Email Marketing -- Ten Tips
By Bill Quinn, Internet Marketing Consultant

Ten Tips on Email Marketing:
Longer ago than I care to remember, I got my very first email. Suddenly it dawned on me what an incredible new marketing tool this could be for me and my clients in all kinds of industries.

Was this what we had all been dreaming of—the Holy Grail of Direct Response Advertising? A tool that would let you sell your products or services to millions of Internet users around the world…one on one…as many times as you wanted…at virtually zero cost?

With email, marketers could reach out to countless new and highly qualified prospects almost instantaneously, using the airwaves instead of postage stamps and envelopes, without printing out a single flyer, postcard, brochure or catalog. We could contact our customers almost at whim, with countless new offers, building relationships and adding new revenues almost as fast as we could hit the Send button.

If only it had turned out that way.

In the real world, of course, most of us have experienced varying degrees of success with email marketing. We send out thousands of emails and get but a handful of responses. Some of us even find ourselves in trouble with “the system,” as our emails get labeled as spam. Some find their websites blacklisted, so even the most harmless emails cannot be sent. We ask our peers how their email campaigns are working, and we hear everything from “Great!” to “Terrible! Email just does not work!”

The truth is…email marketing does work, but as with most things, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. In this report, we’ll talk about the wrong way. As you read this and compare it to your own email campaigns, see if any of this hits home with you.

“So why isn’t email marketing working for me?”

As marketing consultants, our company has been in the enviable position of not only creating of email campaigns and tallying the results, but we have made it a practice to gather hundreds of samples of what works—and what doesn’t—in email.

What we found is that the main reason email marketing may not work is that most of us are making incredibly simple mistakes…and that someone should be rattling our cage about it.

OK, consider your cage rattled.

Are You Making These Mistakes?
You’ve got a lot riding on your email campaigns, so make the most of them. Most importantly, avoid the mistakes that cause so many such campaigns to fail. Here, forged from 15 years of experience in email marketing, are what we have found to be the 10 Biggest Email Marketing Mistakes:

#1. Failure to Plan
Why is it so many of us are in such mindless hurries to launch email campaigns? Have you noticed that? As one who has been responsible for creating hundreds of these campaigns, I can tell you the single biggest complaint I have is that everyone wants it out yesterday. Which means there’s rarely time to think it through properly.

Good planning requires you take the time to find just the right offer. Sometimes that’s nothing you can create off the top of your head (Yes, Mr. Marketing Big Shot, I’m talking to you!) It sends shivers down my spine every time I hear a marketing guy/gal nonchalantly toss out the suggestion that, “Hey, let’s just offer 15% off their next order.” What makes you think that will work? Why not 25%...or 10%...or why not Free Shipping instead…or whatever? Don’t assume you know the best offer without spending adequate time planning it. Look at your past campaigns. What really pulled in the responses? How can you reproduce those campaigns (copy genius!) in fresh new ways? Create offers you know your audience will react favorably to, not just those you think they might like. Consider testing more than one offer, a sensible and proven direct response approach that is almost always recommended.

It takes time to plan. Think it all through. Which list will you use—and why? What is the optimum timing? Will you have follow-up mailers—and at what intervals? Will this be a text or html format, or both? What kind of landing page will you need? How will you track response? Can you track an “open rate” (how many people actually click open your message)? What is the maximum number of responses you can handle without swamping your order fulfillment or customer service staff? What kind of training or information will your people need to respond efficiently and effectively? What do you hope to learn from this emailing (try to learn something about strategy, tactics, lists and prospects every time you launch.)
Fail to plan…and you’re planning to fail, the old saying goes. Just because email marketing is relatively easy to launch (with no printing required, no print and mail houses), don’t think that you should treat it any differently than relatively expensive print mail campaigns. Take your time. Don’t unnecessarily or mindlessly rush your creative and production team. Pause…Plan…Proceed.

#2. Misreading Relationships
Let’s talk about your audience. Who are these people you are about to email? What do you really know about them? Or more critical: what do they know about you?

Email marketers get into trouble every day because they send messages to people who don’t want to receive them. The primary rule of bulk email is that you contact only individuals who have given you permission to contact them. Mess this one up, buster, and you’ll soon be wearing the Capital “S” on your forehead. “S” for “Spammer.”

What’s so bad about that? Spamming can result in loss of your email account. Your URL could be blocked forever—so you can’t send out even the most innocent of messages. I don’t care how honest your business is, spamming can cost you thousands in lost revenues, even when you do it innocently.

So how do you avoid being labeled as a spammer? Truth is, if you mail a lot, you may not be able to avoid it. I don’t care if you’re mailing to customers, or to people who have opted into your list, even to people who outright ask for your message, any given number of these people will one day consider your messages to be spam. You see, people forget that you got their permission to mail them. They forget that you are the one who sold them their favorite widget. They forget how nice your customer support people are. Or just maybe, they remember how nice your customer support people are not!

