Every profession has its pitfalls, and email marketing is no exception.
This summer, we hosted an event on LinkedIn with Taras, CMO at Claspo, and Oleksandr, an email marketer at Stripo, where we discussed what we disliked about email marketing. Read the text adaptation of this in-depth conversation about the challenges, frustrations, and strategies for email marketers to overcome them.
Managing cold emails
We often talk about the best ways to reach new customers, and while sending cold emails might seem like a quick fix, it can actually do more harm than good. Imagine getting a bunch of emails you never signed up for — pretty annoying, right? That’s exactly how people feel when they receive cold emails.
On top of that, there are strict laws in place, such as the GDPR in Europe and the CAN-SPAM Act in the US. Failure to comply with these rules can result in hefty fines. It’s not just about cold emails; it’s also about ensuring proper practices, such as double opt-ins. Cold emails can also damage your brand’s reputation. If people start marking your emails as spam, it can affect your deliverability rates, meaning that even your legitimate emails may not reach their intended recipients.
Here are some practical solutions for managing cold emails:
- Build an organic email list of people who have expressed interest in your content or services.
- Personalize your emails to increase engagement and build stronger customer relationships.
- To avoid legal issues and build customer trust, follow ethical email marketing practices and comply with GDPR and CCPA regulations. Here are key tips to help:
- get clear consent: Always obtain explicit permission from subscribers before adding them to your email list. Use clear language to explain how their data will be used;
- provide easy opt-out options: Include a visible and easy-to-use unsubscribe button in every email that allows users to withdraw consent at any time;
- minimize data collection: Collect only the data you need for your email campaigns, reducing the risk of noncompliance and unnecessary data handling;
- create a transparent privacy policy: Make sure your privacy policy is accessible and clearly outlines how subscriber data is collected, stored, and used;
- secure subscriber data: Implement strong security measures, such as encryption, to protect your email recipients’ personal information from being compromised.
By following these tips, you can ensure compliance while building trust with your followers.
Balancing multiple roles
We don’t just send out emails. We’re also copywriters, designers, analysts, and strategists. The wide range of skills expected of email marketers can be overwhelming, especially when it feels like you have to excel at everything to be competitive.
The harsh reality is that we have to juggle multiple roles to be competitive in the market. Thankfully, there are great tools out there that make our lives easier:
- for copywriting, tools such as Grammarly, Hemingway, ChatGPT, or even AI copywriting prompts can help polish our writing;
- for design, platforms such as Stripo offer easy-to-use templates, and Canva is fantastic for creating custom graphics;
- for automating targeted emails, platforms such as Mailchimp, HubSpot, and Campaign Monitor can help streamline the process.
By using these tools, we can handle our various roles more smoothly and focus on making our campaigns truly exceptional. Instead of feeling like a "one-man band," we can become more like the conductor of an orchestra.
Discover more useful tools and techniques for email marketers in our guide:
Personalization challenges
Many email marketers find personalization challenging, especially when it comes to collecting subscriber information. For instance, when using subscription forms or pop-ups, there is often a dilemma: conversion versus personalization. Should the form be simple with fewer fields to increase conversion rates, or should it include more fields to gather data for better personalization but risk lower conversion rates?
One possible solution to this problem is to use multistep forms. In this approach, the first step captures essential data, such as the user’s email address, allowing marketers to send a personalized message, even if the remaining questions in the form are left unanswered. If the user completes all the steps, the level of personalization increases significantly.
In addition, marketers can use product-based data to personalize emails beyond basic details such as date of birth. For example, in e-commerce or SaaS platforms, data such as how often a customer uses a certain feature or interacts with the product can be used for targeted and relevant emails.
Here are some tips for solving personalization challenges:
- Start personalizing right away: Don’t wait to collect large amounts of data before personalizing emails. Use whatever data you have from the beginning to build stronger relationships with your audience.
- Use multistep forms: Start by collecting the user’s email address. Then, progressively collect more information in subsequent steps. Even if the user abandons the form, you can still send personalized emails based on the data you have.
- Balance conversion with data collection: If adding more fields lowers conversion rates, focus on collecting the most important data in the first few steps and take the opportunity to collect additional details later.
- Leverage product behavior data: Personalization isn’t limited to form data. Use product usage data — such as how often a customer engages with a feature or makes a purchase — to create personalized and timely emails that speak to their actual behavior.
- Tailor triggered emails: Set up triggers based on customer interactions with your product or website. For example, send personalized offers or suggestions when key metrics (such as CTR or conversion rates) hit certain benchmarks.
