Email Hasn’t Died – Why Treat It Like It Has?

With the advent of social marketing and the increasing rise in popularity many people have begun to ignore some of the basic rules of email marketing.  It’s almost as if they believe that because social marketing is so hot, email marketing must be so dead.

But this isn’t the case.  While most customers have become much more savvy they also still receive, send and request email.  The trick is to do it better – stand out from the crowd – and make a difference in the number of people who then know, like and trust you enough to pull out their wallets and buy from you.

Return on investment has always been important, but in today’s economy it is more important than ever before.  Email marketing, social networking and social marketing are all very cost effective techniques – especially for the small marketer.  However, that isn’t a reason to treat the entire process without concern.

Here are some of the top mistakes that marketers make when they email their customers or potential customers:

1. Keep your emails simple and encourage the reader to click through to your site.  By loading the email with graphics, flash or java script you have a better chance of being filtered by the spam filters so clients never see you.  Or worse, your client is tired of waiting for graphics to load so they just click “delete!”

2. Be sure your customers have a way of getting back with you.  The easiest is to allow them to reply to the email they are reading.  It may be more difficult for you but the idea isn’t to make it easy on you – the idea is to make it easy on your customer.  If this isn’t possible make it very easy for your customer to find the link to your help desk.

3. Be sure that your links are active, correct and your email addresses are correct.  Nothing ticks a customer off faster than sending an email to a non-responding address.  Most people are more forgiving when links don’t work but even this sets you up for lowered expectations from your customers – never a good place to be.

4. DO NOT send an email with missing information.  We all make the occasional mistake with email but most autoresponders give you the opportunity to send your email “later” or “immediately”. Even if you choose a time that is just an hour later – pick later!  This gives you a chance to send a test email to yourself.  Look for errors in the address, content, links and email addresses.  Who hasn’t received an email that says – Hi {firstname_fix}!  If you type in the code yourself make sure it’s typed in correctly!

5. Email gets caught in the spam filters.  What could be worse for a marketer than their customer not receiving the email AT ALL?  Watch your subject lines and content and, if in doubt, send it through Spam Assasin for a good indication of whether or not you pass the test.  Aweber is one of the autoresponder services that includes this ability when you create your message.