Email marketing is cost-effective, efficient, easy, and flexible in comparison to more traditional advertising and fundraising methods, and it allows you to build and grow relationships with your customer or client base. However, the ease factor of email campaigns may lead you to forget how important planning and testing is, and the flexability factor may cause you to go a little heavy on the cutting-edge media. It’s only natural to get exuberant when you discover the freedoms that email marketing brings to your organization’s advertizing, but make sure that energy doesn’t lead to mistakes that could render your email campaign ineffective or worse, get you labeled a spammer. Below are ten common mistakes email marketers make and the best ways to avoid them.

1. Dashing off a subject line without putting much thought into it

For many readers, the subject line of a message is the deciding factor in whether they open it or not, so it is important to craft a subject line with care. At the same time, you should try to keep it below 20 characters—after that point, some of the characters may get cut off. Here are some other things to keep in mind:

• Make sure that your subject line reflects the contents of your messages accurately and succinctly
• Avoid using ALL CAPS—this is tantamount to yelling
• Avoid overuse of exclamation points
• Don’t use the word “FREE” or the dollar sign ($) in your subject lines… these may trigger spam filters

            2. Forgetting about the preview pane

Many email programs offer users a preview pane, and many people use the preview pane to read messages, rarely opening them to full size. Sizes and orientations (horizontal or vertical) for preview panes vary, so you can’t make your message look perfect in every single one, but follow these guideline to optimize your message for previewing:

• Keep the width to 600 pixels or less
• Aim for your most important content to show “above the fold”—where it can be seen without scrolling (this holds for vertical and horizontal scrolling)
• Get your call to action above the fold
• Left align your header image or logo so that it doesn’t go missing from the preview altogether
• Avoid using fixed-width table cells—flexible widths will allow content more room to adjust to different preview pane sizes

            3. Leaving out the forward-to-a-friend link

The forward-to-a-friend link isn’t necessary for every email communication you have with customers or clients, of course, but e-newsletters, nonexclusive promotions, and of course e-membership drives can benefit from allowing for this kind of word-of-mouth. Some people will just use their email program’s forward button to recommend your messages, but placing a link in the message header will remind even the forward-button forwarders to spread the word. And people who do use the forward-to-a-friend  link will reward you with recommendations that will be stored in your ez.newsletter database, so that you can follow up with them later.

            4. Using one large graphic (or many small graphics) and little or no text

HTML-based emails allow you to do great things for the look of your outgoing email messages, but you can go overboard with the graphics. Some email clients automatically turn images off, and some filters strip pictures from incoming mail, so making your message from one big graphic or several smaller ones may leave readers with no idea what your email is about. 

By all means, include your handsome header, company logo, and relevant accent pictures in your e-newsletter and messages, but make your most important points and your call to action text-based, and include your company name in text, along with your full contact information, in the footer.

            5. Neglecting alt tags

When you use images in your messages, provide a brief description for each one in “alt” tags. This way, those who can do so may be inspired to turn images back on, and those who can’t will have a good idea what they aren’t seeing.

In ez.newsletter’s message editor, the insert image feature provides a field for image alt tags. Just enter the text you want to appear when the corresponding image is not available.

6. Forgetting the footer (and things that often go in one)

A footer not only helps tie your message together with the header and body, but it should also contain standard email marketing elements that are necessary for anti-spam law compliance (unless you have incorporated these elements into a different part of the message). These include:

• The physical address, phone number, fax number, and any other necessary or useful contact information
• An unsubscribe link
• A link to your privacy policy

And, while it isn’t necessary for anti-spam law compliance, you may also want to include a statement of origination in the footer… one of those notes that says how your company got the reader’s address and when you received permission to add that person to your email list. It helps prevent false spam claims.

            7. Forgetting to test the unsubscribe link

You can put an unsubscribe link in your email marketing messages, but you aren’t following through on legal compliance until you check the link and make sure that it works. Malfunctions such as this are uncommon with ez.newsletter, but if you are testing your messages in different email programs, anyway (as described below), this is easy enough to do. Try out the unsubscribe link in one of your test accounts with each email marketing campaign. Remember to reverse the unsubscribe after testing, so that you can test on the account again the next time you send messages.

            8. Forgetting to test the message in multiple email programs

Again, your messages can’t look the same in every single format, but it’s a good idea to try them out in as many email clients as you can and ensure that the most important parts of your design and message are coming across. Get free email accounts at Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, and AOL and send test messages to them. If your company uses Outlook or Eudora, test in the program you already use, and see if you have a friend who uses the other program and can offer you feedback.

            9. Getting too fancy with the coding and extras

Javascript and dynamic HTML often don’t work in email, and even CSS isn’t supported across the board. It’s safest to stick with old-school HTML, and you can create some interesting layouts using tables, colors, and/or text formatting.

You may also want to avoid including video clips in your messages. Why?

• If your readers don’t have the latest version of Flash, or whatever player your video requires, they may end up frustrated with the idea of having to download something to see your clip, no matter how cool the clip is.
• Readers with slower internet connections are likely to have a long wait to see video and may experience interruptions in the video feed, which can also be frustrating.

You can get around this by providing a link to special content housed on your website. However, make sure that you note which player is required and be certain that your readers control the start/stop/pause and volume. Video and audio that start automatically could be embarrassing to someone who unknowingly clicks the link in a work setting.

10. Sending too frequently

Contacting your readers too frequently could get you accused of spamming, even if you are doing everything else right. But more than likely, it will just mean that many of your messages will go unopened. What’s too frequent? Well, that may vary from one reader to the next, and may require testing for you to determine accurately (that is a subject for another white paper).

However, it’s pretty safe to say that you shouldn’t send email on a daily basis, even to your most loyal customers, unless you are responding to a message thread started and continued by the other party. You can also bet that regularly sending more messages than you say you will is a bad idea. However, it’s a good idea to give new subscribers some idea of how often to expect messages from you. Better yet, let them choose the level of correspondence they want. Then stick to that schedule.

The mistakes listed here are quite common, really. But ensuring that your business doesn’t make similar gaffes in the future will set your marketing campaigns above the rest, making them uncommonly user-friendly.

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