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If you looked back at your 2018 email campaigns, would you change anything?

Taking a moment to reflect on your email marketing in the past year is a tremendous opportunity for improvement. It gives you a chance to celebrate your best choices and think about the things you could have done differently.

Next year is going to bring quite a few changes in the industry: email validation is on the rise, and content marketing is growing in a new direction. Here are some of the mistakes you can’t afford to make in your 2019 email marketing campaigns.

Promoting yourself excessively

There’s a golden rule in social media marketing, the 80/20 rule, which says that 80% of your posts should inform and educate your audience, and only 20% of them can be self-promotional. The same rule applies to email marketing, where overly-promotional emails can drive people away.

The whole point of email marketing is to create a genuine connection with your subscribers and, in time, build a community around your brand. Many companies have been using content marketing to grow their audience and establish themselves as leaders in their field. Useful articles, whitepapers and case studies, webinars and other pieces of informative content – they are all efficient ways for you to develop an audience that loves your brand.

Next year brings a more personal approach to content marketing: unique, powerful storytelling that stands out above the chatter. Sharing your individual experiences and lessons is inspiring and allows people to connect to you in a more personal way.

Using an outdated list

None of the content you work so hard to create matters if it doesn’t reach your subscribers in the first place. As people’s inboxes are so crowded these days, you’re competing with lots of other senders. You can’t take the risk of falling in the Spam folder by using an outdated email list. Email validation helps you avoid just that.

Are you using a reCAPTCHA code on your signup forms? Also, is double opt-in your method of collecting email addresses? They’re both effective measures of precaution against fake contacts that could spoil your email list. But for marketers who are looking to achieve full email deliverability, email validation is the go-to

solution.

Data decay is a fact: did you know that 30% of your email list deteriorates within just one year? An email validation system helps you stay on top of your email hygiene and ensure you are not sending your campaigns to invalid addresses and toxic domains. Also, deploying an email verification API on your subscription forms, besides using reCAPTCHA and the double opt-in, will keep your database clean and safe to use.

Want to take your marketing to the next level? Be sure to also check out their email address hunter. Hunter uses several factors that will search any domain to local the most probable email address in less than a second and is used by well over 1,000,000 professionals. You can also get the quick and easy Google Chrome plug-in to speed up your efforts even more.

Not sending emails consistently

Once they join your mailing list, your subscribers expect to get content from you. Also, sending your emails consistently lets Internet Service Providers know you are a serious, legitimate sender. Email validation supports your deliverability by removing bad leads from your list. Furthermore, a stable sending behavior keeps your IP warm and increases the number of emails that reach the inbox.

Run a few A/B tests to see what day and time works best, in terms on open rates, for sending our your newsletters. Then stick to that day and time, no matter what. Ten marketing studies have shown that Tuesday is the best day to send email. The second best day would be Thursday, and the third is Wednesday. However, it all depends on the industry you’re in: for examples, newsletters from magazines and blogs perform well on Sundays.

We’ll leave you with a few final tips:

Strive to create content that educates and entertains

Use an email validation service to keep your list healthy

Send your emails on the same day, at the same time

Test your emails to ensure they render well on mobile

Engage your subscribers by asking them questions and expressing genuine curiosity about their feedback

Share your personal lessons and allow people to be inspired by them

These tips should get you started on a fresh and more productive email marketing strategy for 2019!