“Success is normally found in a pile of mistakes.” - Tim Fargo
Email marketing can be a hugely rewarding and beneficial service for businesses to make use of. It can open up opportunities for businesses to gain new leads, as well as improve customer retention. However, email marketing must be done right and it’s important to ensure that you haven’t fallen into making the following 5 common email marketing mistakes.
1. Looking “dodgy” and ending up in the SPAM folder
Think about the emails in your own inbox.
The emails that look a bit suspicious you will avoid opening at all costs through fears that it could lead to a hacker or a virus taking over your laptop.
Have a think about the subject line and preview your email before you send it. If your subject sounds too much like a spammy email, it will be flagged up in your audience’s inboxes as such and sent to that folder, or they may actively choose to just ignore it.
2. Check your title and preview to maximise opening success
Always check the title and preview of your text.
A great subject line should always try to include the following:
- Provide value to your audience - show them WHY they need to be opening your email
- Focus on the subject inside without added irrelevant wording
- Not be sensational and over the top as this has connotations of being spam, it should be professional sounding
- Avoid capitals and “shouty” language
- Personalise them with merge tags (For example the recipient’s name)
- Get to the point promptly
When your audience checks their email inbox, they will be checking to see what looks enticing to open. Anything which looks like spam, or a waste of time will be ignored, deleted or worse yet - sent to the spam folder. You want to intrigue your audience and persuade them that your email is worthy of being opened and read.
Your preview has the same job to do. Intrigue and entice. Your audience wants to be able to read the preview, knowing that the rest of email will be worthy of being opened. Often businesses forget to fill in the preview, which is a wasted opportunity to entice your audience in.
3. Ensure your audience can respond to keep it personal
There is nothing more off putting to your audience than finding out they can’t respond to the email and ask any questions they may have. If they have gotten as far as opening the email and reading it, chances are they are interested in what you have to say.
Imagine the disappointment in seeing the words “Do not reply” on the email. If this comes up in the sender box then the chances are, it won’t get opened. However, if you provide your audience and readers with a way of getting in touch, even through a “Contact us” link, you are giving them the chance to keep communications up with you and this can result in leads turning into potential clients.
Your audience will value the chance to be able to communicate with you. This adds more of a personalised feeling to emails and lets your audience know that you value their response, thoughts and time.
4. Not being consistent with email campaigns
Unfortunately, after one or two successful email marketing campaigns, businesses often get lazy and forget to be consistent with sending out regular email updates. On the other hand, some markets then send out too many emails and leave their audience feeling irritated and bombarded.
You need to strike a good balance with your email marketing, a monthly newsletter is ideal. Try not to bombard your audience too frequently, as they may end up unsubscribing, but also make sure you stick consistently to sending out something regular. If you are going on holiday, you can even automate or schedule the email campaign to send out whilst you are away so that you don’t end up having a long break.
5. Don’t forget to finish off with a call to action!
When writing an email marketing campaign, an important goal and end result is to get your readers to take action and turn those leads into clients or customers. Get them invested in your products and services.
The important thing to remember is to focus on your audience, rather than what you are selling. Think about your audience’s pain points; what do they need? Think about how you can resolve them, then let them know what you do (without sensationalising it) and how to follow up with you.
We hope that this article has helped you to see what the common 5 email marketing mistakes are, as well as how to avoid them. Give your new skills a whirl today at www.transpond.id