5 challenges email marketers face and how to solve them

Email marketing boasts an average return of $40 for every $1 spent. Meaning it remains one of the most successful marketing channels available today.

So you would assume that driving results through email marketing would be a simple task.

Right?

Despite your email marketing expertise, not necessarily.

Email marketing can be a complex channel to manage. And as marketing tactics and consumer expectations advance, so does email marketing capability.

It can be hard to keep up.

In this post, we will cover some of the 5 main challenges that email marketers face. And also offer some email marketing tips to help you solve them.

You’re welcome.

Healthy deliverability

Maintaining engagement

Retaining customers

Managing data

Expanding skill sets

Healthy deliverability

The challenge of deliverability may not be new or ground breaking. However, it remains an ongoing struggle for many email marketers.

And if emails aren’t getting in the inbox, then all the hard work designing, copywriting, and personalising will have gone to waste.

Email deliverability can be influenced by a range of factors which is potentially why it remains a challenge for so many.

These include:

• Subject lines
• Message size
• Link domain
• Mobile responsiveness
• Imagery

…plus many more

The solution

Ensuring healthy deliverability is an ongoing process.

Begin by reviewing your sign up journey to ensure that you are marketing to recipients who have explicitly signed up to your communications. This will reduce the chances of high unsubscribe rates or spam complaints.

You can support this process by offering a comprehensive preference centre, allowing recipients to easily select the type of communications they wish to receive, or unsubscribe entirely.

And to directly address your deliverability, carefully consider the content you are sending out to ensure it adheres to the latest deliverability guidelines. If you need support with this, automation or email platforms will often offer the ability to run deliverability checks that will flag any potential issues.

Maintaining engagement

When a consumer first subscribes to your email list, their engagement levels are at their peak. Meaning that email marketers are battling to maintain engagement from the very beginning.

To pique the interest of their recipients, marketers need to scrap blanket emails. Instead, opting for targeted, personalised communications that recipients won't be able to resist.

The solution

For marketers who are struggling with their data (more on this later), this process can be started with the use of simple segmentation. Whether that be based on demographics, location, or purchasing behaviour.

But for the data-savvy marketer, there are endless possibilities for more advanced personalisation, particularly with the use of dynamic content. Marketers can create emails which are automatically populated with copy, content, products, and imagery that is personalised to each individual. Creating a one-to-one experience.

And don’t forget the impact of using people to sell to people. Many consumers crave community, which is reflected in the success of influencer marketing, with 80% of marketers reporting the channel to be an effective strategy. So, consider incorporating photos and testimonials from other happy customers and, where possible, collaborating with influencers that recipients can relate to.

Retaining customers

Consumer expectations are ever increasing.

In fact, nearly two-thirds (58%) of consumers report they would sever their relationship with a business due to poor customer service.

Which means retaining customers and keeping them loyal is more challenging than ever before.

A large element of retaining customers is to keep them engaged. And as we previously mentioned, personalisation is key to achieving this.

The solution

Use personalisation to encourage your current customers to continue purchasing by making the buying journey as simple as possible. This could include recommended products based on past purchases, abandoned basket reminders, pricing updates for products browsed, and even utilising geo-location to recommend nearby stores.

Also, don’t forget to make your customers feel special and valued. Send them exclusive VIP sales, discounts, or pre-launches. Even an email on their birthday or anniversary can go a long way.

Managing data

To achieve all of the above, data is essential.

But with the vast amounts of data to collect, store, and integrate, data management remains a significant challenge for many email marketers.

And while 63% of marketers have increased spend on data-driven marketing, 81% of marketers consider implementing a data-driven marketing strategy to be complicated.

So, there’s evidently room for improvement.

The solution

To practice advanced email marketing, marketers should pull their data from multiple sources.  Their CRM, EPOS and POS, finance systems, newsletter lists, and surveys.

To name just a few.

To achieve this they must integrate their key data systems, enabling them to optimise their emails to the specific individual and offering an engaging experience for the recipient.

Once this data sits in one central place, marketers can gain a 360 degree view of their audience, keep on top of data cleansing and duplication, and segment their recipients.

Expanding skill sets

Nowadays marketers wear many different hats. And the same can be said for email marketers too.

Copywriter, designer, coder, data analyst, and project manager. Although I’m sure you can name even more.

Naturally, even those with the most advanced email marketing expertise can find themselves spread too thin. Leading to mistakes, a lack of innovation, and burnout.

The solution

Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple solution to this challenge. It can vary from business to business, depending on team structure, budgets, and resource.

If possible, it’s important to build out a team with a variety of interchangeable expertise so that all elements of email marketing don’t fall to one individual.

In addition, regular training should be built into any email marketers’ role so that they can expand their skill set. And in turn, benefit the wider business.

Of course, we understand that the above isn’t possible for all businesses, in which case we would advise gaining support from external email marketing experts.

The benefit of this route is immediate support from those who boast advanced email marketing expertise. And while this support is beneficial in the short term, your team can also learn from the experts. Helping them to build their own skill set whilst not being overwhelmed by email management.

Need help resolving your email marketing challenges?

Then why not get in touch with our team of experts to explore your options for email marketing support? We’d love to hear about your email marketing plans, and offer our email marketing expertise.