9 Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

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Email marketing is an integral part of everyday business. Having a solid game plan when you send out an email to your subscribers is the first step to seeing a higher conversion rate.

Sometimes, even if you follow every email marketing tip there is, you have no guarantee of total success. There is always room for error. Here are nine email marketing mistakes to avoid.


1) Sending Out Poorly-Focused Content

Do not send the same email to all your subscribers. Everyone on your email list is interested in the same content. Segment your audience. Do this by having different opt-in forms that offer different information and freebies.

If you have a blog you can place an opt-in form in different areas for your visitors. For instance, your blog’s main focus may be Internet marketing which includes different sub-topics like home-based business, affiliate marketing, marketing information, etc.

Place a relevant opt-in form offering a freebie in each of these categories. When people opt in, they’ll be added to a particular categorized list. As the site owner, you can then send relevant information to this list of subscribers instead of inundating them with irrelevant emails.


2) One-Way Conversations

You want your readers to get to know, like and trust you. Make sure they have a way to connect and interact with you. Your email should be personable and identify you and your company.

At the end of your emails, initiate a two-way conversation by asking your readers if there is something in particular you can help them with, and include a link to your social profiles.


3) Lots of Offers and no Information

When someone subscribes to an opt-in form, they want useful information and not a bombardment of sales and promotional emails. There’s nothing wrong with promoting your products and services in an email. Just be sure to include useful content.

This can be an informative video, a link to a useful blog post or a great infographic. At the end of the email, you can mention any promotions you have and always add value by actually giving away something for free. Constantly promoting your products and services without giving away anything of value for free will only annoy your subscribers and push them to unsubscribe.


4) Unclear Call to Action

To ensure people see your CTA (call to action) for your awesome freebie or discounted product you need to be sure the CTA is clear. Send out an email to your loyal subscribers to let them know about your offer and include a link.

If that link is hidden in a small piece of anchor text, some of your subscribers will have a hard time finding it. Boldly highlight the link, add bright buttons or ask people to click on a picture to get to your landing page. A few considerations are:

1. Make what you need very clear by including words like ‘Head here’ or ‘Click here.’
2. Very clearly highlight the text that leads to the landing page.
3. Repeatedly mention the CTA throughout their email.


5) Belabored Subject Line

Get to the point! Although you want to make the subject line interesting, if your subscribers can’t figure out what your email is about, they become annoyed. A few tips:

1. Keep it short

Make sure your subject line fits in the subscribers’ view screen. There’s no point in having an awesome subject line if they can’t read half of it.

2. When possible use numbers

Examples:

Join 475 people who signed up for my free online course today!
Happy Valentine’s Day! 50% off all our products.
Here is why 85% of small businesses rely on email as their primary acquisition source.

3. Be personal

Use the name of your subscribers in the subject line.

Hi (first name)! Want access to my free new course?


4. Tell your audience what’s inside (be truthful)

Make your subject line descriptive and honest. It should immediately help your readers figure out what is inside the email.


6) A Welcome Email

Sending a welcome email to your subscribers is fine. Just don’t make it a generic one. Make it informative and useful. Include a great freebie or a link to resources that are only for your subscribers. Make a good first impression by saying something other than just ‘hello.’


7) Attention to Data

If you’re not paying attention to data you could end up with an enormous amount of information each time you email subscribers. This includes the open rate, the time of day when most people opened your email, which links they clicked on, etc.

This data can help you improve upcoming email campaigns you’re working on. You can figure out what’s working, what content your audience likes, and what to get rid of permanently.

Optimizing your email marketing campaigns requires four clear factors:

Personalized emails
Clear headers to optimize email marketing open rates
Clear CTA to optimize email marketing click rates
Updated email list


8) Quantity Over Quality

Focus on the quality of your subscribers rather than how many. Every so often you need to clean your email lists.

Remove those people who are not opening your emails. In the long run, you want only an engaged list of subscribers. Most email marketing services have a ‘Clean Up Inactive’ feature that makes this process very simple.

Doing this will reduce your monthly outgoing cost. You may be paying for a plan that is dependent on the number of subscribers you have.


9) Sending Emails at the Wrong Time

Many studies say the best time to send emails is in the late morning during work hours, at around 10-11a.m. If you send emails when no one checks them, your campaign will probably fail.

Use the tips in these nine email marketing mistakes to avoid to help you build a large list, and create relationships with your subscribers by focusing on a good email marketing strategy.


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