Even the most professional email marketers make mistakes sometimes, not mentioning someone doing email marketing for the first time. In order for your to really be successful in your email marketing venture you have to, amongst other things, really double check what you want to send before you send it.  Too many a time you realize a mistake just just after you have pressed the “send” button….

For your convenience I have set out a list of 6 things that you should avoid when email marketing, this will be sure to make your venture a successful one.

DON’T BUY DATABASES OR EMAIL LISTS
Do not buy bulk email address lists, you will not only be missing your target market but receiving advertising emails that are not at all relevant to your company is really annoying – 8 out of 10 they are not even read.  Rather mail from a list that you have previously contacted or made some connection with, and who you know will be interested in your brand/company/product.  It is then better to do some telemarketing before you just send out thousands of emails to general email addresses.
Effective email campaigns cater to specific demographics, tastes and interests.

DON’T SEND FROM AN UNKNOWN ADRESS
As soon as you have subscribers, make sure they open your mails regularly.  This can be assured by using the same email address every time.  Also, don’t make the email address a generic one like adminads@……co.za, rather use your name and add your email signature at the bottom so that people can contact you should they be interested in your product.
Once subscribers are on your list, you want to make sure that they open your messages

DON’T IGNORE THE SPAM COMPLIANCE RULES
One of the compliance rules is that the sender has to include the valid physical and postal address, which could makes it difficult for a home based company, although it is very important for the following reason.
If you think of it logically, a client would feel more comfortable if you add all your details – scam artists will less likely give their real details in fear of being traced.

DON’T SEND INFREQUENT/IRRELEVANT EMAILS
Ok, so you have built up your client database after following their confirmation that they would like to receive your marketing material.  You send them the information pack and they never hear from you again…  That would not be the way to keep them interested, will it?
Keep your info frequent, updated and fresh and keep it relevant to the topic of your company.  If they are interested and keep getting your articles on the subject it would only interest them more.
An unwritten rule regarding email follow ups is that if you haven’t contacted the person for six months or more, delete them from your list.  Changes are, if they haven’t contacted you in a while, they are not interested anyway.

Very important is that you don’t stray away from the original topic of advertisement.  Compare your consecutive mails to the first one to make sure you are still on the right track.  Also set expectations so that clients will know what to expect from you.
This can take place in three stages namely 1.  Create the expectation before you send out the email.  Decide what you would like to focus on in your introductory email and stick with it. 2.  Reinforce the focus in every email.  Keep to the topic but don’t make it sound monotonous – keep it updated with interesting facts. 3.  Through doing this you will build a long time relationship with your client and they will know what to expect from your emails, for instance, add a quote for the day or a short quirky saying every time, they will soon grow used to it and actually look forward to reading the next one.

DON’T LEAVE THEM HANGING
After you have introduced your company or product to them, give them an option about what to do next, whether it is to unsubscribe or to follow steps on how to place an order.
Always link them back to your website so that they can find out more about your company. Make your website enticing and your buying process easy so as to make them buy immediately.

DON’T SEND OUT MAIL BEFORE TESTING
As mentioned in the beginning, test your marketing mail before sending it out.  This will not only cancel out embarrassment but make you look more professional than an email with spelling or grammar mistakes.  You can send it to your own email or to an email that you created for this purpose.  When opening you can see if it presents well, reads easy and gets the point across, and if there is a problem you can always go back and edit it before it is too late, as will be the case when you send it out before scanning.

It might seem like you have to change many things now but in the long run it will be much more rewarding, you will see….

Please visit our blog at www.wsi4all.com to let us know what changes or improvements you have made to your marketing strategy and how it benefited your venture.