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11 Email marketing mistakes that destroy your open rates

August 27, 2020 by Jim Connolly

One area of marketing I often get asked about, is how to improve email open rates. So, I thought I’d share eleven of the most common reasons for unopened email marketing with you.

email marketing tips

In no particular order.

  1. The recipient of your email uses Gmail. Gmail dumps valid emails into the recieptient’s promotions folder. They get no notification when these emails arrive. As such, open rates plummet. I know from personal experience that my Gmail subscribers miss over 90% of my emails, unless they’ve added my blog to their Gmail contacts list. This happens, even though they used gmail to double opt-in to receive my stuff.
  2. The email subject line didn’t motivate the recipient to open it. Getting this right is trickier than it sounds. That’s because many of the words used to inspire people to open an email, are also triggers for spam filters.
  3. You sent the email at the wrong time of day or on the wrong day. This can have a huge impact. Despite what some people say, there’s no universally ideal day or perfect time to optimize email open rates. For example, different timing is required when you target consumers, than when you target businesses. Different times also work better for different industries; hotels work completely different hours than accountants. They also have totally different peak times, when they’re unavailable to check email and are least likely to see your message. One time doesn’t work for all. Test and measure until you find your email open rate sweet-spot.
  4. The recipient’s email address is on a list you bought, so they have no idea who you are. And the people on these lists get bombarded with tons of marketing emails. This means they’re far more likely to have aggressive mail filters.
  5. Your list is out of date, with lots of addresses that no longer exist or are no longer monitored. Non existent email addresses will register as ‘bounces’, and are easily cleaned with email marketing software. Unmonitored addresses will still be able to receive emails, so they don’t bounce. Depending on the software you use, you can either set things up so addresses are deleted after ‘X’ number go unopened, or remove unresponsive addresses manually.
  6. The content of a previous email didn’t engage the reader, so they were less inclined to open subsequent emails. Remember: You never have ‘a list’. You need to earn and re-earn their permission. So stay useful.
  7. You send marketing emails direct from your desktop software, rather than use a trusted email marketing provider (mailchimp, aweber, constant contact, etc). If you send large numbers of the same email from your own IP address, your address can become blacklisted. When that happens, your emails won’t even reach the recipient’s spam folder.
    Tip: You can check if your IP address is blocked, using Spamhaus. It’s free to use.
  8. The email content (or body) contained certain words, which trigger email filters, so the email is wrongly identified as spam or junk.
  9. The email contained too many links or images. These are also common spam filter triggers.
  10. You included an email attachment. Attachments are major sources of malware, so are often blocked.
  11. You built your list by offering a freebie in return for their email address. People almost never use their primary email addresses for give-aways.

Email is a spectacularly powerful marketing tool. And sometimes just a few improvements can lead to massively better results.

Filed Under: Email marketing & mail shots Tagged With: email marketing

Would people miss your marketing if you stopped?

May 2, 2019 by Jim Connolly

I get scores of really important emails every day. I call them important, yet none of these marketing messages are of any importance to me.

They’re typically irrelevant and of literally zero interest. They are only important to the people sending them!

I know you receive these emails too. The amazing offers, which are not amazing in any way whatsoever. The poorly targeted offers, which aren’t even applicable to you. And let’s not forget the masses of automatically generated spam.

Here’s the thing: If your important news is only really important to you and your business, you’re not marketing to people. You’re interrupting them! And if you do that a second time, you go from interrupting them, to pestering them.

That’s not a good look.

How to get it right

Create something genuinely interesting, which is important to your prospective clients or customers. Then, only send your message to people who have given you permission to contact them, and who you know have a genuine need for that important information.

It’s hard to overstate the marketing power of a valuable message, sent to people who want to hear from you. It’s how you create the best marketing… marketing that’s so useful, people would miss it if you stopped.

Filed Under: Business Development, Email marketing & mail shots, General marketing, Social media marketing Tagged With: email marketing

Marketing, persistence and pests!

June 3, 2010 by Jim Connolly

Don’t you find it amazing that in 2010, people are still using the 1980’s sales and marketing model of pestering and pursuing people?

Here’s the problem with that approach: People hate being pestered and pursued.

For example, I received an email last week, whilst I was on holiday with my wife and 4 year old son.  The email started with the line; “I know you are on holiday with your family but…” then he hit me with a sales pitch.  He showed me zero respect and instantly alienated me.  The same guy then emailed me again today with the same pitch and said he hoped I “respected his professional persistence.”  There’s nothing professional about what he did.  In fact, the message he gave me was; “Yes, I know you are on holiday but I really don’t give a shit about you – buy this now!”

Permission marketing & professional marketing

For over 2 decades, I have successfully used and advocated the use of, what some people today call permission marketing.  Back then, we simply called it professional marketing.

Professional marketing is about treating the marketplace with respect.

It’s about operating with class.

It’s about building a strong, professional reputation.

It’s about building relationships.

It’s about trust.

It’s about professionally researching your marketplace.

It’s about considering the person behind the “sale” and not just thinking of everyone as a number.

It’s about engaging with people, who have a genuine, potential need for whatever you are offering and who have given you permission to market to them.

That’s how to build a very successful marketing function!

It’s ironic when you consider the example I gave earlier of a pushy marketer, but email marketing is one of my favourite forms of marketing.  That’s because it lends itself beautifully to the professional marketing model.  When used correctly, it can be super-effective and generate incredible results.  Of course, very few people use email marketing correctly – choosing instead to buy lists or copy them from websites, and then pester people with unwanted sales pitches.  They may get 1 person in 5,000 to place an order, but they will have just sent what felt like spam to the other 4,999! 

