You asked, and we’ve been listening! Here’s a list of the top 5 mistakes we see clients make in their email marketing efforts that you need to avoid. Hopefully you’ll learn a little something and take the extra bit of time to apply these tips to your own efforts. We promise you’ll see improvement in your email performance!
5. No Clickable Elements
A common mistake, and one that we see all the time, is clients including images or text in an email without making it clickable. When possible, you should always make an image a link – even if this is just a link to your website. Your main goal is always to get interaction, and you can’t achieve that without making interaction possible! So when in doubt, hyperlink it!
4. Images – Too Many and Too Large
Although we are big advocates of including images within your emails (visuals get you so much more interaction!!), it is important to be aware of the size and frequency of the images you use. An image that is gargantuan can take forever to load, limiting the power of your words. Likewise, overloading your email with too many images can detract from your message or cause all kinds of issues with formatting. A good rule of thumb is to keep them under 1000px wide, and only put an image in when it enhances your message.
3. Long Email Subject
One of the most common issues – an email subject that goes on forever in your subscriber’s inbox. Ideally you want to keep it short and sweet, so that your readers can see the gist of your email’s content at the glance of an eye. If you want to add more, you can always pop a little extra description into the Subheading.
2. ALL CAPS!!!
MAKING A SENTENCE IN ALL CAPS IS A SUREFIRE WAY OF GETTING YOUR EMAIL SENT TO SPAM!!! A big no-no, and one of the most common mistakes we see being made with nearly all of our new clients! We know, we know… you want to make an impact on your reader. But you can easily accomplish this with a different color text, or by bolding or italicizing it. That all caps tendency is like a red flag to spam filters, so if you want to be seen, stay away from them.
1. Sending Without A Test Run
Never, and we mean never, send out an email without sending a test run first! We cannot emphasize this enough! Even if you feel like you’ve double and triple checked it in your editor, things can get lost in translation. Spelling errors, bad images, wrong links… all these things are easy fixes, but cannot be taken back once you hit that send button. So do yourself a favor and pop a test run of if to your inbox (and somebody else’s for another set of eyes if possible).
So that’s it! Did you learn anything new? We hope so! Have more questions for us? We’d be happy to answer them for you! After all, that’s what we’re here for. Give us a call today and we can help you with any of your needs – 904-269-8630.
If you’re in the market for an email marketing service, we’re official local representatives for Constant Contact, which is probably the best option out there!