How to get your email marketing wrong

There are many ways to get your email marketing wrong. You have probably seen email marketing gone wrong in action many times, you just didn’t label it that way. For example, have you ever received an email and had to search top to bottom for an unsubscribe button, but just couldn’t find it? Or, have you been bombarded with the same uninteresting sales email over and over every week? Sometimes, even the emails you subscribed to in hope of receiving great deals turns a bit sour after the deals become repetitive or no better than the next company offering similar deals.

So, to help you get your email marketing right, here is an attempt to show you how to get you email marketing wrong. How to get your email marketing to not work for you. How to get the recipients of your email distribution list upset and annoyed. How to get your existing customers and potential customers so annoyed that they unsubscribe and never want to ever receive an email from you. This will eventually lead you to create the most stunning emails. So take note and push the email marketing boundaries to compel and bring benefit and excitement to your recipients.

How to get your email marketing wrong

 

Not giving a real reply address
This would be perfect for getting your email marketing wrong. Send a potential customer or an existing client an email hoping they can’t reply back to place an order! Email is very personal, probably just as personal as writing a letter to someone specific and so it needs to be personalised. Offer a legitimate reply address if you want more business, offer 29946_no_reply@hotmail.com if you want to generate no enquiries.

Subject lines that mean nothing
The best way to get no one clicking on your email is by having a subject line that means nothing to them. Give them an uninteresting and irrelevant subject line and you will have forced them to walk away. If the email subject is one of the first things a recipient looks at, why wouldn’t you want to give it your best shot and come up with a fantastic subject? I have written and entire blog post on Persuasive email subject lines that won’t be ignored which elaborates on this topic. Just imagine your own email inbox piled up with unread emails of which most will be dumped, but you’re hoping one of the subjects you see in the preview window will catch your eye and enrich your life even for a few minutes. Your email must want to be one of those!

Making unsubscribing complicated
It’s simple. The more difficult you make finding your unsubscribe button the more the recipient is going to look for it and the more they are going to despise you for it. No matter how beautifully your email is crafted, how relevant your content or even how special your offer may be, people are going to want to unsubscribe. This is a superb way to annoy your recipients and allow them to come back at you armed with a vengeance. Wouldn’t it be better to keep it nice and simple, easy to unsubscribe so that the recipients depart reasonably? Be sensible and they will honour and respect you for not wasting their time.

Defy unsubscribes
One of the finest ways to get your email marketing wrong is by defying unsubscribes. Why not try it? If a person unsubscribes from your email distribution list, ignore them and continue sending them emails which they wanted to unsubscribe from! You will gather lots of attention from enraged people who will not stop at anything in order to get to you. Now that would be slightly uncomfortable don’t you think? You must honour unsubscribes the very moment people request to do so. Those recipients are not interested in what you are emailing them about and hence, cannot be converted as your customers at least for now.

Send emails infrequently
Send your marketing emails infrequently and have the pleasure of being forgotten. What a great way of disregarding your existing customers and paying no attention to new potential customers. Customers, new and old, need to be frequently fostered and actively nurtured in order to inform, update and generally, take care of them. Remember, the same rules apply to your new business leads too.

Email attack, attack, attack
As the sub-heading suggests, attack your recipients with email blasts on a daily basis in order to obliterate their inbox. This would be a wonderful method of destroying not only your email distribution list, but also the relationship you’ve built with your audience. No matter how compelled you feel about sending marketing emails every other day… Don’t! You will experience a wonderful flow of unsubscribes and by the end of your rampage, you will definitely not gain benefit. I say, test the frequency of your email campaigns to what suits your time, budget and conversion rate. You will want to create a clear balance that allows you to engage with your recipients, but also, to monitor and convert business leads.

Ignore mobile devices
Since nearly 40% of people check their emails on mobile devices on a daily basis, ignore formatting your email for easy viewing on mobiles. That way, you can suffer from non-click-throughs, generate less leads and reduce the amount of conversions. Have you thought about what it feels like when one of your emails is opened on a mobile phone or tablet? Are your recipients having trouble viewing the content on various platforms? Do forgive those who have busy lives and tend to check their emails on the go, but you have no excuse to not cater for them. Unless of course, if you are happy with 40% less click-throughs. Test your emails before you begin your campaign and ensure that they are compatible with the various email applications and devices.

Disregards all call-to-actions
If you really want to get your email marketing wrong, don’t include any call-to-actions. Why waste yours and more importantly, your recipients time by making them click-through to another web page? Well, how else are they supposed to interact with your email? Surely, the purpose of your email is to inform your recipients through valid email content and to help them take the next step into becoming a customer. Just imagine what a misuse of time it would be for them when they got your email and there was no meaningful, actionable response for them to take. This is your lead generator, make the recipients react and take the next step into becoming your greatest lead.

Why bother checking and testing
Since you’re not really bothered to get your email marketing right, why not get your email marketing wrong to the point of no return! Let’s face it, one thing you can’t recover is the ‘word’ after it has been said. The same goes for email, once you have distributed your email may it be in the 100′s or 1000′s, there is no recovery of the data sent. So, does it not make good business sense to double check, triple check your content to make sure it is error free? Rectify any spelling mistakes, correct sentence structure the best you can, click on the links to make sure they are going to where they are supposed to and most crucially, forward the email to a friend or colleague who could also help in the proofing process. Once that is completed, blast out a live email campaign to a small group of people who you know will help you test how it appears when it is received in the inbox and opened. If you don’t have an opportunity to run a small group test email, simply send it to yourself and test on a couple of the most popular email applications and mobile devices.

For the most part, you are now ready to blast out your email marketing campaign. Don’t get you email marketing wrong, get it right! What is your favourite or least favourite experience in email marketing? Drop us a few comments below.