A whopping 17% of all emails worldwide go missing or go straight to spam folders after getting caught by popular spam filters. That’s money and time wasted on campaigns that didn’t even get to see the light of day—and you don’t want that. Yet, many companies continue to send crappy emails.
According to Perkbox, the most annoying email clichés that will make your recipients hit delete are:
- Just looping in…
- As per my last email
- To whom it may concern
Are you using any of these? If so, then stop!
If you want your emails delivered and read, send messages that highlight your products and services in ways that give your recipients value. The last thing you want to do is to annoy them with irrelevant emails, which is what we’ll discuss below.
In this article, we look at the annoying tactics that prospects dread seeing in their inboxes, and how to avoid and rise above them. We’ll take you from annoying marketer to reputable company in no time.
5 Best Email Marketing Practices
To get the most out of email marketing, you need to keep your prospects engaged from the very first email you send until you close the sale.
For an example of what to do, consider the following marketing email from Grammarly encouraging users to subscribe to Grammarly Premium. The email nails all the best email marketing practices and avoids several annoying tactics that tempt the best of us:
The email is enticing and we’d probably open it. There are five reasons why:
- The email is the only email that was sent—we didn’t find five other emails from Grammarly in our inbox this week, so this one stood out (and didn’t annoy us).
- The email is valuable. The email contains a 50%-off coupon for the premium plan, which hits our pain point, because we’re writing tons of blog posts and cold emails all the time, and Grammarly services help our company save on editing costs. Plus, the 50% savings on Premium is a steal for this kind of service!
- The email’s subject line was perfect because it was clear and direct, and didn’t shout at us with too much !!! or guilt us by telling us we’ll go bankrupt if we don’t sign up.
- The email’s call to action (CTA) was easy. The green “upgrade now” button was right there at the bottom where we expected it.
- The email provided contact information. In case anything was fishy or we had questions, the sender provided a professional and verifiable email address.
Now that you’ve seen a good email from another company’s campaign, let’s look at the email marketing practices that can help you achieve the same thing.
#1 Don’t Send Too Many Emails
Keep track of how many emails you send each prospect and how often you send follow-ups. Every day billions of emails are sent, and most of them go unanswered and unopened.
Flooding customers with too many emails too often drowns them and leaves your campaign with high unsubscribe rates or, worse, you could find yourself on the spam list.
What you can do: To ensure that you’re not sending emails too frequently, set up a release schedule for your campaign. Most email marketing software offers a scheduled email feature, which allows you to set how often you want to release a new email to your email lists.
Remember to give your prospects and leads a space to breathe. Don’t bombard them—they’ll turn away if you talk too often and too loud, which defeats your purpose.
#2 Just Give Value
Whether your email includes a limited offer or shares an informative blog post, every email you send should be nothing but value-packed. Trash goes in the trash, and useful things get put to use.
If you expect to boost customer loyalty and receive positive responses from your campaigns, explain how your products or service can be valuable to them and resolve their current issues. Depending on who your audience is, include information or services that they will appreciate.
Segmenting your email list can help you identify your target audience according to their interests and personalize your emails to give them value and, as a result, boost your conversion rate.
What you can do: Only send emails if you have something valuable to give, and focus on using your cold emails to educate, inform, and engage your prospects.
For example, you can offer an exclusive discount to your subscribers to engage them and entice them to avail of the offer. Or you can also provide free resources to educate your readers, like giving tips on how to increase social media reach.
#3 Avoid Clickbait-y Subject Lines
Clickbait-y email subject lines promise more than you can deliver or don’t accurately reflect the content of your email body. Here are a few examples:
- “This One Simple Trick Changed My Life!”
- “OMG, You’ll Never Find Easier $$$ Than This!”
- “Share My Latest Post About…”
- “Follow Me On Social Media For More Content Like This!”
Using sensational language, making false promises, and teasing information without enough context is plain annoying. Plus, misleading email subject lines only damage your credibility and reduce the chances of recipients opening your email.
Remember: 47% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line alone. Writing annoying subject lines is your metaphorical face-plant when the starter pistol goes off—your chances of getting past your mark, let alone winning the race, are significantly diminished.
What you can do: Ensure your email subject lines accurately reflect the email content by using engaging and plain language that communicates exactly what your recipients will get when they open your email.
#4 Make One Powerful Call-to-Action
Don’t go overboard on your emails.
We know you want recipients to do all the above: follow on Instagram, sign up for the newsletter, leave comments on the blog, and buy the product. But include more than one call to action (CTA), and you risk completely overloading and driving them off.
Too many options and demands lead to the paradox of choice, where prospects get stressed and run. Instead, use just one CTA, put it at the end where everyone expects to find it, and clearly say what you want the reader to do and how to do it.
Your goal is to make them excited and ensure they get what they want from your email.
Here are more tips on what not to do when adding CTAs to your emails:
- Don’t place the button or link somewhere not easy to find
- Don’t use language that doesn’t align with your message
- Don’t ask users to subscribe to your services without explaining the perks
- Don’t use boring colors that don’t pop or inspire actions
What you can do: Put your CTA in a prominent position, write clear and concise words, use visuals to make it more noticeable, and provide enough information about the action you want them to take.
When done correctly, a CTA can help increase your click-through and conversion rates without annoying your potential customers. They’ll even rejoice at the fact that they know how to get what you’re offering.
#5 Avoid Using a No-Reply Email Address
Using a “no-reply” email address to send outreach emails is a lazy marketing technique that may snag a few lazy buyers, but won’t generate leads, attract customers, or enhance your campaign. No-reply cold emails are uninteresting and unfriendly.
Apart from that, using a no-reply email address is non-compliant with GDPR and CAN-SPAM laws. Your recipients should be able to request information about your data collection and unsubscribe from your email list with a reply email. A no-reply email doesn’t allow both actions, which would result in your emails being non-compliant and punishable.
A no-reply email address can further hurt your marketing efforts by reducing your email deliverability rate and worsening your customer experience.
For example, some email providers have a security setting that sends no-reply emails straight to junk, so no matter how well you craft your email content, if you send the email from a no-reply address, it’ll never be read. Additionally, a no-reply email address stops your prospects from replying to any of your emails for feedback.
Automatic cannot-deliver responses drive anyone nuts.
Avoid Annoying the Inbox: Campaign for Customers
Email marketing can convert leads and strengthen business, but not if you’re not seeing your prospects eye-to-eye. You need to build your reputation until they’re comfortable doing business with you—and sending annoying emails would be a horrible start.
Careless cold email campaigning is like going for a run in your bunny slippers. However, get those runners laced up, and you’re in for as good a run as you put in.
Successful cold email outreach is all about intentionality: Be conscientious of the right amount and the right time to email prospects, get to the point right away, give them something worth reading, and leave them energized to take action.
With ScaleUpSales, you can immediately strategize your campaign and launch it in no time. Our experts will help ensure your emails look professional, organized, and engaging—all while ensuring a higher open rate, better customer engagement, and increased sales.
Contact us today and start growing your business with effective email marketing campaigns.