In any event, the great little list you think you can safely mail doesn’t always turn out that way. Many of us misread our relationship with the people on our lists. They may not consider us as friendly correspondents, trustworthy or safe. They may consider us intruders, dangerous, or invasive. Which means your relationship with them needs a bit of work.

Do not neglect to stay close to your prospective audience, whether customers or prospects. Make it convenient for them to opt-out or cancel at any time. Re-affirm your relationship with them. Remind them how they came to be on your list. Reassure them of your commitment to preserving their privacy—and never, ever sell their address to another company! Contact them with non-sales communications—give away free information, news, updates, etc. Give away how-to tips, suggestions, reports, anything of value…and do not charge for it. Be someone other than the guy who is always emailing them with a pitch for something or other. Build your relationship with them as a trusted, welcomed friend, not as the salesman always trying to part them and their money.

Never think for a second that you have the right to email people a sales message of any sort…unless and until you earn that right.

#3. Just Plain Lousy Lists
There’s a saying in direct response that the list is everything. Same thing in email marketing. Lack of a good list will cost you dearly.

So how do you develop a good list? First, when we’re talking email marketing, forget about purchasing or renting a list from a list company. That often works well for a snail mail campaign, but not nearly as well for email (based upon my experience.) Why the difference? Because relationships are far more important in email marketing than in snail mail marketing. When you purchase an email list, you have no relationship with that person at all. So how can you expect your message to be well received, let alone opened and acted upon.

If it’s not your own list, it just won’t work very well, at least, not for long. However, on a one shot deal, if you can offer something irresistible, get that first sale, and THEN start building the relationship, you’ve got a small change of retaining the prospect as a customer. But the odds are clearly against you, so why even bother. There’s a much better way.

Build your own list. I have rarely seen a list that a company built on its own that could be considered “lousy”—that’s a very scientific term, by the way, meaning “it don’t work good.”

Your own list can be built with a positive relationship as its very foundation. I always recommend a verification process that proves the authenticity of your prospect’s email address. This process also reinforces in his mind your commitment to preserving his privacy and minimizing spam.

So let’s say you begin with an offer of a free newsletter or report to new website visitors. Have them fill in their first name and an email address, and immediately (using an autoresponder) send them a message verifying their request. They have to return the message in order to get the newsletter or report. Don’t worry about the 20% or so that don’t respond—they’re not very good prospects anyway. Incidentally, don’t try to acquire too much info on this first contact—take it slow and easy. Once they’re on your mailing list, start building the relationship, again, slow and easy. Keep your list up to date and active by contacting list subscribers at least twice a month.
Naturally, there’s a lot more to the process of growing a strong list than we can cover here, but just keep in mind this major principle of email marketing: your list is gold, but it stays that way only as long as you treat it like the treasure it really is.

#4. Spammy Subject Lines
Think of the subject line of your email as a preview of the message inside. If you write a subject that alerts the reader that you’re trying to sell him something, you just made one of the most common email marketing mistakes of all.

Most Internet users, studies have show, decide whether to open or not open an email based on how interesting, intriguing and applicable the subject line is. If it is boring or too blatantly “salesy,” your “open and read” score plummets through the basement. Sometimes, you have to wonder what the email marketer was thinking when he wrote the subject line.

For example, here are 5 email subject lines I received in that past few days:

“Stay home and make more money”
This subject line is the absolute tip off that somebody’s sending me another work at home message—probably the 1000th in the past several months. I never open these types of emails and never have.

“You’ve won the Swiss lottery, Bill!”
Oh if only it were true. But since I never entered that lottery, I doubt they’ll pay my winning “ticket.”

“Please respond”
Come on. I stopped falling for vague, ambiguous heads long ago. Gotta work for it if you want me to open an email like this one! Plus, the people I know and work with would never send an email like this one to me. So it has to be someone wanting to make a pitch. I don’t have time for that.
Come on now.

“Louise”
I never did understand this approach. Have you seen emails like this—where the sender uses random names to catch your attention. He’s probably booking on my wanting to hear from someone named “Louise.” I don’t even know a person named Louise—try again, buddy! (No, please don’t try again!)

“Free music downloads”
Spam detectors usually deflect emails with “Free” in the headline or body. Nothing’s ever really free, so I wouldn’t have time to open this message. Plus…I don’t have any desire for music downloads. The sender obviously has no relationship with me nor does he know my buying needs and wants.
Instead of turning off your email recipients, make them curious, appeal to their interests, be anything but a used car salesman. In other words, do your homework about your audience and leave the lackluster, overt sales pitches to the shady looking guys at the county fair. Final thought: Test everything.

