When it comes to online marketing email remains to be one of the most powerful channels for reaching out to your customers. And unlike SEO, email marketing allows companies large or small, to drive masses amounts of targeted traffic to their products and services, thus creating positive leads and sales instantly.
However amongst the many mistakes to avoid when doing email marketing, today I want to share with you 4 of them, which I strongly believe if not avoided can have costly consequences for your company. Let’s take a look.
4 Deadly Mistakes Of Email Marketing
1. Avoid using misleading headline titles and deceptive subject lines
Nothing comes across spammier than receiving a marketing message through email that uses this unethical tactic.
Using misleading headline titles and deceptive subject lines, in hope to increase your open rate should be avoided at all costs. If anything this tactic will cause an immense amount of confusion with your recipients and increase opt-out rate.
Also using this tactic won’t only give your organization a really shady spammy appearance, but your company could also face some hefty penalties for spamming. Always check the CAN-SPAM compliance guide if in doubt.
2. Avoid coming across too sales-like and not providing ‘value’
Email marketing enables businesses to advertise their marketing message, offers etc to their recipients broadly and effectively. However as a business you should make every effort to make your recipients fully aware of exactly what your marketing message is about.
Whilst it’s good to recommend products and services you should always strive to provide, or combine adding ‘value’ and a ‘solution to a problem’.
3. Avoid not telling your recipients where you’re located
Ask yourself this, would you purchase products or services, or even put trust into a company, where you didn’t know their location? No would be the answer I’m betting. Always ensure that your email marketing message includes a valid postal address to where you or your business is located.
4. Avoid not giving the option to opt-out
My final tip is to ensure that what ever message you send out to your recipients, always provide them with the option to opt-out, and when they do, honor their decision regardless of their reasons. You’re more likely to keep your recipient on your list if they know they can opt out should they wish to.
So let’s recap -
- Don’t use misleading headline titles or deceptive subject lines
- Think about providing value and how your content will help your readers, customers solve problems
- Add a postal address, let your recipients know where you’re based
- Always give the option of opting out!
Conclusion
So there you have it folks, my top 4 deadly mistakes to avoid when doing ethical email marketing. My advice would be to avoid using any email marketing software’s that you are unsure about, but instead try and use a more reputable online email service provider such as AWeber or Mailchimp.
OK, let me know your thoughts and whether you have any additional tips and suggestions you want to add to the list above.
As usual, have an awesome week what ever you’re doing 
Recommended reading
- Integrating Effective Email Marketing into Social Media
- 7 Ways How Not To Do Email Marketing
- 3 Common Email Marketing Questions Answered
Image courtest of Photobucket user: jhaworth
