12 Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid [New Report]

While I was working at MarketingSherpa, we published MarketingSherpa’s Dirty Dozen: Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes as a lead generation offer for the 2008 Email Marketing Summit.  At the time, I thought that this was a valuable document that could help companies recognize and change their less than stellar email habits. Three years have passed, and I’m inclined to believe that the email mistakes that were most common then are still rampant today.

We all make mistakes, and my recent blog posts on the topic of email marketing challenges, objectives and tactics have generated comments from our readers highlighting perceived errors by HubSpot's marketing efforts, primarily the perception of too frequent emails. 

Here are the "Dirty Dozen" and my brief commentary on each with their current relevance to your email marketing efforts.

Mistake #1: Blatant Lack of Permission - Companies still try to get around the permission issues in search for the quick buck. That’s a big mistake.

Mistake #2: Utterly Deficient Segmentation - Content relevancy is the number one issue for the email marketer. Without segmentation, you have no real relevancy.

Mistake #3: Lame ‘Welcome’ Messages - We still receive far too many lame welcome messages. What a wasted marketing opportunity.

Mistake #4: Frequency Decisions Made for the Wrong Reason - Marketers are in a constant battle on the matter of frequency.

Mistake #5: Institution-to-One Messaging - The debate on how to personalize company emails is ongoing. It’s all about testing.

Mistake #6: No Real Interactivity - Interactivity is not only for social media. Email was once the relationship building medium, and it still can be.

Mistake #7: Deliverability: Content, Formatting & Lack of Self-Advocacy - If anything, deliverability is even a bigger issue than it was a few years ago.

Mistake #8: Designing Images That Appear as Red Xs - Getting HTML images to appear for those who have images turned off still requires that they turn the images on. It’s the text vs. HTML debate.

Mistake #9: Disregarding Your BlackBerry and Mobile Readers - The number of mobile readers has exploded since 2008. Thank you iPhone and Android.  It’s more important than ever to make your email mobile reader friendly.

Mistake #10: Repeating Ad Types - Banner blindness in email newsletters is more prevalent than ever.

Mistake #11: Collecting Bad Response Rates - You need good analysis to determine the effectiveness of your email. That’s always been the case.

Mistake #12: Relying on Email Only - This last mistake of relying on email only was written during the dawn of the social media revolution. It’s the only one that feels a bit dated, but it’s still worth noting that relying on just one tactic alone is never a good plan.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the Dirty Dozen: Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes, you can download a free copy. We’ve updated portions of it with data from MarketingSherpa's 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. What we’ve kept is the wisdom.

View the original article here

New Chart: Most Effective Email Marketing Objectives for 2011

In my last post on email, I talked about email marketing challenges. Today, I’d like to focus on email marketing objectives.

There are many good reasons for email marketing. Send out a well thought out and timed email and you can see sales jump. Unfortunately, many companies get addicted to email sends that produce instant sales, and when the numbers decrease, they wonder why.

That’s why it’s so important to set your objective for your email marketing. What do you want and expect from your email sends? Once you figure that out you can measure the effectiveness of these objectives.

So which objectives are most effective?

This should not be a surprise since with emails you want people to click to your landing pages or website.

But the number 2, according to MarketingSherpa, may come as a bit of a surprise – building brand awareness.

People often overlook the value of email as a brand awareness tool – but think about it for a moment, and you can see why.

To begin with, most business emails are not opened. According to eMarketer, the average open rate for a marketing email is 19.1%. That leaves 80% of your sends not being opened. However, there is a better chance that your prospect saw either your company’s name in the “from” line and read your subject line, but chose not to open your email.  Each time your email arrives in an inbox means you’re making your prospect aware of you. That’s why it’s so important to create a consistency with your subject line, because each subject line builds a little more brand awareness and identity.

And, when your email is opened (and read), it’s important that you provide them with information they expect from your brand.

The number 3 most effective objective is increasing sales revenue. That’s easier said than done, and requires coordination between the email, the offer and the landing page. One of the best ways to learn how to do this effectively is to read up on case studies. At MarketingSherpa’s upcoming Email Summit 2011, there are a number of sessions that deal directly with increasing sales through email. One is a panel how to develop content for specific buying stages and another is a case study on turning innovation into new revenues. 

