Email marketing is still one of the leading ways to connect with your leads and customers.
Or annoy them.
Today, marketers are bombarded with tactics and methods promoted as the ‘the next best thing’ – urging them to try it out. Furthermore, it’s a fantastic opportunity to live in a resourceful world where our message can effortlessly show up in the inbox of thousands of people at the same time.
But, a lot of us forget that acquiring prospects’ email addresses and sending our marketing messages to them should be treated with respect, as it’s like an invitation to someone’s home.
There are many mistakes we can make with email marketing (and we all did them at some point), so here, we bring you the three big blunders you should avoid at all costs.
1) Ending up in the spam folder
It’s ok, we all end up in the spam folder sometimes, but there are things you can do to avoid that happening in the future.
Avoid heavy imagery and attachments
Making your emails visually appealing is advisable, but in most cases, using one to three images is enough.
Some email client’s settings block images by default, and if you use too many images, your email may end up looking odd. To avoid this from happening, make sure your content does most of the explaining, while the images come as a complementary add-on.
Finally — don’t send attachments. The only occasion when you may use attachments is when customers have specifically requested them, or else you will risk appearing scammy.
Dont ignore GDPR
If you acquire someone’s email address, your emails must be based on transparent and unambiguous communication.
To ensure you adhere to GDPR, consider:
- Disclosing where you got the recipient’s email address
- Giving an option for the recipient to choose the type of messaging they would like to receive
- Having the unsubscribe button easily accessible
When you exercise the best practice this way, you gain trust with your customers and minimise the risk of losing them.
2) Disregarding the timing and frequency element
Firstly, starting on the right note matters. “Welcome” and “Thank you for subscribing” messages are expected nowadays, and if you don’t include them, you may end up appearing as shady.
A good welcome email includes:
- Clear welcome or thank you message
- Set expectations (Example: how frequently will your subscribers hear from you)
- Recommended content choices (For further segmentation and personalisation purposes)
Another occasion when the time element plays a significant role is when companies send out too many emails during a short period — customers get annoyed. The same goes for sending emails at a low frequency — customers forget about you.
To help nail down the ideal email frequency you can:
- Give your subscribers the option to choose their email receiving frequency
- Hold A/B tests to uncover the best frequency for your subscribers or a specific segment
3) Not providing quality content
To achieve and maintain quality content, start with your audience, more precisely — with segmentation. Quality segmentation is the prerequisite for personalisation, and personalisation is what drives marketing today.
To summarise — if your email looks more like it comes from a friend rather than a corporation, your subscribers are more likely to read it.
Achieve quality email messaging by:
- Personalising your message based on demographic, behavioural or historical data.
- Delivering value without trying to sell. Put your customer first.
- Using professional and respectful language throughout your email.
- Choosing relevant and eye-catching subject lines
- Editing the sender filed. Please don’t leave it as Do-not-reply.
- Including a clear call-to-action.
- Provide a way for subscribers to reply or get in touch with you.
Final thoughts
There are many more occasions when we see email marketing go wrong, such as broken links or irrelevant offers. The road to successful and healthy email marketing may take some training, but without it, you will be facing a lot of spam reports and unsubscriptions.
And if you are eager to step up your game – your best solution is embracing marketing automation technology. For more information on that, get in touch with the team here at Cloud Orca.
