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At this point, most people, even those with no marketing experience, have heard that email marketing has the highest average ROI. Currently, the most highly referenced stat is: for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you'll make $36. Of course, this is an average, and a stat, so take it with a grain or two of salt, but in the end, email marketing has the potential to be extremely effective in driving your business forward. In this article, our goal is not to help you craft an excellent email. It is to help evade the most common pitfalls of email marketing. So, we're going to look at what we believe to be the most important email marketing mistakes to avoid. 

1. Relying on an insignificant contact list

You can spend a couple of hours drafting the perfect email; it could be pure industry poetry, the most insightful, articulate, thought-provoking content this side of Y2K, and it can fall flat on its face with a dismal open rate and a non-existent click-through rate. If your business doesn't have a contact list at least partially full of people who would get real value out of what you have to say or promote, then it's not worth investing the time yet. We've seen past clients who were thrilled with a beautifully designed newsletter, and then say, "what happened here?" when it's time to view the reports. Having something worth saying means very little when you aren't saying it to the right people. So, before you start an email marketing campaign, do an audit of your contact list(s), and if possible, create relevant segments. 

2. SKIPPING Your Research On Subject Lines

The easiest way to increase your open rate is to write a good hook. Most people say they try not to judge a book by its cover, but everyone judges a book by its title. The subject line is what will get people interested, it is what will get people to actually pause for a couple seconds longer to see if there really is something worth reading in your email. Everyone gets flooded with emails every day. How do you decide which ones are going to get time in front of your eyeballs? When thinking about subject lines, there are various stats out there on keywords to use, when to capitalize things and when not to, yada yada yada. Take a look t all that if you have the time. But the easiest way to write a good subject line is to scratch your own itch. What would make you open that email? Each business has a different ideal target audience, so hopefully you know yours pretty well. And test some things out. Writing is an art that can sometimes have statistical significance. Whatever you do, don't take the click-bait route. It's not sustainable. Be authentic, be honest, and deliver value. 

3. Leaving Out The Personal Touch

When people think of email marketing, they think email blasts, which makes sense, because that is actually quite a lot of what email marketing can be. The problem with thinking of an email as an email blast is that you can lose the personal touch. Even worse, if you are using email software that is actually trying to personalize emails with the whole, "Dear <FIRST NAME>" gambit, then it can come across as extra unauthentic if the rest of the email reads very much like a form letter. For each email, either write the email you would want to receive. If you've built out a detailed buyer persona, then write it as if you are talking directly to that person. 

4. Missing Buttons

The first goal of an email marketing campaign is to get as many people to open the email as possible, but that's not the primary objective. The primary objective is to get your ideal customers to take as many actions as possible. Meaning, you want them to click on things. The best flow for an email should lead your readers to a button, and that button should have a relevant piece of copy that isn't "click here". The button copy should be obvious and enticing: "Read On" or "View the Form". Each section of your email should have an action that you want people to take from it. This leads us to the last of our email mistakes to avoid. 

5. Neglecting Tracking

Before the days of UTM, there were still ways to track email marketing effectiveness, but now that we have UTMs, there's absolutely no reason not to utilize them. If you don't know what a UTM is: it's a simple code that can be attached to any URL to generate Google Analytics data for digital campaigns. Here's an example:

In this link: 
"https://thatagency.com/email-marketing-company-west-palm-beach/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=September"

You can see that the "source" is 'Newsletter', the medium is 'Email' (as opposed to 'video' or 'blog' etc) and the specific Email Newsletter Campaign was September's. This way, you can know exactly where your traffic is coming from, what is successful, and what isn't. If you're looking for a free and easy UTM generator, here is the one we use.

Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

If you avoid these email marketing mistakes, then you are well on your way to turning your email marketing campaigns around. While email marketing does have the potential to be extremely effective, it takes practice, time, and up-to-date insight to stay at the top of your game. If you have other parts of your business that more urgently require your attention, let us manage your email marketing for you. We can help you grow organically, the right way, and help drive revenue for your business. Reach out to our email marketing team today.