Here are 4 ways you could ruin a great email marketing campaign:
1. Not personalizing the email
Businesses forget this often, but this is one of the more important things you can do for your email marketing efforts which is invest in great software, which is usually relatively inexpensive, and can insert your subscribers’ names into each email so when they open it, they see it is addressed to them and will feel like they have an identity with you who is this big nameless beast of a company.
2. Not providing either useful information or a relevant offer
Another cardinal sin in email marketing is not providing value in your email blast. No one likes useless mail. In fact, it’s a peeve for most who realize that email is a huge time-waster and their time should be spent doing other things, not managing their inbox, so if you are going to interrupt someone’s day with an email, make sure you’re adding some value to their life by providing educational information or giving them a special offer like free shipping or maybe a discount.
3. Not testing subject lines for CTRs
If you want to maximize the results of your campaign, you don’t want to send out your blast with just any subject line because your most important announcement can be spoiled if no one wants to click your email. You should test a few headlines with a small sample group to see who clicks-through which headlines and opens the email with a specific headline at a higher rate, and beyond that, which headline converts customers at a higher rate too, then use the one that has performed the best for you on the rest of your email list.
4. Sending your blast out to everyone on your list
It might seem like a no-brainer to target everyone that has had some interest in your business, but you actually don’t want to target everyone on your email list all the time. Considering users’ historical open rates, how they signed up for your email in the first place, and if they’ve purchased before, you want to be selective in which types of email blasts you include them in and the ones you choose to keep them out of.
About the author
Danny Wong helps with Email Marketing for Blank Label Group, working with the startups Blank Label, Thread Tradition and RE:custom.
Image credit: anonymonk