Most of our email inboxes are full of automated emails that include newsletters, promotions, offers and advertisings that just occupy space. Most of us just mark them as unread or like me leave them in your inbox to be deleted automatically with time. Today I choose to do an analysis of the email marketing that I receive from brands and businesses. For this I will use the emails from Monday October 19, 2020 from my personal email.
On Monday I received a total of 26 emails. I opened only two of them, one from Best Buy and one from Monat. I chose the one from Best Buy, because it was a notification letting me know that this month’s payment for my credit card is due in a couple of days. So, I opened it to verify the amount I owe and the total I still have to pay. For me the email does not have a good subject line, because its missing urgency. The name of the company that appears at the top is just the email from the credit card company, which also seems too vague. I have more than one credit card, which I receive emails from, therefore adding the name of the company to the subject line or description is a must in order to let the consumer know who the email is from. In my opinion this is a high priority email that must be open immediately before the due date, but the email does not deliver this urgency in the subject line. I would recommend using a straight to the point subject line.
Example- “Credit Card Payment from Best Buy is DUE SOON”.
This would definitely get me to open the email as soon as I get the notification on my phone. It emphasizes the urgency and importance of the email and it also informs me of which company the email is from. In fact, did you know that 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone? At the same time, 69% of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line (Fernandez, 2020). This email can get lost so easily in my inbox if I didn’t recognize the format of it and the sender’s email by memory. Once opened there are no attractive or interactive visuals, it’s just a simple invoice from the company with my personal information, amount due and minimum payment. The email is designed only for informational purposes. It has a link added that calls to action to visit the page to make the payment.
I usually don’t delete my emails; at the moment I count with 12,000 approx. emails on my inbox. I just scroll through them every day, looking for specific ones that are important to me usually payment emails, order confirmation emails, and offers from Gustazos. For this week I did not unsubscribe from any offerings, though I should. I have so many emails from brands that I have never purchased from and don’t think I ever will.
This analysis of my own emails showed me that email marketing is very saturated and that companies should find other ways to gain leads, conversions and interact with consumers. For me this year emails have become a tool I use to communicate with coworkers or school related messages. But for promotional services, offers, and discounts, I feel that they get so easily lost in this sea of emails that everybody is constantly sending. Therefore, using other marketing channels like mobile applications, social media, ads, and SMS are great ways to get closer to the consumer and avoid all the noise in the email world. My recommendation, don’t rely only on email marketing in your marketing strategy plan, use a combination of all the communication channels to target your audience through different and more personal ways.
Works Cited
Fernandez, M. (2020, April 23). 164 Best Email Subject Lines to Boost Your Email Open Rates (2020). Retrieved from Optinmonster: https://optinmonster.com/101-email-subject-lines-your-subscribers-cant-resist/
