Email Marketing: Don't Make These 5 Mistakes

Lisa Mason
Email marketing is an effective and innovative way to promote your business and enhance your relationship with existing and potential clients. As long as it's done correctly, it has many benefits such as being an inexpensive way to market your company. It also allows you to reach more people faster and easier than with any other marketing tool.

However, when done incorrectly, it can do more harm than good. Customers may be "turned off" by your emails, which will ultimately affect the way they view your company as a whole. For this reason, it's important to not only know what to do but also to know which mistakes to avoid.

When taking advantage of all the benefits linked to email marketing, don't make these 5 mistakes:

1. Using poorly written content with spelling and grammatical errors. This will not make a good impression on potential clients. Nor will emailing a page full of ads instead of using content the reader can relate to or providing links that don't work properly. All of these things will create negative responses from the reader.

2. Making things too complicated is a big mistake that will result in getting your email deleted right away. If it's time consuming or difficult for the recipient to subscribe to newsletters, receive updates or take part in any other interaction with your company, normally, they won't waste their time.

3. Adding so many graphics and other extras that it's difficult to read the email or to determine what you're asking the reader to do, gets confusing and annoying very quickly. The normal response you'll receive from most readers will be to hit that delete button.

4. Accidentally sending out spam and getting your site shut down. Before you can send out commercial emails, you must have the permission of the owner of that email address or it's considered spam. Spamming is illegal so doing it can get you shut down. Problems arise because there's a fine line when it comes to what constitutes permission. Therefore, it's in your best interest to learn the laws.

5. Using CAPITAL letters in the subject line or throughout the article is another common mistake. On the Internet, CAPS are considered yelling. Many consumers consider this to be pushy and they don't normally respond very well to this technique. It would be better to get their attention through providing unique and inspiring content that makes the reader curious about what you have to offer and intrigues them to learn more.

Email marketing is an excellent strategy that can boost your sales and increase your revenue. Nevertheless, it's vital that you don't make mistakes that can get you in trouble or rejected in order to get the most from this form of marketing.

Published by Lisa Mason - Featured Contributor in Technology

Lisa Mason is a freelance writer and social media marketer with more than 10 years of experience. As VP of Special Media for Social Media Sun, she makes sure that readers have access to the most relevant and...  View profile

4 Comments

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  • Han Van Meegerin6/9/2011

    These are still good tips.

  • Han Van Meegerin5/12/2011

    Good tips!

  • Laura Cone4/20/2011

    great job

  • Dina Sullivan4/20/2011

    Great advice.... :o)

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