Email marketing is one of the most popular and affordable marketing techniques that are extensively deployed by businesses to reach out to new prospects. It allows you to reach thousands of potential customers with just a click of a button. As a result, email marketing has surpassed even SEO (along with social media) when it comes to profitability with about 75% of the companies reporting an excellent ROI from their email campaigns in 2016. There are many disadvantages of email marketing tools like spam, and undelivered emails. But this does not mean that email marketing is easy to execute. Complications can arise, especially when you fall into the trap of deploying countless email campaign tools. Here are the many disadvantages of email marketing tools that hinder the performance of your email campaigns -
1) Spamming - Why do Emails Reach the Spam Folder?
Emails that are sent out in bulk with the help of marketing tools often end up in the spam folder. This happens because the email service providers always try to cut down on the number of unwanted emails that a person is receiving. You should consider email spamming as a serious issue since you may be subject to penalties of up to $16,000 in accordance with the CAN-SPAM Act. Email marketing tools often give an indication to the service provider that the same email is sent to a large number of people. This ends up triggering the spam filters if they are not sure that you have taken due permission from the email recipient.
2) Unsubscribe Option - Why the ‘Unsubscription Count’ Matters
Marketing tools often provide readers with an option to unsubscribe from the mailing lists. While this is a good value to provide to your readers at times, it can also end up biting you in the face in case you are experimenting with different engagement options or end up making an unintended mistake. For example, let’s say you want to wish your readers a happy new year in their native languages. You divide the email list based on the language parameter and send out the emails accordingly, only to realize later that you have sent the wrong email to the wrong recipients. How do you think the Unsubscribe button will perform in this case? There is a lot of noise in a modern-day inbox and your readers might think that they have subscribed to a list that they did not intend to! Hence, an exodus may follow.
3) Name Stamp - Why Email Marketing Tools Hinder Branding?
Have you ever noticed some emails having a perpetual stamp at the footer that gives you the name of a marketing tool? For example, email marketing tools like Mailtrack add a stamp at the end like “Sent with Mailtrack”. That often proves to be a turnoff for some readers who might become wary of the fact that you are tracking how and when they read your emails (as that is what Mailtrack does). Some might even consider this a breach of privacy! Therefore, your email marketing efforts can end up backfiring with the marketing tools attracting all the unwanted attention instead of your email body. Whatever be the case, the practice also interferes with your branding efforts since it becomes blatant that you are dependent on third-party apps for your in-house requirements.
4) Lack of Personalization - Why Email Personalization Matters?
The usual email marketing tools are only capable of sending out bulk emails to a bucketload of addresses. This often works by trying to write an attractive email headline and praying to God that people click on it. As one might guess, this is not the most optimum method to go about. Personalization is the best thing to ever happen in the email marketing industry and you would be leaving money on the table if you are not making use of it. Email personalization is crucial since it requires you to know everything about the prospects and address the issues that they are facing in the emails. On the other hand, personalization also helps you to segregate the email list on the basis of the recipients’ demography and the time of the day. Hence, this has a direct impact on your ROI since more number of people end up reading your emails as well as engaging with them.
5) Same Time Stamp - What is an Email Time Stamp?
An email time stamp shows the time at which the email was received according to the timezone of the email recipient. Email marketing tools often send the emails in a hurry from the server so all emails end up having the same timestamp, regardless of the time zones the recipients may be in. This can often create a lot of confusion, especially when you are sifting through a chain of emails to determine the time at which they were sent or received.
6) Same Subject Lines
We have already seen how marketing tools lack the quality of personalizing the emails according to the recipient. A huge aspect of it is the email subject lines. The email subject is the first node of interaction with a prospective client since it is the first thing that the recipient notices in the inbox. Bulk emails cater to the data set of email addresses as a whole. Hence, the endgame here is to make as many people as possible click on the headline and read the email. So the email headlines come out to be something like -
- 7 Tools to Simplify Your Marketing (educational)
- The Winners of the Facebook Contest are Here! (announcement)
- Please Me Before it’s Too Late! Touchscreen Phones at Heavy Discounts! (humor)
- Why is Your Child More Digital Than Bill Gates (intrigue)
While this is not necessarily a bad way to go about, you can boost your revenues by multiple folds with personalized emails. What if we told you that personalized emails are known to boost transactions by 6 times as compared to bulk emails? Take a look at these subject lines -
- Hurry! Free Shipping for a Limited Period! (sent after a customer leaves the website without buying)
- An Item in Your Cart is About to Sell Out! (sent after customer fails to check out cart)
- Happy Birthday! Here’s a Gift for From all of Us at BlaBla (promotional offer sent to the customer on his/her birthday)
These headlines may look analogous to the usual ones, but they are more relevant to the recipients since the emails are being sent after careful consideration and analysis. Email marketing will always be at the crux of modern-day digital marketing. Hence, it is important that we do everything in our power to extract the best possible ROI out of it. Which marketing tool do you use? Share your views with us in the comments below! 
