Email marketing is definitely not dead, nor can it even be deemed antiquated. To this day, it remains an effective marketing strategy.
The primary advantage of making use of email marketing is that you’re able to notify your prospects and clients of something important, but unlike an SMS or a push notification, they aren’t always perceived to be urgent.
The importance here is that emails are able to carry important notifications while still remaining significantly less invasive than the former options.
Customers are less likely to get annoyed when they open a seemingly important push notification only to find that it isn’t urgent at all.
On the other hand, emails contain important information that they can read when they find the time to do so, thus allowing them to absorb the information contained within the email better.
But, despite this, it shouldn’t be misunderstood that email marketing is a foolproof strategy. At times, it may even be profitable when you’re able to monetize it when used in conjunction. While it can be a very potent approach, there are still many ways you can mess it up and as a result, jeopardize your relationship with your clients.
So, what are the email marketing mistakes that you should avoid at all costs?
Spamming
Spamming is the act of sending electronic messages that are often redundant – and are therefore unwanted – in bulk to a wide range of people indiscriminately.
The key terms here are “unwanted” and “indiscriminately”, and these two words influence each other. When you send an email to a person who did not give you consent to email them, you are already sending them something they do not want to receive.
When your emails get marked as spam, they end up in the spam folders of everybody you email, effectively killing your email campaign. DO NOT SPAM.
Not checking email lists
First, you need to verify that the content that you’re sending to followers actually reaches their inboxes. That’s why an email address checker is a valuable tool — it quickly analyzes email lists of any size, identifying which addresses are valid and which are not. This helps you avoid sending emails to addresses that have “gone bad.” As a result, you’ll keep your bounce rate right where it should be.
Failing To Put An Unsubscribe Link In Your Emails
Whether this is because of sheer negligence or if this was the result of a predetermined decision, the failure to put an unsubscribe link in your email is a quick way to jeopardize your email marketing campaign.
This is because it is required by law for all emails to have “a visible, operable unsubscribing mechanism”. This is important because people have the right to opt out of mailing lists that they do not want to be a part of.
This is critical because when your recipients cannot find an unsubscribe link, they’re very likely to try an alternative way to silence your emails, which is to report your emails as spam. Once you’ve been marked as spam, it essentially kills your email marketing campaign.
Sending Irrelevant Emails
It’s probably happened to all of us at one point in time on the internet. One minute you’re browsing for a new pair of men’s running shoes on a retail site, and you receive an email for women’s coats.
Or when you’re looking for whey protein online, and you receive an email for a gym membership. Much like spam, these emails are incredibly annoying, especially because of the fact that these emails are automatically perceived to contain important information.
This is akin to making small talk with a total stranger about something that’s completely out of context. It is a waste of time, both yours and that of your target audience. This is something that’s easily remedied with a bit of quality control. Simply take the time to ensure that your target audience is getting emails that are relevant to them.
Not Including A Call-To-Action In Your Email
Even when you’re able to craft the most convincing, most relevant email that you possibly could, it’s not going to matter much if your audience is left without further steps.
Even if you’re able to fully convince your audience, without giving them clear directions on what they can do to deepen their involvement with your message (or advocacy), the email that you so eloquently wrote isn’t going to make much difference in terms of leads, much less, conversions.
This is essentially a missed opportunity. The kicker here is that even if your audience was willing to get involved further, they weren’t given the directions to do so. And all it needed was a simple call to action to help steer your audience towards what you need from them.
Sending One Big Image
Yes, it’s tempting to simply send a single big image in lieu of a body of text. After all, it would seem like an incredibly efficient (and aesthetically pleasing) alternative to text-filled emails. Except, there’s one very real and very critical problem when you do this. What if the image doesn’t load?
And well, when the image doesn’t load, then whatever information you meant to share in that image is pretty much lost. You have to consider that not everyone has a reliable internet connection at all times.
Sure, you could say that they can simply view the email again once they have a stable internet connection, but that defeats the purpose of sending emails that notify your prospective buyers of any time-sensitive promos.
Chances are that they could completely forget about your email (that didn’t give them any information, to begin with) and they would simply assume that there probably wasn’t anything important in that email anyway.
Sending a big image isn’t necessarily bad. Sending it without any supporting text as to what it is and what it’s trying to convey is because you run the risk of the message not being conveyed at all.
Couple that with the fact that it’s going to take more time to come up with an image versus the time it’s going to take you to type out what you needed to say.
Email marketing is one of the most reliable marketing strategies that are currently available to us. It is an essential component of any marketing campaign, and because of this, it’s important to be able to do it well.
Not because it’s going to help your brand stand out, but because failing to do so will cause your brand to stand out for all the wrong reasons. Hopefully, this guide will help you to overcome the email marketing mistakes.
I’m a tech enthusiast, entrepreneur, digital marketer and professional blogger equipped with skills in Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, SMM, and lead generation. My objective is to simplify technology for you through detailed guides and reviews. I discovered WordPress while setting up my first business site and instantly became enamored. When not crafting websites, making content, or helping clients enhance their online ventures, I usually take care of my health and spend time with family, and explore the world. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or read my complete biography.