Email Marketing Management Mistakes
Write great content, manage your list well, and the results you’ll get will be both rewarding and motivating. Relationship management is all about common sense and respect, so take a step back if you’re unsure, and treat customers how you’d like to be treated.
1. Your list are full of invalid email addresses
The older your list grows, the more regularly you’ll see invalid addresses. Use Email Software to detect soft and hard bounces and will deal with these addresses automatically. In some cases, the only way to detect that an account is unused is through the permanent out-of-office messages. You can receive the message: “I’m no longer employed by Widgets Inc.,. I’ve moved to a new email address, john@smith.com”. The invalid email list won’t affect your subscribers, but anyway, for your own good, you should clear out the trash every few months. It’ll allow you to maintain a clearer idea of your active readership and list size, and will save your money by avoiding sending to dead addresses.If your customer list is small and the relation with your readers are solid, you can contact the owners of invalid addresses by mail with a postcard asking:Where have you gone? We miss you!
2. Emailing a user without their permission
Sending email to people who haven’t subscribed is what has given email marketing a dirty name. Don’t send emails to a customer unless they’ve expressed interest.There are exceptions to this rule. In a business-to-business context, if you’ve attended an event as an exhibitor and were given the list of all attendees email addresses, there is no damage in sending them a one-off email inviting them to join your mailing list or find out about your business. Just remember that those who do not respond should not be added to your list without permission. And as far as business-to-consumer is concerned, there should be no reason for you to email users without their permission.
3. Using cheap lists
Using 300,000 emails from a $100 CD is not the best idea. These email addresses are mostly dead, and most are acquired through snooping and email extraction from forums. Most will not be from your target market anyway. Just sending aloud marketing message is a sure way to get yourself banned from major Internet Service Providers. Anti-spamming laws are catching fast in most countries, so beware of such tactics.You can either buy a good list of your target group from reputed list brokers, or start compiling your own house list of all past and current prospects, customers, vendors, suppliers, contractors to market to them.
4. Difficult way of unsubscribing
First off all it’s a requirement to have a clearly visible unsubscribe link on any emails sent to an opt-in list.Needs change, and sometimes, a good inbox cleaning is the only way to get back on top of things. If users decide to unsubscribe, it is not necessarily to make them unhappy with your business or what you have to say, so don’t cause them headache. In conformity with the CAN-SPAM regulations, when you receive an unsubscribe request, you have ten days to honor it.If you’re interested to save your readership, here are some suggestions:• Allow them to reduce email volume without unsubscribing completely.• Offer a change-of-address option: Maybe a reader doesn’t want to receive your newsletter in its personal inbox, in this case ask the business address.• Offer an alternative: If you have a blog or publish your newsletter online,offer them the opportunity to bookmark it or sign up via RSS.
5. Sending content that isn’t relevant to what the user signed up for
Users like to know what they sign up for; the frequency, the topics covered, the benefits they’ll get out of it. But first of all they need to be sure that you’ll respect them. They need to know if they’ll be able to unsubscribe in future.If you create a newsletter broadly discussing technology, but find your self focusing on mobile technology in every newsletter, it might be worth considering starting a new group specifically for the topic. Not only will you show your users you respect the fact that they may not want to hear about mobiles, but you also create a second, more direct point of contact with those who are interested.
6. You aren’t dealing with people as individuals
Don’t talk to everyone…deal with individuals. In your business you try to do everything automatically, in this way you save your time. You run the numbers on your sales statistics, but people are not just numbers.Always remember the human element. They are real live individuals who have wishes, needs, and desires just like you. Deal with them that way. Be willing to give away free information…Be willing to help…Give away free samples…Be someone that people like.
7. You aren’t willing to think outside the box
Many internet marketers see only two types of advertising: free advertising such as free links, free classifieds, newsgroup participation, and more. And paid advertising such as banner ads, offline advertising, and paid links.Press releases can get traffic to your site almost overnight if you have something that people want or need. Have you considered setting up your own affiliate program? This is the quickest and easiest way to expand the sales of any successful product or business.
8. No clear objective or strategy
Start with the right goal and marketing strategy. Your first objective should be to establish trust and credibility within your target market. Secondly, get the headship interested enough in what you are selling, so that they are willing to give you their contact information. Your marketing message should be sent out regularly so that the receivers expects it, waits for it, and it shows that you are consistent, reliable, and trustworthy.
9. Boring marketing message or ad copy
A long verbose message is not a way to capture the prospects attention. Whois going to read your unasked for marketing email if you are not even addressing the problem. There are a lot of messages spend countless paragraph stalking about what they offer, their products, services, but there’s nothing in the message to catch the reader’s attention. You need to talk about the problems faced by your target market, their industry, and their issues. Once you establish a tie by acknowledging that you know about their problems, they will be more receptive to your message, and products.
10. Underestimating current customers list
Usually marketers ignore their current customer list, and leave money on the table, buying other list. Even worse, most have no systematic way of capturing their customer’s email and contact details in a common list.A consolidated customer email list can be easily used to sell new products to existing customers or to get repeat orders if done regularly and consistently.Existing customers have seen your product and service before, and are more likely to buy from you again.
11. You renounce too soon
Many persons give up too soon. Hundreds make some mistakes above on their sites,lose a little money, and then renounce believing that the internet just doesn’t work. Sometimes people give up on advertising too soon. They don’t test it enough. Instead of believing that a certain web site isn’t a good place to advertise or that a certain ezine doesn’t bring in responses for you, did you try editing your ad first. Find information on Internet, read through them…Take them to heart…Make changes in your business if needed.
12. Your graphics are overkill
Too many graphics, slow downloads, graphics that sadden your message, and attachments will turn off readers. Keep it concise and simple. Give people something they can use - for example, provide information that makes them want to do business with you. Readers want to know what’s in it for them.
13. Not interested in educating the prospect
The marketers are so focused on sales, that they do not spend enough time with their customers to educate them. Remember that if you service a prospect well, they will most likely convert to a paying customer sooner or later. Use email to send them regularly information, education, free offers etc. until they build enough trust to buy from you.
14. Your emails are full of errors
The high number of errors found in e-mails is astonishing -words misspelled,poor grammar, links that do not work, and so on. These mistakes, however slight,signal a lack of professionalism. They can be easily avoided with some careful editing.
15. You do not test them first
Too often marketers learn by the lack of response. E-mail newsletters are a perfect medium for testing different tacks. Before sending to your entire e-mail list, test out several subject lines, different content, and a few types of graphics and designs on a small number of people. You can tell how many e-mails were opened and which test group received the most responses.