There is plenty of scope for getting things wrong with email marketing campaigns; the focus here is on the most common errors made.
Poor Subject Line
Getting recipients of your email to open and read it is key to your marketing campaign’s success. It follows, therefore, that of primary importance is the field marked “Subject”. Yet research shows that the content of this title bar is often the last thing considered, and sometimes it is even left blank. What a wasted opportunity.
Equally important as not leaving it blank is devising a suitable subject. Headings such as “Free Coupon” tend to perform badly against simple descriptive titles such as “[Company] Newsletter.” My advice is to describe the content honestly, rather than “sell” it with a gimmick.
Unrecognised Source
Some email campaigns originate from unrecognisable email addresses, or companies with bizarre names few have heard of. Emails from unidentified sources are usually instantly deleted. If your company is known to everyone on the data base you are using, ensure its name (or yours) appears in the “From” field. You certainly don’t want the words “Mailing List” appearing as sender.
Awful Presentation
Emails have to be easy on the eye for comfortable reading, so how you format text is important. Central alignment of content makes text very hard to read. Similarly, choosing an unusual font is a bad idea as it may not be among the listed styles on your recipients’ system and will consequently not display properly. Play safe – stick to the common fonts, and the standard “align left” for content.
Outsize Images
Promotional emails are sometimes simply a scan of a company’s leaflet, with a huge image embedded with little or no worthwhile text. Don’t commit this crime. Many email programs do not display images by default, so such emails can appear empty or blank. They also run the risk of being deleted by spam filtering systems. Use images only if they are necessary, and keep them down to 10% or less of your email content.
Badly Coded HTML
This is a technical issue but worth mentioning to anyone with coding knowledge, or in-house programmers. Emails are single or multi-part templates with many HTML emails using CSS and <HEAD> tags for text coding and display commands. However, some email programs (especially web based ones) strip out <HEAD> tags to prevent security problems. Any style code commands listed here will be stripped out, thus mangling the coding and making the email impossible to read. To add style to your email, make sure inline CSS coding is used. Be aware, too, that HTML exports from some programs, such as Microsoft Word, Publisher and PowerPoint, can create very bad HTML that does not work in email.
No "Unsubscribe" Link
There are pointless risks run with either not offering an “unsubscribe” link, or putting a “Reply with Unsubscribe” link in the Subject/title bar. Recipients of such emails will instantly hit the “Spam” button, and you could get blacklisted. Instead, make it as easy as possible for recipients to leave your list by providing a simple “one click” instant unsubscribe link. That way they will think better of you, and you will not be wasting your resources emailing uninterested people.
Spam Appearance
Marketing emails that are blatant promotional messages will resemble spam and, like all junk mail, end up being deleted. It is wise, therefore, to steer clear of highlighting text in bold, to refrain from displaying content in capitals, and to avoid using too many colours. Using the word “free”, particularly in bold or coloured text (whether in capitals or lower case), can also trigger automated spam filter systems if usage in ratio terms is out of proportion to other words used.
Unfamiliar Contacts
If it has taken far more than a year to build up your list of leads, and if you are not in regular contact with everyone on it, will they remember you? Don’t email infrequent customers and prospects out of the blue; some may have forgotten you, been replaced or changed their email address. Instead, turn a potential negative into a positive by sending a short and sweet re-subscribe email along the lines of: “We know it has been a while since we were in touch. If you are still interested in hearing from us, please click here to subscribe.”
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