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Top 10 Email Marketing Mistakes

With email marketing being so widely used these days, we start to see an increasing number of people making very common, yet critical mistakes. Have a look at our Top 10 Email Marketing Mistakes below, and ensure you’re campaigns are performing at their best!

1. Lacking a strategy - Develop a strategy detailing why your recipients will find value in your campaign. Content, key messages and metrics expectations.

2. Outdated list - Develop a permission-based list of opt-in subscribers to increase open rates and reduce undeliverable e-mails. For customer lists, try and contact your customers to ensure you have an updated email address on file. Outdated lists will offer higher bounce rates, and lowe view/click rates.

3. Non-relevant content - Keep your message relevant. Your recipients should find your campaigns interesting and engaging. E-mails with the highest opt-in and open rates are most often thought-leadership topics or personal insights into industry trends.

4. No thought to layout - Keep in mind that your message may be viewed in a preview pane with images turned off or on an e-mail system or PDA that doesn’t support HTML content. Your top-line message must include a link to a Web-based version—just in case.

5. Sloppy design - Adding graphics improves visual appeal, but you need a balance of images versus text. Too much text can be overwhelming and your readers will quickly get bored. Get to the point.

6. Hard selling - If your readers feel they’re being pitched to, your message will not only get deleted but they may even unsubscribe from your mailings. Worse yet, they could report your e-mail as spam.

7. Lack of external links - Newsletters are best developed with stories pointing to an outside Web site. Include a portion of the story with a link to “read more” and have links relevant to specific Web site pages.

8. Poor testing - All e-mail systems will not display your message the same, so be sure to test your campaign across various applications. Format consistency is critical for HTML-based e-mails.

9. Sending at the wrong time - Think about recipients’ time zones and business hours. Recent data suggest higher open rates occur on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

10. Ignoring reporting - Metrics tell you whether your message was successful, or a flop. Analyzing your campaign reports allows you to develop better content, that will engage your recipients.