Popular Marketing Posts
Email Marketing Mistakes That Could Cost You Your Campaign
Contrary to popular belief, email marketing isn’t dead…or dying…or even injured, for that matter. Get it right and email marketing has the potential to be one of the most spectacularly powerful channels at your disposal. But as is the case with most things, getting it right is easier said than done.
Or should that be, getting it wrong is easier done than you might expect.
While the basic principles of e-mail marketing are the same today as they have ever been, what represents an effective strategy could not be more different. So with this in mind, what follows is an overview of some of the most common e-mail marketing mistakes that could very easily render your entire strategy ineffective:
1 – Cold Calling
First up, cold calling just doesn’t have the power or influence today that it may once have had. And this applies just as much to email marketing as it does to sales. The simple fact of the matter is that if a prospect has had no interaction or connection with your brand prior to you firing an email at them, it’s highly unlikely they will respond positively…or even read it.
2 – Generic Approach
To the average consumer, there’s very little less inspiring than opening an e-mail that’s clearly a generic mass-marketing material. If there is nothing personal about the e-mail, it is unlikely it will be taken seriously. Of course, personalisation of email content – even to a modest extent – can be both challenging and time consuming. Nevertheless, it is the only way of creating genuinely effective marketing emails.
3 – Silly Mistakes
A quick point but an important point nonetheless, if you cannot be bothered to ensure that every e-mail you send out is flawless in terms of content quality and accuracy, you cannot expect your prospects to respond favourably. Even just the tiniest spelling mistake here and there could wreck your entire campaign.
4 – Unsubscribe
One of the most effective ways of annoying your subscribers is to not make it as easy as possible for them to unsubscribe, should they decide to do so. Extensive studies have shown that where ‘unsubscribe’ options are prominent, the rest of the e-mail tends to be more positively received.
5 – Media Mix
From photographs to creative imagery to video clips and so on, research shows that emails featuring mixed media are exponentially more likely to be both read and acted upon than those containing nothing but text. It of course has to be media that’s relevant to your brand/campaign, but in all cases unbroken text can be highly unattractive.
6 – Humour
Is humour the right way to go for your campaign? It could be, but it’s also one of the riskiest of all strategies when it comes to this kind of marketing. The reason being that if you displease, annoy, offend or in any way miss the mark with any number of recipients, you’ll have trouble ever winning them back over again.
7 – Bombardment
Last but not least, exactly how frequently you should send out your marketing emails will be determined by what it is you do and who it is you are targeting. Nevertheless, there is always such a thing as crossing the line and if you make the mistake of bombarding your subscribers with too many emails, you’ll find more choose to jump ship than stick around.