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Email fatigue is a real thing, especially with the ongoing pandemic.

Email marketing is far from dead, but it’s getting harder and harder to open and click your branded emails.

What is email fatigue?

As the name suggests, email fatigue is when a person doesn’t want to read email and is more willing to delete, unsubscribe, or send to spam.

Email fatigue is something everyone experiences from time to time.

Gone are the days when people diligently clicked on every unread email in their inbox to see what was in it.

Gone are the days when people would actually look forward to receiving a new email.

A full inbox is nothing new or exciting these days. And it’s gotten worse.

In 2017, two-thirds of Americans felt overwhelmed by the number of email messages they received on a daily basis.

And who can blame them?

In the same year, 85% of emails were found to be useless.

In 2020, email fatigue was growing exponentially, and for an obvious reason: most consumers were locked in at home, and all brands relied on email marketing as their main (and often only) way to keep in touch with them .

Obviously we were all blown away in 2020 and it doesn’t get much easier in 2021.

However, email marketing remains one of the most effective marketing tactics.

Customers who purchase products after clicking links in an email typically spend almost 140% more than the average customer. Up to 50% of marketers say email marketing is more effective than social media.

Here’s how you can overcome email fatigue and improve your email marketing strategy:

1. Send a welcome email

This might be a no-brainer, but many brands still don’t. Welcome emails still work, mainly thanks to the freshness factor. Your customers have just interacted with your brand so they will likely get in touch with your email and find you right away.

Welcome emails are very effective: studies have shown that welcome emails generate 320% more sales than any other promotional email.

2. Take advantage of marketing personalization

It’s amazing how many promotional emails I still get that don’t even include my first name.

But even the most basic personalization helps. Greet your customers by their name and you will find that they are much more willing to try your message out.

Go a step further and personalize your email by adding products they viewed or added to a cart. You will see even better results.

Case studies show that personalized campaigns bring almost twice as many openings and clicks as non-segmented ones.

This of course depends on how well the personalization is done, so the percentage can be even higher. How well you personalize naturally depends on your marketing partner or platform.

Wix’s email marketing services allow you to personalize your email in meaningful ways, such as using your customer’s name or previously purchased products:

3. Treat email as any content campaign

Any email marketing draft recommends sending great emails so your subscribers can look forward to your next one.

Obviously, it’s easier said than done.

However, it can be doable if you change your mindset: Treat each campaign as a content marketing asset. Talk to your customers’ needs, pains, and interests. Research what triggers their interactions and find ideas for content that would pique their curiosity.

Asking a good question in an email subject and then replying to it in your email is one of the most effective ways to generate more email openings. I often turn to the Text Optimizer question section to answer a good question to discuss in my upcoming email marketing campaign:

Text Optimizer uses semantic research to identify angles that customers are likely to read. Hence, it is a good tool for subject and audience research.

4.Use (but don’t overuse) video content

Another marketing ploy that is more likely to work in content marketing is using video content. Like any form of visual content, videos combine the best of both worlds: they make information easier to process and are entertaining at the same time.

Videos work wonders when placed on landing pages, and they help get emails noticed.

It’s a well-known trick that including it in an email subject will result in more opening and reading. Of course, you can’t overuse this tactic, but sending a video email for a birthday or occasionally sharing a video tutorial can do wonders for your open rate.

5. Set up meaningful email triggers

Obviously, too many emails trigger email fatigue. So do your best to avoid exceeding your subscribers’ limits.

There’s a fine line between not making your customers forget you and being too aggressive to remind them of your brand.

Usually the following routine will help improve detectability without irritation:

• A promotional email once a month
• An email for special occasions (like the “Happy Birthday” message mentioned above)
• Automatic email reminding customers of an abandoned cart or a failed payment.

Almost any email automation software will help you set it up very easily. Just don’t overdo it!

6. Be really empathetic and genuine

Empathy has always been a good idea (not just for marketing) but these days it’s more of a necessity than a recommendation.

And don’t try to fake it. In these difficult times, your customers are more sensitive than ever. You will immediately smell of fake!

Maxwell Hertan of Megaphone Marketing put it best:

Also, depending on your company, it may be 100% necessary to address the elephant in the room. COVID-19 is on everyone’s mind, it’s okay to bring up the issue Just don’t take advantage of the situation!

7. Keep track of your landing page’s performance

It would be pretty disappointing if after all of this strategic planning you lost a subscriber to a broken link or a slow landing page. Today’s consumers don’t have the patience to wait for a page to load. They’re also less forgiving when it comes to interrupted browsing due to broken links or images.

So make sure you click on all of the links in your email to make sure they work. Or better yet, check this link on a mobile device (where most emails are read and most emailed links clicked).

If you tend to be really thorough, do a quick on-page analysis to make sure there are no broken links or images on this page, as well as no performance issues. Site Checker gives you the ability to quickly run free on-page audits and determine if something is wrong with the page:

8. Continue to look at your stats

Most email marketing solutions include analytics in one way or another. Most of the time, you will see which campaign succeeded in terms of clicks and opens and which seemed to be caught by spam filters. After a few days of sending an email, check these numbers out for some actionable insights for your next campaign.

Here, too, your on-site analysis is of great help. You can see which campaign was getting the most conversions and which was not getting any tangible results.

Finteza is an analytics solution that provides the most actionable insights and helps you understand what worked and how well a traffic source is working to send these website visitors to your sales funnel:

[See how your email marketing traffic interacted with one of your sales funnels]

Conclusion

Email marketing may be a lot more challenging than it was a decade ago, but almost every marketing tactic has changed over the years and in recent times.

It would be strange to expect email marketing to stay the same. The good news, however, is that marketing software has also evolved to help you keep up with changes and stay one step ahead of your competition. The key is to find a smart marketing solution. Hopefully the recommendations above will help!