How to fail at Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great tool to incorporate into your inbound marketing strategy.

You can easily provide substantial value to your customers and build a loyal customer base for your brand. Email marketing is also a powerful tool in targeted online marketing and can be of big help in online lead generation. As great as all of this sounds, if not used correctly, it can easily backfire and do some serious damage to your brand image. Below we have listed few slip ups that you should keep clear of to see some fruitful results for all of your email marketing efforts.

Faking it

We all know that many people are on the lookout for last minute deals and creating a sense of urgency can greatly increase the open rate of your email. Running a special sale only for a couple of days, or give a discount coupon valid for few hours will surely get customers interested in opening your email. However, creating urgency can be tricky and if you do it the wrong way you brand credibility will sink. If you keep on sending emails every three days telling people it’s their last chance to buy something, they will not feel a sense of urgency; instead, they’ll be quite annoyed at you for flooding their inbox.

Ugly Break-up

OK, we get that the last thing you want to see is people leaving the email list that took you such hard work to put together. But, as sad as it is, some people are bound to opt-out, and when they do, it’s always smart to make the process as easy and pleasant as possible for them. You may ask yourself  ‘why would I care to make it easy and pleasant? They are the one leaving me!’ While we understand your disappointment, keep in mind that just because somebody wants out from your email list, that doesn’t mean that they want nothing to do with your brand. They might be your customer again in the future, so it’s always best to leave things on a good note, who knows, they might even come back to you.

Being a drama queen

One of the best thing you can do to lose brand credibility is to send out emails with exaggerated subject lines. We are completely on board with the fact that to increase open rates you need to have an eye-catchy subject line. But if you keep on sending out emails with overhyped subject lines and poor or irrelevant content, this will impact your brand negatively. Not only will your email list decrease as you watch, but the trust and credibility level of your brand will suffer badly. Creating great subject lines is not easy, but don’t take a chance and fall into the “over-hyped trap”; it’s better to have a lower open rate than to damage your brand image in the long run.

Being too cold

No one likes to be treated like a stranger, and if you are trying to build a solid relationship with your customers, being too stiff and impersonal won’t take you a long way. Don’t send emails with form names such as ‘noreply’, this will end your relationship before it could even start. Remember, you are trying to get people to engage with you, not destroy any possibility of that happening. Using a ‘from name’ that actual contains your name with a personalized content will make you customers feel that much special and closer to your brand. And it’s always more pleasant to interact with an actual person rather than a generic email address.

Being too complicated

 

Before sending out an email, before even thinking of writing the content and creating the layout, you need to ask yourself what the goal of your email marketing campaign is. Are you trying to get people to purchase something? Do you want them to subscribe to your blog? Do you want them to engage with your social media platforms? Set your mind to one objective and focus on that and only that in one email. If you include too many CTAs, you will confuse your audience, and your email marketing efforts will go to waste. Don’t try to achieve too much with too little, set objectives and keep things clear and to the point.

Being too clingy

 

The easiest way to get people to unsubscribe? Flood their inbox with email after email and voilà, watch your email list magically disappear! Not having a consistent emailing schedule is a big no-no, and if you abuse your email list by suffocating them with emails, you can kiss your email marketing campaigns goodbye. Many companies still believe that volume is key to getting high click rates and increase visibility, but we are to tell you that this approach will not work. Find out what frequency works best with your subscribers, maybe by even asking them how often they would like to hear from you when they sign up.

Being too persistent

There is a good chance that a certain number of subscribers will never open your emails, ever. You might think that you should keep on sending them emails with the hope that one day they will notice your efforts. However, doing might result in email providers automatically marking your emails as spam and sending them into the junk folder based on the low open rates. Go through your email list regularly and remove those recipients who never open your emails. You might be sad to see your list reduce, but it’s always better than the negative impact of emailing unresponsive users.

Created: July 29th, 2015