Open your email inbox any day of the working week, and you will likely be faced with a plethora of emails that you do not recall subscribing to. Depending on your mood, these emails might be instantly deleted, marked as ‘junk’, or replied to with a sarcastic remark.
To save your inbound email marketing messages from suffering the same fate, make sure you do not commit these 10 common mistakes.
1. Sending Emails to the Wrong Recipients
Blasting a single email message to your entire list can be ineffective. You will have far superior results if you segment and target your list properly. Email marketing is not about sending out huge quantities of emails, and hoping some recipients will bite. It is more about sending quality, targeted messages to the relevant people.
2. Failing to Personalize
Your marketing emails are much more likely to be read if they appear to be coming from a human being, rather than a robot. Personalize your communications by referring to the recipient by their name, so that you are speaking to them directly. If you know the name of their business, you could also include that to customize the message further.
3. Unattractive Designs
Poorly designed layouts, unattractive color combinations and broken images can lead an email straight to the trash can. It is worth taking the time to choose an aesthetically pleasing email template, as well as a plain-text version, that accommodates various browsers, devices and operating systems.
4. Failing to Grab Attention
If writing your marketing email makes you feel bored, it is likely that the recipient will feel the same. Keep your audience interested with a relevant, attention-grabbing image, and write engaging copy that speaks directly to them.
5. Having No Goal
Every email marketing campaign should have a goal; something that you can define success by. Before you start designing your email, decide on what you are trying to achieve, and take a note of the expected outcome. That way, you can compare the results of the campaign to your expectations, and identify what works and what doesn’t.
6. Making Language Mistakes
Grammatical faux pas, misspellings and broken links have no place in marketing communications. When you are next preparing an email campaign, have at least two people look over it to identify any such errors. It can be hard to spot these mistakes when you have built the email content from the ground up.
7. Being Too Long-Winded
People have busy schedules and limited attention spans. Keep your audience’s attention long enough to get your message across by keeping it under 200 words. Be concise. Get to the point quickly. Use an image to support the message, and close with a prominent CTA.
8. Having a Poor Subject Line
Your email subject line is the first thing your recipients will see, so it is of utmost importance that you get this right. Your subject line should grab the reader’s attention, create a sense of urgency, and give them a clear reason to open the email. Avoid using all caps and excessive exclamation marks; both can instantly kill your credibility.
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Avoiding these common mistakes can work wonders in keeping your emails out of the trash can. The easier you make it to read, open, and respond to your emails, the more your audience will engage with your business.
