Are you deep in the throes of creating your first email marketing campaign? Maybe it isn’t your first email marketing campaign; rather, you’ve tried several without the success you had hoped for. Email marketing can be an immensely powerful tool for businesses of all sizes to embrace, but it needs to be done correctly. You want to strike a balance between providing readers with information on a product or service that would appeal to them without coming across as too “salesy” or pushy.
To help you better navigate the waters of email marketing campaigns, here’s a look at some of the don’ts you should avoid. These can save you a lot of effort and time.
Not Optimizing Emails for Mobile Devices
The first thing you need to think about when creating an email campaign is how it will look visually when the person opens it up. If you haven’t optimized your content for mobile devices yet, you’re doing your campaign a disservice.
The vast majority of people have smartphones nowadays, so the odds of them opening an email on their smartphone or tablet are pretty high. You want to be sure that the email looks the way you intended, with links that work, photos and media where it should be, and the font is displaying properly.
Not Having a Hook in the Subject Line
The next big mistake is not taking the time to create a subject line with a hook. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so you better make sure the first one is impactful. As the recipient scrolls through a potentially cluttered inbox, your message needs to stand out. You need to be sure they feel compelled to open it.
Having a hook in the subject line is essential. This can be a hard lesson to learn, but every industry will benefit from a hook. Even the sites found on Casinos.com understand the importance of email marketing campaigns, and they get that the subject line can make or break the effectiveness of the message itself.
Not Knowing Who Your Target Market Is
To ensure the hook in the subject line and the body of the email hit right, you need to be very familiar with who your target market is. This is where market research is extremely useful. Who is your product or service made for? What is the age group? What is the income level? These and many other questions can be answered via thorough target market research.
Making the Sales Pitch Too Obvious and Too Strong
While the purpose of your email marketing campaign is to grow your business and boost sales, don’t come across too strongly. Most people don’t like being sold to, so you need to be sure your email isn’t coming across in a way that may irritate them.
Sending Too Many Emails
This tip ties into the one mentioned above. If you send too many emails, too often, not only will it come across as strong, it’s going to look like spam. Instead of getting people interested in your products or services, they are going to get irritated by the emails. This creates a negative image of your company, the exact opposite effect that you want to achieve.
What can be a hard question to answer is how many emails is the right number to send. Experts tend to agree that two to three emails per week is a good goal. The caveat is that you’ve got to have a purpose for sending each one. Don’t just send emails for the sake of sending something; they need to convey new information, a promotion, a special deal, a sale, or maybe a new product release.
Not Ending the Email with a Call to Action
Did you know that every good email also needs to end with a call to action? This is when you give the reader the next step(s) to take. It could be to “click here” to purchase a product, make a reservation, get a quote, or “contact us” for more information. The idea is that you’re gently steering them in the direction that will help close the sale.
The call to action shouldn’t appear throughout the email, but just make sure it’s the last thing they read.
Not Editing the Content Before You Send Out the Email
This tip may sound almost too basic, but again it can have a huge effect and will play into your brand image. You don’t want to send an email that has any spelling or grammatical mistakes. Taking the time to carefully check the content, and even having a set of fresh eyes take a look at it will do wonders. There are free grammar and spell checker tools you can use online if need be.
Not Regularly Cleaning Up Your Email Contact List
After putting all the work into your email marketing campaign, you need to know that your contact list is reliable and high quality. To ensure this is the case, your list should be regularly cleaned up. Make sure duplicates are removed, errors are corrected, and you have given people a way to opt in so that you are adding to your email database organically.
An Effective Email Marketing Campaign Takes Work
As you can see, there are a lot of don’ts when it comes to creating an effective email marketing campaign. There’s also a bit of trial and error because each industry is unique, and the size of your company will play into which tips will be most effective. Don’t forget to also be tracking the results from your campaign. This will be the data you will need to analyze to figure out whether your actions are effective or if the campaign needs more tweaking.