.
Personalization makes your reader feel like you are talking directly to them. They feel that genuine connection with you. They feel understood by you. They feel like they aren’t just a credit card number to you.
Personalization means using your reader’s name in the subject line of the email and inside the body of the email.
But it means even more than that. It also means knowing your reader’s behavior so you can meet them where they’re at. It means you know if they have bought from you recently and you’re acknowledging that. It means you know what they like and don’t like and you don’t try to push them towards something you know they aren’t going to welcome. It means using the data we are capable of gathering and allowed to gather in order to create a more personalized approach to solving your audience’s problems.
So, definitely deprioritize personalization in your email marketing efforts if you’re out to discount your audience and run with your agenda or treat everyone on your subscriber list as one and the same.
7. Skip investing in evergreen sequences
Evergreen sequences are email sequences that target very specific actions taken or not taken by your readers. Some examples of evergreen sequences are:
Welcome sequence
Abandoned cart sequence
Browse abandonment sequence
Re-engagement sequence
Post-purchase sequence
Birthday and anniversary sequence
Upsell / cross-sell email sequence
Event email sequence (pre-event and post-event)
Once these sequences (or any that are appropriate for your business) are written, they are evergreen because they can be used over and over again. They are the gift that keeps on giving. They can always be tweaked as needed along the way. But the value of these sequences is long-lasting.
If you are looking to leave money on the table, then disregard the value of these evergreen sequences in your email marketing.
If you’d like expert assistance in avoiding any of these 7 tips for creating a failing email campaign, book a call with me and we’ll discover how I can help you create a winning email campaign.
Click here to book that call.
