Do Not Send an Email to Mike When it’s Pat’s Mailbox

Email mistakes could be funny, or they could be serious.

Imagine, your department is working on their end of the year campaign, the company's biggest sale of the decade.  With care, photos are placed with the correct colored border to emphasize the offering, the text, after going through many renditions is flawless and the landing page is ready to inspire sales with the perfect call-to-action.  The email will go out today the sale starts 10/1/18.  Somehow the proofreader misread the final copy and, the date was mistakenly changed to 01/1/18.

Bad Mistake?  It could be, considering the last email campaign you sent misspelled boot for boob.

How can these email errors be avoided, because, besides embarrassing mistakes can be costly  To avoid is to be informed, so first, know what the common errors are:

Broken Links:  Links that bring a visitor to a landing page, form or anywhere, are important or they should not be in your email message.  If the link goes nowhere or is broken,  most likely your message will get trashed.   Therefore links should:

• Be defined, by color or underlined
• Direct someone to click on the link, instead of saying, “click here” - consider saying "more can be found at" or "read this"
• Be ranked, with the most  important link at the beginning of your email
• Engage your reader
• Include some that are permanent, ones that should always be in your messages. i.e. refer a friend, social networks.
• Match your content
• Be in the same place in every campaign. Use a template so your readers can find your links easily
• Be used as needed. Do not inundate your readers with too many links
• Be tracked so you know which were the most successful.

Duplicate Dupelicate Errors:  Sometimes typos go unnoticed, even with spell checkers on board. so, have more than one set of eyes reading your content from the Subject Line to the footer.  Subject Line typos are particularly bad, misspellings may signal spam to the recipient.  Try to;

• Use a spell checker and grammar checker, such as Grammarly
• Read your content out loud
• Avoid using placeholders in your work “Lorem Ipsum” is really meaningless to the reader

Stale Information:  Read the example above, an incorrect date can cause subscriber confusion, they may be unsubscribed because they are annoyed that the sale date has passed.

Unacceptable Personalization:  Personalized emails work.  With care using the right syntax, turn your greetings from Dear “First Name” to Dear Pat, which is a proven way to increase open rates.  If you are diligent with your profile pages you can avoid sending:

• Dog Food coupons when they don’t have a dog
• Men swimwear discounts when the subscriber signed up for Women’s’ fashion
• An email to Mike when it’s Pat’s mailbox
• A timely email for an event, such as a Birthday with no special offer.

Cannot reply to a no-reply address: Include a "comment here" at the end of your email message.  The subscriber might have something important to tell you and a no-reply address does not give them a warm fuzzy feeling.

Most of these common errors can be avoided if you employ a routine when developing and sending out an email campaign.  Look for issues, such as missing fields in your information list and other discrepancies. Always have a plan-  if the user didn’t give you their first name, and you are sending personalized email, insert another term for the name field: Dear Customer.  Test your messages, read them before you mail, verify the links and review the message on all devices before you hit that send button. .