What Not to Do!

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Here are five things you should not do when it comes to your e-mail marketing campaigns:

1. Procrastinate – Don’t wait to send out your e-mail communiqués. Bundling them with timeliness & urgency increases the value of what the recipient thinks of them. Have a sense of panic to ‘greet the guest’ as though they have just walked into your front door. If you keep them waiting, they will wander around, & eventually drift away.
   
2. Letting ‘em help themselves – Do not have one big page and expect to have them tell you all. Structure the questions is a flirtatious conversation. Ask them a little bit at a time and keep your questions open – that way you are not leaving out any important information.
   
3. Send them a catalog – If they haven’t asked for it, don’t send it to them. In a survey of more than 300 catalog web sites – I found it impossible to just sign up for e-mail. I basically had to sign up for the catalog or direct mail piece – only then would I get an e-mail. A lot of sites were consumer sites & some were very interesting. In fact, I purchased my new ‘shades’ from one of these sites as well. The $30 market priced ‘shades’ cost me $10 – they were on sale for $15, I found a $5 off coupon on their site, plus by signing up for their catalog I got free shipping on my first order over $10! (But, I had no choice.) When I get their catalog at home I see no use for it – it is an industrial product catalog – wrenches, screws, drill bits, saws, etc. They had safety goggles too – just the kind I was looking for (one’s that will not break easily & cheap.) Their catalog is 250 pages!
   
4. Put the ‘entire’ offer in the Subject Line – People like intrigue. A short subject line can offer a certain amount of enticement to bring people into your web site. Yet, you have some very high brand name retailers who will put the entire offer of the e-mail within the subject line. Yes subject lines as long as 35 words! This one retailer in particular also pays it’s models for impressions. Unfortunately for them the impression is based on emails delivered, not on number of times viewed. With so much being spent on the collateral within the e-mail, their approach baffles me.
   
5. Listen to ‘Experts’ – The experts or analysts believe in numbers & gut feel based on a cumulative opinion. What is cumulative opinion? This is opinion that is based on what everyone is doing. This in my opinion is precisely the time to stop doing what others are doing and focus on something unique. Most of the e-mail analysts publish reports based on case studies, case studies are the results of vendors publishing success stories, these success stories are usually exaggerated and unfortunately very delayed. This is not going to make your program unique, it is simply going to ensure that you don’t fail – kind of stay average.

So to rise above all – learn to create dialogues with your clients & prospects. Your employees, your customers, your prospects, & your opinion is what matters most. By you creating interactive conversations – you can leverage first hand research into actionable strategies & tactics to drive ROI.