#5. Boring First Paragraphs
So many email marketers forget the critical importance of the first paragraph or two in the message. Even if you’ve been fortunate enough to get your audience to open the email, you can easily lose them if you don’t carefully plan and execute that first paragraph.

In fact, once the message is opened, you’ve got about 4 seconds to capture their attention—and you may be lucky to have even that small amount of time.

Messages that do not IMMEDIATELY tell them why the reader must continue reading will always fail to get you the desired action (call, visit a website or landing page, make a purchase, etc.). You will never succeed as an email marketer if you use a boring open. Don’t waste time doing the Attention/Agitation/Solution approach. Instead, make your best pitch in 2 or 3 lines. That means choosing your words very carefully.

So how do you grab them and hold them? My advice to my clients who face the same challenge is to ”place yourself in the shoes of the reader.” Let’s consider it a given that you have carefully chosen the names on your list. You know their wants. You know why they’re good prospects for you. So you SHOULD be able to think like them. If you were they, how would you react to your opening paragraph?

Would it make you want to read further?
Do you understand it clearly—and if not, are you intrigued enough to continue reading?
Do those opening sentences put you to sleep…or do they immediately press your hot button(s)?
Are there any spam elements that put you off?
Do you feel resentment… disinterest … curiosity …excitement?
Is the message personalized to you…or directed at some vague, general audience?

As with other parts of the email, always run tests of your list to see how they respond to different approaches. Sometimes, changing just one or several words can make all the difference in the world. Once you’ve tested that, test something else. Like direct response using print, email marketing is always about testing. You never really know what works best till you’ve tested it over and over again.

And even then, the best opening text you can write may still be the one you write tomorrow.

Whatever you do, do not bore your audience. Captivate them with your first few words…draw them in. Make them want to read your other paragraphs.

#6. Offers That Don’t Turn People On
If email marketing is an art, finding strong email Offers is the art at its finest. If your Offer does not click with your audience, you’re better offer not making one at all.

Both consumers and businesses have learned to be leery of offers received via email. Here’s a list of the top ten most common types of offers that come to mind for the Email Evil Offer Hall of Fame:
• The Nigerian Email Scam
• Phishing
• Work at Home Scams
• Weight Loss Claims
• Foreign Lotteries
• Cure-All Products
• Check Overpayment Scams
• Pay-in-Advance Credit Offers
• Debt Relief
• Investment Schemes

What each of the above has in common is an offer than is not all it was touted to be. People have been burned, and as a result they tend to be very suspicious about Offers. This is what you face when you create your campaign. So many marketers make very weak offers, or offers that do not deliver all that they seem to without reading the small print. This is a mistake that will absolutely destroy you with your prospects.

The best offers are those that have a two-fold impact:
1. They offer immediate genuine value to the recipient
2. They encourage multiple sales and long term relationships.

Suggestion: Always test your offers before you commit to a large campaign. When you find your best offer (according to response), run with it—but very quickly test another to see if you can beat it.

#7. Used Car Sales Tactics
I don’t mean to attack used car salesmen. Most of them are outstanding people, I’m sure. But all too many email marketers use the same high pressure, in-your-eye tactics that car salesmen use. And in doing so, they usually fail.

If you’re blatantly (and excessively) sprinkling your message with large type, exclamation points, star bursts that shout “BUY NOW,” chances are you’re not getting as good a response as you might. Sure, you’ll get some people to bite, but you just won’t get many long term customers.

You see, people do not like to be sold. They prefer to buy (or even better, “invest”).

Your message needs to strike the right balance between want and need, and between solution and urgency. In most cases, only a very experienced direct response copywriter can give you the perfect integration of these proven success markers. The professional writer knows how to push just hard enough without pushing the prospect away. He knows how to phrase your leading benefits to make the prime features of your products irresistibly attractive. Where used car sales tactics focus primarily upon the sale at hand, the successful email writer focuses upon building a long term relationship—one that captures not just this sale but many others to come.

Don’t get me wrong: you don’t have to give up aggressive sales tactics. Just couch them in a different perspective. Emphasize “What’s In It For You, Mr. Prospect,” rather than “Buy Now So I Can Gain a Sale!” Don’t rely upon your prospects to buy just on your word that the offer is outstanding and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Prove it to them. Pump up the benefits, advantages, and proven results. But do it in a professional, honest and open way. If you truly have something phenomenal to offer, you won’t need to shout.

Suggestion: Try giving something away—something of true value—to gain the trust and confidence of your audience. This could be a free report, newsletter, even a free premium. Attach no strings. This sets you up as a partner interested not just in their order, but in providing value that relate directly to their needs.

