Email Marketing Myths That are Killing Your Agency’s Campaigns!

As an email marketing aficionado, nothing infuriates me more than misleading ‘facts.’ NOTHING! And I don’t mean the ‘email is dead’ kind of articles that emerge every so often (just to set the record straight here, email marketing is very much alive) but rather articles suggesting that email marketing is only for the big corporations, that you should not send more than one marketing email a week and that unsubscribes are bad for business.

These are the types of email marketing myths that I feel compelled to debunk. And here are my top Five Myths that are killing your campaigns:

Myth 1

Email marketing is reserved for big businesses. This is simply not a fact and is nothing but a MYTH!

THE TRUTH: Email marketing is easy to use, effective and cheap. Everybody can send emails today so this is the type of marketing activity that you don’t need a specialist for.

It would be ludicrous not to have email as a tool in your marketing arsenal. Email can help you acquire new customers as well as retaining ones at a low cost. In fact, a recent study found that 74% of customers prefer to receive marketing messages via email which means that if you are not sending out emails you are missing out (a lot)!

Myth 2

Unsubscribes are BAD

THE TRUTH: Nobody likes to see people unsubscribing from their mailing list. You have worked hard to grow your contacts list and now you notice that people have started to drop out. Let them! To begin with, it is much better for someone to unsubscribe from your emails than to mark you as spam. Yes I just said that! If they put you in the spam folder, you can potentially jeopardize your entire email campaign and brand credibility. So if somebody wants to not receive your communications, you should encourage them to unsubscribe.

Another reason why unsubscribes are not that bad is because they give you a more accurate picture of who is actually interested in your products and services. If you send out 1000 emails, all 1000 of them get opened and 50 people have unsubscribed, then that leaves you with 950 people who have opened and read your message and found it useful. If you were to follow up this email with a phone call, you can now save time and effort by contacting only the people who are truly interested in what you have to offer.

Myth 3

Don’t send more than one marketing email per week.

A major MYTH!

THE TRUTH: Hiding behind the idea of not wanting to come across as pushy or annoying, most businesses don’t send enough emails! In their search for the perfect email frequency, marketers tend to not send enough messages at the acquisition stage of the customer journey. Think about how easy it is to delete an email nowadays. We tick 10-15 at a time, click delete and they are gone. So how many of your emails have been deleted before even being opened? With this in mind, you can easily deduce that the more emails you send the better the chances of them being opened and read. And if people don’t want to receive communications they can always unsubscribe, clearing your list and leaving only the really hot leads and prospects.

Myth 4

You don’t need to send marketing emails to people once they buy from you.

The biggest Myth: we at Paradiso Insurance have a whole on-boarding process once a prospect becomes a client and YES it makes a huge difference to help maintain that relationship and grow that bond.

THE TRUTH: I often hear how if someone has purchased from you, you should not send them any more communications. This could only end badly — real badly. If you don’t remind customers about your business, educate them on other insurance products you sell, if you don’t make an effort to retain them, if you don’t try to stay ‘top of mind’ for your service, then you will probably lose that customer. In today’s time you need to be front and center of your clients — if not, direct writers will work their way in and it will not end well for your agency.

The key here is that the types of communications you send to a prospect are different from the types of communications you send to an existing client. You don’t need to send them a sales pitch, but maybe a discount voucher to prompt loyalty and customer satisfaction, or a gift card, an update on upcoming events, industry news, etc. It’s so important to keep your agency in front of your customer.

You will need two different strategies and two different types of content, but ultimately, unless you are emailing your clients, you are under constant threat that your competitors will. Direct writers spend billions of dollars to get in front of our clients and we need to be creative in how we remain in front of them.

Myth 5

Always send out emails with pictures.

THE TRUTH: Are you a graphic designer? I personally have a graphic  designer and feel every agency needs one so you can have a consistent brand. If you are not, I would suggest you refrain from sending emails with images. Your logo and branding within the email template are great; however there are too many ways you can fail when it comes to sending emails with images, so it’s just not worth the risk. What if the picture is not good enough quality or the browser suppresses the image so that your email looks incomplete?

There are too many ifs. To clarify, I do not intend to imply that you should never send images, but do so cautiously, and have agency photos go out in your emails so it adds a personal touch to your email if you do.

The absolute worst thing you can do is to put your offer or headline in an image — many readers won’t ever see the image. I’m sure, like us, you’ve received emails that contain huge images that you never even download.

As someone who works with marketing automation and email marketing every day as an agency owner, I truly believe that quality sales opportunities and leads can still be generated through email, as long as you’re doing it effectively. Know the real facts and learn how to spot the email marketing myths. Spend money and time investing in your own personal email campaign and if it’s done right and watched and corrected you will have email success. So don’t listen to these consultants who say email marketing is DEAD – it’s simply not true! It’s alive and well if done properly.

Christopher Paradiso, CPIA, is President of Paradiso Financial & Insurance Service. He has been acknowledged by several insurance publications as a leader in the industry for his use of digital marketing and social media to help brand his agency and promote other small businesses within his community. Chris has also been recognized for his charity work with The Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.

In 2011, Chris introduced “Paradiso Presents LLC,” a social media program aimed at teaching small agencies to not only survive, but compete in today’s complex online marketing world. Chris resides in Stafford Springs, CT with his wife and two children, Mia and Gianni.