Common Mistakes To Avoid With Your Next Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is still one of the very best methods to use for obtaining conversions, when it is done properly. Therein lies the rub as quite a few businesses out there regularly use email for marketing but are making errors in the process that end up costing them business. As one of the top web development companies, we often offer our take to clients about what they should and shouldn’t do. Today we wanted to share some of that knowledge as we discuss common mistakes to avoid with your next email marketing campaign.

Generally speaking quite a bit of work goes into most email marketing campaigns, so it makes sense to get the most out of each and every email that goes out. While there are different strategies and methods that have proven to be successful, starting with what not to do is first on our list as by limiting mistakes you immediately increase your effectiveness regardless of the strategy you have been or will use.

Common Email Marketing Mistakes

• Not having clear goals – Before you enter into any type of marketing campaign you need to have a clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish. Time and time again we see people reviewing analytics mid-way through a campaign and saying “Is this okay?” That should never be a question because your goals should be clear from the outset. For example, if you are sending out 5000 emails to notify potential customers about a new product you are offering what open rate do you need? From there what click-thru and then sign-up rate are you hoping for? Or if you are looking for more traffic to your site, what is the percentage goal?
• Not baiting the hook – Typically the most successful email marketing campaigns are the ones where the mailer already has a strong list of customers or potential customers along with a decent open rate. For them, the hook has been baited and they have a good guess about what percentage of the people will be biting. Other people regularly send out emails with a 1% or less open rate and then expect miracles from a new campaign. The hook is not baited! That means you need to go back and work through that contact list, cleaning it up and adding to it, and then start using giveaways or promotions to help increase open rates first. Here is a link to an article we wrote on this topic a few months ago.
• Lacking email personalization – Personalization is very important because customers want to feel special and not part of the herd. So that means you need to deliver timely, relevant emails to people when and where customers are most likely to be engaged. For example, sending out an email to your entire list on a Friday to promote a Saturday sale at a specific location is not a good idea as it only applies to a small group located near that location and the timing is horrible (yet people do this). You need to send emails that offer people what they want, need, or are looking for. It also helps to use triggered email responses. Take the time to learn as much as you can about your email list and then aim for maximum personalization down to a singular level if needed. Should it really matter if 100 subscribers receive an email Monday morning while 200 get them in the afternoon and another 500 get them Tuesday because that adheres to the times they are most likely to open them compared to one mass email to all 800 on the same day?
• Not testing enough – One company proudly explained how they used A/B testing to decide on the email header. Our question was how many testing rounds did you use followed by how big of a demographic from your list did you cover? Your email list is made up of individuals; this can mean you need to perform multiple rounds of testing and then break down large groups of subscribers into subsets to then provide more personalized contact that resonates with them.
• Not being mobile friendly – All emails need to be mobile friendly from subject lines to content to where they are sent if they click a CTA button. Many mobile email boxes display limited amounts of characters so if you regularly go over 50 they might be missing the attention grabbers you are using.

Email marketing is powerful, when done right. When it is done wrong it can be a disaster. Plus the more mistakes you make in the process tends to alienate or eliminate subscribers to your list which is most definitely something you don’t want. Take some time to review these common mistakes to avoid with your next email marketing campaign and see what you can change in the process to increase your engagement and effectiveness.

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