10 Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

A lot of experts within various industries will be quick to say that purchasing email lists are not a good move; it makes a lot more sense to build your own lists naturally through customer inquiries and successful transactions. If today was 1950 then that would be great advice, but in the 21st century businesses should definitely buy email lists to jumpstart their marketing efforts. Here are six big reasons why:

1. The law of averages definitely works against businesses who solicit customers via email in most cases, but it is still the most effective form of advertising in the world today. From a cost perspective, it simply makes sense.
2. No other form of advertising can produce same-day results for businesses, and that’s why 98% of all Fortune 500 companies rely on customized email lists for reaching potential buyers within their industry.
3. In terms of cost, buying email lists are usually 12 times less expensive than any form of print media or 25 times less expensive than television or radio. The true difference in price kicks in the second time an email list is used…because from that point forward it is always completely free advertising.
4. Likewise, email lists can build quite a following if implemented correctly. In certain types of campaigns, it is entirely possible to reach more than the original target audience just by word of mouth through social networking alone.
5. With the recent explosion of smart phones in today’s marketplace, companies who buy email lists are often more in touch with younger generations and the mainstream media.
6. If you’re not currently using email lists to gain an advantage over your competition, then it’s very likely that they are using that type of technology to slowly leech away your customers.

A quick Google search of the term “AutoResponder” yields a whopping 8.4 million hits, with the first ten pages of results dedicated almost exclusively to companies that are marketing this type of product for purchase on their website. The problem for consumers kicks in about the time that they realize with so many products and services to choose from, picking a single AutoResponder for their business needs is just about impossible. Here are a few pieces of advice to simplify that process:

• Do not get too swept up in the features themselves; most autoresponders have far more customization options than the average consumer will ever need. As long as emails can be personalized and your email list can be freely edited, the product should be sufficient for an everyday campaign.
• Be very careful with free autoresponders. Some of them are excellent overall, but by agreeing to the service contract you are also giving that company to market products to everyone on your email list. In some cases they will spam your potential clients so badly that your personal messages will be far less effective.
• Likewise, do not think for a moment that the most expensive AutoResponder available is naturally the best on the market. While it may have some extra features that would certainly come in handy, it is also probably designed with huge corporations in mind that send out millions of emails per day.
• Once you narrow down your autoresponder choice to just two or three products, feel free to download the trial of the software and conduct a limited test run by soliciting friends, family members, and people within your organization. Until the software is thoroughly tested and deemed worthwhile, do not even think of uploading your main email list into it.

The days of surviving on one email address alone may seem like little more than a distant memory for some consumers, but it is still an entirely possible scenario with a little bit of upfront planning and a careful look at what the various email service providers have to offer. After a little bit of careful digging, many users discover that today’s email accounts come with so many customizable options that there is little reason to play the spam juggling games anymore; it is entirely possible to get a fantastic email client through just one service provider.

So which one to choose? That’s certainly a tough call because there are many excellent options available. Some of the more popular names come from Windows, Google, and Yahoo! but there are also viable options from Mozilla, Opera, and independent sites like Mail.com. All of these software options allow users unlimited storage as well as the ability to apply multiple filters for just about anything under the sun, so in some aspects it is difficult to go wrong with any of them. With that said, however, here are a few key features you should keep an eye out for:

Online Compatibility
In today’s modern age of smart devices and Wi-Fi, it makes little sense to choose an email client that is tied down to a single computer system. For that reason alone, an online email service provider is usually a better choice in the long run.

Productivity Tools
Gmail and a few other email service providers have recently introduced an entire productivity suite of tools and gadgets that serve the needs of small businesses very well. While these options are certainly not mandatory, they make great added features.

Forwarding/Setup Options
Even though you may be moving on to new email accounts, it is nice to have a service provider that will allow your old addresses to be forwarded automatically. Some of the better email clients can route hundreds of email addresses at once and they can also be setup to respond to numerous groups of people with the appropriate address. These options truly make life easy so they should not be overlooked.

People ask us all of the time for the magic formula that makes our email marketing campaigns such
a success, yet when we give them the answer it almost seems like they are offended. In fact, in most
cases they flat out think that we are lying to them because they cannot comprehend that building a solid
email list could be so simple. We are going to give the same answer anyway though because it is 100%
true, and those who put these email marketing techniques into practice usually end up receiving more
than their fair share of the pie when it comes to connecting with consumers or generating new leads.

