Do’s and Don’ts of Email Marketing

We’ve all been there. You wake up to your phone alarm, roll over to silence it and then instantly check your email. Low-and-behold, you have at least half a dozen marketing and spam emails that landed in your inbox at 3am. Emails with coupons for Bucca De Beppo and Aldo, or advertisements for the newest “products you might be interested in” on Newegg and Amazon.

This is not only lazy marketing, it is bad marketing.

Since the dawn of emails, email lists have been coveted by marketers. Emails are one of the most direct ways to contact your patrons/customers and continually convert them into repeat business. It allows your business to stay in their lives, just so long as they don’t unsubscribe.

An issue we have seen in the recent trend of email marketing is that many poor marketers are taking the BLAST part of e-blast way too much to heart. They are abusing the outlet of customer contact and are illustrating all of the Don’ts that we see when it comes to email marketing.

Don’ts:

• Aggressively demand emails from people – While a good opt-in works, demanding their emails at checkout in brick-and-mortars is how you end up with a lot of NoSpam@Yahoo.com entries on your list. Numerous studies have shown that when it comes to e-commerce, allowing for guest checkout without an account/email increased sales by 30%.
• Constantly bombard your list with emails – This not only will increase your unsubscribe rate, but also desensitizes readers to your brand. These desensitized readers then become false open rates that don’t gain any traction.
• Farm lists – For the love of all that is holy, when you send that intern to rip emails from various websites you are damaging your reputation and brand through irate people having to unsubscribe from you. Additionally, once someone has unsubscribed from your list, most email marketing services like MailChimp and Constant Contact will not allow them to be re-added.
• Send emails in the middle of the night – While the wake-up emails may have a higher open rate, they will have a lower conversion rate. This makes for a wasted opportunity and will, over time, lead to unsubscribes.
• Reuse and resend the same content over and over again – This dilutes your brand and irritates recipients.
• Sell people’s information – It’s illegal and can get you dinged by Google and is just a bad business practice. 

Do’s: 

• Collect data from your customers – This can include things like names so that you can have your template include that which makes the email more personal. Age is also important and birthdays are great for that personal Happy Birthday email.
• Make email marketing sound like a person – People are more likely to buy from people rather than faceless brands. By making your copy sound human, people are more likely to read it.
• Make your email marketing fit your brand and your resources – If you are not a graphic heavy business, don’t force that. If you are a product based business, then don’t use a massive wall of text.
• Provide space in your copy – Walls of text are no fun to read and space makes people feel like they are accomplishing more by moving down the page more easily.
• Segment your list – By knowing who you have on your list, you can target specific segments for products and services that are applicable to them. Then you can email them at appropriate times and appropriate intervals. For example, you are more likely to get opens from 30 somethings at 3:00pm when they are pretending to work but are more likely to get conversations at 7:00pm when they are at home and can get out the credit card.
• Test and track everything – Never assume what you are doing is perfect. Everything changes and can be improved upon. Through proper tracking, your marketing can go to the next level and take your business with it.

If you follow these Do’s and Don’ts, you are guaranteed to improve your email marketing. You will effectively take the blast/shotgun/spray-and-pray approach to a targeted focus that will elevate your business.