Email Marketing Blunders and How To Avoid Them
Email Marketing Blunders and How To Avoid Them
Spam - spam email is unsolicited commercial email. This is illegal and should not need discussion. A few tips for beginners include - only use emails of people who have "double opted in" to your webpage and only use a professional autoresponder company such as GetResponse or Aweber.
Sloppiness - starting an email with "Hi firstname" is unforgiveable. Many years ago mail merge was able to send personalised letters to clients and autoresponders can do this too. Getting it wrong and sending your clients or prospects emails starting with "firstname" rather than their actual name is embarrassingly common.
False Urgency - Having a subject line that shouts at your subscriber such as OPEN THIS NOW is unprofessional. You may be keen that they open your email and you may feel anxious to get your affiliate commission but your urgency is not your subscriber's urgency and if you do this you will lose respect first and subscribers second
Copy and Paste: working in affiliate marketing you feel lucky to learn of an upcoming promotion. You feel even luckier that the merchant has provided pre written promotional emails and you copy them and paste them and send them. Your customer though is busy deleting all the copy cat emails they receive and just deletes yours too. Don't take it personally; after all you didn't write it personally did you?
Overusing the trigger - reading in copywriting manuals that you have to trigger human emotions you decide to use the infamous "Bad News" subject line. The bad news you refer to is just yet another sale coming to an end or yet another bonus running out but the subscriber who feels anxiety or fear in seeing your bad news subject line will be bad news for you; they may well feel tricked and unsubscribe. They may in fact feel so sore about your little trick that they lodge a "spam" complaint even though they are double optins. That is "Bad News"!
Funny formatting - I get some emails formatted so that the text is all of 2 inches wide. I generally unsubscribe pretty quickly because such emails are too difficult to read. They are not as bad as those I get with no formatting at all but I don't read those either. For the beginner - format your emails 60 characters wide. It is so easy to get this right it's just not funny.
Links not working - having worked hard at getting people to sign up to your professional double opt-in mailing list you then send them a link that does not work.
All you have to do is send a "test" email to yourself. This is an absolute must. You will spot broken personalisation, funny formatting and links that stink. Testing carefully will pretty much teach you what you need to know to give your subscriber the impression that you are a professional who cares about them and respects them and that's true isn't it?
Email Marketing Blunders and How To Avoid Them - To learn more about this author, visit Alex Newell's Website.
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We all start our email marketing career making some mistakes and here are seven major mistakes I see in my inbox every day.
Spam - spam email is unsolicited commercial email. This is illegal and should not need discussion. A few tips for beginners include - only use emails of people who have "double opted in" to your webpage and only use a professional autoresponder company such as GetResponse or Aweber.
Sloppiness - starting an email with "Hi firstname" is unforgiveable. Many years ago mail merge was able to send personalised letters to clients and autoresponders can do this too. Getting it wrong and sending your clients or prospects emails starting with "firstname" rather than their actual name is embarrassingly common.
False Urgency - Having a subject line that shouts at your subscriber such as OPEN THIS NOW is unprofessional. You may be keen that they open your email and you may feel anxious to get your affiliate commission but your urgency is not your subscriber's urgency and if you do this you will lose respect first and subscribers second
Copy and Paste: working in affiliate marketing you feel lucky to learn of an upcoming promotion. You feel even luckier that the merchant has provided pre written promotional emails and you copy them and paste them and send them. Your customer though is busy deleting all the copy cat emails they receive and just deletes yours too. Don't take it personally; after all you didn't write it personally did you?
Overusing the trigger - reading in copywriting manuals that you have to trigger human emotions you decide to use the infamous "Bad News" subject line. The bad news you refer to is just yet another sale coming to an end or yet another bonus running out but the subscriber who feels anxiety or fear in seeing your bad news subject line will be bad news for you; they may well feel tricked and unsubscribe. They may in fact feel so sore about your little trick that they lodge a "spam" complaint even though they are double optins. That is "Bad News"!
Funny formatting - I get some emails formatted so that the text is all of 2 inches wide. I generally unsubscribe pretty quickly because such emails are too difficult to read. They are not as bad as those I get with no formatting at all but I don't read those either. For the beginner - format your emails 60 characters wide. It is so easy to get this right it's just not funny.
Links not working - having worked hard at getting people to sign up to your professional double opt-in mailing list you then send them a link that does not work.
All you have to do is send a "test" email to yourself. This is an absolute must. You will spot broken personalisation, funny formatting and links that stink. Testing carefully will pretty much teach you what you need to know to give your subscriber the impression that you are a professional who cares about them and respects them and that's true isn't it?
Email Marketing Blunders and How To Avoid Them - To learn more about this author, visit Alex Newell's Website.
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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Joe DagerJoe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma Marketing and organized referral marketing. What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe’s ability to combine his expertise with “out of the box” thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with.” - James R. If you want to learn more about Business901, start a conversation with us. We can be found @ Web/Blog: Business901.com Web/Blog: FundingYourNonprofit.com LinkedIn Profile Follow me on Twitter - Visit Joe Dager's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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