Monday, 7 October 2013

8 step you need to avoid in e-mail marketing

 
Femi

As a CEO, marketer, content creator, SEO consultant or blogger, one of the things you wake up doing everyday is thinking how you can win over more clients by the content you produce. One way to achieve this is by doing outreaches via email.

Even in this digital age, emails are still a fundamental part of any business strategy. You want to keep your customers engaged, inform them of promotional offers and intimate them about the development in your company. A well crafted email can help achieve increase in sales.

Employing email as a means of marketing your products or service is crucial to the overall success of your business. If you want to remain in business, you have to continuously build your list and employ email marketing.

Email marketing has been known to have a high ROI. And for this particular reason, it was abused and lost its value. Therefore, to protect customer’s privacy, most email providers upgraded their systems to filter out “unwanted email.”

Since email marketing is crucial to the success of your business, you have to avoid making mistakes that can ruin your reputation and business strategy, using email marketing. Here are top nine mistakes to avoid when using email as a marketing strategy.

Don’t spam
This singular point is crucial. Get it right and you already have 70 per cent chance of success with your email marketing. We get emails all the time from companies we never solicited them from and it irritates us to the bones. Sending emails to people — either by buying email list or using a friend’s list — is considered as spam. Anyone who didn’t expressly indicate interest in your company’s service should not get your email. If such a person gets it, your email will be considered as spam. So, what do you do to avoid such scenario? Build your list gradually. Use opt-in forms on your website; get down the emails of people who visit your store. Give away free stuffs in exchange for people’s email. Do everything legal, but avoid buying email list.

Don’t mislead
Do you get email promising you something in the headline and when you open such mail, you don’t see the offer in the content of the mail. This is a bad technique any marketer can use to force people to open their email. If you promise something in your headline, then by all means, make sure it’s included in the body of the mail.

Let people know why they are getting your email.

To avoid people considering your email as spam, always indicate in the email why they are getting it. Did they sign up on your website? Did they give the email in exchange for a free product on your website?

Provide a way to opt out
Including an option to unsubscribe is a healthy practice. When people decide to opt out, take them straight to the page where they can do so. Creating an intermediary page between the opt-out forms is bad practice.

Segment your list
Having your email list divided into different categories is a standard industry practice. You can use your segmented list to test different things like headlines, design, etc. This will give you an idea of what works and what needs to be improved.

Be regular
When people opt to receive your emails, that means they are ready to hear whatever you’ve got to say. So, do just that. Send your emails at regular intervals and try to stick to it.

Headline matters
With the amount of emails we have to deal with, creating good headlines helps people to decide if they are ever going to open your email. If possible, your headline should tell what your email is all about and what benefit the reader stands to gain. Here are three headline variations picked from one blog post.

1. 7 Simple A/B tests for your blog post.

2. 7 Simple A/B tests that can increase conversions.

3. 7 Simple A/B tests that can increase conversions by 10 per cent or more
Which of the three headlines do you think will get more people to open the email?

Prune your list
Sending emails to people who do not read your emails are a waste of time and effort. That is why you need to track your mails by adding analytic method to it. If you send mail and the person doesn’t open your mail three times in a row, it’s better to remove them from your list. This will save you cost on the long run.

It’s not about you
Remember, like every means of digital marketing like Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click and Email marketing, it is all about offering value to your clients. When sending your mail, avoid pitching sales and talking about yourself. Rather, try to add value to your readers by providing good content.

Email marketing, if done properly, can make your customer understand more about your business and make them ready to buy from you whenever you are offering a product or service.
Ready to send your next email campaign? Avoid the aforementioned pitfalls!

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