10 Most Common Email Marketing Errors to Avoid
We all have been embarrassed with sending wrong emails. And the worst part, is not knowing that the copy you sent is the draft copy until receiving a reply verifying your mistake and shouting your blunder in the face. You don’t want to commit these email mistakes especially in doing business. It is painful to lose patrons and customers. Even more painful is to stain a brand reputation.
Thanks to those who have already committed email marketing errors before, because now there are already lessons to learn and mistakes to avoid. This article serves as a tribute to those who have had oops moments before, and an advice to those who haven't experienced it yet.
The top 10 Oops Moments!
1.Sending Spam messages
Many online marketers fall for the illusion that sending as many emails as possible even to people who don't ask for will create a good return on investment, but sadly it is not. Nobody likes unwanted emails. Making an email spree to virtually all contacts you can gather is in reality sending spam messages.
When you send email uninvitedly, it's not important how interesting and useful your promotion is, but far from promoting your business offering, you are actually making your email marketing appears like a spam or a phishing bait. Because as everyone sees it, spam messages are actually computer virus dressed in a lamb's hide.
You don't want to stain your company’s reputation just because of sending an unwanted email.
Also, odds are your country has in legislation an anti-spam law, in which case you can get into a deeper and more serious trouble if you send unsolicited emails.
Tip: A good way to start your email marketing campaign is to email the right people!
- Not paying attention to Subject line
Your subject line (and the name of the sender) are the first things that customers will see in the email you sent. Thus, this minute detail of your email marketing is very crucial. Every email marketer should consider the brand reputation and business offering that he is promoting in order not to overhype subject lines and avoid lame and bland ones.
As a rule, subject lines should be informative and inviting.
- Informative- it should meet your marketing goals while providing relevant information to customers.
- Inviting. Subject lines of email marketers are commonly intriguing or touching, but not useful and timely. If you're not buzzfeed, move beyond writing merely intriguing subject lines for you don’t just pique your customer's curiosity, more than that you are offering useful tools, apps or services that your brand is proud to offer.
Tip: Stick with what you can offer; be creative in how you say it and don’t compromise your brand's reputation.
- Verbose email (email is too long)
You are only snatching few minutes from your readers so better give the gist of what you want to say in few words and images. This doesn’t only help you craft emails faster but also ensure that your recipient will not get bored with your email.
Tip: We all know that long and wordy email looks like a chore to read. Thus, write content that is simple, engaging, and easy to read.
- Impersonal emails
Preparing content that doesn’t have a personality is like sending a 90's digital announcement board to your readers.
You are talking to real people, make sure to make them feel like they are also reading a message from real people. You wouldn’t know, they might be subscribing to you because of the perfect tone and mood of your welcome message.
Tip: If you want to move people e.g make them click, subscribe, visit a site, donate or buy; touch through their heart or penetrate their mind. Learn from the politicians.
- Not interacting with customers
This is quite similar to the previous one.
Again we remind you to send emails that connect with the customers. Firstly, do not send emails with a “noreply” account or heading. There is no better way of expounding this idea than what Rob Walling, founder of Drip advised to email marketers:
‘[one of the most common email marketing errors is] using a generic email "from name" such as "admin" or "noreply". People want to interact with people, not mailboxes.’
Tip: be consistent with sending newsletters and emails. Customers will surely forget about your brand if you send too few emails; and sending too much will flood their inbox and annoy them. Don’t send emails only when you feel like "it is time" to send email blast; be consistent. If you send emails weekly, do it religiously.
6.Hard to find subscribe button
Sending emails with hard to find subscribe button, or any call to action for that matter is one big mistake an email marketer can fall into. Unless your email has no mission at all, doing this is nonsense. Isn't it that you send emails to make audiences visit your site, subscribe to newsletter, or to promote your brand? There really is no point in creating hard to find subscribe buttons.
Tip: Make sure to put your subscribe button in the most conspicuous way possible without compromising the format design of your email. Avoid overdoing it, to the point that you look too desperate for their subscription. Remember, your critic is your email recipient.
- Links problems
Thee are three most common problems with links in content. First is the broken link, which is vehemently annoying for customers who are really interested to see the page. Another annoying one is the incorrect link: the link worked and the customers were redirected to a page, but it is just not the page they want to see. Lastly, the worst of all link problems is not including text links.
Tip: Check your content before sending to make sure that links are working or they are directed to the correct pages to satisfy the expectations of recipients.
- Not testing emails
Testing your email messages first before broadcasting it to your whole contact list is your best shot to minimise content errors such as broken links and images, wrong hyperlinks, ineffective CTA and others.
Tip: Send a test email before sending the final copy to your contact list. This will allow you to see the actual email that you will be sending out to your contacts and give you time to make corrections, if any.
- Image only Emails or Emails without Image
Use images wisely.
Some rookie email marketers either send an all-image email or send email with only-words content. At the minimum, every email marketing should use both. And should use them wisely.
The dangers of sending emails with only images as content, is that it may not be available for some recipients especially those with "images-off" email setting. This is also not optimised for mobile users and can be a bit annoying for those having slow connection. More so, the CTA can be hard to find or worse, absent. On the other hand, emails without image is a bit lame and uninviting.
Tip: Images do really speak a thousand words, and it works well with email marketing. To make use of the very short time that recipients read your email, make sure to include image of your product, service or any of your business offering.
- Email List is Never Segmented
Sending emails that do not fit your reader's need, interest or want helps your company no better.
Not all customers are created equal. So don’t send one and only one message for all your email recipients: you wouldn’t want to send a beginner's instruction to your pro or intermediate customers, or promote a woman's clothing to male customers.
You are not broadcasting seeds, you are actually interacting with real people who, when they feel so, can unsubscribe and leave behind your website or company as if it never existed before.
Tip: One of the best practices of email marketers is organising email lists. Try to segment your email list. In this way you are targeting your business offering to right people who havethe higher chance of responding to your CTA positively. This not only calls for higher response and subscription but also makes your email seem more personal to your customers.
Please! Next time you do your email marketing do not commit these mistakes. Try finding some other mistakes then, tell us so we would know!
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https://zapier.com/learn/ultimate-guide-to-email-marketing-apps/email-marketing-mistakes/
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2015/11/common-email-marketing-mistakes/
s://www.allbusiness.com/top-10-e-mail-marketing-mistakes-3987-1.html
https://www.doz.com/marketing-resources/email-marketing-errors