WHY ISN’T MY EMAIL MARKETING GETTING RESULTS?


You're sending out email marketing on a (semi) regular basis. That's great.

Engaging with your client or prospective candidate base is vital to let them know what you're doing and what you're offering. But, and it's a painful but, you're spending hours creating the email, writing the copy for it and choosing images, and once you hit send, nothing happens. With no-one picking up the phone to say 'yes, I want to work with you!', no spike in traffic to your website and enquiries from candidates are next to nothing…

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WRONG?

Chances are, there are some basic steps you can put in place that will vastly improve the response to your email marketing.

Here's a checklist for you to work through:

EMAIL MARKETING PLATFORMS

Are you using the best platform to send your email marketing – ideally you need one that can manage your data and can give you reports on things like bounce rates, most-clicked-users and who clicked what links. There are many cost-effective tools out there, the most popular being MailChimp – you can read more about choosing an email marketing tool here.

HOW IS YOUR DATA LOOKING?

If it's been a while since you had a clean-up of your data, then why are you expecting good results? Crummy data means crummy results – it’s harsh but true.  Take a look at your bounce rate. This is the amount of emails that aren't landing with the end reader, perhaps because they have moved on or there is a typo in the email address. You can usually export the 'bouncers' and check over this data, so be sure to tidy it up regularly. If needs be, get a temp or intern in to help you clean up the data.

WHO IS YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?

If you are someone sending the same message to clients, prospective clients, candidates, prospective candidates and people in different industry sectors, then the response rate is likely to be low. How can the reader really feel like you are talking directly to them if you are sending a generic message? Split the data into separate audiences. Your recruitment CRM should be able to do this for you. Yes, it might mean you send a handful of different emails, but the core message can be the same – you just need to tweak the wording to make it more meaningful to each sector.

HOW ENGAGING IS THE CONTENT?

If your email is all 'we, we, we' then don't expect to get much engagement. We've done this, we're going here, aren't we great - It's just not that interesting for the reader, there is no WIFM factor (that's What's In It For Me). Check how much 'you' there is on the email.  The you's should far outweigh the we's.

If you need some inspiration for content you could talk about what developments you've had in the last month or so and what it means for the customer, a link to a blog, article or helpful guide that adds value to your audience, or details of any events you're attending and a link to tickets (ideally with a discount code or appealing offer for the reader.)

USE VIDEO

Video is not going anywhere when it comes to digital marketing. So many of us shy away from it, thinking you need a big budget or expertise to create it. Wrong.  As a case in point, when I embedded video in our email marketing in a previous role, the engagement skyrocketed. I had messages back from clients, the click rates were higher, and we received more enquiries.

Each video was only around a minute to 90 seconds in duration and gave the highlights of the newsletter in visual form. Plus, each video can be uploaded to YouTube, creating another source of traffic for your website and giving you that all-important SEO boost. People like to receive information in different ways – video definitely ticks the box. They also like to see a real human delivering the message.  Most of the videos were filmed on a smartphone or handheld camcorder and edited using software like Camtasia (although things like iMovie would work just as well).

CHECK THE EMAIL DISPLAY ON DIFFERENT DEVICES

You're happy with the design and layout of your email, it’s easy to read, there is plenty of white space and bright images on there – that’s all great.

But have you checked how it displays on different devices?

Test the email out sending it to different people and/or viewing it on different devices like smartphones and tablets. It might look awful on a phone, and if that's how most people are viewing it, then you won't get the results you hoped for.

HOW ARE YOUR CALLS TO ACTION & LINKS LOOKING?

Last but by no means least, check out those important calls to action. They're the things that ask people to do something – click that link, register for this webinar, visit our website etc. Make sure it's obvious what you want people to do as a result of reading your email. And most importantly, check those links. Imagine sending out an email to thousands of people on your subscriber base only to have the 'contact us' link broken.

These are some basic steps that can make a huge difference to your email marketing and ramp up the results you need. If you would like any more pointers on email marketing or someone to manage that process for you, contact the Green Umbrella team.


Christina Robinson

Written by Christina Robinson

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