Email Marketing Campaigns: Avoiding Mistakes

It's human nature to make the odd mistake. However, there are mistakes which we simply cannot afford to make. The kind that has huge consequences. Doctors can't afford to misdiagnose patient's illnesses and surgeons make critical decisions that don't allow for the slightest mistake because it could cost a patients life. As for government officials and presidents their mistakes have a vast affect on the futures of the countries they rule. In the same way making mistakes when developing an email marketing campaign can cause you to not only lose money but perhaps wreck your brand image. The least you can do is to be wary of the mistakes that can be made.
Better the devil you know than the one you don't know...

Although making mistakes is part of the learning process, a well planned marketing campaign can serve you well in the long run. Nearly all marketers new or experienced have made a mistake or two. You have a chance to learn from their mistakes.

1. Seek permission first

Before investing your time and money ensure that you have permission from every single one of your recipients. Permission means people requested email marketing from you. It's easier than you think. It'll result in fewer spam complaints, better deliverability, and decreased legal liability and most importantly better click results.

2. Know the difference

There's a distinct difference between transactional emails and email Marketing. If a list of customers has purchased products from your e-commerce store they'll be expecting email receipts and email shipping notifications. These are transactional emails. Transactional emails should be sent from your own server. Email newsletters, coupons and promotions are marketing or commercial emails. If you send a commercial email to a list of people without their permission it's called an unsolicited commercial email (UCE)" otherwise known as spam.

3. Do not rush

The biggest mistakes occur when marketers insist to have their campaigns done ASAP! Usually Designers end up not doing proper design and coding and not much thought is given to the content. Subject lines aren't thought through (this is considered one of the most important factors in your open rate).10%-30% of recipients click on the "this is junk" button in their email program which causes alerts to get sent out to their ISPs which in turn blacklists the sender for spamming. Email marketing requires a good amount of planning, testing and measuring.

4. Assumptions

After creating appealing email signup forms, marketers start sending emails. Even though they responsibly acquired every recipient's permission before sending the emails, those recipients forgot to sign up. So when suddenly an email newsletter pops up from out of the blue, they report the sender for spamming. This scenario happens often. A lot of email experts say that permission goes stale after only 6 months. If you're not regularly contacting your list assume that the old emails have already forgotten you. Bright idea? Send them a "remember me?" email every so often.

5. Purchasing email lists

Try not to buy a totally legitimate list of 30 million opt-in emails via some sketchy piece of spam. In this case you should judge a book by its cover. If it looks suspicious it probably is. Although there are still some vendors out there who are selling opt-in lists the old fashioned way. They collect email addresses and ask members if they'd like to receive special offers from 3rd parties. Then they just sell those email addresses to other people. Technically this is not legal. The correct way to do it is to keep the list and then send special offers on behalf of 3rd parties. Be wary of any groups that'll just give you a big list of emails. They should be doing the delivery for you so that their recipients will recognise the sender and so that you won't get reported for spamming.

6. Double-Check

Always double-checking the list before sending to it. This mostly applies to agencies sending on behalf of their clients. Some people send email marketing campaigns to lists that are obviously not permission-based. You're breaking the terms of use and the CAN-SPAM law when you do that. You can be held liable for spam when sending on behalf of someone else. Ask them how they got the list and if it's permission based or not.

7. Test. Test and Test

You should test your campaign in various email programs. HTML emails look different depending on which email program you use to view it. Just because it looks good in the preview window or when you send a test to yourself it doesn't mean it'll look like that for all your recipients. You need to setup a few accounts with free email services like Yahoo!, MSN, Hotmail, and Gmail. Setup home accounts with AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, and Roadrunner. Test on different computers and operating systems like Macs and PCs. If you don't have the budget to build test computers just enlist a few volunteers at the office or family and friends. Send them tests and ask if they can tell you if the email looked weird in their programs.

8. Image is key

Don't send a big email campaign to your customers and use your "@yahoo.com" or "@aol.com" home email address. Instead use your website's domain. You should already have email accounts setup under that domain. Some people like setting up an additional "newsletter@companydomain.com" address for their emails.
Some marketers send dozens of campaigns but they never continually review their reports. As a result they don't notice when their list is very steadily shrinking. See if you can improve your open rates, click rates and conversions on a continual basis. Being aware of possible mistakes is better than trying to rectify a balls' up. Surely, the effort will be worth your while.

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