Email marketing can be very effective for promoting your business but it is easy to make mistakes if you don’t know the right methods to use. It will cost you money, yet not generate any additional sales. Here are some common email marketing mistakes you need to avoid so your marketing strategies will be more effective.

Your customers want to feel like people, not just a number, so never use generic terms in your email marketing. Address each customer by name if you can. It costs more to do, but it is more effective and well worth it.

Don’t use pound / dollar signs in your email as customers think that you only want their money.

Don’t use email marketing during the holidays as customers receive a lot at those times and you simply will not stand out. If you want to market for Christmas, for example, do it early, a month or so in advance, and follow up a couple of weeks before.

Don’t ramble! Your customers don’t have much time and will not want to waste it reading your email – put the most attention grabbing information first and keep your emails short.

Don’t forget to test your email in the most popular email services, like Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! as not all of them will display your email the same. Always give the consumer the option of opening the email in either html or plain text. And use either Arial or Helvetica as your font to be 99.9% sure that everyone will be able to read it.

Don’t sell the email addresses and information you get from your customers and make sure your email sign up clearly states that you won’t. You will be surprised how many people won’t sign up for your email promotions if you don’t offer this bit of information.

Don’t think your customers will want to receive your emails forever. It is natural to expect to lose customers over time but when you do you want them to leave you with a good opinion so that when they need your kind of services again it’s you they will come back to. Offer a link where customers can unsubscribe from your email marketing mailing list. While you want to do all you can to keep them reading your emails, it is important to respect their wishes and remove them from the mailing list immediately.

Don’t think you know it all. If you are new to email marketing, you should consider using a professional to advise you. It doesn’t have to be expensive, and will help to make sure you get the best out of your campaign and yield the best results. They will also be able to help with the sending and tracking of your email campaign, allowing you to tweak it to get even better results.

Email marketing can be very effective for your business if you keep these common mistakes from becoming part of your marketing plan.

Author Bio: Trevor Richards is writing on behalf of Extravision, providers of email marketing services.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: email marketing mistakes, email marketing errors, email marketing tips