The efficiency of Email Marketing has always been a long-drawn debate amongst the SEO Personnel. Some of them think it as – “Oh! Email Marketing is certainly DEAD!” While the rest of the majority agrees to the fact that it still exists and can reap profitable results if done correctly. In our previous updates on Email Marketing, we have covered the topic on How to Plan your Email Marketing Strategy with Care so in this post we are gonna focus on the common mistakes that online marketers usually commit while setting up their email marketing campaigns.
So let’s see what Wikipedia has to say –
Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.
So it is basically a type of online marketing that falls under the category of Direct Marketing and it has certain ethics that involve a potential customer. The problems tend to occur when marketers do not think about any advanced planning, execution timings, non-relevant content and eventually start losing money from their campaigns.
Common mistakes that you should avoid in your Email Marketing Campaigns
Before we start off, let me remind you once more that Email Marketing is not just a stereo-type email sending process. There’s a lot more creativity involved inside those emails. The main emphasis should be given on proper timing to achieve the desired goals.
- How are you Designing your Emails – Let’s start off with the designing part! Cause that is the 1st thing that a reader will notice. If you’re using any email service that portrays your website then keep in mind that designing a website is hell lot easier than designing emails. The rules that apply for your website designing doesn’t hold value for emails. In emails the response time is actually a lot lesser and so is the area of exposure. So you got to attract the reader in less than 5 secs otherwise the email will either end up in SPAM or Trash Folder. Emails that have a lot of content with little or zero graphics tend to ignore and offend the reader. Make it interesting by including attractive graphics!
- Is your Email Content worth reading – Content the part where users use their brains to understand what you are offering to them. Most marketer emphasis more on this but fail to deliver it.
In this format, there are 4 types of mistakes –- Boring and Lengthy Content – Ask yourself do YOU read boring emails, emails that are more than 5-6 lines? lolz then how can you expect your audience to do so? Try to keep your emails as short as possible. Better enough if you can use graphics that speak 1000 words for you.
- Avoid repeating words from other campaigns – Remember those specific set of words that pushed your mouse to click on the Delete button? Words like Rewards, Jackpot, Prize Money, etc. tend to land up in the SPAM box automatically. Use campaign focused keywords that easily attracts the user attention right from the Subject of it.
- Is your email Mobile Friendly – A lot of users use their mobile to surf around the world wide web. Take the case for Android users, nearly all of them are gonna view your email in their cell. If your email isn’t properly formatted to display in their mobile then your campaign is only asking that much amount of extra work from the users’ side to read your emails. Result as you have guessed it – DELETE.
- Have you planned correctly – Planning forms the major portion of your email marketing campaign. You should plan accordingly so that your readers get the best user experience while reading your emails. Lack of proper email marketing plans are often the reason why campaigns fail in mid-way. Planning properly is an art for every marketer that are setting up their respective campaigns.
Under planning we have 2 important sub-section –- Who is your Target Audience – Without a target audience whom will we focus on? Target audience actually define the main part of the email marketing plan. Now if you’ve a mailing list that has several users from varying backgrounds then you need to sector out the leads in order to make the campaign more profitable. Keep in mind to divide the content as per the sector. You certainly don’t want to send the same message to all of your audience. As a marketer it is your job to figure out which section of audience loves what!
- Is Timing getting overlooked – After selecting your target audience you should think about the time that will be perfect for updating them. Keep in mind the factor of Local Time and try to guess the mood of your audience. For example, if you are targeting an audience class that wake up early you can set the email delivery timings accordingly.
- Where is the Call-To-Action – For newbies, call-to-action, is a specific term used by Internet Marketers to signify a particular encouragement given to the readers to complete or do something that the marketer wants. In fact, it was the main purpose of the campaign. Without a proper call-to-action there’s slight chance of getting any conversions. A favorite place for placing call-to-action signals are in the email newsletters. Successful marketers often employ various tactics that readers often overlook and this reduces the efficiency of the best email marketing campaign.
- Are you Linking back to your Website – Alright so last but not the least, remember to link back to your website. Its important! Users and readers who are actually reading your emails might want to just discover new posts made by you. So always keep that hyperlink to your website. It works well if you can link back to the relevant post(update). For example, if you are running a contest about something and you plan to tell your subscribers about it, well just point back to the relevant post that has the Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions of the contest and so on!
So that was our update on the most common mistakes committed by Email Marketers in their Campaigns. Make sure that you do not repeat the same things in your own email marketing campaign. The above stated points if rectified have proven to be highly effective and profitable at the same time! So all the best and keep writing in your feedback at our Contact Us page.