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Top 10 Email Marketing Mistakes and how to avoid them.

Published: 30th October 2018

Common email marketing mistakes 2018



Email marketing can be one of the most successful ways of marketing to your subscribers, used correctly it can be a really great source of business.

Getting the balance right however requires work and planning, it’s easy to make mistakes along the way that can cost sales conversions.
In this video, we are going to look at the top ten email marketing mistakes.

#1 Too much text



Nowadays, your viewer’s time is in short supply, we all receive a large volumes of emails each day. This means that we have very little time to invest in each email that we receive.
So, in order to hold the interest of your viewer, use short sentences and paragraphs and don’t use too much text.
If your email needs more than two or three short paragraphs, then consider adding the rest of the text to your website and invite the viewer to click from your mailer to view this page.

#2 No Call to action



Your email needs a purpose, what do you want your viewer to do after reading it? – this instruction to your viewer is called a ‘call to action’

It is a common mistake not to include this call to action, leaving this out means that your mailer does not really achieve anything. This can leave your viewer feeling confused about it’s purpose, often this can then lead to your subscriber opting out of your future sends.

#3 Asking your existing customers to opt in again



Over the past few months, GDPR has had everybody running around in a state of confusion. GDPR outlines a requirement for everybody to opt in.

Lots of people thought that this meant you had to ask your previous customers to re-opt in. So, lots of us, from small companies to big brands sent out re-opt in mailers.

The response rate of pretty much all of these was very poor. This lead to lots of people abandoning their loving crafted databases of customers.

The ICO have confirmed that you do not need to reconsent your customers, you are perfectly fine to remain in contact with people with who you already have a working relationship. This is called “legitimate interests”

#4 Generic send from address



What we are referring to here is an address such as sales@ or marketing@, it’s really not a good idea to use something such as this for two main reasons:

  • Spam filters penalise these addresses, this means that your communications could end up in the junk filter

  • Viewers are much more receptive to communications from real people – it’s worth remembering that people buy from people, despite our reliance on electronic communication, this is still very much the case.


#5 Not validating your sending domain



If you are using email marketing software, then you are effectively sending your communications through a third party. If your sending domain is not validated, then spam filters can penalise you for this, because your sending domain is not the same as the send from domain that you are using.

Validating your domain means adding ad SPF record and a DKIM signature via your domain administrator. This effectively adds a seal of authenticity to your send, therefore satisfying the security measures employed by the spam filtering systems.

#6 Using content that triggers a spam filter



A spam filter will read what you are sending, before it decides whether to deliver your email to the inbox or to the junk filter. If it detects spam phrases in your text, then it will put your mailer into junk. There are lots of phrases that can trigger this, any decent email marketing software will have a spam checker app that helps you to identify any troublesome text.

It doesn’t matter how great looking your mailer or product offer is – if people aren’t receiving it, they won’t can’t from you.

#7 Not sending relevant content



If your viewers feel that your content is not relevant to them – they won’t buy from you, they will also opt out from your future sends. A high opt out rate causes reputation damage, which will affect your future delivery rates.

By looking at your analytics, you can get a get idea of what your viewers like to read and hoe they like it presented. Read and clicks stats will show you this info, the more relevant, the higher the reads.

Your message, tone and presentation may take some tweaking to find a formula that really works.

#8 Not reminding people of how they opted in



As we’ve touched on before, your viewers will allocate a very small amount of time into deciding if they want to read, delete or unsubscribe. Often, as viewers, we forget asking to receive some emails. This means that we very quickly hit unsubscribe.

High unsubscribes means lower engagement and can cause damage to your sender reputation, this means poor delivery for your future sends.

If you add a small amount of text at the top, offering a quick reminder of why you are receiving this email then this acts as a quick prompt. It reminds the viewers of when and how they asked to receive your emails.

#9 Poor housekeeping of data



It’s important that you keep your data in good order, delete people who opt out, dead email addresses, people who haven’t read your previous campaigns. Keeping your data clean will ensure good delivery for future sends.

If your lists contain lots of bad data, then this can cause reputation damage, resulting in lower delivery rates in the future.

#10 Not segmenting data



In order to really maximise the success of your email marketing, you really need to be sending the right email to the right people eat the right time. Segmenting your data is a huge step towards this.

Looks at your previous campaign statistics and create sub lists or data segments of people based on criteria such as what time of day they opened your email, which of your links did they click on, how many of your links did they click on.

By looking at this info, you can identify groups of people and send them email marketing that is based around their previous behavioural patterns. Grouping people in this way and sending them something different, perhaps at different times really helps to maximise those conversions

Summary



Ok, so that wraps up our run down of the top ten email marketing mistakes in 2018 , you may want to check out the other video in this series: How to convert email readers into buyers”
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