With all the shiny toys littering the media landscape (we’re looking at you iPad, and your social media friends), it’s easy to forget about some of the less glamorous – but just as effective – ways of communicating with your audience, like email newsletters.
What email lacks in novelty, it certainly makes up for in reliability. Roughly 247 billion emails are sent per day and nearly 1.4 billion people worldwide actively use an email account. And 39% of executives at Fortune 500 companies, publishing companies, and agencies reported email as being the strongest performing marketing channel for them in 2009, according to a recent Datran Media survey.
Despite email’s apparent universal adoption, many on the “Send” side aren’t paying enough attention to those who have chosen (or been duped) into receiving.
Need proof? How’s this: only 72% of emails actually make it to the recipient’s inbox, and of that, less than 20% gets opened, and an estimated 81% of all email sent is spam. And to top it off, an astounding 37% of marketers don’t even bother testing their emails prior to sending.
So what can you do to combat casualties in the battle of the inbox? A lot.
But here are 7 things to avoid while fighting the good fight:
1. Sending One BIG Image
Make sure your email has enough text that it can be understood even with images turned off
Design with the preview pane in mind. Many people reading email (i.e. Outlook users) read exlusively in the preview pane and with images turned off as the default. Accomodate this by putting enticing text in the upper left-hand section of the body of your email.
Besides, image-heavy emails run a higher risk of being caught in spam filters.
2. Making it Impersonal
So you want to segment your list and send specialized content based on personal preferences. Great! You’re not sure if you have their first name (your form didn’t require it) right? Not so great.
If you’re going to attempt personalization, make sure to get it right by employing a double opt-in, asking for confirmation, and other techniques to ensure your data is top quality.
3. SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS
You really have something important to say. SO YOU WANT TO SAY IT AS LOUD AS YOU CAN! We get that, but your audience might not appreciate the extra effort.
Remember, using all caps online is Internet code for “I’m shouting.” And using too many bright colors and strange fonts is Internet code for “I can’t design.” Avoid both.
4. Forgetting to Test
This is like forgetting to spell check before you send an email to the entire company (ok, so we don’t always do that, either).
But when you’re sending a message on behalf of your brand, make sure your testing the message in multiple email clients, on both PC and Mac, and once more to yourself, and get it proofread just to be sure. It never hurts to double-check. (And we wouldn’t be saying this, but nearly 1 in the 3 marketers is currently commiting this sin).
5. Writing Bad Subject Lines
Maybe you’re in the unfortunately position of being the email marketer for Viagra. Good luck. For the rest of us, try to avoid spammy sounding subject lines – or even worse – overly vague ones.
If you read the subject line aloud and it sounds weird to say, you probably shouldn’t send it to your audience. Sending your email through a spam filter trigger test is a good idea not only for the subject line, but for your body copy as well (you’d be surprised as to what may offend the overzealous spam filters out there).
6. Assuming Everyone Wants to Hear From You
Just because someone registered to win concert tickets at your happy hour fundraiser doesn’t mean they want to be notified every time you update your website, have a new white paper, or think a new thought.
Your most valuable customers are the ones who actually want to hear from you, so focus on serving them well instead of pelting everyone who looks at you with 40 pieces of marketing collateral.
7. Having No Call to Action
So they received your email, opened it, and read your brilliant copy. They’re truly excited about the opportunity you are sharing with them. They can’t WAIT to be a part of your pyramid scheme. They scan and they scroll, but they can’t find a link. So they delete your message and move on (in reality, they probably didn’t even try THAT hard).
You were close enough that you could smell the conversion. But they couldn’t see where to take the next step. Always provide a next step, or the relationship will end in the inbox.
By no means is this a comprehensive guide, but it’s a starting point.
Look in your spam folder and tell us what we missed!
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Also add to the list: “Assume your readers want you to share their info.” So many publishers are making a quick buck by selling their list info to another party, but ultimately everyone loses.
@Emberton: You’re right, that’s a great point. It’s undeniably frustrating to sign up for one email newsletter and to get pelted with emails from tons of other companies.
Clever, even though the music was a little wtf.
@bill: HA! That’s a funny way to put it. Nicely done.
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