Aaron Agius is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of the award-winning global marketing agency Louder.Online.
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With 4 billion people using email every day, email newsletters are a great way to expand, nurture and convert your target audience. But there are some common pitfalls that you should avoid when creating email campaigns. So if you want to get the most out of your marketing efforts, stop putting these six things in your email newsletter:
1. A ‘Cute’ Subject Line
Sometimes email marketers outsmart themselves. Sure, you’ve got to capture attention and stand out, but that doesn’t necessarily mean being more “creative.”
For instance, let’s say you sell shower hardware and you’re running a special sale for spring. An example of a “cute” subject line to avoid would be: “Spring flowers and May SHOWERS—hooray!” This subject line doesn’t tell your prospects anything of value. It’s just a meaningless sentence designed to be fun and unique. It won’t stop readers in their tracks, especially with dozens of other emails crowding their inboxes.
A better strategy for grabbing attention would be one that addresses a primary benefit for your audience, such as: “Save 30% on shower heads this spring!”
2. An Early Solution
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With email newsletters, your subject line is your headline. And a headline must entice your readers to engage further with your message. If you give everything away in the subject line, prospects don’t have an enticing reason to click through and read the body of your email, where the conversions happen.
Instead of telling your readers what the amazing solution is right away, create curiosity by merely alluding to it. That way, they’ll have to click through and read your email body to receive value. An example of a subject line to avoid, which gives away the solution too early, is: “Drink one shot of vinegar to cure headaches.” By knowing the solution upfront, your reader doesn’t need to view your newsletter at all—they can read the subject line and move on with their day. On the other hand, a great subject line to encourage more clicks would be: “This 2-second trick relieves headaches.” Your audience is now wondering what the trick is, and of course, the only way to find out is to read your newsletter.
3. Unjustified Scarcity
Great marketers find ways to induce urgency. But there are good ways and bad ways to do it. When using your newsletter to drive sales of a product or service, don’t try to induce scarcity if you can’t justify it or if it doesn’t seem realistic.
For instance, avoid saying, “This downloadable e-book is selling fast, and there are only 15 left!” Obviously, there are not only 15 left. An e-book can be distributed a million times with practically zero effort or cost, so using false urgency will backfire.
Make sure that any scarcity is believable and backed up with a reason. A better approach to create scarcity would be, “This e-book is available for 50% off for the next two days only, as our way of saying thank you for being a subscriber.”
Your scarcity is now believable, and you’ve given your readers a reason for the discount so it doesn’t come off as a sleazy sales tactic.
4. Irrelevant Links
Email newsletters primarily accomplish one of two things: offering value and converting. Therefore, any external link in your newsletter should lead your subscribers down one of those paths.
A company that provides weekly updates on pop culture would do well to include some links to funny interviews with celebs. It aligns with the value proposition of entertainment. However, if you sell web design services, it’s a different story. You might be tempted to include some irrelevant or quirky content to present yourself as a fun brand, but what’s the value proposition? It’s creating high-quality, functional, responsive web assets that help people grow their online presence. Once in a blue moon, you might include a random link just to keep your brand voice light and fun. But most of the time links should directly help your audience achieve the goals they subscribed to your newsletter for in the first place.
The problem with getting out of hand with irrelevant links is that it takes your prospect out of your funnel and down an internet rabbit hole.
5. Long Paragraphs
Avoid huge paragraphs longer than four or five sentences. Those are a lot more intimidating than short ones or two-sentence paragraphs and could eliminate any desire your prospect has to read through your newsletter. There’s no word limit or space limit in an email, so you don’t have to worry about crunching all of your text together. If you want your readers to devour your content, make it incredibly easy on the eyes so that they can skim it and maintain momentum all the way to your call to action.
6. No-Reply Email Address
Want to frustrate your subscribers? Then don’t allow them to respond to your newsletter. In fact, using a no-reply email address is a great way to prevent any engagement with your readers at all. But if you do want engagement, allow qualified prospects to “raise their hand,” indicating that they’re interested in your content.
Even if you don’t feel there’s anything to reply to in your email, allow subscribers to respond. You can create a new segment of your audience that has proven engagement and could be more likely to pull the trigger on future calls to action. In addition to that, your readers will feel like you actually care about them and want a two-way conversation.
Wrapping Up
Sometimes, crafting an excellent email newsletter is more about what not to include than what to include. If you avoid the mistakes above, you can more easily connect with and convert your audience to grow your brand like a pro.
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Author: Aaron Agius, Forbes Councils Member
