Chaotic Neutrality

If nothing else, fixing these problems is a good start and should help get your email marketing machine firing on all cylinders. Email marketing remains a very powerful and cost effective technique as long as you avoid making these types of common mistakes…

1. Poor or non existant tracking.

   This is unexcusable. One of the powerful aspects of Email Marketing is that you can get near-instantaneous results. Even if you know nothing about tracking - a simple visit (and free subscription) to Google Analytics will get you moving down the right path.

2. Mailing to people who haven’t opted in.

   Generally, there is not a lot of good that can come from spamming people with messages that they don’t want. At best, the recipient just deletes the message and ignores you. At worst, you get flagged as a spammer, blacklisted by email servers, and damage your brand and customer base.

3. Not providing an unsubscribe mechanism.

   This is just asking for trouble. First, your customers will hate you… and quickly stop being customers. Second, this is a requirement of CAN-SPAM Act (aka federal regulations that you had better read or you will be looking for a new job).

4. Sending HTML messages without an included Text version.

   There are a couple main reasons why it is important to include both a HTML and plain text version of HTML emails. The primary reason is that sending emails in ‘Multipart‘ format allows the recipient’s email client to determine which version of the email to display. For example, if I can only view plain text in my email client and you send me HTML, I will get an unreadable mess of HTML slop. If that same message is sent in multipart format, my email client will display the plain text version and I will receive the message.

   The other reason to do this is because it makes your email message look less like spam to the email filtering software that mail servers employ.

5. Not testing the creative thoroughly.

   Few things can make you look more amateur than having broken links or an email layout that does not work in the most popular email clients. It is essential to become familiar with the limitations of both Windows and Mac based clients and to accept that designing for a website and designing for an email campaign can be two completely different things.

6. Thinking that “Open Rate” and “Opens” actually means people read your message.

   Open Rate is a staple of the email marketing world’s metrics. However, it has absolutely no relevance to whether someone actually read your message. Both of the following cases are possible:

   • I receive your message, click on it in my inbox, delete it immediately, and get tracked as an open
   • I receive your message, click on it in my inbox but have graphics disabled, read it entirely, and do not get counted as an open

   Open rate is an imprecise metric. Always remember that when you are doing analysis.

7. Lack of subject line testing.

   It seems like everyone falls victim to this one. The sad part is that the Subject Line is quite possibly the ONLY piece of the email message that a recipient will see (in addition to the From: field). It is also likely going to be the first (again, maybe only) thing that drives that recipient to open and/or read your message. It is imperative to test subject lines and optimize this key piece of the email puzzle!

8. Ignoring conversions and revenue.

   Open Rate and Click Through Rate are great starting points, but the real metrics that drive the business world are conversions and Return On Investment (ROI). This calls for a slightly more complex method of tracking that will allow you to count conversions (orders, for example) for a campaign and arrive at some type of dollar or revenue value. If you can track orders and total order amount, you will be well upon your way. You can always assign a dollar amount to actions that take place (such as a form being filled out) and create a ROI number from that, as well.

9. Mailing too frequently to the same universe.

   One of the best ways to fatigue and kill off your list is to constantly send to the same universe. Inboxes are already overflowing and will only get worse in the future. It is extremely important to plan out the timing and spacing of your email messages to your list. Over-mailing your list may cause it to meet an untimely demise and potentially ruin the future value of your email marketing campaigns.

10. Not having a plan for handling and cleaning your undeliverables properly.

    These dead addresses will clog your email system, cause your deliverability to suffer, and cost you money. (Generally, you pay for the email whether it is successfully delivered or not.) Make sure your email system has a way to track bouncebacks and clean the database of permanent undeliverable messages. It will make your system run smoother and improve your metrics.

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