Sometimes email gets overlooked as a marketing tool. You may even have heard some industry experts saying that email marketing is dead. But it’s still a powerful and effective tool—if you use it appropriately.
There are certain things you shouldn’t do with your email efforts. Here are three things to stay away from. Not only are they ineffective, but they can actually damage your credibility.
1. Boring or unclear subject lines. We all still get a lot of email. And we don’t have time to read through everything to find out if it’s important. The subject line is our first clue. When you send out an email make sure it’s clear what benefit your reader will get from reading the email. Make it interesting. If the subject line is boring—or sounds like every other email in the inbox, who wants to read that? Make sure your subject line and the rest of the email are in sync. People HATE “bait and switch” communications. Deliver what you promise. And don’t sacrifice clarity for cleverness.
2. Inactive recipients: Some marketers fall into the trap of thinking that if they just mail to a bigger list they’ll get a better response. It’s the quality of your list that’s important—not the quantity of names. If you mail to 10 uninterested people, you’ll be ignored 10 times. If you mail to 100 uninterested people, you’ll be ignored 100 times. And there’s a good chance that some of those 100 people will complain about unwanted email from you. This doesn’t mean you should never test inactive names, but don’t keep hounding people who don’t respond. They’re not responding for a reason.
3. Emails from Companies: Do you really want to get an email from a company? It’s OK if someone signed up to get a coupon or special offer via email. But if you’re sending out any kind of message, make sure it comes from a person. Otherwise your email will come across as spam—something you definitely don’t want.
Email isn’t evil. And it’s not dead as a selective marketing tool. Just make sure you only use it with people you know and people who want to get communication from you this way.
What kind of emails do you actually enjoy receiving?