So what is the magic formula for email marketing success? Forget about email marketing for a moment
and take a long, hard look at whatever you’re trying to sell. Once you’ve envisioned the product or
service in your mind, think about why the average consumer would want to buy it. Is it something they
need? Would it make their life easier? Will it increase productivity inside another business?

Next, start putting these thoughts on paper because you’re about to write an article or two about them.
Now, you may not think that you’re qualified but nobody knows your product like you, which is why
you’re the only person for the job. This article does not need to be some crazy sales speech with a
bunch of gimmicks either; just tell consumers how your product will enhance their lives.

The magic formula for email marketing success is to think like a consumer and give clear, honest sales
copy to your possible clients. Build your email lists with people who have a positive outlook on your
company and let them know that you appreciate their patronage; the rest will fall into place all by itself.

Since the massive surge of popularity in social media, every email marketer has been wondering whether they will still have jobs in the future. While your job can’t be guaranteed, you can work to create an integrated email and social media marketing strategy to keep your customers happy and engaged.

First, dedicate a portion of your email to social media. Whether it’s in the top navigation or your footer, keep the location constant so that customers know where to find it when they want to. Allow your customers to choose which network they want to follow you on – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus (coming soon) and/or any other one that fits your email list. If your email campaign calls for it, also give them the option of sharing via their preferred social network. ShareThis is an online platform that you can implement on your site to allow users to share messages across the web.

After you’ve shown your customers how to follow you, devise a strategy to keep your email list engaged in both email and social media. It’s important to stimulate and engage your social media followers. Start conversations, ask for opinions, share photos…basically anything that will evoke emotion with your audience and cause them to respond. Relate these actions can be related to opens and clicks on your emails. If you have the resources available, try installing some tracking software to learn who your most active fans are and see how they promote your brand. Context Optional, Shoutlet and Spinback are just a few of the many options available and come equipped with different features for tracking social media influencers. They should also have a solution for putting an email signup on each of your social network pages. Most will give you a free or reduced-rate trial so that you can determine if their solution is right for you.

In order to keep both your email and social media streams effective, make sure the content of each doesn’t overlap. Treat each outlet individually and design promotions and creative for each. Keep each network up to date and use a planned posting strategy (similar to the frequency you send mail your email list) so as not to fatigue your fans. Try using email to promote your sales while keeping your social media as more of a soft sell approach – or vice versa. If you’re able, take it one step further and create separate promotions or sales that cater to each social media’s audience. This will reward your customers for following you and will keep them engaged in your brand.

You can also use your email list to promote your social media presence. Be sure to point out the differences in each medium and let them know that they will receive the most value by following you in as many places as they can. Start by developing campaigns that specifically drive your email subscribers to follow you through social media. Contests and sweepstakes do an especially good job at this. They can increase engagement of your current email followers and add new fans to your pages. Including an extra incentive for sharing the sweepstakes with their friends is an added bonus for both the customer and you. Once the campaign is viral, it costs you practically nothing and you gain new customers in the process.

Another way to use email to drive followers to your social media is during the unsubscribe process. If your customers decide that they no longer want to receive your emails, present them with your social media options on the unsubscribe page. Here, they can choose to interact with your company through the method that is most convenient to them. And even though you have lost an email subscriber, you may have gained a highly engaged social follower.

All in all, your customers will decide where and how they want to connect with you. It’s up to you as an email marketer to work closely with your social media team to create a highly integrated and coordinated approach for communications. Remember to report on social media engagement in a similar manner as email. Consider likes, comments and unliking the same way you do opens, clicks and unsubscribes and you will find common ground for your company’s statistics.

Being accused of spamming can shut down your email marketing campaigns and make things very difficult for you. Here are eight simple things you can do that can help you avoid being accused of spamming.

1. Keep track of who opts out of your email list and make sure to remove these people.
Keeping good records can definitely help keep you safe as far as spam is concerned. You should take every opt-out request seriously. In fact, according to CAN-SPAM rules, you have to remove anyone who opts out of your list within ten days. Get into the routine of implementing remove requests every few days, as well as right before each mailing you send out.

2. Include a privacy policy on your website and link to it in your opt-in form.
Including a privacy is not only just good business sense, it can also help to decrease your opt-out rate. People will feel more comfortable giving you their contact information and joining your email list if you provide reassurance that you won’t abuse their information.

3. Do your research before you sign up for an email service provider.
When it comes to email marketing, you’re judged by the company you keep. If you join a disreputable email service provider, you’ll be the one who ends up getting into trouble. These email service providers can include list brokers, web-based email service providers, and deliverability service providers.

