The 5 Most Common Email Marketing Questions Marketers Ask

Jnana S Rao

The most remarkable question we received was – To be an email marketer, what questions should I be asking? That left us thinking!! So while these are few questions that marketers have asked us to clear out their confusions; anyone who wants to know what to ask- well, here we go!

• What is the meaning of email deliverability and open rates? Why are these so important?

Email Deliverability: Email deliverability is the most vital aspect of your email campaign. If your emails are not delivered, your campaigns will go into vain. For a successful email marketing campaign, it is very important that your emails reach your users’ inboxes. Deliverability helps you in measuring the success of your emails that reached your users’ inboxes. This list does not include emails that reached the spam or junk folder, or those that have bounced.

Open Rates:  The total number of users on your mailing list who have opened your emails defines the term Open Rate. It is usually represented in percentage. Open rate is a crucial metric for your email campaign. This percentage will help you judge the success of your email campaign. The drawback of relying on open rate percentage only is that this value does not talk about the actual number of emails that got delivered. It is a cumulative percentage. Another thing to keep in mind is that open rate cannot be calculated only on the basis of the HTML text read. Many users download images which are again a vital part of the email. There are many users who open emails only to skim through it rather than reading it properly.

• What is the difference between a spam email and a cold email, legally speaking?

Cold emails are mostly sales emails sent with content that aligns to the recipients’ need. It is usually personalised and has a business prospect included. However, it is still an unsolicited email. And all unsolicited emails are labeled as SPAM.

If you are flooding the inbox of your users regularly with such unsolicited emails, it is highly possible that your emails will soon get redirected to the spam or junk folders. To avoid this, the most important thing to do is- respect your recipients’ decision to opt-out from receiving emails from you. You can include the links to unsubscribe easily. You must be familiar with the CAN_SPAM act and its regulations.

• How many times should I send out emails?

This is a very dicey question with no proper answer to it. There is no magic number to follow. Your email campaigns can work brilliantly when you are sending out emails twice a week; it can perform poorly at the same frequency too. According to the National Email Client Report 2016, about 17 percent companies send out emails 4-5 times in a month. The report also reveals that about 8 percent opt for 6-8 times in a month, and another 8 percent send out emails more than eight times in a month.

There can be two situations: overmailing, where you send a huge bulk of emails that might annoy your recipients; undermailing, where you don’t send enough emails to engage with your recipients properly. The magic lies in between. You can’t do either. Also, before you start sending out emails, you must be well aware of how mailbox providers work. Each mailbox provider has different rules and regulations for spams and inbox delivery. The bottom line is Email Marketing Frequency optimization depends upon engagement. You have to find out how many emails are giving you maximum return regarding engagement and click-throughs.

• What is the Click-through Rate I should be expecting?

It will take some time to determine the ideal average click-through rate for your business. Factors like, your keywords, industry, and conversion rate impact the CTR. According to a Google employee, a beginner should aim for a 2% CTR. Well, this is not a set milestone that you have to follow, but an objective like this is a great start. Most PPC experts would recommend something between 2% to 5% for a competitive industry. For a non-competitive industry, a CTR of 5%+ is great. This is because, in a non-competitive industry, customers will have lesser options to choose from.
N.B.: According to a recent report, Bing search engine ads have high CTR in comparison to Google and Yahoo! Search engines.

• How do I deal with huge bounce rate?

Bounce rate indicates the percentage of people who left your website almost immediately. This percentage is a clear red flag that your visitors did not get what they were looking for, or maybe they did not find sufficient ways to engage on your website. Either way, your website needs rework!
Before you think of handling a huge bounce rate, let’s get few facts straight. If your motive was to bring your visitors to that one landing page only, then you need not worry about the bounce rate. Well, you did not want them to visit other pages (rather it wasn’t part of your plan). So if they left viewing a single page (which was linked), then you can relax. However, if it is otherwise, here’s how you can deal with it:

• Add more links to other pages that might stir an engagement.
• Do not just focus on your product pages. Include a manual or a guide or anything that can grab the attention.
• Include contents that everyone will like in a sidebar that remains intact throughout the course of site viewing.
• Work on your content.

MichelleAlese

Thank you so much for this excellent information! I'll certainly be referring to it to keep improving my process.

Ankit Singh

Really useful post! thanks for sharing!