In a recent post I shared 5 reasons why your email list may not be performing. Here are 5 more reasons you may not be getting the lead generation results you expected.
Use this list, combined with the previous five reasons, to determine why your email list isn’t performing.
1. The target market is too broad. Top performing email campaigns are written to specific business issues your target market is grappling with. For example, improving the IT wireless connectivity experience for guests in a hospitality target market. If you try to water down the business issues to fit too broad a market, sales prospects won’t pay attention to your campaign content. Segment your email list.
2. Your email list includes multiple contact roles. Not only do you want your email list segmented by target market, you also want to identify which contacts to target. Knowing your email campaign is for business owners rather than IT managers allows you to focus your lead generation campaign messaging more clearly.
3. You have incomplete data. The more demographic data you capture about your contacts, the more flexibility you have with your lead generation campaign. You can email, mail or connect via social media. You can invite all the business owners to an executive breakfast, send office managers an infographic, and invite IT managers to a webinar – each with their own unique messaging.
4. You communicate inconsistently. You’re busy running the business and don’t have time to write blog posts or queue email campaigns. It’s just lead generation after all. Nobody’s expecting your emails – or so you think. As you create valuable custom content centered on your target market, they begin to expect to receive – and actually look forward to it. When your communication is inconsistent they look elsewhere for the same type of information they’ve come to appreciate from you.
5. Your email list is fatigued. Too many companies are blasting more emails as a solution to low response rates. If you’ve over-communicated with your list, emailing it repeatedly, you may be experiencing email list fatigue. Even great content sent too frequently begins to feel like spam. If your unsubscribe rates are climbing, you may need to reduce the number of emails you’re sending.
How did you do? It’s time to step back and assess your email list performance. Making these adjustments will positively shift your lead generation campaign results. Some may take longer than others to implement, but over time you’ll have a significantly higher performing email list.
Kendra Lee is president of KLA Group, a sales and marketing agency focused on helping clients get more customers in the SMB market. Read more KLA Group blogs here.
