Don't write off email marketing... but

Email marketing gets a bad press, but it’s a huge asset to have in your marketing toolbox. Just avoid a few basic errors.

I’ve been using email marketing for 20 years and there are a few easily avoided mistakes to stop your hard work blowing up in your face, leaving you with a mess to clean up rather than a full order book.

1. Give Something back.

If you make your newsletter all about selling you are likely to see your unsubscription rates skyrocket - nobody wants to be sold to all the time.

Give something back to your customer or subscriber - make your emails entertaining, informative and educational.

Of course, promote your products and tell your customers about the great deals you are offering, they will expect it but mix it up!

Like everything else, use the 80/20 rule! Try out various approaches and measure what happens.

2. Make sure you have a Call to Action.

Don’t tell the customer what they need to do, and guess what – they won’t do it - It’s not really an email sin … but it’s so basic and so common I had to include it.

And remember – Less is More – a single CTA (Call to Action) in a mail hugely amplifies it AND while you are at it ….

+ Make it a Button – a button converts 28% more often than a link (according to campaign monitor)

+ Use actionable language – Get the Discount, Buy Now – and so on.

+ Try using the First Person – Reserve My Spot, Download My Book. Unbounce shared a study that showed that changing “Start your free trial” to “Start my Free Trial” increased clicks by 90%.

Remember to experiment.

3. Get your story straight – check your copy.

An email with poor grammar, spelling errors or formatting problems is a huge turn-off – it says you don’t care.

There are even worse problems – broken, incorrect or missing links make the email pointless and a waste of everyone’s time

These problems are easy to avoid, send a test email to yourself and somebody else in your business, check it before you send it.

4. Don’t use your own email profile – use a service.

Please tell me you aren’t doing bulk mail using your personal account on Gmail or similar.

This is a bad bad idea and is likely to result in your personal emails being tagged as spam, or worse, in having your entire account shut down.

When emailing your list, you should always use an email marketing service like MailChimp, Constant Contact or MailerLite – they aren’t expensive.

More of your mail will get delivered, you won’t get so many unsubscribe requests and they all have a ton of features to make your work easier and more effective.

5. Don’t Be Random.

Be consistent and plan ahead – customers hate nothing more that no contact followed by a ton of emails close together so don’t leave it until you want something.

Whether you email your subscribers once per month, once per week, or once per day, the key is to be consistent – anything else will push your unsubs up.

So make a plan and stick to it!

6. Don’t look like a Spammer.

Even by accident, you can come across as a spammer…without even trying…

A few things to avoid…

              ? USING ALL CAPS

              ? Lots of exclamations marks!!!!!

              ? Emojis everywhere      

              ? Heavy use of words like free, credit, win, or guarantees

              ? Using numbers or characters in place of letters (like FR3E!)

Just don’t do these things – your email service (as I mentioned above) will have a spam checker – again check it out before you send.

Last but not least - Have you got Permission to Email.

There is one thing you need to be sure of when you email them - have they opted-in.

In your list, don’t include the following

-       Purchased or rented lists

-       Personal contacts you’ve manually added (unless of course they have given express permission to do so)

-       Contacts you’ve acquired through another site, even if you own the other site

-       People who have indicated they want to be removed from your list

There's nothing wrong with manually adding emails you've gotten through trade shows, conferences or even through your personal or business address book, just be sure each person has given clear permission to be added and has gone through the double opt-in process.

Considering the latest GDPR guidelines, making sure you get permission to email people is even more important – and includes making sure people know exactly what they’re signing up for, making it easy for people to update or change details and keeping a record.

Hope that helps.

As ever, reach out for a chat if you want to discuss.

Thanks for reading - if you got this far, you're a star.

Peter

WSI Digital Advisors UK