We are trained as children (and even sometimes as adults) to learn from our mistakes. Making a mistake is human, but failing to recognize the mistake and learn how to avoid it in the future can be disastrous. This is especially true for e-mail marketers. Repeating common mistakes can lead to deliverability issues and cause the intended reader to ignore the message or send it directly to the junk mail folder—a worse fate.
Mistakes come in all shapes and sizes, but here are a few that we see too often.
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Failing to close the loop. Email marketing is a cyclical process that ends with evaluation of metrics to determine what works and what doesn’t. Every audience is different. Using the data available in the “Reporting” section of eLoop will help determine the features to which your audiences respond best.
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Links that link nowhere. Using links in a message is just one of the standard elements of our business, but not testing the links can be disastrous. Nothing can frustrate a recipient more than clicking for more information only to be routed to a page that doesn’t work. Test your links.
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Ignoring the advanced features. These days, anyone can send an HTML message, but do you want to be just anyone? Incorporating the advanced features that eLoop offers can expand your readership and, most importantly, improve your campaigns. The features are there for a reason. Take a few minutes to play around with them and learn how to use them to your benefit.
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Customizing your opt-out form. If you haven’t already customized your opt-out form, drop what you’re doing and log into your eLoop account now. An effective tool to limit your list attrition (the fancy phrase for recipients opting out of receiving any communication from you) is to give them some options. Maybe the reader wants to receive some correspondence, such as a newsletter, but doesn’t want others. Let them choose and you may find that they’ll stick around instead of opting out all together.
Don’t wait until New Year’s to make a resolution to avoid these mistakes. Resolve to do better today.