Before we continue to explore the benefits of a good e-campaign, we need to look at some cardinal rules, or rather the breaking of those rules.
When companies decide that they are going to use email to market their products and services many of them make the classic mistake of thinking it will be a cinch. Without careful thought as to what will actually go in the emails, you will be sending the electronic equivalent of those shiny junk envelopes that customers toss in the garbage.
The top five mistakes companies make when using email to market are...
- Poor content. You read magazines, right? The average glossy magazine now has about a third of its weight taken up by advertising. But we tolerate that. Why? Well, because the other stuff is both interesting and readable. Great content and advertising work well together. So, take a look at your firm's emails, and get harsh. Is the content likely to keep the customer reading? Is it brief but well-written? Does it offer an insight into your product or offer a solution to their problems? Take the time to look at what your marketing guys have done with the emails and make sure that they're worth reading. Otherwise, scrap them and start again.
- Bad SPG. Spelling and grammar must be perfect. This cannot be over-exaggerated. Put yourself in your customer's shoes (you know, the guys who pay for your groceries). If someone sent you an email that looked like it was written by an eight year old, would you respect them?
- Multi-media swamping. Don't overload your emails with graphics. These take time to load on customer's computers, and they're often filtered anyway. They also distract from your message. Don't waste your customer's time, or they won't give you theirs.
- Be allowed. This is really simple. Make sure that your recipients have agreed for you to send them email. If they haven't, it will be tagged as spam. Once your customers consider your message as spam, it is spam. Period.
- Try, try again. Too many businesses do too many things without thinking first, and emailing is one of them. Test out your email marketing on a small group of customers first. Don't screen them; make it as blind as possible. Choose twenty customers, and test with them. You'll know who opened what and who responded. This is a great way to test the quality of your strategy.
This raises the point of having a strategy. We'll be covering what an e-campaign actually looks like soon. But just remember one thing: what's bad for your customer is bad for your business.
Tags: campaign, e-campaign, e-commerce, email, top five mistakes, web marketing