8. Spelling Errors and Broken Links
Long-retired grade school teachers are no doubt turning over in their graves (assuming they are no longer with us). Countless marketing emails are sent out every day filled with all types of spelling errors, poor grammar and broken links.

Imagine the response of your audience when they see such mistakes. The obvious conclusion is that, if you’re not careful with your email copy, then you’re not careful with your products, order follow-through and customer service, either.

It takes only minutes to proof read your messages. Take the time to do this, and as we encourage our clients, have more than one person look it over. We had one client swear his message had passed 15 different sets of eyes. But it still had a glaring spelling error in the inside headline. Run your message through Spell Checker—but remember that spell checkers do not find all errors. Watch for repeated words at the end of one line and the beginning of the next. Read the message out loud s-l-o-w-l-y, word by word, paying attention to the punctuation. Then do it again.

Check every link. What good does your email do if the link back to your landing page or order form simply does not work? We always send our client messages to a small list of 5 or 6 people on the client side with the challenge to “find the one remaining error in this message.” Naturally, you need to include a deliberate error (such as a link that does not work or a subtly misspelled word, a comma that should be a period, etc.). You may be surprised when your proofing team uncovers yet another error or two that had somehow gotten past your previous proofing.

Watch for subject/verb agreement, plurals that should be singular or vice versa, excessive number of words (when fewer will do), etc.

Check and double-check all phone numbers. In our agency, we call all phone numbers and email all email addresses as a matter of course before the message ever goes out. More than once we have found incorrect numbers that would have made the campaign fall flat on its ears. Once we even discovered that we had left out the contact info entirely—but proofing saved us (and our reputations!).

Finally, understand these 5 common grammatical traps—and avoid them:
“You are” versus “You’re” versus “Your”
“Their” versus “They’re” versus “There”
“Its” versus “It’s”
“Effect” versus “Affect”
“Sells” versus “Sales”

9: Failure to Build Trust
Let’s say you’ve done all of the above: You’ve got the right list for your products, you have copy that’s tight and to the point, without spelling errors or broken links, you’ve got a strong offer…but your emails still fail to pull.

What’s going on?

One of the more common causes of failure—assuming you’ve got almost every other possibility covered--is Mistake No. 9: Failure to Build Trust.
If your prospects still see you as someone whose only interest is getting them to buy your product or service, they simply turn you off. They don’t trust that you have their best interests in mind, but only yours. So why should they do business with you?

The solution, of course, is to build trust.

First, be sure your message, your landing page and your website inspire confidence in the visitor that you’re a legitimate business. If the website design is poor, unimaginative or shabby, who’s going to do business with you. It’s the same thing as having a retail store that badly needs painting and cleaning, or whose clerks are rude, poorly dressed or unclean. Make sure the image you present is professional, friendly and efficient. Your email, for example, needs to be well designed (but not over-designed), concise, focused, filled with benefits and offering a clear path the viewer can follow to call you or visit your landing page.

That’s the physical part; now let’s address the non-physical. Your chances of success with any audience will increase dramatically if you give more than you ask for. Let me repeat: Give more than you ask. Be generous with your offers. Make them irresistible—even if you find you’re only breaking even! For many businesses, just having a person as a customer is more important than making a profit on that first sale. Think in terms of having each customer for years, not just for one transaction. Make your money over the long term, and your business will grow exponentially faster and more profitably.

Give away free information…frequently and consistently. Share your expertise—without charge. Prove that you’re looking for a relationship that goes both ways, a win/win approach. The more you do this, the more you reduce the barriers to sale that prospects build around themselves to protect against unwanted solicitations. Become the expert they turn to for information and advice…and you will find it incredibly easier to be the source they automatically call on when they’re ready to buy.

Build this relationship of trust with your email prospects (and yes, it takes time) and each email you send will have far more favorable results.

10. Attaching a File.
One of the surest signs that an email marketer does not know what he is doing is when he attaches any kind of file to his pitch message. Never, never send file attachments to people who do not know you well and with whom you do not have a relationship.

Even relative novices on the internet have learned that they should never open a file from someone they don’t know. They don’t know if you’re attempting to send them some kind of virus, Trojan, phishing or other nasty application that will take over their computer, slow it down, or even destroy files.

Amazingly, we frequently get promotional emails with files attached to them. A recent trend in the past few months as been for spammers to take their spam material out of the email message and to include it in a pdf or MS Exel attachment—which at first got past the spam blockers. That tactic succeeded only so long until people and spam blockers wised up to it. It goes to show you, however, that any way of displaying your message other than in the body of the message will probably be treated as suspect.

Bottomline: we always counsel our clients to avoid attachments at all costs. Instead, if you have something that requires a file, why not put it on a landing page that can be accessed with a link? Otherwise, follow the traditional solution and put it into the body of your email message.

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