We all make mistakes.
But when it comes to your business, it’s best to learn about the common pitfalls early on so that you can avoid them.
There are so many reasons to maintain an engaged email list, but there are some common mistakes people fall into with email marketing.
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5 Mistakes People Make When Building An Email List
Be honest with yourself as you read through this list.
Knowing what you’re doing wrong is the first step toward building a more valuable list.
#1 – Mailing Too Often
One of the quickest ways to get an interested subscriber to unsubscribe or ignore your emails is mailing too often.
How often is too often is a little variable and depends on your target market and what your list is used to.
If you’ve been emailing them twice a month, it would be a mistake to suddenly start mailing daily.
A better idea would be to slowly ramp it up.
If you have something of value to provide that they want to read each day, daily emails are fine.
But for most of us, 2 to 3 emails per week is as high as we want to go.
#2 – Not Mailing Often Enough
The second mistake many email marketers make is that they don’t email often enough.
Beginners hold off emailing until they “grow their list” even though the person subscribing doesn’t realize they are only one of four people currently subscribed.
Start mailing from day one.
It’s also a mistake to only email occasionally because you don’t want to “bother” your subscribers or because you are seeing a few unsubscribers each time you send out an email.
A large list that’s forgotten who you are and that you never email isn’t of any value to you or anyone else.
Your subscribers signed up for a reason!
Not emailing them or only emailing every few weeks is doing them a disservice.
They may have also forgotten that they signed up by the time the next email comes around.
This can result in large unsubscribe numbers and even being marked as spam.
Stay in touch regularly.
Once a week is good or at the very least once every two weeks.
#3 – Mailing Offer After Offer
Unless your readers signed up for a “daily deal” type mailing list, they do not appreciate being bombarded with offer after offer.
Yes, it is fine to make offers and monetize your list, but it has to be balanced with some valuable and helpful free content.
In other words, spamming your list with “buy this” or “buy that” is not a good idea.
Think of it this way.
You wouldn’t like to get email after email asking you to buy something that you don’t want or need.
Your subscribers feel the same way.
Keep that in mind before you send another offer.
#4 – Not Vetting The Offers Before You Mail Your List
Another common mistake I see is that people make an offer without checking it out themselves first.
You want to make sure it’s a good fit for your list, the quality of the product is good, and that the people selling it will take good care of your subscribers.
You worked hard to build that list.
Be protective of them and vet each offer before you send it out to your readers.
Vetting the offer and going through the order process yourself also helps you pinpoint stumbling blocks.
You can help your readers make it easier to order and find their download information after the purchase.
#5 – Promoting Things Your Subscribers Don’t Want Or Need
The next big mistake is to push products on your readers that they are not interested in or don’t need.
It’s easy to make this mistake when you don’t know your audience very well.
You may go too wide and think that parents of toddlers have to eat and everyone likes vegetables.
So you promote a vegan cookbook.
The thing is, only a very small percentage of your readers will be interested in this.
The other reason your readers may not be interested in an offer is because you’re not presenting it to them in a way that makes it interesting.
Let’s go back to the parents of toddlers and cookbook example.
You could potentially make quite a few sales selling them a slow cooker cookbook by marketing it as a way to get a kid-friendly, healthy, home cooked meal on the table, while still being able to chase the kids around the yard all afternoon.
I’m all about education. So if you have any other questions, be sure to jump into my free Time Money & Happiness Matters!
