Are you Making these 7 Deadly Email Mistakes

Here’s what you need to do to avoid making making email mistakes!

MISTAKE #1: Your email messages are filled with spam-triggers and you’re blissfully unaware.

Even including one or two tiny “innocent” spam-triggers can make a huge difference between delivered emails and dumped emails. Blindly sending your email messages out without first checking the content for spam filters is a deadly mistake and money down the drain!

Solution #1: Run your content through a professional content checker every single time!

Do this 100% of the time and you’ll dramatically increase your delivery rate. I also strongly suggest you send a test message to yourself first. Most good hosting companies provide a spam filter on your server.

And, of course, start to familiarize yourself with the most common spam trigger words and phrases. For example, putting “FREE,” or any variation, in the subject line is a big no-no. 

MISTAKE #2: You don’t include personalized data in your emails.

Studies show consistently that people buy from people they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST. But when we get mass-produced emails, it doesn’t quite cut it. It feels like border-line spam, in fact. You need to take time to build relationships with your subscribers. And the more you know about them, the more personalized information you can include in your emails.

SOLUTION #2:At minimum, personalize every single email you send out with your recipient’s FIRST NAME.

“Dear Friend” is a huge red flag in the world of spam, by the way. MUCH better to say “Hi John,” or “Hello Jayne,” or “Greetings Jill.”  A person’s first name is the sweetest sounding word in their entire vocabulary! Plus, with a decent email program like KickStartCart.com or CoolerEmail.com you can merge in “dynamic data.” That is, the data changes for each individual.

MISTAKE #3: You don’t include calls to action in your email body.

What’s the point in contacting your subscribers if you don’t tell them what action you want them to take? Granted, if you’re just sending out weekly tips, for example, the action you want them to take is to just read, right? But even with a tips/advice type of email communication, you should be including a good email signature file.

SOLUTION #3:Include at least TWO calls to action in your marketing emails.

When you’re sending out a specific marketing email – that is you’re promoting a product or service – at minimum, you need to include TWO calls to action. Depending on the length of the copy, you might manage to put as many as four or five calls to action. Just a simple link is fine. When composing your marketing emails, always start with the end in mind. Ask yourself, “What is the single action I want my readers to take?”

MISTAKE #4: You email your list too often or too seldom

This is one of the worst email mistakes I see in the world of marketing. There are one or two of the “Big Guys” out there who insist on emailing DAILY. And it is simply TOO MUCH! On the other end of the spectrum, if you don’t have a set schedule and just email “whenever you feel like it” this has the opposite effect. “Out of sight, out of mind!”

SOLUTION #4: Use a Marketing Calendar to properly time your campaigns.

What is a Marketing Calendar? This is a special tool to implement a structured, systematic, series of marketing emails. That way, you can stay on top of your promotions and sleep soundly at night! Once you have a regular schedule set up, then you can intersperse your e-zine emails with promotional emails on an irregular basis.

MISTAKE #5: You manage your list manually.

With the inexpensive professional choices available today, it’s insane to try to manage your list yourself. Besides, you don’t have a fraction of the sophisticated tracking systems available when you use Outlook or web-based email like Yahoo, AOL or Hotmail.

SOLUTION #5: Switch over to a professional email system NOW!

My top picks are: KickStartCart.com – full email management and shopping cart solution; CoolerEmail.com – full email management software; and if ALL you want to do is create and send out an e-zine (no shopping cart, no autoresponders), ConstantContact.com will do the
job well. They have simple templates to plug in your content.

MISTAKE #6: You rarely, if ever, check your metrics.

“Metric? Huh? What’s a metric?” That’s the response I hear most often when asking people about this topic! Metrics are statistics like your delivery rate, open rate, read rate, click-through rate, forward-to-a-friend rate, unsubscribe rate etc.

SOLUTION #6: Learn how to analyze and use your stats properly.

Any decent professional email management software should provide you with charts, graphs and statistics that you can monitor pretty much “real time.” My pick is CoolerEmail.com – they assign points to each subscriber for each email I send depending on how many times they opened and read an email message, how many click-throughs and how many forwards
they sent (send-to-a-friend).

MISTAKE #7: You’re not doing enough to build your list.

Okay, so you slapped up a website. Maybe you even hired a webmaster to do a nice job for you. Perhaps you have an e-zine in place now and slowly subscribers are trickling in. But what else are you doing? Do you do something every day (minimum every week) to build your list and
market to them?

SOLUTION #7: Select at least six different list-building methods

There are endless ways to drive traffic to your website and build your list effectively and efficiently with prospects hungry for what you have to offer. I strongly recommend you start with KEYWORD ANALYSIS. Once you understand exactly what keywords your customers are searching for, you can better target your product, services and all your marketing efforts.

Next, you’ll want to do search engine optimization (SEO). My friend Andrew Zirkin of BrandSEO.com can help you with both keyword analysis and SEO.

Now, with these two pieces in place you can purchase ads through Pay Per Click services (such as Google, MSN.com, Ask.com, Yahoo!, Search Marketing and Amazon.com’s new ClickRiver), write articles and submit them to directories, do reciprocal linking, be a guest on internet radio, be a featured expert on others’ teleclasses, create a squeeze page, offer freemiums, buy ads in e-zines, start a blog, create podcasts… the list goes on.

Which of these email mistakes are you making?

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