EMAIL NEWSLETTER MISTAKES EMAIL MARKETERS SHOULD AVOID

Many may speculate on the death of email newsletter with the growth of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many more. But the statistic says otherwise.

Despite the growth of social media, email remains to be the most effective lead-generation platform. It is 75% higher compared to other platforms. Why? It’s simply because of the convenience and affordability.

Email newsletters can generate more sales with over 50% and costs 33% less over other platforms.

So those who speculate that email marketing newsletter is no longer effective, forget that this strategy is ineffective when the contents of the email do not satisfy the interest of the recipients as well as other factors. Your recipients are now more selective of what they will read and what they will delete or unsubscribe. Thus, you have to make sure that each of your newsletter campaigns focuses on one goal at a time.

One of the most common email marketing mistakes by marketers today is buying an email list. Buying an email list poses a risk to your email marketing campaigns because it can affect your Sender Reputation. This is because either the emails that you bought are not valid, or you don’t know the recipients, and you might get reported as Spam or the recipient will simply unsubscribe.

Another one common email marketing mistake is not paying attention to the quality and validity of an email list. Before sending any newsletter, the recipient’s email must be verified first. Otherwise, the newsletter may be delivered into the Spam folder which may negatively influence the Sender Score.

When the email lists are validated, there’s a better chance for your newsletters to be protected from bounces once you sent it.

Email marketing mistakes you should avoid

And now, we will discuss more below about the other most common email newsletter mistakes committed by marketers:

1. Not Using an Email Service Provider

An email service provider (ESP) is a company that offers services like email marketing or bulk email. When you use an ESP, your email newsletter for E-Commerce stores will look professional and credible compared.

Below are some of the benefits of using ESP:

• A large volume of emails can be sent fast and efficient
• List management and personalization features
• Ability to track open rates, CTRs, bounce rates, conversion rates and more
• Subscriber management features
• Compliance to avoid spam complaints, bounce rate, or low sender reputation
• Email marketing campaign automation

2. A Limping Email List Management

Attracting new customers is five times more difficult than keeping the old ones. Customer retention is a valuable long-term solution for increased revenue and sustainability, but we know it’s not that easy. However, when you also focus on this aspect, you can also attract new customers.

If your customers signed up for your email list, then your email marketing campaign is doing good. Email data validation is also useful to eliminate negative engagement so you can reach more leads and customers which eventually generates sales.

3. Poor Newsletter Designs

This is not particularly about plain text emails, but it’s referring to HTML newsletters which have more potential to be visually attractive. Keep your designs simple. Let your newsletter correspond to your brand’s identity. Don’t bombard it with so many texts—there’s a different platform for that.

4. Uninteresting and inappropriate subject lines

No matter how great your newsletter content is, the wrong subject line will ruin everything. Your open rate is determined by how effective your subject line is. Write a subject line that is catchy and reflects the contents of your email.

5. Hard-sell approach rather than soft-sell

If the goal of your campaign is to generate sales, then you can subtly persuade your recipients. Study shows that when your approach is insistent and overt then you are likely to lose a sale. A hard sell has been ruled as an ineffective marketing strategy.

Why a soft-sell approach can help grow your business? Here’s why:

• Variation in your newsletter will avoid recipients to get tired of your emails.
• An element of surprise—this makes them more likely to open your emails out of curiosity.
• Reinforces the idea that your company and they have a common interest.
• Better engagement with subscribers.

6. Bad Newsletter Timing and Frequency

If you are keeping track of your engagement over time metric, then you can avoid this mistake. Engagement over time tells you what time of day is best to send emails because timing and frequency depend on the industry, audience, or brand. If you send your emails too often, your recipients might get annoyed and delete it or even unsubscribe.

Or if you don’t follow up, you might lose your chance to build a relationship with your recipients; they may even forget about you.

The following are some tips on the best email newsletter timing and frequency:

• Quarterly. Quarterly emails can also be effective if handled correctly. Just avoid cramming a 3-months’ worth of information into a single email or your recipient might get tired of reading it.
• Monthly. Monthly emails have higher open rates with 86% on the first day. For this frequency, newsletters and information-based emails are most successful.
• Weekly. Weekly emails are effective in promoting weekly deals or extended products. They tend to be opened promptly; 74% of weekly emails are opened within 24 hours from when the recipient receives them.
• Daily. You need to be sensitive when sending daily emails and minimize per se. Daily emails should offer exciting content and incentivize your recipients to take action whether by purchasing, recommending or downloading. For example, you can opt for daily emails to highlight sales that only last for a short period (three days or less).

7. Too Long

Let’s be honest, people now have a short attention span. Therefore, you should keep this in mind when creating the contents of your newsletter. If your newsletter is too long, the most obvious outcome is it will be deleted.

Frequency also has something to do with too many contents, especially with quarterly emails. Your newsletter should be of the same length irrespective of how often you send it. Aim for your newsletter content to take less than 3 minutes to read.

If there’s too much information but you want to include it because it is necessary, include a link that routes your recipient to your website or a blog post. By doing so, you are giving your recipient the option of whether or not to read the full content.

8. Missing Call-To-Action Buttons

Always include CTA buttons in your newsletter regardless of the main goal of your newsletter. If your recipient has never signed up for your email list and got interested in one of your newsletters, then your CTA button should be easily located. Every sign up is likely a result of a CTA. Successful marketers usually put a big CTA at the top of their emails, and then repeat the same button at the end.

9. Missing Social Media Buttons

If you don’t include options for your recipient to share your newsletter on social media platforms, then you are missing an opportunity to expose your emails in more than one recipient. So same with CTA buttons, always include social media buttons to allow your recipients to share your email on their social media accounts.

10. Not Tracking your Reports

Reports are there to provide you valuable insight into your subscriber’s growth and the performance of your newsletters. With these reports, you will know the number of emails that were opened, how many times it was clicked, how many times the links were clicked, and the total subscribers and unsubscribes of your newsletters. You can use this information to manage and improve your email.

Some best practices

• At the very start, set what your subscribers can expect from your newsletters.
• Write attention-grabbing subject lines.
• Curate relevant, informative, and engaging content.
• Personalize your newsletters.
• Keep your content short but concise.
• Optimize your newsletter for mobile devices.
• Be consistent with sending your newsletters.
• Comply with CAN-SPAM Act.