Email is often forgotten about now in marketing terms with all the clamor around other channels like social media. This is a major mistake for any business though due to the sheer amount of people who use email regularly and the direct engagement it can provide with them. In 2017, there were 3.7 billion global email users – that figure is expected to jump to over 4 billion by 2022. Being able to market your goods or services to this huge audience via email is therefore a very good idea.

However, running an email marketing campaign that delivers the expected ROI and allows your business to generate hot leads is not always simple. Here are the biggest challenges to overcome in this vital area of marketing.

Operating at scale

When you first start off in business, sending a few emails out manually to prospective clients or existing customers is simple enough. But what about when you grow and have thousands of customers? Or when you want to reach out to a huge number of potential new ones?

Operating at scale like this just does not work when doing it manually. To overcome this challenge, you should make the most of easy to use email outreach tools. These powerful pieces of software automate the process of finding new targets to reach out to, also the process of sending outreach emails.

Deciding on how often you send emails

Another common challenge for businesses to overcome is the frequency at which you will contact people. This can actually be quite tricky as different sections of your existing client base may like daily emails with new offers, but others may prefer a weekly one instead. When contacting potential new audiences, you may find the same type of issue. This is where analytics come in – by closely monitoring the opening rates of emails and any follow-up action they drive, you can pin down the frequency which works best.

Readability

If you plan to run a large promotional campaign via email, making sure your messages are readable is key to success. This challenge is essential to get over or you will simply be wasting your time. Make sure to put maximum effort into making your emails as useful and readable as possible – this will mainly revolve around the title of your message along with the wording and layout of the text. Many email providers now classify emails as spam if other messages from the same source have not been opened before. To avoid this, it is important to analyze previous campaigns, so you do not waste time sending messages to people who did not open the last one.

Make email marketing your secret weapon

When it comes to marketing online, there are a lot of channels you could divert resources toward. Email marketing is certainly one you should consider for the ROI a well-run campaign can deliver, the ease in which it can be done and the extra engagement it can drive. Just be sure to overcome the above challenges first!