4 Common Mistakes Email Marketers Make that Result in Lost Revenue | Guest Post

It has long been established that email marketing is one of the most effective methods of getting the word out about your organization. With an ROI of $38 for every $1 spent, there just aren’t any other avenues that come even close.

That doesn’t mean that every email marketing campaign will be successful, however. If you’re not careful as you lay out your campaign, you could find yourself making some mistakes that will end up costing you.

 

Overhyping the Subject Line

We’ve all seen it before. “Amazing results in just one hour!” “ You won’t believe how effective this product is!” Clickbait subject lines have been around on email marketing messages longer than anywhere, and it’s a big turnoff for customers. A sensationalized title that delivers something less than it promises damages the trust you want your customers to have for your company. After a while, they’ll stop opening your messages entirely.

Even something as simple as “Amazing new product!” can backfire if the product in question has been out for more than a month or two. Keep your subjects simple, informative, and accurate. Avoid capitalizing entire words or phrases, and only use special characters when absolutely necessary.

 

Making it Too Difficult to Unsubscribe

This might sound counterintuitive. After all, why make it easier for customers to stop receiving your emails? When customers try to unsubscribe from your emails and can’t do so in just two or three clicks, though, they often just mark your emails as spam. If this happens too often, then email clients will begin to notice. Your sender reputation will be damaged, and your messages will start going directly to other customers’ spam folders.

 

Foregoing Email Marketing Software

Putting email marketing software in place can help your marketing efforts significantly. These software suites put layers of automation in place to ensure that your emails are sent at the right time to the right people, even personalizing the messages different customers receive. You also will have access to business process management tools that will help you to time your messaging and to data to determine the effectiveness of various campaigns. Pay attention to these analytics. They can mean the difference between spending resources on an ineffective campaign and making a few small changes to improve your conversion rate.

 

Grammatical Errors in the Subject Line

One of the fastest ways to ensure that a customer will completely ignore your email is by allowing a simple grammatical or spelling error to slip through. These are damaging anywhere in your email, but particularly in the subject line. It makes you look unprofessional and unintelligent. After all, if you couldn’t bother even doing a simple copy edit before sending a mailing to your customers, then why should they trust you with their business? Before confirming any message templates for send out, give each a thorough read through to remove any major errors. Spelling errors of customer names are particularly egregious, so if it is possible to double check your database, do so.

 

Overdoing It When It Comes to Personalization

While you want to target your email messages to your customers, there is such a thing as too much personalization. One Etsy user shared a story where, after they purchased an engraved spoon from one seller, their emails from the site became flooded with promotions from that same seller. These constant promotions not only had very little positive influence, they actually soured the user’s opinion of the site. The constant advertising for engraved spoons, which the user only ordered as a gift, did nothing to encourage her to do further business. Meanwhile, the opportunity to promote other goods that the user would have been interested in was lost.

The point here is to take it easy a bit when you are personalizing your promotional emails. Just because a user has displayed a particular behavior on your site, don’t immediately focus all of your efforts in that area. Continue to send a variety of messages, while still using the analytics to give you a general idea of how to reach each customer.

Written by Automizy


This article originally appeared on Automizy