I’ve been compiling the results of my email marketing survey and without further ado, here are the the answers to my three questions.
This number surprised even me.
The good news is that people are sending something at least every month. The bad news is more than 50% are not!
Email marketing is like a muscle, you have to use it for it to get stronger.
With all the press surrounding social media I wondered if good old fashioned email would fall by the wayside. It hasn’t yet (nor should it since it still returns the highest ROi of any online marketing channel) but it’s important to note that social media is gaining in prominence (no surprise there).
Your Top 5 Challenges to Doing Effective Email Marketing.
After analyzing the reader responses here are the top five challenges other professionals, entrepreneurs, and small businesses like you are facing.
1. Not enough time to do email marketing. You don’t seem to have enough time to learn how to do it properly or set aside time to write emails and get them out. Often this lack of time seemed to be tied to a lack of creative ideas to know what to send.
2. List size not large enough. You seemed to be looking for ways to increase your list size and gain more followers. This is a common challenge for everyone.
3. Getting people to read your email. This surprising frustration cropped up very often in the answers. Providing relevant and quality content is easy to say and hard to deliver consistently.
4. Managing my list(s). It was surprising to see a large number of companies were finding it challenging to keep track of their various lists and segments. This becomes more important as you use email more frequently for more applications.
5. Not wanting to send too frequently or annoy readers. The real concern here is certainly a projection of how you feel about emails. If you don’t neccessarily like receiving them, you’ll be reluctant to sent them. Don’t let this belief hold you back. You don’t mind receiving your Groupon offer each day do you?
On the whole, the biggest constraints are a combination of lack of time and lack of skills to do email marketing effectively. But we already knew that, it’s the main reason companies hire us. We save them time, and they get better results.
See for yourself.