Top Email Marketing DONTS

An email marketing campaign, despite popular beliefs, is like a precision machine which needs to consistently be fine tuned for maximum results. What this means is that when it comes to your email marketing campaign, you need to always be on the ball to make sure that it is working in an optimum state.

At the very least, what you need to ensure with your email marketing campaign is that you do not make the mistakes that are common in this community. You would be surprised at the number of things many seasoned email marketers consider to be appropriate but are actually serious mistakes.

Here is a list of the top 15 strict email marketing DON’Ts that you should go through to check that your email marketing campaign is free of such mistakes.

Punctuation:

Punctuation is a sign of professionalism and expertise. Any self respecting online entrepreneur or professional will know how to punctuate a sentence.

What this means is that when your target audience would read a poorly constructed email message without proper punctuation then they would immediately discount you as someone who does not know what he is talking about. This is why you should make sure that you do not miss out on using the right punctuations in your email messages.

Overload:

Some irresponsible online entrepreneurs and internet marketers seem to think that they can just send all their different types of emails at one go because everything is automated.

However, if an individual receives more than one email newsletter at the same time then he would get irritated and promptly mark them as spam. Scheduling is one of the secrets of email marketing and something you should not lose sight of at all times.

Profiling:

Just like sending all your email messages designed for different types of situations at one time in bulk is wrong, it is also wrong to send the same type of email to all types of users. Each user is unique in sociological, economical, psychological, geographical, and other ways.

Therefore, it is important that you create specific email messages for people with different types of profiles. Profiling would improve your chances of getting through to your target audience and compelling them to make a purchase. This shows that you should not send the same email message to your whole target audience.

Sourcing:

Making email marketing lists is an exercise in patience and strategy. It requires careful planning and even more deliberate implementation. This can put off many internet marketers who look for quick results. The solution that such people come up with is to source their emailing lists from third party providers.

This is a strategy that will never pay you dividends because the veracity of the emailing lists you source would be in question. There is nothing better than putting in the required time, money, and effort and making your own emailing list which is why you should not miss out on it.

Updation:

Lack of willingness to put in enough effort, time, and money into the process of email marketing can also result in the individual using an old emailing list for new purposes.

This is counterproductive because not only would many email addresses in your emailing list have expired but many receivers would have already forgotten you and your business.

In other words, you would not get enough results and might even find yourself blocked by many users and email servers. Hence, do not use old emailing lists for your email marketing campaign.

Resend:

It is inevitable that some email addresses in your emailing list would either become invalid or be abandoned. The former would result in hard bounces while the latter will cause soft bounces.

It is imperative that when you receive these bounces you remove the faulty email addresses from your emailing list. The reason for this is that these addresses may result in your email address and IP address.

Furthermore, at the very least, these email addresses would bring down your conversion rates and returns on investment. Thus, do not resend emails to addresses that have already given you bounce backs.

Graphics:

Another temptation that many email marketers fall prey to is the use of a single image file as their email message. Making email messages in software programs like Adobe Photoshop is very easy. Even easier is to create a JPG file of these messages and send them straight.

However, as most email servers frown upon large graphics files this increases the chance of your email messages being blocked. In different words, deliverability suffers when you send your email messages as a single graphics file. In effect, do not use one big image as your email message.

CAPS:

A misconception that some people have is that using CAPS means that their email messages will draw more attention. Instead, what happens is that CAPS sentences put off most email owners.

The worst case scenario is that excessive CAPS usage would result in a deletion of the email and the message getting marked as spam. In contrast, the least you can expect from this strategy is the user unsubscribing his email address. In simple words, do not use CAPS a lot in your email messages.

Content:

There are certain sets of words that email servers view as a sign that the email message is a spam. These spam words can vary from one email server to another but would usually include words such as today, apply now, call now, buy now, weight loss, order now, free, guarantee, and many others.

Bt simply avoiding using these words in your email messages you improve the deliverability of your email message. Increased deliverability, as is obvious, means greater conversion rates. What this means is that you should not use words that bring email servers’ red flags up.

Links:

Links in an email message are the key to conversion. Therefore, if the links in your email message are broken or dead then you are basically sending the email message for nothing and even risking a bad reputation.

Furthermore, you also need to ensure that the links in your email messages are not text links i.e. pasted straight from the browser. Instead, use anchor text and hyperlinks because text based links are considered to be a sign of spam email by many email servers. Therefore, do not use deal links and avoid using text links.

Attachments:

It is very convenient for an email marketer to simply attach the files that are being used in his email message to the email message itself. The reason why many email marketers do this is that it saves them time, effort, and also money on the hosting space that they will need to put these files on the internet.

However, attachments can combine to increase the size of your email message significantly. This would not only put off many of your leads but also put the email servers on alert which may result in blocks. This implies that you should not send attachments in your email messages.

Name:

People like a personal touch. Any sales or marketing professional would tell you this. Therefore, if you send your email messages as your company then you are taking that interaction and engagement away from the equation altogether.

It is much better to use a name to send the email message. Ideally, this individual should be a high ranking professional in the company. The best thing to do is to send the email message as the CEO of the company as this would be personal and high profile. Effectively, do not use your company as the sender and use an individual’s name.

Proofreading:

Spending a lot of time on making a good email message is well and good but if you do not proofread it then all your efforts will go to waste. The reason for this is regardless of how careful you were during the creation process, it is likely that there are some mistakes in the email messages you have created.

This is why it is highly recommended that you do not avoid proofreading your email messages before sending them to everyone on your emailing lists.

HTML:

HTML is all the rage in email messages these days. Countless email marketers have switched to using HTML as their format of preference. However, this trend is gradually reversing simply because people have realized that there are still a lot of people on the planet who use text only systems.

If you do this then you would be alienating the text only component of your target audience which can be considerable in terms of potential conversions. Inevitably, this means that you should not limit your email messages to HTML.

Spam:

Spamming is the biggest cardinal sin in email marketing. Whatever you do and however bad your results may be, you should not resort to spamming. The reason for this is simply that spamming is an extremely short term technique which will land you in hot water sooner than later. In fact, it would result in not only your email address being blocked and your reputation taking a hit but also your IP address being frozen.