More than ever before email marketing is more successful than other marketing avenues. When a marketer takes time and plans each email campaign, using the right email strategy for their audience, amazing things happen. They see growth. However if their plan isn’t solid, peppered with common mistakes, they may not be too happy with the results.
Here are 13 email marketing mistakes you might not want to make.
1. Subject Line
There overwhelming evidence that the decision to open an email is based on the Subject Line alone. With that in mind try not to make them
- Absurd: “Here’s One Million Dollars, no strings attached”
- Over-hyped: “Vanilla Ice Cream that tastes so much better than Vanilla ice cream”
- In All Caps: “CAN YOU READ THIS”
- Critical: “Don’t you know not to fry chicken?”
- No Subject Line
- Abusive: “Open this email or you’ll regret it”
Too many words “After you read this email your life will change, may not change tomorrow or the next day but will change”- Deceptive: “You won the Lottery!!!”
- Not viewable on a mobile device
2. Irrelevant Information
Everyone is in a hurry. No one wants to waste time reading immaterial messages. AND if you send enough irrelevant messages your list member may never trust your emails again and unsubscribe.
3. Sending Email Campaigns At The Wrong Time
- There are different Time Zones to consider
- As an
example, people who are 9-5ers will generally not see an email sent to their business address at 6 pm on a Friday night, and if the email is time critical like a reminder about a sale on Saturday, it becomes irrelevant.
4. They Don’t Trust You
Recent studies indicate Social Media is now one of the less trusted sources for reliable information followed by media outlets (NEWS). Trust is a big issue. You need your list subscribers to trust you and not view your email campaigns with a wary eye.
- Follow the rules of the land. For
example, compliance of The Canned Spam Act requires you to tell your recipients where you’re located. - Educate your reading audience about you and your business and/or services
- Send emails on a regular basis, a schedule.
- Use the same branding and from address.
- Apologize if you sent something you shouldn’t have sent
- Tell them your privacy policy.
5. Grammar and Spelling ERAS
Your emails should read well using correct grammar and spelling. You do not want to leave your recipients with a hard to read and understand newsletter. Your message will get lost and with it, your creditably
6. Mobile Devices Do Not Display Correctly
- When you realize that more than 65% of emails are opened on Smart Phones, this point becomes very important. AND if your message is not easy to navigate it will not be read, even when someone is legitimately interested.
- Test your emails on mobile devices.
7. Are You Sending From No One?
When you use a no-reply address, you’re cutting off communication. It’s easier to either use a real email account or include a link in the email footer for your subscribers to respond too if they feel the need to do so.
8. Not Tracking Your Success (or Failure)
Make it a habit to look at your email campaign reports and take note of
- Delivery rate
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Conversion rate
Why, because planning is key, and analytics will assist you for the next campaign. With mailing data, you will be able to tweak success.
9. Did you Buy or Rent the List You’re Emailing to?
Keep your list clean and up-to-date. Send to active customers, as defined by your standards. There are several automatic tools offered by most ESP’s to assist you with this.
10. Badly displayed message preview
A text preview of an email message is displayed by most email clients. This text is normally limited to 100 characters or less. The wording comes from the first few lines in your message. You can use this to your advantage by building on the subject line, to entice opens.
11. Emails and Too Busy
How much information should one email contain – don’t overwhelm your recipient with too many links, graphics or forms to fill out. In other words, keep the CTA (Call to Action) reasonable.
12. Mailing to a Bad List
You have the reports and know that Bounce Rate and Sender Score are important numbers. Bounces happen for many reasons; some you can solve and some you can’t. ISP pay attention to your bounce rates and the same numbers you do. If your bounce rate is too high, you may be blocked or marked as a spammer. The bottom line, don’t buy lists, keep your subscriber list up to date and remove people immediately
13. Who Wrote That?
It may take time to write the perfect copy for your newsletter. Plan your content and don’t rush. The goal here is to produce a professional looking email that makes sense.
And finally
Focus by putting your audience first. Treat them well, say thank you when is warranted, and do not demand anything. You want your information to be engaged, valuable, generate a positive attitude and shared. Serve your email list members well, give them what they expect, focus on the customer, not the product and you’ll avoid those email mistakes.
Email marketing is the number of one-way small businesses are reaching more people than ever before. With a solid email marketing strategy, business owners can convert new customers and stay top of mind with existing customers.
But what makes up a solid email marketing strategy? We’re here to help you answer that question and show you how to avoid some of the most common mistakes small business owners are making with their email marketing today.
You can avoid these potential setbacks by investing in a done-for-you email marketing solution, but for the purposes of this article let’s focus on common mistakes and, most importantly, how to avoid them.
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