Now that you’ve built a good quality email marketing list, the last thing you want to do is cause people to unsubscribe. You need to nurture your list and ensure that its members continue to have interest in your messages. In previous email marketing mailings we’ve discussed things you should do to maintain your list. Today we’ll offer a few things that you should NOT do.
1. You never stop selling. While the main idea behind your email marketing campaign is to generate revenue, it’s important that not all of your messages go for the hard sell. Some of your messages should be conversational. Too many sales-focused emails have a tendency to push people off of your list.
2. You send irrelevant messages. We’ve all seen it before. An email promoting a discount or special event arrives with only one day left to take advantage of it – or worse yet – after the promotion/event has expired. Or maybe you received an offer that is targeted to a group that you’re clearly not part of. When this happens the sender loses credibility. Make sure that the message you’re sending is relevant to the audience you’re sending it to.
3. You send boring emails. Lack of interesting content in your messages is a sure fire way to have the recipient bail on your list completely. If the consumer is not engaged by your message, they are going to lose attention. If they lose attention, you lose them. Be sure to always include interesting content in your messages. Even if the topic is, by its nature, uninteresting, use some outside content to spice up the message.
4. You send messages that take too long to load. Sending messages that consist of one big image or overloading your content with pictures (especially if they are large files) can be damaging in many ways. ISPs tend to block mailings with high image content and mailings that don’t get blocked can take time to load when opened in the recipient’s mail client. A few seconds is all it takes for the client to push the delete/SPAM/unsubscribe button – and poof, your message is gone. Images should only make up about 30% of your content and never send a message that is only images.
5. You send too many messages. This one is pretty straight forward. Members of your list signed up so that they’d receive news and information from your company – not so they’d be bombarded with emails on a daily basis. When you send too often two things happen: 1) your messages are deemed less important and 2) you annoy subscribers. Both of these things are sure to drive people to unsubscribe. Instead, consider asking your members how often they’d like to receive mailings and send only that frequently.
To learn more about email marketing or if you have any questions please contact wddonline, for assistance. And remember, you can always take a look back over previous email marketing tips by visiting our website www.wddonline.com/emailtips.
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