Common Email Marketing Mistakes

Many business owners who opt to try email marketing make the mistake of believing any type of email marketing is beneficial. This is simply not true; there are a number of mistakes business owners can make when they organize an email marketing campaign.

Examples of these types of mistakes may include allowing promotional materials to be tagged as spam, not following up with promotional emails, not being prepared for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort and not marketing specifically to the target audience.

Spam

We’ll begin our discussion on email marketing mistakes with spam. Spam is a problem which has reached endemic proportions. Each day Internet users are bombarded with spam from around the world. I’m sure you know the feeling!

This may include a host of unsolicited emails which are promoting products or services the recipients may or may not be interested in purchasing. A critical mistake business owners can make in email marketing is to issue emails which are likely to be construed to be spam. This may result in the emails never reaching the recipient or the emails being deleted, without being read, by the recipient.

Avoiding the potential of falling into the spam category is not very difficult. It basically involves ensuring your promotional emails contain more useful copy than blatant advertising. This will make it more likely for your emails to be taken seriously.

Following Up

Another email marketing mistake often made is failure to follow up on promotional emails. Sending out emails to interested parties can be very beneficial but it is even more beneficial to contact these email recipients by other methods such as mail or telephone to answer any questions they may have and offer any additional information they may require. This type of follow up can be much more effective than simply sending an email and allowing it to fall into the abyss of an overcrowded email inbox.

Be Prepared!

Business owners may also run into the mistake of not preparing themselves for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort. The express purpose of email marketing is to generate increased interest in your products or services. Therefore it is critical for business owners to anticipate an increase in business and be prepared to accommodate this increased demand for products and services. This is important because potential customers who have to wait for products or services may seek out your competitors who are better prepared to provide them with products or services immediately.

Know Your Audience

Finally a critical mistake made by business owners is to not tailor an email marketing campaign to their specific target audience. This can be a problem because it may result in the email marketing being less effective. Business owners typically make this mistake because they fall into the trap of believing that it is more important to reach a large audience than it is to reach a target audience.

You may blindly send your email marketing materials to millions of recipients and only generate a few leads. However, you could send the same email marketing materials to a smaller group of only a thousand recipients who all have an interest in your products and services and will likely generate more leads from this smaller email distribution list. It is not only important to send your message to members of your target audience but to also tailor your message to suit this audience.

Creating an email message which will appeal to a variety of individuals is not as important as creating a message which will appeal to members of your target audience.

Not Having An Auto-Responder

An autoresponder can help your list of clients grow, even send each one of them their own personalized email message. If you choose, you can also follow up each individual email with repeated emails, varying the content whenever you wish. These programs will also allow you to keep track of conversations, and send out broadcast email messages whenever you have news or new products to offer your clients. The best I've found is AWeber.

These are some of the most common mistakes that an email marketer can make. Learn from them and press on. Avoid them and you’ll find your email marketing campaigns taking on a whole new life of their own.

Here's to your success!

Tony