Techniques 2010 – Common Email Marketing Mistakes. Part 1.
Make no mistakes!
Email marketing is very profitable business, and like every business it has rules. Here are few topics to make your email marketing business more stable and profitable. Don't make mistakes listed below, and you'll see how your email marketing business grow!
You do not have a permission-based mailing list. Unless you have the recipient's permission, you may be sending spam, which is against the law. Too many business owners take shortcuts and buy e-mail lists or compile them in unethical manners, such as harvesting them from the Web. Spam also hurts the reputation of your business. The CAN-SPAM Act provides strict requirements about what you can and cannot do; for more information, go to the Federal Trade Commission Web site.
Your content is poor or nonexistent. The more ads your e-mails contain, the faster people will hit delete them. E-mail marketers frequently send nothing of value to the reader. Just as people accept advertising and promotion in a magazine because they want to read the content, the same principle holds true in e-mail. You need to provide them with something that they desire. Interesting and topical content, albeit brief, should hold their attention long enough for you to market yourself successfully.
Your emails are full of errors. The amount of errors found in e-mails is astonishing — words misspelled, poor grammar, links that do not work, and so on. These missteps, however slight, all signal a lack of professionalism. They can be easily avioded with some careful editing; don't let these avoidable mistakes happen.
You make readers jump through hoops. If you want someone to subscribe to an e-mail newsletter or sign up for updates about your product or service, do not make them fill out endless online forms, click through multiple pages, and provide unnecessary information. The more difficult you make it, the less likely they will be to subscribe. All you really need is their permission and their e-mail address.
Your "from" and "subject" lines are poorly chosen. Pay particular attention to the "from" and "subject" lines, because often people will determine that they do not know the e-mail sender and delete it immediately. Be clear: The "from" line should be the exact company or newsletter name with which they signed up. The subject line can be the name of the newsletter or a well-thought-out, brief headline that grabs their attention.
