Unlimited email marketing is a wonderful tool to get the message out about your products and services widely without spending an arm and a leg. But the process has its pitfalls, so take care to avoid the following dumb things email marketers have been known to do when you conduct your next campaign.
1) Sending bulk emails without an unsubscribe link. The CAN SPAM act of 2003 requires these links on all bulk email. Make sure you’ve included one to avoid being classified as a spammer and having your ability to conduct future campaigns curtailed.
2) Choosing an uninspiring subject line. Given that the subject line is crucial to your click-through rate, don’t make the mistake of making it bland, confusing, or uninteresting. Make it as compelling as possible in order to increase the success of your email campaign.
3) Hard-to-read text. You aren’t sending out an academic dissertation. Using dense paragraphs that are a pain to decipher is a good way to keep your prospects from reading the whole email. Keep your paragraphs short and snappy to retain the interest of your readers.
4) Unclear messaging. In this day and age consumer attention spans are likely to be short. Get to the point and let your prospects know how you can help them without trying their patience by making them read a wall of text first.
5) Not using bcc. If the names of all recipients on your email blasting lists show up on the “to” line of the emails you send it is likely to irritate your prospects by making their email addresses available to anyone receiving the emails. Use bcc to prevent this from happening.
6) Using poor grammar and spelling. Nobody expects a marketing email to be a literary masterpiece, but when spelling and grammatical errors pile up it is likely to make your readers less likely to respond favorably to your messaging.
7) Image and attachment overload. Adding an image or two to your emails is fine, but when they are so dense or numerous that the loading time irritates your prospects you will have defeated the purpose of sending them in the first place.
8) Doing too much in one email. If you have a variety of topics to discuss, or products to offer, don’t feel like you have to cover them all in one email. A good rule of thumb is to have each email focus on one product or idea/call to action. Adding more is likely to dilute effectiveness.