Do you agree with these email marketing objectives?  What will you concentrate on during 2011?

View the original article here

New Charts: Most Effective Email Marketing Tactics for 2011

HubSpot makes closed-loop internet marketing software that integrates your sales and marketing activities. It's simple really.

Get found.Convert visitors into leads.Close those leads efficiently.

View the original article here

New Chart: Most Effective Email Marketing Objectives for 2011

In my last post on email, I talked about email marketing challenges. Today, I’d like to focus on email marketing objectives.

There are many good reasons for email marketing. Send out a well thought out and timed email and you can see sales jump. Unfortunately, many companies get addicted to email sends that produce instant sales, and when the numbers decrease, they wonder why.

That’s why it’s so important to set your objective for your email marketing. What do you want and expect from your email sends? Once you figure that out you can measure the effectiveness of these objectives.

So which objectives are most effective?

This should not be a surprise since with emails you want people to click to your landing pages or website.

But the number 2, according to MarketingSherpa, may come as a bit of a surprise – building brand awareness.

People often overlook the value of email as a brand awareness tool – but think about it for a moment, and you can see why.

To begin with, most business emails are not opened. According to eMarketer, the average open rate for a marketing email is 19.1%. That leaves 80% of your sends not being opened. However, there is a better chance that your prospect saw either your company’s name in the “from” line and read your subject line, but chose not to open your email.  Each time your email arrives in an inbox means you’re making your prospect aware of you. That’s why it’s so important to create a consistency with your subject line, because each subject line builds a little more brand awareness and identity.

And, when your email is opened (and read), it’s important that you provide them with information they expect from your brand.

The number 3 most effective objective is increasing sales revenue. That’s easier said than done, and requires coordination between the email, the offer and the landing page. One of the best ways to learn how to do this effectively is to read up on case studies. At MarketingSherpa’s upcoming Email Summit 2011, there are a number of sessions that deal directly with increasing sales through email. One is a panel how to develop content for specific buying stages and another is a case study on turning innovation into new revenues. 

Do you agree with these email marketing objectives?  What will you concentrate on during 2011?

View the original article here

New Chart: Biggest Challenges Facing Email Marketing in 2011

Email marketing is tied to inbound marketing: inbound brings in the leads, email nurtures them and sends them back to the website or landing page which, in turn, offers valuable content that helps convert the lead into a sale.

This lead generating and nurturing cycle relies on every piece of the marketing puzzle working to its fullest. That’s why every inbound marketer needs to understand the challenges that go with email marketing and what works best in order to leverage it effectively. Let’s start with the biggest challenge to email marketing effectiveness.

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, the #1 challenge to email marketing effectiveness is targeting your prospects and customers with highly relevant content.

 What’s interesting about these findings is that the one thing a company can control is the relevance of its content.

The issue is that the more targeted your email campaigns, the more content is required.  According to MarketingSherpa, a reason for this challenge is that “developing a sufficient amount of content is a time-intensive process that many marketers do not have the resources to produce.”

Key to creating relevant content in email is to make sure your email messages:

Provide an offer that is connected to the initial requestOffer content that fits the needs of the recipientAre sent at the right time and with the right frequency

To accomplish these tactics, you need a well segmented database so that you can better target your customers and prospects with relevant email messages - content, offers, as well as timing.

Like landing pages which need to be tested and tweaked to improve conversions, email should also be tested for open, click-through, and conversion rates.

Things to test include:

Subject lineHeadlinesCalls-to-action OffersHTML vs. TextLength of copy

One of the reasons relevant content is so critical is that the minute an email recipient starts to feel like your emails are no longer relevant, they’ll stop reading them. You don’t get too many second chances these days.

What I find helpful is to read as many case studies as I can, to find out what’s working in the real world. At MarketingSherpa’s upcoming Email Summit 2011, there are a number of sessions that deal directly with crafting effective email messages, as well as a session from HubSpot’s Mike Volpe on how to integrate your inbound marketing with your email marketing.

In my next post on email marketing, I will be talking about the most effective email marketing objectives for 2011.

View the original article here