Sometimes, companies make costly mistakes when emailing their customers. These can vary from minor typos to major emails being sent out to the wrong customers. Mistakes like these can lead to emails being sent to spam, businesses not taking them seriously, or email systems blocking them from emailing the company altogether. We’ll review five email marketing mistakes to avoid and how they could be impacting you today.
Not Personalizing Content
One mistake that companies make is not personalizing their emails for their customers. They send out generic copied and pasted email content from inside their system. Customizing email marketing for each customer has many benefits for clients, it shows that you’re dedicated to working with them by spending the time upfront to know their business. It also reassures them that you pay attention and really cares about their needs and how your company can ultimately help them.
Not Optimizing for Mobile
Not optimizing your emails for your mobile customers can result in unread emails. According to Invespcro, “More than ⅔ of emails are being opened on smartphones and tablets” and “75% of smartphone owners use their mobile devices to check their emails”. Like the statistics state, a large portion of customers open and respond to their emails from their phones and not optimizing them to fit for mobile would be a mistake in itself. If emails are opened on mobile and they don’t render well within a few seconds, the customer is onto the next one.
Not Updating Records
Another common mistake is using an old contact list instead of an updated one. Try to keep email lists up to date and routinely clean out the contacts that aren’t engaged with you anymore. Sending emails to old contacts can hurt your email sending reputation, causing future inboxes to flag your emails as spam and negatively impact your deliverability rate. As a marketing best practice, never send content from your marketing automation system to purchased lists. The list could be years old and if you send an email out and 80% hard bounced due to incorrect, or old, email addresses, your system could be shut down.
Poor Subject Lines
Having poor subject lines in your emails can make or break whether or not your customers open them. According to Business News Daily, “the average open rate for emails across all industries analyzed was 20.81%. It’s hard to get consumers to open your emails, and bad subject lines can wreck your chances of boosting your open rate.” Most subject lines should be under 60 characters. People tend to open emails that have a simple, yet knowledgeable subject line. Using relatable wording for different companies can make all the difference as well.
Not Paying Attention To Spam Best Practices
There will be times where emails won’t be properly delivered. This is because of the customer’s inbox putting your emails straight into the spam folder. A couple of reasons why this happens comes from not including a physical address in the email, or if you use words that are usually linked to spam content. If you’re curious about whether or not your emails will be marked as spam there are tools, such as Salesforce Pardot, that can help give you feedback on if your email would be spam, and how to fix them if so.
All of these email marketing mistakes are common, but can easily be avoided if you follow best practices. Being too pushy, emailing un-opted in leads, and sending irrelevant content are also best practices to be aware of. Here at Corrao Group, we are trained in Salesforce Pardot and will help you enhance and maximize all of your marketing emails. If you’re interested in working with us, please feel free to visit our website, and sign up for our newsletter too. Hope to see you there!
