What NOT To Do in Email Newsletters
July 29, 2014
CONSUME CREATIVELY
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Time and time again I come across poorly formatted email newsletters and quite honestly, it breaks my heart. A simple mistake made in an email newsletter can translate into a missed opportunity for your business to engage readers or convert leads into customers. This makes me really sad. I want your business to experience success!
Let’s put a stop to this communication sadness and start actively avoiding some common mistakes. Below are a few tips to remind you what NOT to do in your email newsletters.
What NOT To Do in Email Newsletters
1. Don’t forget to link to your website.
Email marketing is one of many online marketing tools available for you to use to promote your brand. Whichever marketing technique you’re using, you always want to link viewers back to your website.
If the only thing that links to your website in your email newsletters is the “unsubscribe” link then you have a problem. The big idea behind sending these newsletters is to encourage your contacts to interact with your company in one way or another. By not linking images, text or your logo from the newsletter back to your website, you’ve taken away the stepping stone your email recipients need to cross over to your main online business platform (your website). Even if the main goal of the email was just to give some sort of confirmation to a customer, as opposed to being an offering email, still link back! Adding links into your emails is easy to do, so there’s no excuse for not doing it.
Takeaway:
Forgetting to link to your website from your newsletters equals a missed opportunity to connect with customers.
2. Don’t cheat or dupe your recipients.
Our offering emails clearly communicate to readers that the download is free.
Nobody likes being tricked into doing something they don’t want to do, so be transparent in your newsletters. This means giving your recipients key information they need upfront instead of tricking them into clicking on a button they wouldn’t have otherwise clicked. This tends to be a problem with promotional emails. If you’re sending an email because you want people to download an offering from your website, be straight forward about what it “costs” for them to receive the offering. Make sure the answers to the following questions are clear to recipients just by reading the email and not clicking:
- Can they get the offering for free?
- Do they need to provide their contact information in exchange for the download?
- Does the download actually cost money? If so, how much?
If you’re purposely not including the cost of the download in the email with the hope of improving click-through rates, that’s cheating and duping your recipients and that’s NOT OK.
Takeaway:
Send out email newsletters that are transparent and provide recipients with the information they need to make a purchase decision.
3. Don’t forget to keep the ball rolling.
In the thank you emails we send to customers who download our free offerings, we always include a second call-to-action button to keep them engaged with our company.
Emails should never be a dead end for your readers. No matter the main purpose of the email, there’s always room to give readers a next step or alternative action to take. When sending offering emails, although you may be promoting one specific product, you can keep the ball rolling by giving a shout out to another product or service at the end of the email. This gives readers the freedom to choose the path that best fits their consumer needs, yet both options result in them interacting with your business. It’s a win-win situation!
Even if you’re sending out more of a heads-up, informative type of email to perhaps alert your contacts about an upcoming event or a policy change, you still want to encourage them to take an action that drives them back to your website.
Takeaway:
Always give your recipients an action or follow-up action to take within your email newsletters.
Who Manifested This Madness?
This fabulous human, that's who.
Monica Maye Pitts
Monica is the creative force and founder of MayeCreate. She has a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture with an emphasis in Economics, Education and Plant Science from the University of Missouri. Monica possesses a rare combination of design savvy and technological know-how. Her clients know this quite well. Her passion for making friends and helping businesses grow gives her the skills she needs to make sure that each client, or friend, gets the attention and service he or she deserves.
