5 Common Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Are your email marketing campaigns achieving your company’s desired results? Many business owners ignore the key aspects to an effective email marketing campaign. If done correctly, email marketing campaigns can provide high return on investment. Read on to be sure your business isn’t making these common email marketing mistakes.

Not Using Emails as a Lead Generator
The purpose behind all email campaigns is to generate leads. As a part of making your email interactive, add call-to-action buttons and remember to include links that lead readers back to your website. Include social sharing buttons to generate more leads through your company’s social networks. Keeping lead generation and return on investment in mind when creating an email will ensure a successful email marketing campaign.

No Segmentation
Every email marketing campaign should be highly targeted for a specific audience. Often times, businesses have one large contact list to send every email out to with no segmentation. Each email must be appropriate for the audience you’re sending it to. If an email is sent out to the wrong target audience, those potential leads are likely to delete your emails or unsubscribe because they assume your services aren’t for them. Not segmenting your emails is a quick way to lose potential leads.

Creating an Email Without the Monologue
Emails need to be interactive with your target audience and less of a monologue, as they are meant to start a conversation with your consumers by directing them to contact your business in order to learn more. Overwhelming your audience with too much content will push them to leave the conversation and unsubscribe from your emails. Giving away too much content, and pushing away potential leads, is a common email marketing mistake you want to avoid.

Avoid Spam
This may seem like an obvious mistake to avoid; however, there is a growing list of keywords that spam filters are picking up on. Spam filters today look not only in the subject line of your email, but in the body of the email. It’s important you choose your words wisely to avoid this common email-marketing mistake. Find a list of spam keywords to ensure your emails are always reaching your target audience. You should be able to find up-to-date spam lists by Googling it.

Track Emails
It’s very important to track your emails and look at the analytics. Most email marketing services provide its users with analytics to see who opened your email, who has opted out of receiving emails, and your email’s click-through rate. Seeing your email’s click-through rate is the most important data to analyze that will help you determine what worked and what did not. All information is useful to ensure you’re getting the most out of your email marketing campaign.

Five Key Takeaways:

1. Make sure your emails have calls-to-action and links back to your website to generate leads
2. Segment every email so that it’s tailored to the consumer who will be opening the email
3. Don’t overload your email with content; emails are meant to be a conversation starter
4. Research spam keywords in order to void them in your subject line as well as the body of the email
5. Look at your email analytics to track potential leads and turn them into hot leads

About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.