5 Ways To Fail
How many ways are there to really mess up at email marketing? Let me count the ways! There are at least an equal number of ways to do things wrong as there are to do things right.
There may even be more ways to do things wrong than right. There is usually only one right way but
something there are multiple wrong ways.
1. A marketing email must be formatted so that it can be read in any email delivery system. All email delivery systems do not use HTML. Some only use plain text.
Plain text is only ACSII characters. Those are the characters that you can see on your keyboard. The only program that comes on your computer that uses only ACSII characters is NotePad.
Use that program to write your email marketing messages. Not doing that is one of the primary ways to fail at email marketing.
2. Plain text email delivery systems will deliver messages that have lines longer than 65 characters but all of the characters greater than 65 will be scrambled. The email message will be a lot of gibberish. This is yet another way to fail at email marketing.
3. Marketing email messages should only promote one product or one service at a time. Multiple products and services advertised at the same time will lead to email marketing failure.
4. Links that are sent word-wrapped will not appear as clickable links in plain text email delivery systems. The recipient will only see the words. They wont see the link and they wont know what the link is. Not sending full website addresses is another way to guarantee email marketing failure.
5. Marketing emails that are filled with misspelled words and poor grammar will cause the recipients to think that the sender is not all that bright or, maybe just uneducated. This is yet another way to fail at email marketing.
5 Ways to Succeed
Success is a beautiful word! Success at email marketing is a beautiful phrase. There are so many ways to fail at email marketing....that's the bad news.
The good news is that there are techniques available that, if not guarantee success, at least increase the odds and put them in your favor.
1. Build your list. Do NOT even consider buying a list. Build your list from scratch. Yes, it will take time but once you get a list going to will actually self-propagate and it will be a list of names of real customers and real prospective customers. Use all of the available techniques and your list will be your most valuable asset. A long and impressive list of real prospects opens doors for you that will otherwise remain closed.
2. When you send your marketing emails to your list be certain that they are formatted in such a way that all email delivery systems will deliver them in readable form. Use NotePad to compose your messages so that you have only ACSII characters and be sure that your lines are never longer than 65 characters.
3. Never, ever word-wrap links. Plain text email delivery systems will deliver word-wrapped links without the link. Always type out full website addresses.
4. Never promote more than one product or service per marketing email. Keep your emails short. 300 to 400 words long is long enough for a marketing email. Be certain that all of the links in your marketing email work and that every word is spelled correctly. Double check your grammar, as well.
5. Do NOT over-do sending marketing emails. Remember that these people who opted into your mailing list gave you permission to email them but they did not give you permission to pester them to death with marketing messages.