Email marketing’s top 5 most (un)wanted

Be on the lookout. There are things out there that can reduce your email marketing efforts to nothing but a pile of wasted keystrokes and bandwidth. These five culprits could kill your email marketing strategy. Here is a brief description of them and some information on how you can keep them from thwarting your plans.

The “One and Done”

You might get some results with a single email, but just one message is rarely enough to have any real impact. You are always better off planning a well-written and well-executed multi-message campaign. Keeping up communication with your customer base or prospects is vital for establishing and maintaining a relationship with them. The more visible you are, the more opportunities you have to do that, just be careful you don’t get blindsided by our next culprit along the way.

The pest

Plan your communication strategy wisely. Showing up in someone’s inbox every single day is a great recipe for a low open rate. There is a difference between being visible and being a pest. Following a few rules of email marketing etiquette will keep you from bothering your subscribers. Keep an eye on your stats and see how your click-through rates, open rates, and delete rates look at varying intervals between messages, then use your findings to put together an effective follow-up strategy.

Captain presumptuous

77 percent of people prefer to get their information about products and services via email. There’s just one catch - they want what they ask for, not what they don’t. Never drop customers from one funnel onto multiple lists. Never assume they want to hear about X if they made it into your funnel inquiring on Y. Mention X in one of your emails and see if they click through to your opt-in. It’s much better than the “forcible entry” approach.

The misplaced messenger

There is no such thing as a universally relevant message. Don’t go the easy route and blast everyone on your list with the same message. Identify the list segments that will benefit from targeted messages, and send to them. You will, for example, not want to send a message geared toward prospects to existing customers or vice-versa. You will only establish and maintain a relationship with subscribers if you speak directly to them, not around them.

The time bungler

You could take years sifting through all the studies about how there are peak times to send tweets, Facebook posts, etc. With email, however, there is more of a curve. There are fewer cut-and-dry formulas for what works best. This is where you come in. Take note of the times and days of the week when you see the best (and worst) responses, then do some A/B testing to figure out when your most productive sending window is likely to be. Invest in tests designed specifically for email marketing, and take the results seriously.

Email marketing is a continuously evolving strategy, so pay attention to how you’re doing it, make note of what works and avoid making mistakes like these as much as possible.