Top 10 E-Mail Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

Do you know there's a lot of money to be made if you could properly prepared and correctly executed your email marketing campaign to your subscribers?

It doesn't matter how good your intentions are and it doesn't matter how butt-kicking good your offer is. If you blow the basic rules of e-mail marketing, you're headed for disaster.

Here's I provide a checklist of what NOT to do when you're depending on e-mail to boost your revenue:

1. Failing To Obey The CAN-SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) was passed into law by the United States Congress to establish rules for companies that use e-mail for marketing or other commercial purposes.

The law affects any U.S.-based company or person that sends e-mail containing advertising that promotes a product or service.

Transactional e-mail, which is e-mail that is used solely to update a customer with information that is relative to his or her account or order, is generally exempt from most provisions of the Act except that it may not use "false or misleading routing information."

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is charged with the responsibility of enforcing the CAN-SPAM Act and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is authorized to pursue criminal actions against violators of the Act.

2. Failing To Test Your e-mail Message Before You Send It

e-mail can be displayed differently in different browsers and e-mail clients. That's why it's important to send a few test messages and to then read those test messages using the most commonly used browsers and e-mail clients in order to make sure that what readers see is what you intended them to see.

3. Failing To Use A SPAM Checker Before You Send Your e-mail

With so many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Internet users running SPAM-blocking software, it has never been more important to see how your e-mail stacks up against the electronic gate guardians that are going to try and stop your reader from receiving it.

4. Forgetting About The "Preview Pane"

Most people have their e-mail clients set up so that all new e-mail messages are displayed in a preview pain. Depending upon their preferences, that preview pane may just display the "To", "From" and "Subject" headers, or it may display all of those as well as the first few sentences of the body of the e-mail.

5. Failing to Use Enough White Space

If you make your e-mail message too long, or you try to cram too many words into a paragraph, your readers' eyes are going to instantly glaze over and they are going to hit the delete key.

Keep your e-mail messages short and get right to the point. Keep your paragraphs short as well.

6. Failure To Test All Imbedded Links

What a waste of time and effort it is to send out an e-mail campaign only to discover that the link to your web site or order page was malformed and it doesn't work. Test, test and then test again before you mail.

7. Locking Prospects Into One Contact Method

Giving prospects only one way to respond to you will cost you sales. Just because you think that e-mail is the best way to communicate doesn't mean that your prospect does. Some people are willing to read e-mail and click on a link to visit a web site, but they're not going to buy unless they can call on the phone or mail in a check.

8. Ignoring Your Bounce Rate

If you're sending e-mail, you can bet some of it is bouncing. You need to be aware of not only how many messages are bouncing, but why they are bouncing. Finding out how much e-mail is bouncing and why can be as simple as checking your mail server logs. Most hosting accounts provide them as well as a tool to view them.

9. Taking Down Your Landing Page Or Other E-mail-Connected Items Too Soon

It can sometimes take a few weeks for someone to get around to reading your e-mail for any number of reasons including illness or vacation. If you take your landing page down too soon or you delete any supporting graphics that the e-mail needs, you'll lose sales. Don't be in too much of a rush to end the campaign.

10. Not Taking Time To Proofread

Nothing makes you look more unprofessional than sending out an e-mail that's full of spelling and grammar mistakes. Don't depend on your spell checker alone. Print the message out and read it carefully, one word at a time. Then give it to at least two more people and have them do the same thing.

Basically, this are the 10 most mistake usually people made it while sending their email marketing promotion out to their list and been wondering why there is no effect at all and if you could avoid this 10 mistake I am sure you could make a sure fire on your email marketing success.