4. Be careful if you use a rented email list.
Before you mail to any rented list, be sure to ask the provider to see the opt-in form they used to collect the email addresses. This way you can be sure that the people on the rented email list will actually be interested in what you are promoting to them. Besides that, you also need to make sure that the people on the rented email list actually gave their permission to the list broker to sell or rent their contact information.

5. Use a return address that has enough room.
Be sure that whatever email account you’re using has enough room before you send a mailing out. You’re probably instructing people to opt out of your list by clicking on a link or emailing a specific address, but you’ll inevitably get people who will simply click reply to the message you sent them. If you lose any unsubscribe requests because your email account doesn’t have enough room to accommodate these people, you can get into a lot of trouble if you don’t remove them from your email list.

6. Include clear directions on how to opt out of your email list.
Your message will be flagged as spam right away if you don’t provide a clear and easy way for people to unsubscribe from your email list. Be sure to include a link for opt-outs to click on, or other instructions for how they can be removed from your list.

7. Use a real from address.
Your “from” line needs to be accurate and valid, and in no way misleading or false. You can use your business name or your own name for this purpose. In addition, you should also make sure that your email address is clear enough so that your email list subscribers will recognize you, since some ISPs don’t show the “from” line when people use web mail.

8. Use a genuine and non-misleading subject line.
Besides your from address, your subject line also needs to be valid and not misleading. If you promise something in your subject line, be sure that you deliver on that promise in your email message.

Email marketing is a great way to reach your customers and increase your profits. Here are 10 simple email marketing strategies you can use to make money.

Strategy #1: Encourage repeat customers by offering regular specials.
One good strategy is to send you email list regular messages that contain information about all of your specials and promotions. Sending your email list regular discounts will encourage people to purchase from you and help to turn your customers into “regulars.” It’s true that it’s cheaper to keep and existing customer than it is to acquire a new one, so market to your email list regularly and turn your contacts into lifetime customers!

Strategy #2: Establish trust and credibility by sending free, quality information.
Internet shoppers are suspicious by nature, so it’s important that you take advantage of mailing to your email list in order to build a relationship and establish trust and credibility. One of the best ways you can do this is to send them free, quality information that you know will be of use to them. Once you establish trust, your email list will be much more receptive to your marketing messages and you’ll have a better chance of converting subscribers into customers.

Strategy #3: Follow up with your best leads.
Email is a great way to stay in touch with your client base and follow up with people you’ve talked to personally but who haven’t purchased from you yet. You can send out a quick email to your email list letting everyone know that you’d be happy to answer any additional questions they may have about your products and services. This will help to increase your chances of closing the sale.

Strategy #4: Host customer only events.
Rewarding your customers is one of the best ways to capitalize on your email list. If you have a website for your business, you should set up a special page on your site that only your customers can access. Then you can send a message to your email list letting them know how to access this special customer only page and what they can find there.

Strategy #5: Include promotions in your appointment reminders.
If you sell a service (as opposed to a product), one great way you can take advantage of your email list is to use email to send your customers appointment reminders. Then you can include special promotions and coupons on those appointment reminder emails in order to encourage repeat business.

Strategy #6: Offer loyalty coupons via email.
You can send each of the customers on your email list special emails containing coupons that they can use in your store or on your website. Be sure to make these coupons valid for a limited time only, to help motivate customers to purchase from you as soon as possible.

Strategy #7: Send follow-up offers to your customers.
A lot of marketers refer to follow-up offers as “upsells.” An upsell is a product or service that is complimentary to the product or service your customer already bought. People are generally more receptive of upsells because you’ve already established enough trust to make the sale, and now you’re offering another quality product or service that they can use in conjunction with what they already bought. Be sure to send everyone on your email list who is a customer follow-up offers!

Strategy #8: Encourage “send to a friend” referrals.
Email marketing is a great way to get referrals because it’s so easy for your customers to forward your emails to their family, friends, and coworkers. Be sure to remind your email list that they can send your messages to anyone else they think might be interested in them. You could even run a special promotion where you give away something for each referral someone on your email list sends you.

Strategy #9: Deliver your product electronically.
Email is the perfect way to deliver your electronic products (like ebooks or e-courses). You can significantly increase your profits if you use email to deliver products because you won’t have to pay for storage, shipping, packaging, etc.

Strategy #10: Use email marketing to create recurring revenue.
Finally, if you’ve had a lot of success with a particular industry or activity, you could start sending your email list a regular newsletter containing tips and advice. You could easily get away with charging around $29 per month as long as you’re providing quality information that your email list can’t get for free somewhere else.

