Companies use email marketing to connect with their customers and share information. Unlike direct mail, email puts the company’s marketing message right in front of the customer—or at least that’s the goal. Email marketing isn’t perfect; it has some advantages, but it also comes with several downsides. Before you decide to use email for your next marketing campaign, consider these five major drawbacks of email.
1. Your customers may not see your message.
Spam filters often block customers from receiving emails. If you’re not careful with your subject line wording, your customers might never see your email. If you find that many of your customers aren’t opening your emails, it may indicate an issue with spam filters, so it’s worth investigating. Additionally, consider the days and times you send your emails. If it’s during a workday, your customers might miss your email while focusing on their tasks, and by the time they get home, they may have forgotten about it completely.
2. It’s not cheap.
In order to send campaigns to a large number of consumers, you will need to have someone on staff who can design something eye catching and someone who can write something intriguing. Both of these people will cost you money.You will also need to invest in email campaign software, such as Constant Contact. This tool will store all of your contacts’ information as well as provide you with templates to create basic email campaigns. But again, this will cost money.
3. You need to work hard.
If you have mastered getting by the spam filters, your next challenge is to actually get your email opened by your customers. This requires you to create catchy subject lines and also provide good meaty content on the inside that will interest them. Your customers are not going to waste their time reading your email if they’re not enticed to do so, so your email marketing campaigns need to be thoroughly planned and launched to be successful.
4. There will always be glitches.
Though we live in a world run by technology, we can’t seem to make all the technology work together. Chances are that not all of your customers are using the same type of computer or web browser. The problem is that what looks great on one computer and on one web browser may look like garbage on another. For example, if you created your email marketing campaign on a Mac computer and you tested it out through Outlook on Safari and it looked great, that doesn’t’ t mean that it will look great on a PC opened in Gmail through Internet Explorer. For those customers who are getting the distorted version of your email campaigns, you can be sure they won’t benefit from your emails.
5. It’s becoming an old tactic.
Back in the day, email replaced direct mail. Today, social media is replacing email. Many companies are turning to social media as a way to engage with their customers and provide them with information. Some companies are even doing away with internal emails and relying on corporate social media sites like Yammer for all of their internal communications. Thanks to social media, email marketing does not have the same effect it once did.
There are a few drawbacks to email marketing, and if it’s a tactic that you’re using or thinking about using, it’s important you understand these disadvantages to better assess which marketing tactics are right for your business.
This valuable marketing article was written for Small Biz Diamonds by Joshua Reyolds for SEOMAP – a group specializing in SEO keyword research.