Planning an email marketing program? Already running one? Either way, you are sure to find some helpful tips in a recent blog post listing eight of the worst email marketing mistakes to avoid.
Despite its somewhat tongue-in-cheek title, the post contains serious advice for any business looking to generate positive results and avoid damaging its reputation with customers.
On that note, we applaud the fact that the very first “don’t” is sending email without permission. Apart from the fact that this is illegal, it simply makes poor business sense. People don’t like spam, so don’t be a spammer! Easy.
If you had to sum up several of the remaining tips into one word it would be “relevance”. Making sure your email adds value to the individual recipient is one of the most challenging – and most important –tasks you face as an email marketer. Not only do the results of the current campaign hinge on relevance, but so do the results of your next one: if your recipients don’t find value in what you send, your next email may end up in their spam folder. Avoiding “one size fits all” emails is a good starting point.
The post also touches on the importance of knowing the medium. Email has its own particular elements to get right, and a little knowledge of email’s limitations and best practices can go a long way. For example, incomplete subject lines can hamper open rates. For most email recipients this means limiting your subject line to 50 characters or less, but if you believe most of your recipients will be checking on a mobile device, you may want to keep it to under 20 characters.
Here are pbSmartEssentals, we love a good checklist of best practices, but somehow when they are presented as “don’ts”, they have even more impact. Make sure you don’t get caught doing any of these!
What Next:
To learn more, read our other articles on email marketing or get started today with your 60-day free trial of pbSmart Connections.
What about you? Are you running an email marketing program? What would you say is critical to success for your business? Please share your experiences below, we’d love to hear from you.