A company using that approach for long enough, will actually make their prospective customer base smaller and smaller, with each unwanted email they send.

Have you been pestered by pursuit marketers?  How does it make you feel about the people behind those tactics?  Let us know!

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Filed Under: General marketing Tagged With: email marketing, marketing coach, marketing pests, permission marketing, pursuit marketing

More marketing pests: Your feedback please!

March 21, 2010 by Jim Connolly

Several times a week, I get email from people, who claim to enjoy reading this blog and want to know if they can be one of my guest bloggers.  Clearly, they have never read the blog, as there is no guest blogging here. (The clue is in the blog’s name!)

Several times a day, I get email from people, telling me they enjoy reading my blog and would like me to link to them.  Clearly, they have never visited the blog, or they would know there are no link-exchanges here.  I link to a few sites, all of which are owned by people I know and trust.  NONE of them asked for the link.  BTW: I just added Danny Brown’s blog to my links (Get well soon Danny!)

In yesterday’s blog post, I wrote about the mindset that says it’s ok to piss-off 99.9% of people you contact, to reach that 0.1%,  who may listen to or read your message. That post was about cold calls from unprofessional tele-marketers, but the same applies to other forms of impersonal, mass produced junk marketing too.

…and the best part?

The massive majority of email I receive, asking for links and postings, comes from marketing companies or SEO / SEM (search engine marketing) companies; on behalf of their clients and in their client’s name! It’s their client’s reputations that are being rendered toxic – and I’m willing to bet that in many cases, their clients don’t even know the damage being caused to their name or brand.

Filed Under: General marketing Tagged With: email marketing, inlinks, link exchange, sem, SEO, spam

Get your marketing emails opened!

March 18, 2010 by Jim Connolly

This post is all about email marketing; specifically, how to get your email marketing opened!

The reason I am focusing on getting your marketing emails opened, is that no matter how great your marketing message or offer is, unless people actually open it and read it, it’s not going to generate the results you want.

How to get your emails opened

So, how do you quickly determine the best way to get your marketing emails opened?  Simple: You keep copies of the marketing emails, which you have opened and you ask your contacts to do the same.

Then, you look at them and see what lessons you can apply to your own marketing!

Is this the best way to ensure your email’s get read? No!  The best way is to hire a proven expert.  Is this an effective way for a keen, small business owner to improve his or her email marketing results? Yep!

Email marketing clues

Once you have looked at the marketing emails that either you or your buddies have opened, you need to start looking for clues.  By the way, it would be particularly useful, if you could get existing customers to let you know the kind of marketing emails THEY have opened, as they are the same profile of people that you want to target.

Here are just a few of the clues, which you may find when you examine those successful emails:

  • The email was sent to you, from someone you know and trust.
  • The email came from a person or company, which you remember subscribing to.
  • The subject line contained the correct spelling of your name.
  • The subject line contained the name of a person or business that you know personally or professionally.
  • The subject line contained a question that got you curious.
  • The subject line contained a bold statement, which grabbed your attention.

Many great marketing opportunities are missed by small businesses, simply because their emails never get opened or read.  The sender often thinks the message or the offer was unattractive, when the reality is that too few people actually saw it.  Don’t let this happen to you!  Email marketing is one of the most effective and cost effective marketing tools on the planet – So long as you use it correctly.

If you have any email marketing tips you would like to share, please do so by leaving a comment below.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Filed Under: Copywriting, Email marketing & mail shots Tagged With: Copywriting, email marketing, marketing emails

Email marketing and blog marketing – A quick tip!

February 1, 2010 by Jim Connolly

If you use email or blogging to market your services, I believe you will find the following information really useful.

It’s all about the importance of avoiding certain words or phrases in your emails and blog posts, which could get them blocked from reaching your readers.

Whilst there are many different things that can lead to an email getting trapped in someone’s junk mail or spam filters, I’m going to focus on just one of them; the words you use in your blog titles and your email subject lines.

What does blog marketing have to do with email filters?

Many people subscribe to blogs via email.  For instance, around 40% of this blog’s RSS subscribers read it via email.  So, if the title of one of my posts contains words or phrases that email filters are looking out for, there’s a good chance the post will get trapped in either the readers junk mail folder or it may never reach them at all.

I wrote a post last Friday, which had a title that was essentially a “toxic” phrase.  The title was “REVEALED: The fast rack to wealth.”  You can see the post here.  It also had the opening word written in caps, which is another, lesser, junk mail trigger.

I was curious to see how many people opened it, compared to an average post.  There was a drop of around 25%, pretty much what I had expected.

So, whilst it’s a great idea to use blog titles that will capture people’s attention – you need to also ensure that your titles are email friendly (if you offer the option for people to subscribe via email, which I believe you should.)

Email marketing and filters

Titles are also a key element in getting your marketing emails and newsletters past filters and in front of your readers.  On my marketing newsletter, I opt for a very simple title: The Jim Connolly Newsletter.  Keeping this very basic title format does 2 clever things.

  1. Because it’s familiar, it immediately alerts my readers that the newsletter has arrived.  If I used different titles every time, it would be harder for my newsletter to get noticed for what it is.
  2. It contains nothing that’s likely to get trapped in a junk mail filter.

As I said earlier, there are a number of things, which can lead to your marketing email’s getting trapped in filters.  Here’s a simple email marketing tip, from one of my first blog posts.

Filed Under: Blogging, Email marketing & mail shots Tagged With: blog marketing, Copywriting, email marketing, marketing blogs, marketing titles, spam filters

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marketing advice, marketing help Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help business owners to make more sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. You can find out more here.

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