This is Inbox Hacking, a free newsletter with Email Marketing insights, tools, & tactics sent twice per week. Join marketers from Stanford University, the NBA, & BASF, and sign up for a Free subscription.
Hope y’all enjoyed your Labor Day off. I’m hopping in a kayak as soon as I wrap this edition up.
But first, here are 7 questions to ask before you hit send on your upcoming email campaigns, followed by 3 vital email marketing statistics.
7 Questions to Ask Before Hitting Send on Upcoming Emails
- Does your email content pay off the subject line’s promise?
Readers don’t like being tricked into opening emails. Use great subject lines but no trickery.
- Are you taking advantage of abandoned cart emails?
Nearly 70% of people walk away from online shopping carts without buying. Abandoned cart emails reel those purchases back in. Abandoned cart emails are not optional.
- Are your sales emails or ad sections too timid?
No one on this planet expects to use the web and not see ads / sales pitches. Look at any website, any email in your inbox. Your subscribers expect pitches, so don’t be shy.
- How long has it been since you cleaned your list and tweaked the list segments?
List cleaning is a must (reg-u-lar-ly!). Segmenting your list is an easy task to ignore but it will cost you. Take advantage of automated segmentation at the very least.
- Should you test an email combo punch?
Digital marketing keeps growing as offline marketing shrinks ($436 billion versus $196 billion in 2021). This means using offline marketing such as postcards alongside email could set your brand apart (consumers keep physical mail in the house 17 days on average).
- For newsletters— are you tackling topics your readers care about while using unique stories or angles?
Yes, give readers what they want… but if every marketer uses the same stories in Morning Brew, why would readers need our emails? Have an alternate opinion at the very least. Even better— dig up stories other writers don’t have time to investigate. Watch old interviews, read books not published in the past 3 years, use personal stories to make your point. My favorite stories from The Hustle were about a roulette-playing doctor in the 60s and a cheapo wine brand… not the latest tech news🥱.
- Are you pushing your lead magnets as much as your products / services?
Donald Miller of StoryBrand says his company pushes lead generators more than their actual products. He attributes much of the company’s early success to a specific lead magnet. Getting leads ensures you have a captive email audience for years down the line. BTW, Miller estimates only 40% of their lead generators produce good results, so be testing and tweaking yours.
Now, those promised statistics…
Don’t Ignore These 3 Email Marketing Stats
- 80% of marketers say they’d rather give up social media than email marketing (HubSpot)
- 1 outta 5 emails are not mobile friendly (HubSpot)
- Welcome Emails shown to have over 3x the open rates of other email types (GetResponse)
My take on the above.
⚖Some social media companies will one day be sued like Big Tobacco (make a note, lawyer up!). Plus, all the fraudulent clicks and new AI content on social are making the inbox an even smarter marketing focus.
📲Lots of preaching on testing before sending emails. More preaching than listening. Some mistakes are no big deal, but emails that show up jacked-up or tiny on phones are a major problem for marketers.
🏆Your Welcome Email should be your best email. More readers will see it than any other email you send and it can ensure more readers care about the emails that follow.
Read on for a specific threat from Apple’s link tracking update and Today’s Hack→ using exclusivity when your offers are not exclusive.
Billions Sent
You learn a lot from sending billions of emails.
Yes, B… Billions.
Inbox Mailers learned:
- Nearly 100% of people read email in a predictable pattern
- They delete unwanted emails then read all the remaining emails
- People only read emails when they make time for it
These learnings lead to a patent-pending trigger system. Triggered emails that hit your subscribers’ inbox while they’re making time for reading emails.
These emails land after the unwanted emails are deleted. So, the triggered emails are in the perfect position to be read… because they’re next to the emails the subscriber purposely kept!
This produces 50, 60, even 70% open rates, higher click volume, and deliverability improvements in no time. Demo Inbox Mailers and take advantage of their patent-pending triggered emails so your campaigns can benefit from higher engagement based on a proven predictable inbox behavior.
*sponsored
Knowledge Base
💪Knowledge is power, but first, parrot selfies?
A specific potential threat from Apple’s Link Tracking Protection
👨👩👦B2B content should feel human. How to do it
Click fraud rates by industry (chart)
🤖4 signs sketchy traffic’s creeping on your website
Are you making these 3 mistakes on LinkedIn?
Follow Inbox Mailers…
Self Help
My Grandma was a world-class southern cook. Biscuits, gravy, dressing, you name it.
Very generous with her meals. Anybody who stopped by.
She told me once that her 1st-grade best friend shared her lunch with her every day. Because my Grandma had no lunch to bring.
One kind act from a little girl I never knew led to a lifetime of good food around a table full of generosity and love.
* Inbox Hackers Shout-out:
📢Lori at Insurance News Net
📢Rachel at Go Pure Beauty
Facts and Stats
- Execution. Failure to stick to plan was the #1 reason marketing campaigns failed (Marketing Made Simple Thesis)
- 62% of Gen Z believe products/services using AI have more benefits than drawbacks. Just 43% of Baby Boomers agree (Ipsos)
- 70% to 80% of users completely ignore paid ads (SmallBizGenius)
Bonus: Name the illogical marketing technique that can be used to erase objections, reduce refund requests, and run off pain-in-the-neck prospects? Strip-lining.
Email Fails
Spam filters are hurting even good emailers.
Apple’s trying to put email marketers in the poor house.
And readers have the attention span of a meth-headed goldfish.
I guess we should all give up, go home, and cry to mama?
Nah, mama don’t wanna hear it.
Instead, do the simplest thing possible to improve your email deliverability…
Get subscribers to open more of your emails. That simple. But how?
Inbox Mailers’ triggered emails. These emails skip the line at the inbox to ensure your emails get top billing, get opened, then get clicked on.
*sponsored
🙏thank you for supporting
Get Hacking
Using exclusivity in marketing emails is not possible for every service / product.
But you can stiff-arm potential customers. Umm… you won’t like that technique. It’ll be like running customers off. Pretty rude too, so never mind.
See ya next week.
Kidding! Kindle a desire inside people by telling them they probably won’t like your latest widget. That it’s likely not a fit for them…or other average people 😅. Tell them they probably wouldn’t understand how to use the widget anyway and it’d be a hassle for you and them.
Ok, don’t go that far. But if you want the effect of exclusivity when you can’t use it naturally, try the tactic of making your widget “not for them.” This requires real, almost illogical confidence in your offers though.
Please forward Inbox Hacking to other email marketing wizards. Many thanks.
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