- Focus on timeliness: Sending emails at the right moment — based on customer behavior or important events — can significantly increase open and response rates.
By applying these strategies, you can deliver more relevant, timely content that resonates with your audience.
Branded vs. regular text emails
Outside of work, we are all ordinary email users. You’ve probably been there — cleaning out your inbox on a Monday morning and sifting through emails to find the important ones. Even messages from brands that we love are often overlooked in the process. So marketers need to strike a balance — staying visible to subscribers without overwhelming them with too much marketing content.
The main challenges that email marketers face with branded campaigns are as follows:
- Loading times: Branded emails with heavy imagery and complex designs can take longer to load, which can frustrate users, especially on slower connections.
- Spam filters: Emails with too many images or promotional content are more likely to get caught in spam filters, reducing visibility and engagement.
- Inconsistent rendering: Branded emails may not look the same across different devices, email clients, or platforms, resulting in poor user experience for some recipients.
- Oversaturation: With inboxes often flooded with promotional content, branded emails can be seen as noise, leading users to delete them without reading them.
- Engagement: While branded emails are visually appealing, they may lack the personal touch of plain text emails, leading to lower engagement if the content doesn’t resonate.
Here are some tips for overcoming these challenges:
- Optimize for fast loading: Use a balance of images and text. Compress images and limit the number of visual elements to ensure faster loading times.
- Avoid spam filters: Follow email deliverability best practices, such as minimizing image-to-text ratios, avoiding excessive use of promotional language, and ensuring that your email is well-coded.
- Ensure responsive design: Use flexible, responsive templates that adapt to different devices and email clients. Test your emails on multiple platforms before sending them.
- Personalize content: To stand out, use segmentation and personalization strategies to send relevant content to each user. Address their interests or needs directly in the email.
- A/B test your frequency: Test how often you should send emails based on your audience’s preferences. Some users may prefer regular updates, while others may engage better with fewer high-value emails.
- Engage with interactive elements: Consider using interactive content, such as buttons, GIFs, or polls, that invite users to engage rather than passively view the email.
- Maintain brand consistency: While you can be creative with the design, make sure that all branded emails have a consistent style, tone, and look across all channels so that they are easily recognizable to your audience.
This will help you create branded emails that stand out, engage your audience, and maintain high deliverability and performance.
Adapting to different mailing systems
One of the biggest challenges with customizing emails for different mailing systems is that emails may look perfect in one client, such as Gmail, but look completely distorted in another, such as Apple Mail or Outlook.
Solution: Use testing tools, such as Litmus or Email on Acid, to preview how emails appear in different clients.
Another issue is inconsistent HTML and CSS support across email clients.
Solution: Implement fallback options to ensure that emails still look good, even if some styles don’t render as intended.
Image blocking is also a common problem, as many email clients block images by default.
Solution: Use alt text and a balanced mix of text and images to ensure that the message gets through, even if images don’t load.
Mobile optimization is a significant concern, as many users check emails on their phones.
Solution: Make designs responsive. Use single-column layouts and touch-friendly buttons to ensure that emails are easy to read and interact with on smaller screens.
Future skills for email marketers
In the next five years, mastering generative AI tools will be essential for email marketers.
CMOs will expect email marketers to become more proficient in copywriting, design, and even development. Familiarity with low-code solutions and keeping up with no-code marketing tools and trends will be crucial. Tools such as Stripo, generative AI, and other automation technologies will increasingly allow marketers to focus on strategy rather than execution.
Looking to advance your email marketing career? Check out our article on the different stages of growth in the field.
Cohesive email marketing teamwork
One of the most overlooked, yet crucial, challenges for an email marketer is maintaining effective communication within the team. It’s essential that every team member — from copywriters to analysts — not only understands the email marketing strategy but also actively contributes to its success. So how do we achieve this?
The short answer is documentation. A shared document that outlines the email strategy, goals, and everyone’s roles ensures that no one is left in the dark. Good communication also involves regular meetings to keep everyone aligned and updated on the strategy’s progress.
At Stripo, we recently released a guide to teamwork featuring insights from 20 companies, including Claspo and Chelsea Football Club. Discover the examples and best practices we gathered from these companies, and enhance collaboration within your team!
Wrapping up
Email marketing can definitely have challenges, but as we’ve seen from the experts at Stripo and Claspo, the right strategies and tools can make a huge difference. By staying compliant, using personalization effectively, optimizing your branded emails, and staying on top of new technologies, you can build stronger connections with your audience. And don’t forget that teamwork makes everything run smoother! When everyone is on the same page, email campaigns can really shine.
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