The Don’ts of Email Marketing

We have gone through the holiday season, the busiest time of the year for shopping, both online and offline.

If you check back your inbox to the month of November, you will see the majority of the emails will be from the companies and stores offering special deals and discounts or the companies who have something new to share with you.

There are people talking about how email marketing is losing its importance and social media is taking over almost everything. I highly disagree with any such debate because according to me email marketing is still one of the important channels online and conversion rate generated through it (if you do it right) is still higher than any other inbound channel.

The reason why most people are ignoring this channel is because of its abuse. According to a survey, an average person receives around 147 messages per day and deletes almost half of them. The competition is tough, so casual email won’t work and one has to do something extra in their email to grab their audience’s attention.

Email marketing should be a part of your on-going advertising and branding strategy. There is a fine line between getting benefit from email marketing and abusing users. Today in this post we will discuss some of the major don’ts that you should always consider as important when planning to invest in email marketing.

Don’t Email Every day

Sending emails every day (in many cases multiple times a day) takes up your time and effort, and what does it do? It simply annoys the receiver and is a pain for him. I usually move the email to the spam folder if I see someone (person or a company) is sending emails almost every day. Don’t do this if you are running a business!

In order to run an effective email marketing campaign it is important to send emails when it is needed. For instance, it is smart to send an email related to Christmas during the middle of December but sending the emails since the start of November will make people leave you and as a result overall the opening and conversion rate will get hurt.

Don’t Just Aim To Sell

When you draft an email, don’t just stay focused on selling your product or service, you are aiming to build a relationship with this prospect. A professor who taught me sales management said that the customer likes to be addressed individually because it makes him feel important and after being in the industry, I have now realized what he said was completely true. I wrote an article on my blog where I point out the mistakes one makes while writing outreach emails, this will surely help you out if you are looking to correct your errors.

Remember that you are acting as an advisor to the customer, you have to help them make better buying decisions rather than raving about your product in the email. Focus more on how your product or service will help the customer and make their life easy.

Don’t Go Overboard With The Discounts

Remember each and every prospect and customer is different, and he wants to be treated special. If you announce in the email that you are offering too many discounts and it is to everyone, why would he think that there is an added advantage for him? If you are emailing a housewife who buys detergent from you, tell her that as she is a valued consumer and you will offer her discounts on cleaning products.

Marketing is not simple, you have to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and find out what makes him tick. Follow these don’ts and keep up with the trends to keep your email marketing campaign alive and fresh.