Email marketing can be a great way to connect with customers and grow your business, but it only works if done correctly. All too often, businesses make avoidable mistakes that not only hurt their chances of success with email marketing, but also damage their relationships with customers.
To help you make the most of your email marketing campaigns, we’ve put together a list of the most common mistakes businesses make, and how to avoid them.
1. Not Asking for Permission
One of the cardinal rules of email marketing is that you must always obtain permission before sending someone an email. Failure to do so is not only a violation of the law in many countries, but it’s also incredibly rude and will likely get your emails marks as spam.
Asking for permission can be as simple as including a checkbox on your sign-up form that says “I would like to receive occasional emails from [your business].” Once someone checks that box and submits their information, you have their permission to add them to your email list.
2. Not Having a Clear Purpose
Every email you send should have a specific purpose. Are you trying to promote a new product? Drive traffic to your website? Make a sale? Whatever it is, make sure every email aligns with that goal. Sending too many emails with different purposes will confuse your audience and make them less likely to take any action.
3. Not Knowing Your Audience
before they’ve even had a chance to read it. Keep your subject lines short and sweet – ideally, around 50 characters or less – and make sure they accurately reflect the content of your email. 4. Not Personalizing Your Emails In addition to knowing your audience, you also need to personalize your emails as much as possible. This means using the recipient’s name in the subject line and throughout the body of the message whenever possible. It also means segmenting your list so you can send more targeted messages instead of blanket emails to everyone on your list. 5. Not Making Your Emails Mobile-Friendly With more than half of all emails being opened on mobile devices these days, it’s more important than ever to make sure your emails are properly formatted for small screens. That means using short paragraphs, large fonts, and clear call-to-action buttons that are easy to tap on a mobile device. 6. Not Creating compelling Content Just because someone gave you their email address doesn’t mean they want to hear from you every day (or even once a week). If you want people to actually read (and click) your emails, you need to give them something worth reading (and clicking). That means creating compelling content that’s relevant to your audience and getting straight to the point without filler or fluff. 7..
