In one of our previous posts Why your email marketing campaign is not working we said that when used correctly email marketing can deliver one of the highest returns on investment of any online marketing methods. We also discussed why your current campaign might not be working. Today I’m going to discuss a couple of things you should definitely not do when setting up an email campaign.

• Don’t buy mailing lists: One of the most important things is to have an opted in mailing list. If someone doesn’t give you permission to send them mail and you do in a newsletter you are sending spam, and that may be illegal. By buying mailing lists or gathering addresses in unethical matters you can scar your business’ name. You also will not yield positive results as most of your recipients will not open your newsletter or it will just be deleted. You must also ensure that you give recipients the option to unsubscribe on your newsletter.
• Don’t have errors in your content: Make sure that you have good error free content. Nobody wants to read boring content so it is important to give information to people that has value. Make sure you quadruple check your newsletter copy for errors. Spelling mistakes and grammar errors are annoying and can also negatively affect the image of your brand and professionalism.
• Don’t be vague when choosing a subject line: Your subject line is very  important when it comes to grabbing the recipient’s attention. Avoid using subject lines such as October newsletter, or Christmas newsletter. Choose catchy lines, maybe ask a question that will encourage the recipient to read further. I receive newsletters from a cycling website, the newsletter I received this week had a subject line that read: Are you on the wrong size bike? Now I am not sure whether my bike is the right size so it immediately sparked my interest and I wanted to read further  to figure out how to determine the right size of  bike, I clicked through and read the article on their website. In my opinion that was an apt  subject line.
• Don’t send out a newsletter without testing it first: One important thing that you should do every time before you send out your newsletter is test it in different email clients. If you send out an HTML email to a mailing list where the HTML breaks and images are displayed incorrectly in outlook or a web based mail client like Gmail you will definitely not get the response that you want on your newsletter. Make sure you test the newsletter in multiple mail clients before sending out to the mailing list.
• Don’t forget a call to action and focused landing pages: Make sure you have clear call to action phrases on your newsletter and the correct landing pages. If you don’t give the recipient a clear indication what they are supposed to do  like the phrase  “Buy this CD now”, they won’t know what to do or where to go. Once they click on the button, please don’t take them to the home page, you might not have the content that they were interested in on your home page and they will ultimately leave our website,  rather take them to a landing page that is relevant to the content they have searched for on your newsletter.

These are just some of the mistakes that you can make when sending out a newsletter, if you have made some in the past let us know.