Bad practice in email marketing is bad business, according to Chris Marriott. Companies making mistakes in marketing via email is like shooting themselves in the foot. He gives us a short list of 5 mistakes and missed opportunities many companies make on a daily basis:

1. No welcome message

Acknowledge that I have signed up for email newsletter, or notice of special promotional offers. If companies fail to do so, it is as if they don’t care about who have signed up.

My comment: So true. Sending welcome message ensures that new subscribers are not confused about the process. Sometimes, when requesting an offer, I tend to doubt if I have missed something if I didn’t immediately get a message in the mail. “What have I done wrong? Did I enter the correct email?”

2. Ignore information entered during sign-up

If companies ask for preferences and other information, they should use them. Don’t ask for company name if all they want to personalize is my first name.

Hendry: If I opted in to receive specific information, please don’t send me others unless they are relevant. I expect companies to use the preferences I set during sign up.

3. Treat me the same as everyone else in the email file

Retailers are the worst offenders in this regard. Email marketers should segment their recipients by interests, product they currently bought, etc. This increases response and clickthrough and conversion.

This is exactly the thing I commented on in the second point above about segmented information.

4. Let everyone in the organization mail to me

Unless the company has instituted strict email touch governance rules around the frequency of email communications to its customers, I’m likely to receive too many emails (maybe two in one day) from that company.

Coordinated effort in email marketing ensures more control in messages received by recipients and their experiences with the companies.

5. Send me ugly transactional emails

It has been proven that transactional emails are great oppotunities to offer related products.

Why immediately offer other products? Because the greatest open rates belong to transactional emails. Customers also are more likely to buy because they have just bought something.

My comment: Mr. Marriott complained about using plain text and unbranded emails in transactional emails. While it is great to have HTML emails with all the bells and whistles, plain text emails are less likely to be filtered. I should say at least companies should clearly brand emails, although they are sending in plain text. And yes, don’t make it appear so garbled!