Have you ever come up with a masterpiece of an email that you thought would send sales surging through the roof? As you pressed send, you imagined getting a pat on the back from the client and a bigger retainer. Then, from nowhere, it abysmally failed.

This happens more often than you think. The content was good, the design was exceptional but, the fish, they weren’t biting. It’s not you, and certainly not them either. So it’s important to figure out how great emails fail to make an impact. This will certainly help with your bruised ego and future email marketing campaigns.

1.       Your broadcast frequency isn’t up to scratch

Your audience wants to hear from you regularly. According to the Marketing Sherpa, 61% of consumers like to hear from their favourite brands on a weekly basis. If you send mailers inconsistently, the likelihood of them getting engagement is very little. The solution is to have a broadcast schedule that provides content to your audience frequently and at the right time.

2.       Your email list isn’t the right target

There’s very little chance of changing someone’s mind if they’re not interested in your product or service based on their traits. So if you target a list that isn’t interested in your content, you’re bound to get low engagement. Data collected by Marketo suggests that 23% of the engagement an email achieves can be solely explained by segmentation. The more intense your targeting is, the better the chance of it achieving its objective.

3.       It just wasn’t responsive enough

If you don’t already know, mobile use has surpassed that of the desktop by more than a billion users worldwide in 2015. So if your email isn’t responsive enough, we’re not sure who exactly you’re trying to get to interact with it. Email Monday explains that 45% of emails occur on a mobile device, while 36% happen on desktop. So it’s far more important to have an email that works perfectly on mobile devices.

4.       There was no landing page / mailer consistency  

Sure your email is great and your landing page even better, but are the two consistent? If the message on your landing page doesn’t correlate with the email, this can be confusing to the reader. What’s more, the more fields there are to fill, the less likely the form will be filled in. So you should keep the design and message constant throughout, while trying to keep the fields to a minimal.

Learning from past mailers can help you improve the engagement your campaigns achieve. It’s essential to always keep in mind that your mailer depends on a variety of factors for success, apart from the design and content. These elements must function and look as great as your email to ensure that it makes an impact.