Email Advertising Mistakes to Avoid
Email marketing is used by many businesses, from small business to huge corporations. This is because it is widely recognized that using emails to communicate with your customers has many benefits, ranging from simply creating a positive image of your business, to actively promoting sales.
However, unless your email campaign is well planned, and properly executed, it can have serious negative effects on your business.
To ensure that your email marketing efforts do not lead to your clients developing a poor image of your company and unsubscribing from your lists, there are a number of mistakes you should avoid to make your email marketing strategies more effective.
Consumers like to feel that your business regards them as a person, not just a number in your database. Addressing your customer by name rather than as ‘Dear Customer’ helps to personalize your message for the reader.
Most people reading emails are busy people so don’t bury your main message well down in the body of your email. Most of your readers are unlikely to ever get down that far when reading. Hit them with your important main message right at the start, then once you have their interest, provide the details further down in your email.
Many people online these days are wary about providing their personal information, and that includes their email address, to anyone online. If you are asking people to optin to your list, make sure you clearly state that their information will be kept confidential and secure and that you will never sell their information and that it will be kept confidential and secure. Failure to do this will result in you losing many potential signups.
The laws and regulations regarding the use of email marketing vary from country to country. You should research to determine which of these requirements relate to your email campaigns and ensure that comply fully with them. Otherwise you may find yourself in legal trouble with the authorities in one or more countries.
Manage your customer database effectively. If customers ask to be removed from your list, or to have the email address or other personal details updated, make sure it is done in a timely manner.
Don’t assume that you know exactly what your customers want. Give them the opportunity, through comments, questions and suggestions etc to provide you with feedback about what you are offering them, and what they want.
Ensuring that you pay careful attention when planning and operating your email campaigns will help to build up customer loyalty providing you with a list of satisfied customers. Remember it is relatively easy to sell something to a customer once, but much more difficult to get them to keep coming back time after time.
