5 Common Email Marketing Myths Fully Debunked and Explained
The facts explained for common email marketing myths
A number of high profile and common myths exist within email marketing. It’s important to understand the facts behind these to ensure you can maximise your email marketing activity to cultivate both prospects and your existing subscribed audiences. In this blog post we will explore myths relating to Consent, Hitting spam filters, timing of email sends, the impact of unsubscribes, and plain text email performance.
Myth 1: You need consent to email B2B prospects
A common misconception of the GDPR implementation is that consent is required for B2B prospect marketing. There is no GDPR compulsion to acquire consent to process the personal data of a prospect audience, providing there is a lawful basis to do so.
As a data controller Leisure Lists’ ensure we have a lawful basis for processing, which is our legitimate interests and those of third parties. To ensure those interests remain balanced with those of the individual, we have conducted and recorded a legitimate interests assessment test (LIA) as recommended by the Information Commissioner. We regularly review this document to ensure that it remains valid.
Before processing and using prospect data yourself, you should run an LIA. You can find out more here in our blog post covering this topic.
Without consent, how can Leisure Lists’ contact lists be used for direct marketing purposes?
The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (22(1)) requires the consent of an individual for the transmission of unsolicited communications by means of electronic mail to individual subscribers ONLY. Messages directed to corporate subscribers are permitted on an opt-out basis i.e., without consent.
Our lists contain the electronic contact details of corporate subscribers. Consent is therefore not required.
Myth 2: 'FREE' in the subject will go into spam
A great Subject Line can make a huge difference to email engagement. However, one major myth that still exists today is that certain promotional words in a subject will lead to more emails ending up in spam folders. This may have had some truth many years ago, but the biggest impact on 'spam' filtering is reputation, A weak reputation will lead to more spam filters being hit. So go ahead and experiment (AB test) your email subject lines. Try promotional wording, CAPS, emojis, long versus short titles to see what works best for you.
Did you know we can build and broadcast email campaigns? Find out more on our marketing services page.
Myth 3: Tuesday is the best day to email
Early wisdom dictated that Tuesday was indeed the best day to email. To be honest we have no idea where this idea came from but we did find this from Campaign Monitor that interrogated over 30Bn messages sent on their platform. It did actually prove that Tuesday does see a higher open rate, BUT given the amount of emails sent on this day it
also sees the highest levels of unsubscribes.
“We get a lot of questions about the best days to send emails. But this finding proves that while sending emails on Tuesday might help you see a higher open rate, you could just as likely see more unsubscribes."
So our view on this is - Don't be a sheep, experiment to find the best day for your own email engagement, or simply don't email on a Tuesday and hit the inbox of your customer or prospect on a day they have less from competing demands.
Myth 4: Unsubscribes = Bad email marketing
We get it. An unsubscribe can hurt, it can feel personal. What was wrong with this email?
Maybe they received it on a Tuesday with a million other emails and they unsubscribed from loads of brands on that day? It likely wasn't what you said.
Every unsubscribe you get, the more engaged your community or list becomes.
If someone unsubscribes it may mean they don't want to received information now, but it doesn't exclude them in the future. We have customers reply to emails over a year old that generate new business. Plus an unsubscribe saves your cost and effort, as you pay per contact as your business scales over free minimum send levels.
Having said this, it is important to track metrics, including unsubscribes. It can help you tailor the comms to become more engaging and revenue generating over time.
Myth 5: Plain text emails don't perform
Plain text emails are what they say on the tin, a simple email design containing just plain text.
It's easy to fall into the thinking that every marketing email needs to have attention grabbing headlines in a cool font, a big graphic image, and defined colours. But, maximum effectiveness can often come from keeping things simple.
.Why should you care about Plain Text Emails? The fact is most emails are sent in HTML and Plain Text. Multi-part MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) protocols are applied by Email Sending Platforms to send email marketing campaigns - these bundle together the HTML and Plain Text emails.
Why?
- Spam filters like to see Plain Text variants. It takes more time to create or customise. If you were a spammer you probably aren't doing this, so it raises a spam filter flag.
- Recipients may see Plain Text by default based on their corporate settings. Does the click to show images banner feel familiar? You probably have these settings yourself by default on an Outlook business email account.
- Plain text emails work better on new devices like smart voice assistants, smartwatches, and gaming devices,
Our thoughts - always include a plain text version regardless. We've found with some clients a Plain Text version can work better for a business development / sales email approach. Again - testing, testing, testing will inform you here.
Conclusion
These myths are all based on some historical data and insight, but no brand and no email is the same. A clear brand positioning and consistency is key, along with a clear plan to test and iterate based on data from each and every email marketing send. As technology advances, and consumer habits evolve your email marketing techniques need to do the same.
Additional Resources
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