Email marketing can produce the highest ROI when done effectively and professionally. Unfortunately, many companies attempt to initiate an email marketing campaign without proper knowledge of specific strategies and guidelines, or without utilizing a professional online marketing agency experienced with email marketing.
The result is often an ineffective campaign due to one or more mistakes that are actually quite common, yet usually easy to remedy.
Email Marketing Mistake #1 – Vague Subject Lines
The easiest mistake to make is to place all of your focus on the content and none on the subject line. The subject line is the first thing recipients of your email will see, and if it doesn’t grab their attention, into the trash it goes. Regardless of whether the recipient has voluntarily subscribed to your emails, or if you’ve added them as part of a targeted campaign, you need to display something about the content of your email in the subject line in order to pique their interest. Simply stating “July Newsletter” isn’t going to cut it. You need to spice it up a bit: try something like “July Newsletter – The Heat is Rising but Our Prices are Dropping!” or “July Newsletter – The Latest and Greatest Online Marketing Strategies!”
Email Marketing Mistake #2 – Sending Emails to Those Outside Your Target Market
Sending 1,000 emails to targeted subscribers is effective email marketing. Sending 10,000 emails to everyone in your email database or on a purchased list is a mistake. Too many managers are under the assumption that sending as many emails as you can, as often as you can, will increase the chances of achieving a high ROI. The reality is quite the opposite. Sending emails to those who don’t elect to receive them, or to those who may not be your target market for this particular campaign will likely result in annoying many recipients and instill a negative image of your brand. It likely won’t be long before you receive many “unsubscribe” requests.
Choose your target markets wisely: do the research and send emails to those most likely to respond or appreciate your message.
Email Marketing Mistake #3 – Out of Control Design Elements
Of course you’d like your email to stand out from others. But a simple design produced by a professional graphic designer is typically more aesthetically pleasing than an email that contains a multitude of graphic intensive elements. Keep your color palette simple, don’t use more than two or three different fonts, and use fonts that are easy to read.
Including images is fine – in fact, images go a long way towards achieving better results, but be sure that they are optimized for the web. Slow loading times or images that display incorrectly, as well as distracting Flash movies and other elements you might think are clever only detract and distract from the message content.
While these are just a few of the more common mistakes in email marketing, there are certainly a host of others committed everyday by those with little experience in online marketing. Email marketing is an extremely tricky type of marketing strategy can work against you if not executed properly.
Active Web Group is the leading full service online marketing agency on Long Island, a pioneer in email marketing and website development. Our email marketing professionals possess the technical and marketing expertise to help you launch your email marketing campaign right from the email design all the way up to the content of your email newsletter.
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