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Starting an E-mail Marketing Campaign? Don’t Make These Mistakes…
By BFBpro | October 8, 2008
By Julia Gulevich
As everything in the world, e-mail marketing is constantly developing. New email practices are being adapted; old ones are going out of date. Email practices that were widely and successfully applied yesterday may not work, and even may hurt your email campaign, today.
Whether you are an experienced e-mail marketer, or just starting your way in the e-mail marketing, you should be ware of those “best email practices gone bad”. No, I don’t want to say that those approaches to email campaigns are not legitimate or forbidden. I just want you to know that they are no longer as effective as before and may not bring you results you expected.
So, if you are using any of such tactics or may just be thinking about applying any of them, you may consider changing your mind and not engage into them.
Well, now let me share with you several email practices that are no longer the best:
- The more IP addresses, the better. If you think so, you are mistaken. Many email marketers try to use as many IP addresses as possible when sending the email messages to large lists. This is a wrong approach because it’s often used by spammers.A good practice these days is to have one or two constant IP addresses and build trusted and reputable relationships with the recipients by sending opt-in newsletters from those IP addresses.
- The prettier HTML email design, the better. Not anymore. Today a simplified HTML email design is preferable because:
1) not all email clients and web mail services render complex HTML code in the proper way.2) an email message stuffed with complex HTML effects is likely to be flagged as spam by ISP or client-based anti-spam filters.
In addition, many recipients may use their mobile devices to view the emails. So, the best practice nowadays is to make the email message readable on a mobile device too. The text alternative of a HTML email should not be ignored either.
- The more secret and intriguing the Subject line, the better. Of course, the Subject line must tease people enticing them to open the email. But at the same time the Subject line must tell the recipients what the email is about. The Subject line is one of the factors that make the recipient either to open or delete the message. People may receive dozens of emails per day and if the Subject isn’t clear for them, the email is not likely to be opened.
- Personalized Subject line is better. Sometimes inserting the recipient’s name into the Subject line was a good practice. At present, it’s not. Spammers adopted this practice very well and are using it in every second message. Thus, it’s better if you just brand your Subject line by inserting your organization name into it.
In this article I’ve just scratched a surface of the immense “world” of the e-mail marketing. You can learn more about email marketing software, HTML email design, permission-based list building, and best email marketing practices in this Ultimate Email Marketing Guide.
[Editor: We highly recommend all of Julia's software and writings to you -- she has written many articles which have been featured on BFB, because she knows her stuff! If you are looking to break into Email marketing we suggest that you learn to do it the right way from the beginning...get her e-book and her software and get off on the right foot.]
Topics: Guest Writer Posts |
October 15th, 2008 at
These are idea I need to start using for my own email marketing campaign. I know I sent out several emails (via Constant Contact) but didn’t include any actual names!
Carlas last blog post..Starting an E-mail Marketing Campaign? Don’t Make These Mistakes…