Why Email Marketing is Like ‘The Hunger Games’: 5 Tips to Survive the Spam Folder
With retailers ramping up their email marketing efforts during the holiday season, they need to take steps to ensure their emails are ending up in their subscribers’ inboxes rather than the dreaded spam folder. Consider these five tips, with an ode to "The Hunger Games":
1. Channel your inner Katniss with fail-safe precautions. With her life on the line, Katniss never makes the same mistake twice. Taking fail-safe sending precautions prevents the same from occurring in your email marketing campaigns. You'll be sure to ruin your chances with customers if you spam them with emails they can't open. With more and more consumers reading email via smartphones or tablets, be sure to implement responsive design templates to make your content is easy to read and interact with. Otherwise, similar to how the cannon blast signals a tributes demise, you'll become a victim of the delete button and will leave the email marketing games early.
2. Your email marketing Mockingjay — make an impression. When you look good, you feel good, right? Similar to how Katniss puts on a façade to entice her sponsors, email marketers need to adopt a mix of eye-catching graphics and personalized content to make a lasting impression. To avoid the dreaded delete button and safely reach your subscribers’ inboxes, your emails need to be personalized and tailored to your audience's desires.
While this may sound like a complicated and time-intensive process, with the help of analytics tools and A/B testing capabilities, you'll be able to easily find the winning formula from the get-go. Be sure to test a variety of factors, including subject lines, calls to actions, graphics, etc., to determine which campaign aligns best with your customers’ preferences and will result in a victory for your brand.
3. Play the dating game. While forced together by chance, Peetah eventually won over the heart of Katniss. Similarly, email marketers need to turn on their charm and win over the hearts of ISPs to gain entrance into their customers elusive inboxes. To do so, be sure to avoid promotional topics in your subject lines and "From" sections — and never come across too needy. Sending timely, targeted emails is a surefire way to gain the trust and respect of an ISP, resulting in a second date with the inbox and breaking up with spam. Never give up if those tricky ISPs play hard to get at first. You didn't see Peetah giving up, did you?
