The Most Common E-mail Marketing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them.
- The Spam Trap
If your e-mails looks spammy’ it will be deleted before it even gets to your intended recipient’s inbox. The easiest way to avoid the spam trap is to eliminate words and phrases such as discount’ special-offer’ an £££ off when you buy now’ from the subject line and main copy of your e-mail.
- Bad Timing
B2B campaigns are likely to get ignored on Monday’s and Fridays because people are too busy recovering or getting ready for the weekend. The best days to send B2B campaigns are Tuesday and Wednesday. Research has shown that the best click through rates are achieved between 2-3pm on Wednesdays.Frequency is just as important as timing. Bombarding your list with daily e-mails will lead to very high unsubscribe rates. If you restrict your sending to a weekly or fortnightly e-mail at a certain time then people will come to expect’ your campaigns meaning they will want to read your content and will be receptive to your offers.
- Lack of Experimentation
Your ESP should allow you to try a number of variations for your subject line, link text and images for each e-mail campaign. They will send out each example to a small pot of recipients and track which version resulted in the best open and click through rates. The most successful version will then be sent to the remaining addresses from your mailing list.
- The Impersonal Approach
Starting your e-mail with Hi [subscriber's name]‘ as opposed to Hi there’ can increase click through rate by up to 650%. This is simply because the recipient feels like they have a relationship with you, since you have addressed them by their first name. You should also personalize the message you are sending to different segments of your database in order to ensure you are sending the right message to the right people.
- Ignoring the Fold
In any direct marketing campaign, the offer or the most interesting copy should appear above the fold so that it is the first thing that grabs the recipient’s attention. You should have some interesting text at the very top of your email, as this will be the first thing that the recipient is able to read in the preview pane.Images are only seen after the recipient has clicked to allow them to be downloaded. Therefore it is a mistake to place large banners or images above your headline, because this can push your most attention grabbing text to the bottom of or even out of the preview pane.
