Email — you can’t live with it, but you certainly can’t live without it. If you’re like most working adults, reading and writing emails takes up a lot of your time. In fact, it amounts to nearly 30% of the workday for the average professional in the US.
While this may be overwhelming, it’s critical to communication both personally and professionally. As a company, it’s also crucial to your healthcare organization’s marketing efforts.
Email marketing, or sending promotional messages to your audience in large volumes, is typically designed to generate leads. With more than 4 billion email users, email marketing can be hugely successful — if done correctly.
Email marketing has an average return on investment of $38 for each dollar spent.
Source: Neil Patel Digital
The problem is — people are constantly inundated with emails. With so many emails flooding everyone’s inboxes, how do you make sure the ones from your organization actually get opened?
Start with fixing common but avoidable mistakes. Here are 6 reasons your audience isn’t opening your emails (and how to fix those problems).
1. Your emails are too general.
Everyone wants to feel special — including your readers. Rather than sending the exact same email to everyone, customize your message to segmented audiences.
In order to define your segments, use data, such as browsing history, demographics, social media activity, questions from surveys, and any other information you have about your audience. For instance, you might segment email lists based on your audience’s need for certain diagnostic or screening tests.
Segmenting your email list may take time, but it’s worth it. Segmented and personalized campaigns have been shown to boost revenue by up to 760%.
2. Your email subject lines are boring and not useful.
Just like the title of blog articles need to be carefully crafted to be intriguing yet focused, email subject lines must catch the attention of your audience immediately. Otherwise, into the trash they’ll go.
Not only will your audience delete your email, but email providers will get rid of them, too. In an effort to clear user inboxes, emails with repetitive titles frequently end up in “promotion” tabs or straight into the spam folder.
When writing your email subject lines:
- Keep them concise.
- Highlight benefits to your reader.
- Make them personal.
- Incorporate keywords.
- Use active voice.
3. Your emails don’t provide your audience with anything.
Assuming your organization has a website and even a minor social media presence, your audience won’t struggle to find you. This means you need to stop using your emails for generic marketing.
Instead, use your emails to give them something useful. Let them know about new information that might interest them. Provide them with a special incentive. Send out an announcement that you want them to know about first.
Whatever it is, make sure the content in your email marketing is special and valuable — and not something they can just find on their own.
4. Your emails aren’t made for mobile.
Nearly every American has a cellphone of some kind — and roughly 85% of those are smartphones. Chances are your emails are being opened on mobile devices, and yet, almost 1 in every 5 email campaigns is not designed for an optimal experience on mobile devices.
If you haven’t already, it’s time to get on board with email marketing for mobile devices. Otherwise, your audience might just click delete.
5. Your email content is congested.
Like all web content, emails need to be easy to digest. When it comes to healthcare content, millions of Americans don’t have strong health literacy skills. Easily digestible healthcare information starts with the copy — and ends with the design.
Email copy should:
- Stick to short sentences and paragraphs.
- Use bullet points.
- Never use jargon or complicated words.
Then, utilize a clean design with pleasing color palettes.
6. You’re sending too many emails.
People’s email inboxes are already overflowing. Don’t add to that by sending emails once, twice, or even three times a day. Not only do they run the risk of getting deleted, but users might also mark them as spam or unsubscribe entirely.
Stick to high-quality emails that contain specific and useful information one or two times a week. This keeps your audience from being annoyed with you, and it also increases the chance these emails will actually be read.
Email Marketing: Worth The Effort (When Done Right)
Email marketing is the superhero of content promotion. You have direct access to your audience, you probably already have permission to send them content, and you can run analytics to see what’s working — and what’s not.
Take the time to set your email marketing strategy up for success. Your open rate will thank you for it.
