The worst way to run an email campaign

In the last few years, I’ve seen some seriously mismanaged email campaigns. Their biggest achievement? Driving away clients en masse.

So, I’ve put together some top tips to avoid that problem. Let’s work through email marketing’s biggest faux pas together — and I’ll show you how to avoid them.

1. Not planning your mail-outs

If you don’t plan your strategy for sending out your emails, you’re most definitely setting yourself up for campaign failure. Keep a calendar close by and write down the actions and objectives of your campaign. This will help you prepare your strategy and will prevent your deadlines from creeping up on you, giving you time to polish other aspects of your emails.

Keep those annual big days in mind (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Summer break and so on) because you can take advantage of them to send seasonal messages to your subscribers, with a more personalized tone of voice and a clearer purpose.

Top tip: Schedule an automated email on an important date for your subscriber (their birthday or yearly subscription anniversary for example). That way, your message will be more engaging and your subscribers will feel like the email meant just for them.

2. Not establishing objectives

When you’re developing a marketing email campaign, you need to establish a primary objective, otherwise you’ll be setting yourself up for disappointing results and minimal (if any) economic retribution from your campaign.

To define an objective for your email marketing campaign, you’ll need to decide what benefit you wish to pursue. That could be pushing your sales, promoting a new product or service, or increasing your website visits. Once you have a clear objective in mind, you’ll be able to tailor your audience, content and timings around this.

3. Not using the right tools

One of the most common mistakes is executing mail-outs from generic email platforms like Gmail or Outlook. This will often be perceived as lacking in professionalism, which in turn will weaken your credibility in the eyes of your customer or client.

To prevent this, there are several tools that focus on email marketing (and shame on you if you’re still not using them). These tools generally allow you to perform massive mail-outs with consideration for the way the email will ultimately display on your subscriber’s screen.

Some of the best and most well known tools are Mailchimp, GetResponse, and Aweber.

Top tip: If you’re just starting out in this space, I’d recommend going with Mailchimp because it’s pretty user-friendly. And very intuitive.

4. Not implementing anti-spam measures

Emails ending up in a subscriber’s spam folder are a common, yet devastating, result. This usually happens because the email campaign isn’t compliant with the rules set out by anti-spam filters.

If you don’t want your campaigns to share a spam folder fate, joining the ranks of Nigerian princes and $1,000,000 lottery wins, you need to verify your own domain before you send marketing emails. You also need to choose a safe sending platform.

Next, avoid overusing capitals or exclamation points in your subject line. Don’t include links that don’t work or take you to broken URLs, and don’t use images that haven’t been optimized.

Remember to always test your email against an anti-spam filter. This can help you determine if your email would probably land inside a spam folder or not.

Top tip: Would you open an email with the subject line you’re thinking of? Make sure it doesn’t sound like spam.

5. Not building your own lists for your email campaign

There are still many companies that waste a lot of money buying random email address lists. What they don’t realize is that this behavior is forcing an unsuccessful campaign.

You don’t know who you’re sending to. Are they a potential client, or are they entirely unsuitable? Plus, in light of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar legislation in the US, this practice is definitely non-compliant.

Your subscribers are not just email addresses. They’re human beings. If they receive an email from an unauthorized sender, they’ll probably mark it as spam. Which gets your address blacklisted (and yes, the process of getting your email address out of this list is long and tedious).

6. Not personalizing your message

Whenever possible, try to personalize the message sent to your subscribers. This way you’ll create a more credible, human and close connection with them.

A simple win is to use your subscriber’s name (or last name if it’s a formal message) to introduce the email. And you can integrate data or feedback from previous interactions they’ve had with your site, and suggest products they might be interested in, based on their previous purchases. Or you could even change the look and feel of the entire email based on their age or sex.

To create personalized mail-outs, you must first obtain the necessary information. To do so, the primary tool you’re going to need are those famous registration and subscription forms (don’t know much about them? We can help you with that!).

7. Not creating a landing page for an email campaign

It’s pretty much useless to promote a product or service with an email, if you don’t have a landing page to match. Because sending an email with a call-to-action that links to your website’s home page and not to a specific landing page will break the flow. So, your customer will probably lose interest too.

On the other hand, a dedicated landing page creates a cohesive, integrated journey. This will immediately make more sense to your audience, and tell them everything else they need to know about whatever you’re promoting. That ‘link’ between the two parts of the journey is essential for a successful digital design campaign.

We’re only just scratching the surface…

… of all the things to keep in mind to run a successful email campaign. There’s a lot more to consider, such as not analyzing your campaign’s results, or not creating responsive emails. It’s almost too much to consider, which is why there are people out there who specialize in campaigns like these. Take a look at some of our designs for some examples of our recent work.

And if you’re interested in optimizing results in your marketing email campaigns, and reaching your subscribers on a whole new level, get in touch with us today.