We all make mistakes, but as a tax consultant, you should avoid email automation mistakes by all means. Email marketing allows you to entice your customers to a good effect. However, like in the “dating game,” you must know the right actions and words to make the person fall for you.
In email marketing, getting the game right is rewarded with more customers coming back and keeping your tax consulting business alive in their minds. Another great attribute about email marketing is that you can always tell when you are not doing it right. It does not take you long to figure out that your customer either has not opened your email or even decided to end their subscription.
It gets worse when customers unsubscribe from your mailing list. Therefore, the question we will help you answer below is, ‘why are customers not answering my emails?’ Let’s explore some of the mistakes you might be making.
1. Using Inferior Subject Lines
How many of your old emails have you still not opened? What criteria did you use to determine which emails to open and those not worth opening? You probably schemed through all emails in your inbox and opened those with a relevant or enticing subject line.
You are not alone. Over 47% of email recipients decide what emails to open based on the subject line. 69% of email recipients also determine which emails join the spam list based on the subject line.
One of the email automation mistakes you are making with the subject line is overhyping it. Imagine an email with the following subject line. “How to make $1M in one week.” Such an email is destined for the spam category without even giving much thought to it. For someone who fears catching computer viruses online, they will even take the extra measure of hurriedly deleting that email without reading it.
So, does your subject line make the email recipient want to read your email? Here is a checklist of the dos and don’ts for your subject line.
Personalize the subject line
Avoid tricking people, instead provide value
Short, enticing, and straight to the point
They are focused without filler or fluff words
Sound professional
All caps appears like you are yelling to the reader
2. Not Engaging the Audience
Picture meeting a person, getting their phone number, promising to call and invite them for a date, yet never have the courtesy of doing it. Imagine how unfair that is to the person you made those promises. You may even make them start to think they are not good enough for you.
That is the same feeling you may create for your potential clients. You put in the effort of convincing them to subscribe to an email listing, and then after a long time, no emails are forthcoming. What was the point of asking them to subscribe?
You may not know it, but such an action may make your clients lose their trust in your tax consulting business. To them, you will be the person who never lives to their promises.
Failure to engage your customers is not only about failing to send them emails. It extends to sending emails without a call to action. You have not fully engaged our customers if you leave them with the “so what” question.
A call to action in your email helps understand why you chose to communicate with them. For example, “click here to submit your tax filing documents.”
3. Sending General Emails
How many emails do you think your potential client receives in a day? If the person is an entrepreneur, it is in the realm of hundreds. Some of your clients even hire virtual assistants to manage their emails.
Your email must add value to your client to want to open it. Such value begins by first showing the client you understand the challenges they are experiencing. For example, an email detailing how to file payroll taxes for a small business may be interesting to many entrepreneurs.
However, the email may be personal to a specific segment if you offered to help file the returns for them. It shows them that you understand that they are busy or may lack the skills needed to file such returns.
4. Failure To Optimize for Mobile
It is probably one of the most ignored rules in email marketing. You place much emphasis on crafting the perfect email and fail to make it readable for all. That is probably why most of your emails to clients go unread/ unanswered.
Remember that at the moment, most people rely on their smartphones to read and respond to their emails. It allows a busy person to multitask the task with other activities such as relaxing or during a meal break. The moment a person opens your email and finds that it is not correctly displaying on the phone, chances are they will not bother rereading. Some will even delete it.
So, before you send that email, please take a few minutes to optimize it for mobile devices. Then, send yourself a sample copy and try opening it on your smartphone to ensure it works.
5. Selling Too Hard
The last thing a person wants to find in their inbox is another marketing ad. They have already been overburdened by too many pop-up ads and hope to catch a break. Therefore, the moment a potential client sniffs marketing in your email, they are likely to unsubscribe from your listing.
Email marketing is about fostering a relationship with your potential clients. Your focus should be on capturing the customer’s trust and using this good relationship to entice them to do something. That is the role of a call to action.
The selling too hard mistake also includes sending the clients very many emails. Even you do not like it when one person takes up all your inbox. That effectively becomes junk.
Have You Automated Your Email Marketing Yet?
Did we put the cart before the horse for you? We may be talking about the email automation mistakes to avoid, yet you have not automated your email. There is no need to panic yet; just click here and we will help you automate your emails like a pro.