Sarah GoligerYou want to be one of those email marketers who sends out email that no one reads? Well, good news: It doesn’t take much effort to land your email in the dark abyss of the Archive or Spam folders.
If you’re ready to cast away any possibility that your email will drive new traffic, leads and customers for your business, here are 10 ways to make those marketing emails extremely ineffective.
1. Write an extremely boring or irrelevant subject line. This will prevent your emails from even being opened in the first place.
But if you do want…your readers to, you know, read the email you wrote to them, try creating a subject line that is engaging and relevant. Make it clear what your readers will get by opening your email.
2. Send your email from a reply@ or info@ mailing address. There’s nothing that screams cold and impersonal like an email from a robot.
But if you do want…to build a trusting relationship with your email recipients, send the emails from a real person. They’ll be more likely to open the email you just sent and any emails you send going forward. In other words, put a face to your brand.
3. Don’t use any of the information you have about your subscribers. Nope, not even their first name when saying “Hello!” Instead go for a greeting that will make them feel like one tiny email address on a list of millions.
But if you do want…to catch your readers’ attention, go ahead and use the data you have about them to create a much warmer, more personalized email experience for them.
4. Blast out one big email to your entire email list. Avoid subscriber data at all costs. Don’t worry about whether your message or offer is even slightly relevant to half the people you’re sending it to. If your goal is to be terrible at email marketing, just cast your readers’ needs and interests aside.
But if you do want…readers to find your emails relevant and helpful, take the time to segment your list based on the data you have about your subscribers and send them emails that cater specifically to those segments.
5. Write boring and useless information – all in one huge paragraph, of course. People don’t have very long attention spans these days. If you want to guarantee that no one will read your email, sprinkle it with unnecessary extra words and make it impossible to scan quickly.
But if you do want…your emails to be effective at getting your message across clearly, keep them short and to the point. Use formatting devices like bullets, bolding, headers and line breaks to make your emails visually pleasing and easy to consume.
6. Make lots of spelling and grammatical errors. There’s nothing that says “Don’t bother reading any further” like obvious spelling mistakes. If you don’t want to gain reader respect or trust, just type quickly, don’t bother checking for errors and hit that “Send” button.
But if you do want… to keep your readers away from the unsubscribe button, keep your writing tidy and double check it – or ask a coworker to look it over.
7. Don’t include a call-to-action. A sign of an effective, conversion-optimized email is a strong call-to-action. If you want to design a terrible email that definitely won’t convert your subscribers into leads (or your leads into customers), make it extremely unclear what you’d like your readers to do.
But if you do want…to have a real conversation with your readers, include an obvious and clear call-to-action that will get your readers to take that next step.
8. Leave out the social sharing buttons. Asking your subscribers to share or forward your content would only stand to get you more subscribers. If that’s not what you’re after, you might as well leave these out.
But if you do want…to grow your email list, attract more readers to your content and gain site traffic, take that extra step of asking email recipients to share your blog on social media or forward to a friend.
9. Don’t include an Unsubscribe link. Double whammy on this one: Not only will you be violating CAN-SPAM laws, you’ll frustrate everyone who’d prefer to not be on your email list.
But if you do want…to follow email best practices (and, you know, the law), place a simple unsubscribe option at the bottom.
10. Don’t optimize your emails for mobile devices. Since a large percentage of your subscribers will view your emails on a mobile device, it’ll really piss them off to learn that you only format your emails for desktop. They definitely won’t take the time to zoom in or scroll wildly to find out what your email is about.
But if you do want…to capture the attention of your mobile readers and have any chance at converting them, create an optimized mobile experience for every email you send.
If you follow these steps, there’s no chance you’ll manage to leverage your email marketing as an audience engagement and conversion tool. Instead, go ahead and delete that awful email before you even consider sending it – and get working on one that will actually help you achieve your marketing and business goals.
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