Before you send anything to your email list, you should take some time to prepare your message properly. The better you craft your message, the higher your response rate will be and the more money you can make. Here are seven questions you should ask yourself before you email your list.

Question #1: What action do you want your readers to take?
What exactly do you want the people on your email list to do? Sign up for a newsletter? Buy a product? Click on a certain link? You’ll get much better results from your email marketing campaigns if you focus your message on the specific action that you want your email list to take.

Question #2: What is the benefit to your readers if they take this action?
Your readers have one main question: “What’s in it for me?” If you send a message to your email list and ask them to do something, figure out what benefit your readers will gain from doing what you want them to do and then use that benefit to help craft your email message. If you answer that question for your readers, they’ll be much more likely to do what you want.

Question #3: How will you create a sense of urgency in your email?
One of the most important things you need to do when you send your email list a promotion is to create a sense of urgency. If your readers don’t take action right away, they probably never will. You can mention that you have limited supplies, that the offer will only be valid for a short time, or something similar.

Question #4: How many compelling benefits does your offer contain?
If you are going to talk about more than one benefit in your email, then it’s a good idea to use bullet points to list them all. People tend to scan text that they read on their computers, and putting your most important information in a format that’s easy to find quickly will help your offer to be more successful.

Question #5: How much content do you need?
Once you’ve identified the benefits you will include in your message, you’ll probably have a better idea of how much copy you need to include. Testing shows that emails that contain bullet points generate a better response when they aren’t longer than one and a half pages. If you’re going to send your email list a personal letter without bullet points, aim for about three quarters of a page.

Question #6: What links will you include, and where will you put them?
If you’re going to include links in your email, be sure you don’t put them in too early. The call to action that contains your link (for example, “Click here now”) should be included after you’ve presented the benefits of your offer and created a sense of urgency. If you are giving away something for free, on the other hand, it might be a better idea to include the link earlier on in your email.

Question #7: Who is your audience?
What audience are you targeting? Are you mailing to your newsletter subscribers? Customers who’ve already made a purchase? Potential customers? People you’ve met in person? Email campaigns that are specifically targeted to who you are mailing perform much better than untargeted email campaigns. You can greatly increase your response rate by speaking directly to your audience. Be sure that the very first sentence of your email includes a reference to the specific relationship you have with your reader. For example, for an existing customer you could say something like, “John, thank you for purchasing [product].”

If you want to grow your email list quickly, it’s important that you create a good opt-in offer that will encourage people to subscribe to your list. For example, you don’t just want a basic opt-in box that says, “Sign up for our free newsletter.” There’s too much information missing here for many people to want to sign up. What kind of newsletter will they get? How often will it come? What’s in it for them if they subscribe? Your opt-in offer should answer these questions if you want to be successful.

The way you write your opt-in offer should really connect with your target audience. You want to get visitors excited about opting into your list and give them a clear idea of the benefits of doing so.

Here are some basic rules you should keep in mind if you want to create compelling opt-in offers and grow your email list.

Rule #1: Emphasize benefits, not features.
This rule speaks to one of the most important parts of creating a good opt-in offer. You have to let people know what’s in it for them if they subscribe to your list. To do this, you should emphasize the benefits of your product or service, rather than its features.

A feature is one of the components of functions of your product or service, while a benefit is something the product or service will do for your customer to solve their problem or answer their question. You can hook visitors by telling them how they will benefit from your offer.

Rule #2: Include a strong call to action.
You can’t just say something like, “Subscribe now to our free newsletter…” You have to tell visitors specifically what you want them to do and how you want them to do it. The call to action should tell people exactly what action you want them to take. It should also create a sense of urgency to persuade visitors to act now, before leaving your site.

For example, a better call to action would be something like, “Click here now to subscribe to our free newsletter…” This call to action tells visitors exactly what you want them to do and how to do it. Don’t leave anything to chance where collecting your opt-ins is concerned.

If you want people to give you their names and email addresses, you need to tell them (“Enter your name and email address in the fields provided”). If you want people to click through to your subscription page, then you need to tell them that too (“Click here now to subscribe”).

Rule #3: Include a link to your privacy policy.
Most people are reluctant to give out their personal information to someone they’ve never met before. You can ease their fears by including a link to your privacy policy on every page of your website. This shows people you are dedicated to protecting their privacy and helps them feel safer about giving you their email address.

It may seem like a small detail, but it will make a huge difference in how many opt-ins you get because it will show that you are a reputable company. Every online business should have a privacy policy. Don’t make the mistake of cutting and pasting a privacy policy from a popular company onto your own website though, because your privacy policy needs to be specific to your business.

