The Dos and Don’ts of E-Mail Marketing

I haz an e-mail market?

My foray into the art of marketing e-mails began in 2015 after a promotion at work. There was no training, no preparation — just a, “You’ll do great, we believe in you, ready set go!” and in I jumped. I’m a fast learner, but there are so many things I wish I’d known when I started. Whether you’re a business looking to start an e-mail marketing program or a marketing professional looking for a little guidance, I’ve got some tips and tricks for you when it comes to e-mail marketing. I’m sharing my insights with you so you don’t have to enjoy an e-mail marketing baptism by fire like I did. Here are some of the basic dos and don’ts of e-mail marketing.

DON’T BUY LISTS

This is my absolute, #1, NO EXCEPTIONS RULE. It’s tempting to purchase a list of contacts, especially when you’re first starting out — but for the love of unicorn Jesus, DON’T DO IT. Buying e-mail lists is an outdated and, frankly, unethical way to send marketing e-mails. The return on investment is garbage because nobody on the list you’ll obtain actually wants to hear from you. Sure, maybe you will get lucky with a conversion or two, but even that is unlikely. Companies that sell lists of e-mails will assure you that their lists are “clean” and “vetted” and will try to tell you how well-targeted the contacts they have are. This is absolute bullshit.

Purchased lists are almost always filled with e-mail addresses scraped off websites or obtained in similarly unethical ways. They often contain fake or “dead” e-mail addresses. These types of e-mail addresses are prime candidates to actually be SPAM traps. A SPAM trap looks like a real e-mail address, but it isn’t. If you have a SPAM trap e-mail on your list and you send an e-mail to it, this tells Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that your e-mail list is unhealthy and you risk being blacklisted. (This happened to a former employer of mine. It sucked.)

DO GROW YOUR LIST ORGANICALLY

Instead of buying e-mail addresses, grow your list organically. You can accomplish this by having strong e-mail opt-in areas on your website — I recommend having one at the top of your home page in the header and one in your footer. Create a dedicated e-mail opt-in landing page that you can use to share on social media and in your e-mail signature. Incentives are a great way to entice people to join your e-mail newsletter: offer discounts, free shipping, etc. Run giveaways, create lead magnets, or start a lead generation campaign on Facebook. These are all excellent alternatives to wasting your money on a list full of crappy contacts that never opted in to hear from you.

DON’T “BATCH & BLAST”

The days of sending the same content to every single person, every single time, are over. They’re gone. Goodbye. I liken a “batch & blast” e-mail to throwing a handful of rocks at a crowd of spread-out people and hoping that at least one person is hit with the rock. (I didn’t say it was a nice analogy.) It’s ineffective and maybe you will hit someone; maybe you will not. Probably you will not unless you happen to have really good aim.

DO SEND SMART, STRATEGIC, SEGMENTED E-MAILS

Instead of flinging rocks all willy-nilly, get yourself a slingshot and focus on one person at a time. With e-mail marketing, you can achieve this by getting to know your audience. Collect as much information as you can: their name, their birthdate, their communication preferences, etc. Once you have good data, you can utilize your e-mail marketing service’s customization features to build super-targeted segments that help you send what your audience members want when they want it. Many e-mail marketing services will let you target customers based on purchase habits, browsing habits, cart abandonment, and many other criteria. My favorite platform for this level of segmentation is Klaviyo. Another fairly good choice is Omnisend, especially if your business is e-commerce.

DON’T BE BORING

Y’all, I get so many marketing e-mails, and I’m willing to bet you do too. It takes a LOT to catch my attention. The subject line and pre-header text is your first chance to be creative and catch the attention of your target audience, so PLEASE don’t waste this space by putting people to sleep. “Open Now!” tells me absolutely nothing, while “Open for your unused coupon!” piques my interest. Unused coupon? I think. I didn’t know I had an unused coupon. I better open this and see what THAT’S all about. If the content of the e-mail is just as attention-grabbing, that company just might get a conversion out of me. But if the e-mail is a snoozefest, has an underwhelming offer, or if the subject line was misleading and there is no coupon, see ya. Byeeeee.

DO BE BOLD/FUNNY/SILLY/YOURSELF

Not everyone is a fan of snarky marketing (snarketing, if you will) like I am, but boy, do I love it. I love clever, creative content and businesses that are unafraid to be bold and loud about who they are. Make sure to inject your business’s personality, tone, voice, and cleverness everywhere — including into your marketing e-mails. Just because you’re selling something doesn’t mean you have to be all serious and boring. (Unless your target audience is also serious and boring, then I guess you should be serious and boring. Ugh.)

There is no perfect way to e-mail market, and the game is constantly changing. New technology and innovations will come, trends will change, and as we learn more about e-mail marketing we will adapt and roll with the punches. But if you follow these basic dos and don’ts above, hopefully, you will find your transition into this form of marketing a little easier than I did. Now get out there and kick some e-mail ass!

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