Email Marketing Mistakes- Diana Roderick (Sourcelists)
Email marketing can be very cost-effective and produce satisfying results if handled correctly. The proper approach to email starts with an ethical, well-thought-out plan that typically requires a little more time and effort than many email marketers realize. Common mistakes include:
1. Not having a permission-based mailing list: unless you have the recipient's permission, you may be sending spam, which is against the law. Too many business owners take shortcuts and buy email lists or compile them in unethical manners such as harvesting them from the Web. Sending spam also hurts the reputation of your business.
2. Poor content or no content. The more ads your emails contain, the faster people will hit the delete key. Email marketers frequently send nothing that holds the attention of the reader. Just as people accept advertising and promotion in a magazine because they want to read the content, the same principle holds true in email. You need to give them something of value. Good content, albeit brief, should hold their attention long enough for you to market yourself successfully.
3. Errors. The amount of errors found in emails is astonishing -- words misspelled, poor grammar, links that do not work, and so on.
4. Making readers jump through hoops. If you want someone to subscribe to an email newsletter or sign up for updates about your product or service, do not make them fill out endless online forms, clicking through multiple pages and providing unnecessary information. The more difficult you make it, the less likely they will subscribe. All you really need is their permission and their email address.
Poor choices of "from" and "subject" lines. Pay particular attention to the "from" and "subject" lines because people will determine that they do not know the email sender and hit delete immediately if you're not clear. The "from" line should be the exact company or newsletter name with which they signed up. The subject line can be the name of the newsletter or a well-thought out brief headline that grabs their attention.