Digital Marketing, Strategy

Avoid These 3 Horror-ific Types of Marketing Emails

In the realm of digital marketing, email remains one of the most powerful tools for lead generation and engaging with your audience. However, not all types of emails are created equal. Some types of email marketing can turn into horror stories that alienate potential customers, decrease your click-through rate, and damage your brand’s reputation. Here are three common types of emails to avoid in your marketing efforts, along with tips on how to cultivate genuine brand awareness and ensure you don’t fall into these traps with your email marketing strategy.

1. Emails with Misleading Subject Lines and Confusing CTAs

The Drawbacks

Misleading email subject lines might get an initial open, but they erode trust and frustrate recipients. For example, a subject line promising a huge discount only to reveal a small, conditional offer in the email body can lead to immediate disengagement. This bait-and-switch tactic can result in high unsubscribe rates, low open rates in future campaigns, and even spam complaints, which hurt your sender reputation. Additionally, including more than one call-to-action can be distracting: simultaneously asking people to learn about a new product, attend an upcoming event or webinar, and cultivate customer loyalty could lead to poor metrics.

How to Avoid

Be Honest and Clear: Ensure your subject lines accurately reflect the content of your email. If you’re offering a discount, clearly state the terms upfront. Focus on one action you’d like the reader to take, and make the benefit clear. Subsequent CTAs can be used for a follow-up email or series of emails.
Value-Driven Content: Craft subject lines that highlight the value or benefit your email provides to your target audience and personas, rather than using sensational or deceptive tactics. Consider offering a new customer a coupon, or setting up automated emails. For example, transactional emails (confirmation emails for purchases, cart abandonment, and more) can all become part of your marketing automation.
A/B Testing: Experiment with different subject lines and kinds of emails to see what resonates best with your audience without crossing the line into misleading territory.

2. Overdesigned Emails with Too Many Graphics

The Drawbacks

While eye-catching visuals can enhance an email, overloading your emails with too many graphics can have the opposite effect. Emails that are too graphic-heavy can suffer from slow loading times, poor readability on mobile devices, and deliverability issues. Additionally, graphics may not display correctly if recipients have images turned off, leaving them with an incomplete message.

How to Avoid

Balance Text and Images: Use a clean, simple design that balances text with graphics. This ensures that your message is clear even if images don’t load.
Optimize for Mobile: Design your emails to be mobile-friendly, as a significant portion of email opens occur on mobile devices. This includes using responsive design and optimizing image sizes for quicker loading times.
Test Across Platforms: Preview and test your marketing platform’s emails across various email clients and devices to ensure they render correctly everywhere.

3. Emails Sent Too Frequently

The Drawbacks

Bombarding your subscribers with too many promotional emails can quickly lead to email fatigue. When recipients feel overwhelmed by the frequency of your emails, they are more likely to unsubscribe, mark your emails as spam, or simply ignore them altogether. This can significantly diminish the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

How to Avoid

Set a Schedule: Develop a consistent email schedule that respects your subscribers’ inboxes. Consider their preferences and behaviors when determining how often to send emails.
Quality Over Quantity: Focus on sending high-quality, valuable content rather than frequent emails to inactive subscribers. Consider a drip campaign that provides something beneficial to the recipient.
Segmentation and Personalization: Segment your email list to target specific groups (product updates and survey emails for existing customers, welcome emails to new subscribers, special offers for first emails, post-purchase follow up, re-engagement emails for lapsed customers, etc.) with relevant content, and personalize your emails to make them more engaging and less intrusive based on demographic information.

Conclusion: Partner with MAKE for Effective Email Marketing

Avoiding these common email marketing pitfalls can significantly enhance your campaigns’ effectiveness and keep you top of mind with your subscribers. At MAKE Digital Marketing Group, we specialize in content marketing by creating email campaigns based on best practices to help you achieve your marketing goals. Contact us today to learn how we can help you craft compelling, effective emails that resonate with your audience.