email marketing mistakesEmail marketing is a straight forward topic…at first. It’s like writing an article for traffic. How difficult and complex can it get?

Like most things in life, the simpler it looks, the less people do a good job with it.

Every internet marketer knows (unless you’re a fresh newbie), that the money is in the list. The bigger your list, the more money you’ll make.

But here’s the cold, hard truth.

The number of subscribers on your email list don’t mean squat.

If the majority of subscribers signed up to your email list using a junk email address to get the freebie and they never open your emails, do you think you’ll make money even with a million subscribers?

Obviously your email marketing will suck when that happens.

So what determines successful email marketing?

How do you know you’re building a list that will make you money and not just collecting unresponsive email addresses?

How successful your email marketing is, is determined by your open and click through rates.

When you send an email to your list, you look for the number of people who open your emails and the number of people who click on the links inside the email.

One of the reasons why a lot of people fail miserably when purchasing solo-ads is because they bought the ad based on the number of subscribers. This is not how you buy solo-ads.

The reason you buy solo-ads is to get subscribers to click on the link in your email to subscribe to your list or to purchase one of your products. However, I would advise sending the people on a solo-ad to your squeeze page.

email mistakesSo why the hell would you pay for an email based upon the size of the email list?

You could be crying over the dismal performance of the ad.

A much better approach would be to purchase a solo-ad based on the average number of clicks the list owner can send.

A huge list doesn’t mean they will send more traffic to your website. By paying for an ad that guarantees a certain number of clicks, you’ll be able to save a lot of money.

Doesn’t this make you think? A lot of marketers have huge lists yet their subscribers are dead!

No one clicks on the links which the marketer sends. With some marketers, not many of their subscribers open their emails either.

So why is that?

The reason is because the list was not treated correctly.

Here are 3 mistakes marketers make on ruining response rates.

Email Marketing Mistakes Than Ruin Responses

1. The Method of Traffic Generation

How you get subscribers onto your email list is very important. It determines how responsive these subscribers are when you email them.

For example, if you participate in a giveaway event where there are many product owners offering free stuff in return for the person’s email address, you won’t get a lot of good subscribers.

This is because the person has probably signed up to a lot of email lists to get the freebies in that giveaway event. He will be receiving a ton of emails and won’t be able to read all of them. It is also likely that he will unsubscribe from a lot of lists, including yours.

I’ve noticed that with subscribers from giveaway events, they are less responsive. Your freebie needs to be of exceptional quality and your follow up emails must contain excellent content for them to read your messages and remember you.

2. Boring your subscribers

Another mistake which marketers commonly do with their email marketing that ruins the responses is being boring with their messages.

Right after the subscriber joins the list, the marketer will email them regularly with content that is old, unattractive and promotional. A lot of the times, the subscribers will be promoted to day in and day out which is not why they signed up to your list at the beginning.

After a while, the subscribers will ignore the emails coming from this marketer and won’t even bother reading the subject line.

Just because someone has not unsubscribed from your list doesn’t mean that they are reading your emails.

The subscriber is most responsive when they are first signed up to your list. Your first few emails must excite them, make them remember you and want to read more. After a while, they will not be as responsive.

3. Not emailing the list

This is a very common mistake and one which I have made as well at the beginning.

Do not build a list for the sake of getting many subscribers on your list. Understand that the objective is to turn these subscribers to your fans and make them trust you. This is what makes them buy from you.

Don’t focus on increasing the number of subscribers. Your goal is to increase the number of people who open your emails and click on the links inside.

Email Marketing Summary

So the next time, you are revising the performance of your email marketing, look at the increase in number of open emails and the click through rate of the links. If there is an increase from last month, your email marketing is healthy.

Remember, your number of subscribers don’t mean jack.

Photo Credit: checkrecordsdotcom

 

 

Alan Cheng is the founder of Traffic Beast and Elite Ghostwriters. Sign up to access the free videos on how to generate mass targeted traffic to your blog at
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