Email marketing is so easy, right? All you have to do is find a list of email addresses and send out your emails and watch the leads pour in… Wrong! Email marketing is only effective if you go about it the right way. Unfortunately, too many newbies get overexcited about email marketing (particularly because it is virtually free) and make a lot of mistakes. Here are the most common email marketing mistakes which you should avoid as a newbie.
Not Getting Permission
It is incredibly important that are of your email marketing recipients opted in. If you are just sending out random emails or collecting email addresses in some shady way, you could be violating anti spam laws. Even if you are abiding by the law, you are going to create a bad name for your company. As any seasoned email marketer knows, spam campaigns do not get any results.
Transaction Emails are Not Opt Ins
If you are selling something online, then your customers will expect emails about their transaction. But this does NOT mean that they opted into your email marketing campaign! Make sure that you ask the customers during their transaction if they’d like to receive emails with special deals or promotions. Sending the emails without permission – no matter how valuable you think the emails are – is spamming and gives your business a bad reputation.
Not Putting Time into Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing is free so you can send out anything without risk, right? Wrong! One of the biggest email marketing mistakes that newbies make is rushing to get their emails out and not taking time to make a stellar email with great graphics and content. If you don’t do this, then your email will be quickly put in a junk file and subscribers will opt out. There are a lot of email marketing services, like AWeber, which can provide you with snazzy templates and make it easy and fast to send fantastic emails.
Not Reminding Subscribers of Who You Are
A very easy mistake to make is forgetting to remind your subscribers who you are. In the very beginning of your email, you should always have an intro which says who you are and why someone would want to hear from you. Never forget that your subscribers are probably getting mass amounts of emails every week and, even if they bought from you or made a donation or whatever, they may have forgotten who you are.
Purchasing Email Prospect Lists
Lots of different companies sell email lists for marketing. Buying one of these is a terrible idea and a waste of money. Even if the lists are opt-in, they are not opt-in for your business. If you send an email, then it automatically becomes spam. The only way that a legitimate email list service works is by promising to send your emails to subscribers for you. That way, they recipients will get the email from the same service for which they opted in.