5 Email Marketing Mistakes that can Sabotage your Sales (and how to update your strategy to start getting some of that 3600% ROI)

Last week I sent an email professing ​my love of email marketing​ (and dislike for Flodesk as a platform).

In it, I talked about the fact that email marketing is STILL reported to have a $3600 return on investment—meaning that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you should be making $36.

Now, if you’re rolling your eyes after reading that, because even though you regularly email your subscribers, you don’t feel like you’re seeing that kind of $$$ return…

Below, I’m going to outline 5 of the main reasons I’ve seen business owners sabotage their ability to make sales via email… and how you can update your email marketing strategy to get a slice of that 3600% ROI.

1) You’re sending How To content

If you’re speaking to a reader that wants to know how to do something on their own… and that’s what your content helps them do…

You’re going to struggle to get those people to pay you for a solution.

Instead (and this applies everywhere), you want to be helping people see you as an expert and giving them the information they need to make smart decisions.

This doesn’t mean you don’t give value, it just means that you provide your reader with the same tips you’d give someone who’s working with you—not the ones they’d need to maintain their status quo.

2) You’re not giving people a $$$-producing CTA

No, I’m not suggesting you’re always going to be asking for a sale, specifically. But if you’re not asking people to take an action that might lead to a sale down the line…

You’re going to have a tough time generating any kind of ROI (though increased brand awareness and being top of mind do have positive benefits of their own).

ROI-focused Calls to Action in an email might look like:

“Hit reply and let me know!”

“Book a free, no-pressure Alignment Call right here”

“Sign up for this brand new masterclass right here”

“Only 3 spots left – click here to claim yours now”

Not all of these lead directly to the sale, but they all serve to engage your subscriber, get them to put their hand up and show you they’re interested, and take a step closer towards being a paying customer.

(Never sure what to add as a CTA? There’s a CTA Roadmap inside​ Activate Your Email List​ where I share a variety of CTA scripts based on what you’d like your subscribers to do.)

3) You don’t stand out in their inbox

I recently did a major cull of my newsletter subscriptions and the very easiest “unsubscribes” of all were the ones where I couldn’t clearly associate a face with the name or the brand.

The easiest way to make yourself memorable (and therefore harder to delete)?

Get engagement early on and help new subscribers them ​see you as a person, not a brand.​

How? By sending them through a ​Profitable Welcome Sequence​, where you introduce yourself, share a picture of your beautiful smiling face, and *connect* with your subscribers as a fellow human being.

4) Your subscribers don’t understand what you offer—or how it will make their lives better

In the same way you want to introduce yourself to new subscribers from the moment they sign up, you also want them to know you’re a business person with an offer.

This is why I recommend you mention your paid offer at least 3 times within your freebie itself and that you pitch that offer within your welcome sequence.

This doesn’t mean that your welcome sequence feels like a hard sell.

It means you want to be highlighting the benefits of your methodology and the results your clients get…

Then inviting your new subscribers to enjoy those same benefits / results.

5) You’re not tagging, segmenting, or making use of personalized content

We’re all aware of the fact that attention spans are shorter than a 4-second Reel these days.

Your subscribers want content that’s relevant to them and will start to tune out if you regularly deliver content that doesn’t reward them for their click.

Whether you’re sending them:

• Emails on topics they’re not interested in

• Content they’ve already seen on social media, or

• Blocks of text that aren’t easy to read

…once that attention is lost, it’s hard to get it back.

I recommend ​asking your audience to share what’s on their mind​s approximately 4x per year and to regularly make use of clicks to tag and segment your subscribers.

What does this look like in practice?

Here are a few examples:

• Include a segmentation email in your welcome sequence where people put their hands up to tell you which segment of your audience they’re in (My buckets are “course creator”, “coach”, “service provider” and “fellow copywriter who likes to lurk on other people’s lists”)

• Use a quiz as a lead magnet: This allows you to segment subscribers based on their outcome, but you can also layer in different levels of segmentation unrelated to the quiz takers final results.

• Tag actions like a subscriber who clicks to join your waitlist OR clicks to opt out of hearing about a launch. Both are giving you information about what they want to see more/less of. It’s up to you to listen.

Now, in my experience peeking at the backend of a lot of people’s email platforms, many business owners have an overwhelming amount of tags… But they don’t actually use that data to make relevant offers.

The key to turning those tags into dollar-dollar bills?

Use them to make relevant offers!

More on that another day.

Talk soon,

Katie