11 Ways to Completely Sabotage Your Email Marketing Strategy

Having a well-crafted email marketing strategy is an important facet of an overall digital marketing plan. Though email may seem old-school, it’s still one of the best methods for getting your content directly in front of (potential) customers.

But how do you know if your strategy is working, beyond an increase in sales or web traffic? Read through our list of “don’ts” regarding your strategy, to make sure you aren’t unintentionally ruining your marketing efforts! 

1. You don’t have a goal for your emails: If you are only sending emails because you think that you "should" or "have to", that’s not a great goal. Goals for emails should be to drive customers to new content, deals and sales, or unveil new information. 
2. You don’t include CTA's: Calls-to-action or CTA’s follow the goals of your email. Do you want to send people to a landing page to download your new ebook? Are you launching a new product? Whatever the goal of your email is, use a CTA to get people reading your email to where they need to go. 
3. You send image-only emails: This is a best practice note. Your goal is to get your email through spam filters, and emails that only consist of a single image may have a harder time doing that. It also makes your email less appealing if it hits someone’s inbox and the pictures don’t load! 
4. Your contacts didn’t opt-in: Another classic best practice here but we’ll say it again. NEVER​ buy contacts. Most CRM systems require you to only send email to contacts that have given their explicit permission to be contacted. And if you want people to open and click in your emails, usually those will be people that already expressed interest in your business. 
5. Your emails are too long: Have you ever gotten an email so long that it felt like you had to scroll forever to get to the bottom? You probably forgot the whole point of the email in the first place! Keep your emails focused on their goals and make the CTA the focal point. People reading your email will know exactly what you’re trying to say, leading to better open and click rates. 
6. Your emails aren’t mobile-optimized: Many people read their emails on their mobile devices these days. But ensuring that your email looks good on both a laptop and a cell phone doesn’t have to be a complete chore. Use your email marketing software to preview your emails on your phone before you send it out. Then you’ll know if you need to make changes ahead of time.
7. You don’t maintain your contact lists: When was the last time you looked through your contact database? Do you keep up with contacts that switch jobs or companies? What about email addresses that no longer exist? Keeping your contact lists fresh will ensure your emails get in front of actual customer’s eyes and not lost in the abyss of the internet.
8. You send every email to your entire database: List segmentation is what separates beginners from email professionals. You have different customer types and not every customer is going to benefit from every email you send. Using specific, managed lists, will help your emails meet better reception. 
9. You ignore the potential of your subject lines and preview text: It only takes an instant to make a first impression, and that’s the role of subject lines and preview text. Those two things are what are going to convince someone to open your email instead of automatically deleting it. Use short, concise phrases that offer up the potential of your email. 
10. You don’t take advantage of personalization: If you have more information about the contacts in your database, like first and last name, company, job title, etc. (which you should since all your contacts opted in, right?), you can add small touches of personalization to your emails. Being directly addressed can lead to higher open and click rates since it subtly makes the reader feel like the email is addressed only to them. Use a bit of personalization in your subject line to really shine! 
11. You aren’t using your results to improve: We’ve mentioned open and click rates throughout this list but maybe you aren’t sure what your open and click rates are for your emails. That’s the first place to start. Reviewing the analytics can show you what email types do well with your customers and potential clients. You can review individual emails or go through reports for longer time periods, like a month, three-months, or even a year to look for trends. Start with creating overall goals for your emails and work on updating your contact database. These make up the ground layer for crafting a strong email marketing strategy. From there, you can work on smaller changes like using personalization, writing stronger subject lines, and mobile optimizing.

Looking to do more with your email marketing? Talk with Four Tens!