Email Marketing Mistakes and Evaluating

Many business owners who opt to try email marketing make the mistake of believing any type of email marketing is beneficial. This is simply not true; there are a number of mistakes business owners can make when they organize an email marketing campaign. Examples of these types of mistakes may include allowing promotional materials to be tagged as spam, not following up with promotional emails, not being prepared for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort and not marketing specifically to the target audience.

We will begin our discussion on email marketing mistakes with spam. Spam is a problem which is reaching endemic proportions. Each day Internet users are bombarded with spam from around the world. This may include a host of unsolicited emails which are promoting products or services the recipients may or may not be interested in purchasing. A critical mistake business owners can make in email marketing is to issue emails which are likely to be construed to be spam. This may result in the emails never reaching the recipient or the emails being deleted, without being read, by the recipient. Avoiding the potential of falling into the spam category is not very difficult. It basically involves ensuring your promotional emails contain more useful copy than blatant advertising. This will make it more likely for your emails to be taken seriously.

Another email marketing mistake often made is failure to follow up on promotional emails. Sending out emails to interested parties can be very beneficial but it is even more beneficial to contact these email recipients by other methods such as mail or telephone to answer any questions they may have and offer any additional information they may require. This type of follow up can be much more effective than simply sending an email and allowing it to fall into the abyss of an overcrowded email inbox.

Business owners may also run into the mistake of not preparing themselves for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort. The express purpose of email marketing is to generate increased interest in your products or services. Therefore it is critical for business owners to anticipate an increase in business and be prepared to accommodate this increased demand for products and services. This is important because potential customers who have to wait for products or services may seek out your competitors who are better prepared to provide them with products or services immediately.

Finally a critical mistake made by business owners is to not tailor an email marketing campaign to their specific target audience. This can be a problem because it may result in the email marketing being less effective. Business owners typically make this mistake because they fall into the trap of believing that it is more important to reach a large audience than it is to reach a target audience. You may blindly send your email marketing materials to millions of recipients and only generate a few leads. However, you could send the same email marketing materials to a smaller group of only a thousand recipients who all have an interest in your products and services and will likely generate more leads from this smaller email distribution list. It is not only important to send your message to members of your target audience but to also tailor your message to suit this audience. Creating an email message which will appeal to a variety of individuals is not as important as creating a message which will appeal to members of your target audience.

Evaluating Your Email Marketing

Email marketing can be a very effective way to reach a target audience around the world. However, your marketing efforts may not reach their full potential unless you invest some time, energy and money into evaluating your email marketing strategy. During this evaluation you may determine whether or not the email marketing is helping you to reach your goals. Likewise you can determine if the email marketing is having an adverse affect on your business. This article will discuss the importance of evaluating your email marketing and will also offer some useful advice on how to do this.

To say that evaluating your email marketing strategy on a regular basis is important is a tremendous understatement. Regularly evaluating your email marketing is not only important it is critical to the success of your business. Failure to evaluate your email marketing strategies can have adverse effects ranging from not producing results to causing you to lose customers to your competitors.

Consider an email marketing campaign which is not effective because it does not reach the members of the target audience. Some business owners make the fatal mistake of not taking care to ensure their email distribution list features recipients who are extremely interested in the products or services you offer. Business owners who take shortcuts by purchasing large email lists, often find their shortcut did not pay off because the recipients of their marketing emails are simply not interested in the products or services you offer. In this scenario the email marketing is likely to generate very few sales or website visits. However, reevaluating the email distribution list to include recipients who are interested in your products or services will likely result in significantly more sales and website visits.

Now consider a situation in which your email marketing is being construed as spam by the recipients. If you have taken precautions to ensure your emails are reaching members of your target audience but your emails seem like over the top sales pitches, the members of your email distribution list may view your emails as spam and not take your advertisements seriously. When this happens the member of your email distribution list may be more likely to seek out a competitor when they are in need of products or services rather than making a purchase from you.

Evaluating your email marketing efforts may be formal or informal in nature. If you have specific business goals in mind you might want to consider using whether or not you are on the way to meet this goal as an indication of whether or not the email marketing is working. If you're interested in reading more about email marketing check out www.jeremyburns.com/blog - Alternatively, you can evaluate your email marketing efforts by soliciting customer feedback. Asking customers for their opinions about the email marketing campaign and whether or not they were compelled to make a purchase because of the content, the advertising or some other element. Based on this information you should have a good indication of whether or not the email marketing is effective. If it is not effective you should consider making changes to create more interest in your products or services. The changes you make should reflect the feedback you receive though to ensure you are not making changes which will cause even less interest from the members of the target audience.