Some Common Email Marketing Mistakes
If you want to build a solid relationship through E-mails, you must be very careful NOT to commit these E-mail marketing ‘sins’:
- Spamming! Never, ever ‘spam’ your mailing list. Even though they have given you permission to E-mail them, that doesn’t mean that you can send them E-mails and sales pitches on a daily basis. Learn to send E-mails at strategic intervals.
- Mailing them only when you are selling something. No one wants to be on your list if all you ever do is sell, sell, sell! The reason people join your mailing list is because they want something of value for being on your list. If they fail to see your value, they will unsubscribe even faster than you can say, “opt-out”!
- Rushing your Emails. When you are doing a promotion, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is that you rush your E-mails to the point that the mistakes are spotted by most of your subscribers. Having too many mistakes in your E-mail will make you look unprofessional. It is quite embarrassing when you spell a person’s name wrongly (the word {first_name} appears instead of the subscriber’s real name) or worse… screwing up your affiliate links!
- Not mailing your list for a long time. The opposite of spamming. If you don’t keep in touch with your subscribers for a long time, they will tend to forget who you are. And that will severely damage the relationship between you and your subscriber.
- Not relating to your subscribers. When every new product launches, there is a tendency to mail your subscribers all the time while forgetting that the product doesn’t relate to the subscribers at all. You don’t want to sell cat food to people who don’t own a pet!
Finally, one more kiss of death for good email marketing is to lack credibility. Here are some ways of improving your credibility:
- Talk about your experiences online and offline. If you’ve run an offline business before, use it to establish your credibility as a business builder. If you’ve been in sales and marketing before, use it to establish your credibility as a copywriter.
- Show them screen shots of how much money you’ve made online (or checks you’ve earned). If you don’t have any of these, use photos of well-known marketers you’ve taken pictures with (e.g. look, here is my picture taken with Mike Filsaime)
- Let others tell the story. It would be better to let others sing your praises – especially in the form of testimonials.
Use E-courses To Build Credibility Over Time
People may not be impressed at the first glance. Sometimes, it takes a few E-mails for people to recognize your capabilities.
One of the ways you can build your credibility over time is to write an E-course or a newsletter that will be sent to your subscriber’s E-mail over a period of days or weeks. It must be something educational – something that will establish you as an expert on the subject.
You can configure your autoresponder to send an E-course once everyday, every two days or a weekly newsletter. So long as the subscriber reads your educational material over a period of time, you can slowly work your way into the heart of your subscriber and stamp a firm impression in their minds.