Your privacy policy should state specifically what information you will collect from your visitors and how you will use it. You don’t have to write one from scratch though; you can use the privacy policy generator available at http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/privacypolicygenerator.shtml.

This site will ask you specific questions about how you will collect and use visitors’ information and then generate a privacy policy for you for free. The program even writes the HTML code for you and emails it to you so you can copy and paste it onto each page of your website.

One question that is on every email marketer’s mind is – how many emails should I send to my email list? This is a simple question with multiple answers. Spend some time testing campaigns and you can easily determine when your customers have had enough or when they respond the best.

Day of the Week

Chances are you probably already send emails on different days of the week. If you haven’t already, compile a report showing your email statistics by day. Then compare them to see if any days perform higher than others. It might be helpful to keep both a quarterly and year to date comparison to allow for swings in statistics due to holiday seasons.

If you’re still not sure which day of the week performs the best, try testing a non-time sensitive message. Because this test can take at least a week to deploy, it would be best to use a basic communication or update instead of an offer or sale notice.

First, randomly split your email list into seven segments. If you prefer to test on a portion of your list, make sure that the sample sizes are large enough to produce a significant result. Then send the same email at the same time with the same subject line and creative to one segment per day. Determine the winner from which day had the highest open, click and/or conversion rate – or any other success metric you’d like to use.

Time of Day & Time Zone

Another important testing option for your email campaigns would be the sending time. Most likely, your customers are already getting tons of emails first thing in the morning. If your email falls into the middle, you might not be getting the attention you’d like and your open and click rates might suffer.

Start by selecting a few small segments from your email list to test on – for example, three segments of 10% each would probably be a significant testing group. Then determine the timing for each segment of your email – mid-morning, just before lunch, lunch, just after lunch, early afternoon, etc. Keep in mind how the sending time corresponds to each time zone across the U.S., but if your samples were selected randomly, this shouldn’t pose a problem to your testing. Then send your email at the regular time to 70% of your list and send the remaining segments the email at the test times you determined. Calculate a lift or decrease in the test segment email statistics compared to the regular time statistics to get the winner.

If you have the zip code available for your email list, use them to segment your list according to time zones. Then send your email campaigns at the winning time you determined in the prior test for optimized email statistics and revenue.

Cadence & Frequency

The time between each email is another factor that can be tested to determine whether your customers are satisfied with your email stream. If you feel that you may be sending emails too close together, try withholding small segments of your list and putting them into a separate email stream. For example, if you typically send emails three times per week, choose two small segments of your list to test with. One test group should get two emails per week, while the other gets only one. Continue this pattern for at least a few weeks so that you have an ample amount of time to collect data. Then compare the results of the test groups to the rest of your email list to see if there is any difference in overall email statistics.

If you have the type of business model that calls for multiple emails per day, try setting up the same testing situation. Ensure that there are groups of customers who only receive one email per day, some receive a maximum of two and the main group receiving as many as you like to send. Again, compare the results to your normal situation to determine whether there is a benefit or harm in sending your desired number of emails.

Preference Centers

Setting up a preference center is one incredibly easy way to give customers the exact number of emails they want. You give your customers the option to choose how often you communicate with them – daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly – and the types of messages you send. Most ESPs have the functionality to accommodate this, or least the ability to create a rolling suppression list for each of the frequencies you offer.

Choose the messages you send wisely since you will be limiting the contact you have with your customers. Make sure you communicate your most important offers to them in the timeframe you are allotted. If necessary, create separate versions of emails with multiple messages for those who wish to be contacted less. In addition, be sure to offer your customers alternative methods for receiving your messages. Facebook, Twitter and text messages are all popular options you can offer to supplement your emails.

Transactional Emails

Transactional messages such as order confirmations, shipping notices and password resets are all business in nature and shouldn’t be considered part of your marketing stream. In most cases, it is imperative that your customers receive these emails regardless of their opt in status and as many times per day or week as necessary. Testing on this type of email is not recommended unless there is a specific need for it.

Success Metrics

The best indicator of whether your customers have had enough of your email messages is the unsubscribe rate. There will always be a constant churn of email addresses through your list. A major spike in unsubscribes or complaints suggests that customers are not happy with your email practices. If this is the case, try testing cadence and frequency to optimize your email stream.

Open and click rates are also success metrics that prove whether or not your email campaigns are on the right track. If you have designed a strategy that agrees with both your business objectives and your customers, then you should experience solid rates and a steady revenue stream.