It's pretty well known in the marketing world that email is one of the best tools for spreading the word out about your business. With email being 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter, there just aren't many other marketing solutions that come even close!

As you would expect, this doesn't mean your email marketing strategies will always be successful. If you do fall victim to the mistakes listed below... then you might want to think twice about your current approach.

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1. Exaggerating The Email Subject Line

We've all seen it before… "Grow your sales by 500%," or "You'll never believe how amazing this tool is."

Fake & Spammy

Avoid clickbait subject lines at all costs. They are not cool or effective. A jazzy subject line with an overpromise of deliverables will eventually hinder the trust between your business and its audience, leading to a damaged reputation & loss of potential conversions.

Ace your subject line with these tips:

– Keep it plain & simple

– Ensure it's informative

– Be honest & don't exaggerate

– Take off your caps lock, no one wants 'shouting' in their inbox

– Only use special characters or symbols when absolutely necessary

2. Making it hard for your audience to unsubscribe

I love receiving a ton of emails every day and not being able to find an unsubscribe button

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SAID NO ONE EVER!

I know what you're thinking. "Why on earth would I want to make it easier for people to unsubscribe… Shouldn't I be making it harder?"

Well, first of all, if a person is actively trying to unsubscribe from your blog it usually means one of two things; and yes, they are beneficial to you.

1) The person is genuinely not interested in your product/service or, even, industry. This is of benefit to you because they were merely cluttering your contact list and were never an "A" grade lead.

2) Your content is not valuable, relevant or personalised to the individual viewing it, therefore making it an annoying experience. But don't worry... no business can provide relevant content to everyone.

(Check out this link to see how Solvi can help with personalisation)

Secondly, I'm sure you've all heard about our beloved new GDPR rules. Staying in line with regulations and industry standards is imperative to ensure your emails don't land in the spam folder. (Check this out to see how Solvi ensure that leads captured are fully GDPR compliant)

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3. Having grammatical errors inside your subject line

This is an easy one and doesn't need much explaining. It's simple as that. You make grammatical errors (especially in the subject line) then you are doomed. Bad grammar will, no doubt, make you seem unintelligent & unprofessional.

After all, why would anyone go into business with a person/company that doesn't pay attention to detail?

My recommendation? Always double check your emails, documents and subject lines before sending them to a client, lead or prospect. Alternatively, if you are as bad with your grammar as I am, run your work through a platform like Grammarly.

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4. Over personalising

Yes, personalising your user's experience too much can sometimes cause more harm than good. (Check out these stories)

Effective email marketing strategies require a level of personalisation, but not so much that you appear to be following their every move. After all, we are marketers, not the FBI.

Here are three (rather hilarious) examples of where big brands get it wrong.

If you have read the three examples above or experienced it yourself, you'll know over personalisation can often backfire.

My recommendation? While creating your email workflows consider them from a customers perspective. I mean, if you really want to get it right, ask your customers what they think with an interactive survey or quiz. A second key to effective email personalisation is ensuring there is a balance.

Email marketing automation is not an easy task. However, that doesn't mean you can't adopt them to great effect. After all, when has anything good come out of "easy? If you have any further questions regarding email automation for your business contact a Solvi Expert here.