Top Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid
Another glorious work week is halfway over in Florida and I am thrilled today to write about email marketing. Why email you ask? It turns out I am involved in various email marketing endeavors and though I certainly aim to provide tools to enhance your email marketing campaign, in this post I will go over email marketing faux pas which I unfortunately am forced to cope with as I continue to serve the Lord via internet marketing…
What Not To Do – A Case Study by Daniel St.Pierre
Take Tim for example, one of the many DIY website owners I am blessed to work with. Tim knows just enough about email marketing to write emails himself in his CRM software then hit the “send to all” button. His efforts indeed generate sales, and so they should considering he is blessed with a list of over 7,500 contacts. Revenue from sales is the main focus of Tim’s email marketing endeavor which unfortunately for our inexperienced trigger happy do-it-yourself’er, is minimal compared to the result of a carefully planned email campaign using the same resources.
One of the most important differences would be packaging, in a far less offensive yet more powerful message, then delivered more effectively in a manner to reduce contact list falloff. The downfall of a DIY method is you have nothing to compare results with. Because DIY email marketing produces results almost every time a list is hit, website owners like Tim are easily fooled into believing their email marketing campaign is working because they “get sales every time they send out an email.”
The Problem: Tim’s emails are poorly designed templates that contain a bold and often rude message meant to produce a response. Any response. The “either buy or get off my list” attitude is at the root of Tim’s failing to set and/or meet his goals. Like too many, Tim is unaware of the value of his mailing list. A result of an unplanned email marketing campaign, Tim’s most recent email outreach invited contacts to join a mailing list they are already on! Free products are offered to existing contacts as a bundle, with a single up-sell product instead of spreading the free products over an email series with several different up-sells. Quotas are not set, then of course never met. Goals aren’t an issue either because the email campaign is a one man show. There’s no accountability, see a pattern here?
Basically Tim’s email marketing campaign is spontaneous and inconsistent. For months at a time no emails go out when Tim is “busy” with more pressing issues or on location, times when his audience’s attention peeked – Sounds familiar?
The Solution: Leave email marketing to professionals or at the very least, don’t go about it alone! Often all your DIY email needs is a re-read by a fresh set of eyes. In some cases you could even triple revenue from each email sent out with a simple call to action.
Either way, avoid mediocrity and do the right thing, not the cheaper one.
