If you’re new to the email marketing strategy scene, you may find your head spinning from all the do’s and don’ts you’re supposed to follow in order to produce an effective campaign. And as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, there’s much more involved than just choosing an enticing subject line or adding a funny picture to get a chuckle out of your recipients.
The pillars of email marketing go much deeper than that, and if you’re sending an email out to hundreds (or thousands) of contacts, you’ll want to make sure the basics are covered to prevent any embarrassing mishaps.
Terrible Advice #1: Grab A List of Email Addresses and Send It To As Many Contacts As Possible
Why It’s Terrible: If you’re fishing for Marlin, you wouldn’t start in the pond down the street, would you? Spamming your message out to people who a). aren’t interested or b). haven’t asked to hear from you is a dangerous game. Not only are you sure to receive a flood of “Spam Alerts” from your content, it also might be illegal depending on your local laws.
What You Can Do Instead: Start providing your audience with content that will entice them to subscribe to your emails themselves. As is the way of Inbound Marketing, create guides, eBooks, whitepapers, videos, how-tos… your options are endless. Have your visitors fill out a form, and require them to provide an email in exchange for access to your content. Not only will this help bolster your email list, but your content strategy as well. Make it remarkable, and they’ll be delighted to receive future emails.
Horrible Advice #2: Keep Your Email Generic and Send It To Your Whole List
Why It’s Horrible: If you’re not targeting the individual sects of your audience, you’re missing out on improved engagement rates. Mail Chimp recently measured statistics across all segmented campaigns, and found that segmented lists, on average, produce:
- 14.44% Better Open Rates
- 14.99% Higher Click Rates
That’s powerful proof that going for the highest common denominator isn’t the best strategy to employ if you’re hoping to engage your lists for clicks and/or purchases.
What You Can Do Instead: Sit down with your team and discuss your target audience before breaking them up into smaller groups. There are many ways of doing this. You can split it up by geographic area, so you can target your content for a particular locale. If you’re in retail, you can segment your list based on the recipients shopping history, whether that be products they’ve searched for on your site, or bought themselves. You can even segment by gender. It really comes down to what you want out of your email subscribers.
Atrocious Advice #3: Make It Hard For Them To Unsubscribe
Why It’s Atrocious: Put yourself in your contact’s shoes here. If they were trying to unsubscribe, why would you want to keep them? They’re clearly not interested in what you’re sending (or aren’t finding value in it), so trying to trick them into staying or hiding the “Unsubscribe Button” isn’t a valuable use of your time. In fact, it may make them less likely to engage your business or organization in the future. You should never hide the buttons, force them to fill out superfluous fields, or confuse them into re-subscribing.
What You Can Do Instead: You need to ask yourself why your subscribers are leaving, if they are. Are you sending too many emails? Do the emails you send offer any value, or are they a waste of inbox space? Maybe they’re no longer interested in what you have to offer? These are certainly questions you need to ask yourself, but holding your email subscribers hostage is never the answer. Consider giving subscribers different options to customize their email experience, like the frequency or topics. That way, they’ll have more control over what they see and when they see it.