You’ve got an important email campaign to launch, and you need to send it out to tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe it’s a new product announcement, an invitation to an event or webinar, or an offer to buy a product from your company. With so much at stake, it’s essential that you get every detail of the campaign right. Even the smallest aspects of your emailing plan could mean the difference between an effective and a disastrous launch. That’s a lot of pressure, and it creates the perfect opportunity for error.
Here are some of the most common errors that marketers make while sending email campaigns and what you can do to avoid them.
Creating the Wrong Email List
Before you launch your email marketing campaign, you need to have a clear picture in mind of who your target audience is, what interests them, and how you intend to communicate with them. To do this, you’ll need to create a list of recipients who are most likely to be interested in your subject matter. You could call this list ‘potential customers’, ‘people who might buy my product or service’, ‘luminaries’, or ‘engaged readers’.
You’re never going to get your email marketing to perform at its best if you don’t have the right list. When you send out your email, you’ll likely find that it reaches a lot of people who weren’t even part of your target audience. Even worse, you might even get some negative feedback because your email was seen as spam. So, before you hit the send button, ask yourself, ‘Do I want to spam my email list?’
If you’re worried that your email might be seen as spam, you have several options. You could ask for permission to send to the list, or you could filter your email through a service like TailorMail. With TailorMail, you can create filters based on a variety of criteria, such as email address or the word ‘buy’ in the subject line. You can find more information about TailorMail here:
- TailorMail – (Free): Email marketing made easy. TailorMail allows you to segment and target your audience with incredible ease. Using a simple drag and drop tool, you can create multiple segments based on whatever criteria you choose. Your segments will then show up in an easy-to-read email format on your MailChimp dashboard.
- MailChimp – (Free) : With MailChimp, you can create targeted emails and send them on behalf of your customers. You can also follow up with automated emails based on customer behavior. For example, if a customer downloads your app and signs up for your email list, you can send them an email explaining the features of your app and inviting them to leave a review on the App Store.
- AWeber: With AWeber, you can create custom email templates that can be used time and time again. As a business owner, this is a great option as you can maintain a consistent style throughout all of your emails, no matter the product or service you’re promoting. AWeber also provides free backups, so you can rest assured that your emails are safe and not lost.
- HubSpot – (Free) : HubSpot is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool that helps businesses of all sizes and types keep track of their customers’ relationships. You can create an email marketing campaign in HubSpot and then send out your email using the tool’s SMTP service. Just ensure that you’re following the correct instructions and setting your email campaign up correctly.
- Salesforce – (Free) : Similar to HubSpot, Salesforce allows you to create an email marketing campaign and then send out emails using their SMTP service. The difference is that with Salesforce, you can create and send up to 1,000 emails per day for free.
- InMailz – (Free): InMailz is a free email marketing tool that can handle all of the dirty work for you. You can create an email marketing campaign in InMailz and then just sit back and let the tool handle the technicalities of getting your email out there.
- MarketingCharts – (Free): MarketingCharts is a free tool that can be used to create and send out email marketing campaigns. You can create an email marketing campaign in a few minutes, and then you can send out your emails within the tool using their SMTP service or build your own mail server.
- Mailjet – (Free): Mailjet is a simple yet effective email marketing tool that can be used to create and send out email marketing campaigns. You can create an email marketing campaign in Mailjet and then use the tool’s SMTP service to send out your emails or build your own mail server.
Using an Unreliable Service To Send Email
It’s critical to get your email marketing campaign up and running as smoothly as possible because any errors or glitches could lead to a complete meltdown of your entire operation. For this reason, you need to eliminate all potential problems before you start using the service you’ve chosen to send your emails. One of the main problems with using an unreliable service is that they could disappear at any moment and take your entire database with them, leaving you with no way to restore it. This is why you need to be extremely careful about picking a service to use for your emailing needs. Make sure that the company is a trusted one and has an excellent reputation. Also, make sure that they are able to offer the level of service that you need for your particular project. It is sad to see how many companies have been tricked by scammers who pretend to offer web hosting but in reality, they’re just stealing your information. So, make sure that you’re not giving out your personal or business details to anyone you don’t know or trust.
Not Testing The Product Before Launching
The worst thing you can do for your email marketing campaign is to launch before you’ve even tested the product or service you’re promoting. When you launch a new product or feature, you’re going to send out a mass email to your subscribers. You’ll most likely use a tool like MailChimp or AWeber to send this email, and depending on the size of your list, it could be a lot of people. You don’t want to launch your product or feature and then find out that people aren’t responding to it the way you intended. The best course of action is to first test your product or feature out on a small group of people before you send it to the entire list. This will help you identify any issues and glitches before your email hits the inboxes of your subscribers. A simple way to do this is to create a free trial version of your product or feature and allow people to try it out for a while before they make a purchase decision. You can use tools like UserTesting.com to get unbiased, expert opinion on your product or feature and improve your chances of connecting with your audience. When testing your product or feature, it’s essential to look for signs of enjoyment or problems. Some customers might appreciate getting a birthday email from you, but most will likely feel that it’s annoying. So, by identifying these types of problems, you’ll be able to fix them before you launch your product or service.
Not Building Enough Confidence In Your Campaign
You’ve spent a lot of time creating a mass email campaign that you’re confident will do exactly what you want it to do. You’ve crafted the perfect message, built an amazing email list, and followed all of the best practices you could think of. Now, it’s time to put all that to the test and see if your efforts were in vain. Even though your email marketing campaign might be flawless, it doesn’t mean that it will be effective. To find out if your email is going to work, you need to put your faith in something more reliable than your own judgement. Luckily, there’s a simple way to do this: test your email.
When you test your email, you’re going to send it to a small group of people who’ve given you their permission to email them about your product or service. Even though you’ve already built a solid foundation for your campaign with all of that prep work, testing is still a good idea. Just to be sure that everything is working correctly, you might want to send out one more email to your test group before you finalize everything and hit the big red button to launch your product or service. Just be sure to never send out spam, and never use a tool to generate random email addresses to test your product or service with. These are all common methods that scammers use to get your personal and business information and trick you into paying for unnecessary services.