Email marketing is not only a form of inspiration, but also one of transpiration. There are so many details that you need to keep an eye on. Before you know it, you can write down another immortal blooper on your list.
Especially when the year is near its end, email marketing goes into overdrive. From the perspective of e-commerce, but also the ordinary F2F shopping, the time around the holidays is a perfect moment to make sure your efforts pay out. In addition, there are also the traditional wishes that need to be send out, more and more via email and less by classic post. Pressure leads to surprising effects.
Blooper 1
To start with, the deadline is sometimes so pressing that an email message is sent out with our eyes closed. It needs to go out NOW. That the email doesn’t have a well-considered subject line yet, gets forgotten. We received a number of such gems in our inbox. Read and enjoy. Do you think you would open an email with the subject line “December 2012 (MAIL-57A77-241261)” or “AJ.117 Project and more”? Our advice is simple. No matter how busy you are, always make sure you check the following standard elements. Is the subject line ok, are there no mistakes in the body, and is the correct mailing list selected? These three short checks can save you from a lot of misery.
Blooper 2
Besides, the end of the year is also a time that you receive emails from all sorts of people. Including businesses of which you are certain, that you’ve never given them your email address. Because you simply don’t know them. So sometimes we grab the emergency brake and unsubscribe. We received an email from an advertising agency that included the appropriate link at the bottom of the message. When we click, we are sent to a landing page. Still a good impression until this point. But after that, we can’t suppress a smile when we are faced with a splash page. It invites us to subscribe to the newsletter. Which is an email. For a list that we already joined.
Blooper 3
Another company that is also active in the digital world, knows something of netiquette. In the email it was clearly indicated that it might be possible that we got the email unasked. Unsubscribing was always possible. We clicked on the link and got confronted with a landing page with several options. Why do we want to unsubscribe? The options are very complete. Including the last one: “Because I never subscribed for this list”. You really have to think of everything. Our advice is simple. Check your unsubscribe procedure yourself from time to time. An invitation to register, before you unsubscribe someone, seems a little bit silly. But be correct, don’t send unsolicited email, unless it is a valid opt-in request!