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Take a quick look at your favorite blogs. Now take a gander at Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. All of these sources are overflowing with more and more advice on what to do to make your inbound marketing better. The problem is, as marketers, we can only do so much. In fact, sometimes we need to STOP doing things in order to improve results or make time for new strategies.
A major culprit of the inbound marketing time-suck is email marketing. When doing email marketing, it's easy to lift your head up from your computer and discover that you've reached the end of the day. Let's make today the day where we stop spending time on the aspects of email marketing that don't work and instead use the time we save to test new email tactics.
7 Tactics to Delete From Your Email Marketing NOW
1. Emailing Inactive List Members - It isn't how many people are on your mailing list that matters. It's the number of people who regularly open and share your content that matters. Mailing list members who never unsubscribe but mark your messages as spam can hurt your deliverability to others who actually want your content. If someone hasn't interacted with your email marketing in the last 90 days, it's highly likely they never will. Remove them from your list now.
2. Implementing Bad Subject Lines - Great subject lines make or break the success of an email. You invest too much time getting people to subscribe and creating relevant email copy and offers to waste them all on bad subject lines. Don't hurry your subject line writing. Give it the time it deserves. Do subject line testing to determine which words and formats work best for your audience. This testing will make it easier for you to create great subject lines more quickly in the future.
3. Using Bloated HTML Templates - Just because an email looks good in your email marketing software doesn't mean it's going to look the same when it's delivered to your list. Do you have a bloated HTML email template with a huge header and tons of images? These templates often don't render well and can hurt the results of your email marketing. If your header is too large, it can push the actual text of your email below the fold of the user's email client. Create a simple HTML template and test plain text emails to improve the user experience with list members.
4. Guessing - For many marketers, email is the most significant online channel they have for driving leads and sales. Unfortunately, too many marketers just guess when it comes to email marketing. Many of the suggestions in this post include ideas for email marketing tests. Tests can help you determine important factors like when to send your email or where to place calls-to-action in your messages. Stop guessing, and start testing.
5. Sending Newsletters - Email newsletters seem like a good idea, and they can be for reasons like educating current customers. However, when you are talking about generating new leads from email marketing, newsletters suck. Newsletters are about education, not action. Stop pouring time into an email newsletter, and start sending simple emails with one clear action you want the recipient to take, like downloading an ebook, registering for a webinar, or signing up for a free trial.
6. Using Your Company Name as the Sender - Who wants to get email from a company? Nobody. Stop setting your company name as the sender of your emails. Instead, use the name of an employee so your list members won't automatically tune out your message as just another spammy corporate email.
7. Including Offers No One Wants - Stop sending people crap they don't want! Do you think someone who just signed up for your email list is ready to spend thousands of dollars on your product or wants to hear how amazing your product is? They don't. Instead, they are looking for information about how to solve a problem. Give it to them. Provide them with educational ebooks and webinars about industry best practices. Stop sending them crap now.
What would you add to this list, or rather, delete from your own email marketing strategy?
Photo Credit: Mike Towber
