When it comes to email marketing, the idea is often to communicate with a large number of contacts in one go. This calls for precise attention to the material, as you certainly don’t desire to suddenly notice flaws being read by thousands of recipients, wasting away all your other amounting efforts. To make the best use of this marketing technique, let’s have a look at several easily avoidable, yet commonly committed mistakes, and what you can do opposingly to carry out victorious emailing content.
Mistake 1: No Setting of Goals
With simple observation, you will notice how any project or general action best meets success with priorly set goals and intentions. Focus on laying out particular and measurable assessing points, with time-based and conveyable relevance. In the case of emails, pay special attention to:
- Deliverability – How many people are receiving your emails?
- Open rate – How many people are opening your emails?
- Click-through rate (CTR) – How many people are clicking included links?
- Unsubscribes – How many people choose to cut communication?
Mistake 2: Leaving Outlines for Later
Let’s face it, if you are dodging the preparation of script outlines due to a busy schedule at the current moment, what makes you think it will be any easier when ongoing customer communication is happening? Procrastination is not a friend in this situation.
Scrambling for ideas under time pressure is usually way more stressful than simply managing and planning ahead. Take time to write outlines for all possible customer interactions. Consider the timeline orders of your drafted messages and the whole process is made easier. That way, you will only have to adjust a few personalizing aspects and all the content will always be ready for sharing with your clients.
Mistake 3: Improper Target Audience
As mentioned in our other guides, part of understanding a well-structured marketing plan is the valuing of a well-selected target audience. Ask yourself, who is your ideal customer? Have you been spending enough time ensuring this qualification process?
Buying email lists is yet another way you can mess up your marketing strategy. Though it seems like an easy solution, partaking in this action will only bring negative consequences. There is no need to destroy your brand’s reputation. We have explained in a previous article how this fails to comply with legal emailing requirements.
Check out that post in order to understand how exactly you can avoid the dreaded spam folder, an email server ban, and a highly-priced penalty. Alongside you will discover whether permission is necessary before communicating via email with strangers. This varies from country to country, so do go out of your way to become familiar with particularly applying laws.
Mistake 4: Disregarding Lead Magnets
Lead magnets can be used to trigger more interest in your recipients. How does it work? You provide some valuable and free content in exchange for email addresses and other contact information. Examples include webinars, e-books, infographics, and more. This is beneficial on both ends and assists you in converting qualified leads into actual customers!
Mistake 5: Boring Emails
If your readers are not attentively caught and in a curious desire for more information, then your copywriting skills are probably lacking. Your body text should be focused, clear and direct. It should be concise, captivating, and remarkably interesting! How else do you expect readers to want more? At this point, you are nothing but a stranger in their inbox, so don’t make them feel like they’ve been wasting time.
It takes just a bit of creative effort and analytical optimization to get your audience hooked and increase the success of all the aforementioned goals we set together. Remember to personalize. Refer to our post ‘’How To Write Engaging Email Content’’ to master this skill.
Mistake 6: Not Refining Lists
Keeping track of your contact list is just as important as creating one in the first place. Be aware of the unsubscribing percentage or ignoring contacts so that you can polish this catalog on a regular basis. Having large send-out numbers doesn’t mean much if no participants are relevant. An ideal list is always up to date and effectively qualified.
Mistake 7: Forgetting Useful Technology Tools
There is plenty of software and online tools out there designed to facilitate your campaign execution. Why waste time when you can assign a series of emails to be sent on their own, on previously set terms? Auto responding can be very useful as well. Make use of such helpful technology and you will encounter an overall improvement in your project management.
Mistake 8: Overloading Readers With Content
Though it is important to remain consistent with customer communication, there is a fine balance to be kept. Don’t send too many emails… Or too few! Remember, we have mentioned how important it is to plan out a suitable timeline, including the temporal distance between each outreach. Wait at least a couple of days before a follow-up.
Overloading the reader can also happen in the body text of emails, so keep it concise and make good use of white space. Remember not to be overbearing with the tone of your sales, the idea is to be informative, not to sound like an exaggerated advertisement. This would immediately interrupt the interest your reader had just begun to develop.
No one wants to be convinced so directly of any truth, but rather to be curiously educated, and then come to the independent realization that your content is indeed valuable. These are crucial psychological tools needed in marketing communication, and we explain everything in more detail in our previously mentioned post, ‘’How To Write Engaging Email Content.’’
Mistake 9: Bad Timing
Who is going to open your email at midnight on a Sunday? Maybe someone out there will, but it won’t be the reliable majority. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the most suitable times to send emails to your customers. This varies between industries, though an averagely good time is around 10 am. The goal is to create engagement, and having the right moment at your advantage can certainly help in the process.
Mistake 10: Placeholder Text
It is needless to say that in order to avoid obvious grammatical errors and inaccurate details, proofreading is a must. Still, you would be surprised at just how many forget to fill in those placeholder text sections. What a nightmare! If a reader opens an email, only to find something as ‘’INSERT NAME HERE’’ as part of the content, you will instantly lose respect and perceived professionalism. Be attentive and don’t underestimate a foggy brain! Double-check! Triple check if you have to. There is no need for such obnoxious copywriting flaws. Dedication is the secret ingredient to wonderful outcomes.
Conclusion
In this guide, we covered 10 mistakes to avoid when curating an email marketing campaign. What to do instead?
- Set goals
- Create outlines
- Set target audience
- Use lead magnets
- Provide engaging content
- Refine Lists
- Benefit from online tools
- Timeline planning
- Use good timing to your advantage
- Check for placeholder text and grammar
By Julia Arguello Busch
