Quick Tips – 5 Email Marketing No No’s

You may have noticed an increase in articles from me about Email Marketing lately. Other than it being one of my online areas of specialty, it’s also one of the lowest-cost / highest-return forms of marketing (online or offline); and with my background in wholesale and retail, show me something with such impressive returns from such a small outlay, and I can’t help but get excited!

Forgive me if I’m preaching to the converted, but if your company (no matter what your size or industry, B2B or B2C, there’s no excuse!) is not at least considering email marketing (especially with all the slashed marketing budgets lately), then you are seriously missing out.

However, whether you are harnessing the power of this tool or not, with such a low cost it’s no surprise how many companies are making the same mistakes with their email marketing.

“Companies can’t afford to be making such simple mistakes and missing potential sales” said UK Managing Director Nick Gold of Emailvision.

“The fundamental aims of any campaign should be high deliverability, targeted mailing, maximum click-through rates and basic personalisation – don’t let the email be the reason customers go elsewhere.”

Statistically, email and search continue to return the strongest online performance. On its own, email has been shown to increase purchasing likelihood by 50%.

Right, I’ll hop off my soap-box now and get on with the reason for this blog article. Here are 5 of the top mistakes companies make, and how to avoid them yourself …

1/ Trying too hard

Don’t design your email as if it were your website home page. Avoid moving graphics which may not render properly in your customer’s inbox. Encourage readers to click through to your website instead.

2/ Using a ‘no-reply’ address

Email Marketing is meant to build a relationship with your customer! Avoid sending from a ‘no-reply’ address. If you’re doing it because you don’t want to filter through which emails are ‘yours’ and which are related to your latest email campaign, just set up a dedicated inbox for your campaign replies.

3/ Missing information

Don’t let gaps in your database cause gaps in your email campaigns. These days, customisation is king, so ‘Dear ____________ ,’ isn’t going to win you any fans. Before your next campaign, check what information is missing and fill in the blanks!

4/ All image, no text

A purely image email should be avoided like the plague. Many email clients, such as Gmail, suppress images as the default setting. Consider a better text to image balance; or at least add a little text below the image to describe the image and tempt your customer to turn images on or view the web-based version of your email. Sure, they can turn images on when confronted with a blank email, but putting that requirement in the way of your message getting through just results in wasted marketing efforts.

5/ Spam

One of the most common issues getting in the way of successful email marketing is also typically the easiest to fix. Professional email marketing solutions provide a spam check test to ensure your email will make it through, and give you tips about what’s been ‘flagged’ so you can fix your campaign before you send it out. Using a spam check test is the easiest way to learn what to avoid. In general though, common spam triggers include an unusually high ratio of images, TOO MANY CAPITALS, excessive punctuation!!! and certain keywords such as free, trial, money and as seen on tv (this list goes on and on, running a spam test before your next campaign is worth the extra effort).

Got any success stories or tips to share about the results you’re already getting from email marketing? Share your experience by adding your comments below.

Even if you’re not in charge of marketing, join my club and champion the cause of harnessing the power of email marketing for your company in 2010.

(PS: Yes, I do realise that image of the Pug puppy in a chair has nothing to do with my topic, however I thought I’d save you from the typical boring ‘@’ symbol over the top of an envelope that everyone else seems to uses when talking about email marketing)