E-mail marketing is one of the digital marketing strategies that businesses use nowadays. Their subscribers can turn into customers by using the right e-mail marketing techniques, resulting in more sales and growth for the company. However, a lot of businesses also fail at e-mail marketing because of improper strategies that lead to unsubscription or marking them as spam. It’s something you want to do right since if you get the basics of email marketing strategies down and you want to give international marketing a try, you need a good understanding of email marketing to make good emails before you even start translating them for foreign markets.
If you want your e-mail marketing campaign to succeed, avoid these common mistakes:
Not Having a Plan
For any marketing strategy, you always need a plan. It’s essential to make sure that your actions are guided and you don’t just randomly create and send e-mails to random people. You can use a marketing automation software to help you map out your strategy.
Here’s what you can do:
- Decide when you’ll send out the e-mails. For starters, you can send once or twice a month.
- Plan the content. What will the e-mail contain? You can create useful articles or updates about your products and include a call-to-action.
- Schedule the time you’ll be sending the e-mail. Consider the seasons. If you have seasonal articles, you have to send them at the appropriate time of the year so they’re relevant.
Buying E-mail Lists
While it’s true that buying e-mail lists will give you plenty of people to send out your e-mails to, it’s not the wisest idea ever. People hate unsolicited messages. There’s a chance that the people on your purchased e-mail lists could actually turn into your subscriber. However, the chances are very slim.
There are many other ways to increase your subscribers. If you send to your purchased e-mail list, it’s going to hurt your reputation. People will mark you as spam, and they’ll remember you as the company that sends them e-mails that they didn’t ask for.
Forgetting the Welcome E-mail
Once you’ve acquired some subscribers, you shouldn’t forget to send them a welcome e-mail. It’s the best time to welcome them as you’re still fresh on their mind. The first ever e-mail that you send is the one that will be read the most because your subscribers are still interested in what you have to offer.
Take this opportunity to introduce your company and what they can expect from you. You can choose to write a professional and straightforward e-mail, or you can send a lighthearted and fun one. This is where you set the tone for your future e-mails.
Creating Unengaging Content
Once you’ve managed to keep their interest with your welcome e-mail, you have to maintain that by creating engaging content. If you always send boring e-mails, you can expect that sooner or later, people will be unsubscribing from your list.
Here are a few tips on how you can improve your content:
- Create useful content. Let’s say you sell skin care products. Send e-mails that contain helpful information about skin care ingredients or tips on how to do a skin care routine.
- Add images to make your e-mail look fun and interesting, instead of just one whole block of text. People can easily get bored with that.
- Don’t use too many images as well because it can make your e-mail look too messy.
- Mind the tone of your e-mail and avoid a robot-sounding message. Make it personalized by using the subscriber’s name in the greeting.
Creating Too Sales-Pitch-Sounding Content
Avoid sounding like you’re doing a sales pitch. Those people probably receive numerous e-mails similar to yours, and they can be tired of them. Chances are, they won’t bother opening your e-mails any longer, or they will unsubscribe.
Focus on the people, not the products. Don’t oversell your products or services because that’s very irritating. You’ll come off way too pushy and you’ll end up annoying your subscribers.
Skipping Proofreading
Spelling and grammatical errors may seem like tiny inconsequential mistakes, but they are actually huge flaws that you should always make sure to avoid. Errors will make your e-mail look unprofessional, which will earn judgment from the subscribers.
There are plenty of tools you can use to check if there are any errors in grammar, spelling, conciseness, and many others. Your subscribers may not applaud you for sending grammatically correct e-mails, but they’ll surely be unimpressed if they find even one mistake.
Subject Line Errors
The subject line is the very first thing that a subscriber will see when they notice that you sent an e-mail. Choosing the subject line is crucial because it’ll be the most significant factor whether the subscriber will open or ignore the message. When creating your subject line, here are a couple of tips:
- Avoid boring ones. If your subject line is too dull and doesn’t sound engaging, don’t expect people to bother opening the message. Subject lines like “Newsletter for November” doesn’t sound as appealing as “Tips on How to Save Money on Your Christmas Shopping.”
- Don’t even think about clickbait. Misleading subject lines are the worst. Don’t set up expectations for your subscribers only to disappoint them when they open the message. Spark their interest, but don’t make the subject line sound so overhyped.
It’s a huge mistake to send e-mails to your subscribers that are from a no-reply e-mail address. It makes your messages seem too generic and impersonal. When people see that they can’t respond to that e-mail you sent, they’ll think it’s because you don’t want any interaction with them, which is also another huge mistake.
People like it when businesses are responsive when it comes to their queries. It makes them think that the company prioritizes its customers. Make yourself available and send e-mails from addresses that they can reply to because no-reply e-mails make you look like you’re sending a signal that you’re not interested in what they have to say.
Complicated Method to Unsubscribe
While you don’t want to lose any subscribers, you also don’t want to be marked spam. And you can expect that you’ll be marked as spam if you make it hard for your subscribers to unsubscribe from your mailing list.
Final Thoughts
E-mail marketing can be one of the best ways for you to gain more customers. If you do it right, then you can expect to succeed in your efforts. However, it can also cost you money, time, and effort if you don’t do it properly. Make sure to avoid the common mistakes above so you end up reaping the benefits of e-mail marketing.
