According to Radicati’s email statistics, there are over 4 billion email accounts in the world. That’s a lot of email users! With email being so popular, it’s easy to assume that everyone is an email marketing expert these days. Sure, anyone can learn how to email market, but launching an effective email campaign takes focus and technique. Even the most experienced email marketers make mistakes sometimes, and unfortunately, these mistakes can lead to ineffective campaigns and strategies that fail to deliver desired results. To make the most of your email marketing efforts, here’s a review of critical email marketing mistakes you need to avoid.
Sending without Permission
The best way to sabotage your email campaign before even getting started is by not having permission to email your audience. Most countries have laws against spam, such as the U.S.’s CAN-SPAM law, Canada’s CASL, and Australia’s Spam Act. By breaking these spam laws, a business can find itself in serious legal trouble. Getting permission ensures that your recipients want to receive email marketing content from you and protects your email reputation. Luckily, working with a reputable email broadcaster like US Data Corporation can ensure that your email subscribers are opted-in for you. This prevents you from accidentally emailing people without their permission.
Not Using Targeted Marketing
The “one-size-fits-all” email approach is an old and ineffective marketing strategy. Your business may have different products and/or services that appeal to different types of consumers, so don’t act as if they’re all the same. A couple of ways you can target different groups of consumers is basing your segments on demographics (age, gender, location, race, income, etc.), product interests, and/or buying behavior. The emails you send to brand new prospects should be different from those that are sent to returning customers. The extra work you put into targeting your audience will produce better results than email blasting the same email to everyone.
Failing to Use Responsive Design
According to the US Consumer Device Preference Report, up to 65% of emails were opened on mobile devices in 2014. With the majority of emails being opened on mobile devices now, it is crucial that emails use responsive design to optimize email content that is viewed on smartphones and tablets. Responsive design readjusts email designs (font size, image size, layout, etc.) to adapt to different screens on different devices. Without responsive design, the viewer will be faced with the inconvenience of having to zoom or scroll to see the email.
Not Using Web-safe Fonts
Not all fonts are created equal. When you use a unique font in your email copy, your recipient must have that same font installed on their computers in order to see it in the email. Choosing a web-safe font is super important. If you use a non-standard font the recipient’s computer does not have, there is a chance that the text will display in a different font, or worse, not at all. This generally means sticking to classic standards such as Times, Arial, Georgia, Helvetica, and Verdana. These fonts already exist as a font on practically every computer. If you absolutely have to use a fancy font, embed the text in an image so that it displays the same for everyone.
The first step towards knowing what you need to do is knowing what not to do. By avoiding these email marketing mistakes, you can create more effective email campaigns that will build better customer relationships, brand awareness, and help ensure your emails are successfully delivered. Are you making any of these mistakes? For additional email marketing assistance, feel free to reach US Data Corporation at (888) 578-3282.