In the quest to increase sales, increase traffic to your website or simply to generate awareness of your / product/service small and big companies are implementing Email Marketing. While Email Marketing is one of the simplest and most effective form of one-to-one communication we include in this article some of the top reasons your email will not land in the inbox or will not be opened at all.
Here is a quick list of things to avoid when sending your emails:
- T00 MUCH PUNCTU@TION** ??? !!!
- Don’t use all capital letters
- Don’t use repetitive symbols, such as strings of dollar signs
- Its a definite bad practice to use strings of asterisks before and after headlines
- Avoid multiple exclamation points or question marks
- Generic or unfamiliar From Address
Readers don’t know and cant connect with Customer Care customercare@online.yourcompay.com. Use your brand name or name that users recognize. Keep in mind that you are building a relationship with your customers. How would you like them to see you?
- Difficult unsubscribe process
There is nothing more annoying to your readers than to have a very difficult unsubscribe process. Especially instances where you need the reader to login to his or her account before opting out.
Emails are not read. They are scanned. It’s always a good practice clearly indicate a process for the readers to unsubscribe. If you don’t, over a period of time unread emails will only land in the junk folder, or worse, your readers could hit the “this is spam” button. Both these actions could affect your IP reputation badly.
A clear and quick unsubscribe process is a must.
- Using whole email as an image
We see many many big and small companies do this. This is is a BIG NO NO. Images are turned off by default in most email clients. By giving a whole image in you email you are asking the person to click the image before they even read the content. Predictably most users ignore such emails. This is a lost opportunity.
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- Boring Subject Lines
Subject lines should prompt your audience to open your email, not simply provide a name for the email. For example, an email with a Subject line that reads, ‘June Newsletter’ isn’t likely to generate too much excitement. Try the following ideas to keep you subject lines from boring your audience:
- Include the immediate benefits of opening your email in the Subject line.
- Use your Subject line to highlight one of the articles in your email.
- Repeat your email’s main call to action in your Subject line.
- Repeat one of your email’s main headlines in your Subject line.
We will publish more such do’s and dont’s in our blogs soon. Keep checking for more.