6 mistakes to avoid for successful email marketing

Email marketing is an age-old concept now, yet effective. But, that doesn’t mean that we can use the same, clichéd tactics over and over again.

We must accept that the customers have come a long way now. More than a decade ago, the customers used to spend a lot of time reading their emails. But, now, over the years, with so many social media platforms available to them for entertainment and communication, email has only utility value.

But, everyone uses email and so we can’t undermine the impact of email marketing. We will just have to get rid of the strategies that do not work and grab the email marketing trends that can bring in more customer responses.

So, I have listed a few mistakes that you should avoid if you want to be successful as an email marketer.

1. Buying Mailing Lists

Marketers actively look for sources which can get them some ready email lists! And, many of them spend a lot of money on buying such lists as part of their marketing campaigns.

But, buying ready-made email lists from weird sources can be the worst that you can do to your email marketing campaign. No matter how much the source claims that the lists are in accordance with your target audience preference, there are going to be users who are uninterested in your emails. And, such users cannot give you conversions. Worst of all, they can get your domain blacklisted by spam filters.

So, it is always better to build your own email lists by making the customers subscribe to your mailing list. You can make this option available to them through your website or links from social media pages. This ensures that you are sending emails to an already interested recipient. And, it anyway increases the chances that the email is read.

2. Unsubscribe Option

Never underestimate the power of an unsubscribe link. Email marketing carries a risk of your domain getting blacklisted as spam by the email servers. And so, marketers must try their best to prevent their domain from being marked as spam.

But, how do you prevent this problem? There is no use sending emails repeatedly to an uninterested audience. Nevertheless, it is difficult to identify if a targeted user is interested in your emails or not.

So, the unsubscribe link comes to your rescue. Though, you have to make sure that unsubscribe link is prominently accessible to the uninterested recipient. That will prompt him not to mark the email as spam when he can unsubscribe from the mailing lists and solve the problem.

Moreover, the page that the unsubscribe link leads to, should be simple to handle and the user should be able to unsubscribe using not more than one click on this page. It is never a good idea to make the uninterested user fill forms at this stage.

3. Content Over-Use

I have read so many marketing emails with long content and loads of images. Honestly, I delete such emails!

Never make the mistake of believing that the customer is just waiting to read your marketing emails. He doesn’t derive any fun seeing your numerous images. Even if he reads it, he is just trying to find something useful and worthwhile from your email. And so, it wants short-form and meaningful content that he can quickly read through.

You have to make the best of the few minutes that the recipient pulls out of his routine to check his emails. For this, your marketing email should be focused on just one intention at a time. There must be not more than one or two images that support the message that you want to convey. And the message should be precise and accurate.

And, if you have to convey multiple ideas, you can always send separate emails for that.

4. Random Timing

The timing matters a lot to your email campaign. But many marketers underestimate the value of email timing and frequency.

Some of them believe that sending emails every now and then keeps your audience engaged with your brand. And such marketers end up spoiling the reputation of their brand by getting their domain listed as spam by the major email servers. And this is an irreparable loss!

While many believe that sending emails in the morning improves the possibility of the customer reading it. But, even by logic, customers have varied schedules. Some of them get time to read their emails in the morning, while some others prefer to read emails later in the evening after they have completed their work.

So how do you decide the perfect timing for emailing? Based on the type of the product you are selling, you must calibrate proper timing for emailing. You can also use big data to assess customer behavior.

5. Exaggerated Subject Line

Marketers have this really bad habit of believing that sensational subject lines increase the possibility of your email being read by your customer. But, the customers now are aware of the decade-old email marketing tactics and so these don’t work anymore.

The rational customer trusts brands which build effective subject lines that match the content of the email. And, they are most likely to read emails which have sensible subject lines and useful content irrespective of whether the subject line was sensational or not.

But, if you use exaggerated subject lines, they might never open your emails again, after a prior bad experience. And, you would not want your customer to mark your email as spam, would you? Well, then be careful, and make sure you don’t use the old and stale subject line tactics.

6. Mismanaged Replies

Using a no-reply email address is the biggest mistake that email marketers are found to be making. This is done particularly when you are using an address for mass mailing.

At times the recipient is interested in your mail but needs additional information from you. In that case, he wants to send a reply email to you. By using a no-reply email address, you have lost a major opportunity of a customer getting back to you with a query or even feedback.

You must assign a significant part of your email customer-care team to deal with the replies to your marketing emails. Believe me; these replies can facilitate maximum conversions from your email marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a crucial step in the right direction for building rapport with your customers. But, like other marketing channels, this has to be managed with caution. And, we must try our best to prevent actions which can make it go terribly wrong.

To get the best results out of your emailing marketing campaign, you must follow the simple tips mentioned above. Or, if you want professional help with your email marketing campaign, you can try some of the top email marketing agencies.

And, don’t forget to share, if you have any experiences, good or bad, with email marketing.
 
 
About the author

Jin Markov is a Content Writer with GoodFirms.co, a research firm in the USA. He has an experience of 6 years and has been writing on areas related to digital marketing.