Newsletter is a powerful communication channel – it keeps your customer informed, and even more, keep then engaged . Truth is, most of your customers won’t visit your website often, and newsletter is a very good way to keep they coming back. I myself – am an example of those customers – most of my purchases were made from newsletters. A good deal shows up and I just buy it – even thought I don’t really need it. Yes it’s not the best habit in the world, but it’s the way marketing works. You get a good sale, I get a product that I might need some day. Everyone is happy, well, might be except my wife.
However, like other channels of marketing, mistakes can be made with newsletter and drive your customers away. Make sure to avoid these:
Sending too many newsletters:
Unless your customers explicitly say that they want to get your newsletter everyday, it’s best to avoid to do so. Even if your site is full of interesting content, keep in mind that if customers received too much emails from you, their interests might wear out. It’s bad when customers start getting a habit of “Oh another mail from <blah blah>, just ignore it”. It’s even worse if they don’t open your newsletter at all, or simply create a rule to delete it.
Keep the frequent of newsletter to be just right (I really like a word in Swedish “lagom” – not too much, not too little). Even more importantly, keep the content interesting – let the customers feel rewarded. Your goal is not to let your customers read one or two mails, but to keep them coming back, even one year later.
There is no (easy) option to unsubscribe:
Sometimes I am no longer interested in a newsletter – mostly because I forgot to un-tick the newsletter option when register. I would really appreciate if the next newsletter have a simple “Unsubscribe” link in the bottom, when I can quickly stop getting the email. The good thing is most of the newsletters follows that pattern. The good thing is some of the newsletters say “If you want to stop receiving this, login and then change the setting in your page”. That’s pretty ridiculous. When the customers no longer want your email, make it effortless to stop receiving the email – even better – allow them to change the option of receiving newsletter.
Or they will simply mark your emails as spams.
Get your customer’s name wrong:
This email came from Uber and tell me if you like it when you receive a mail which spells your name wrong:
No, it’s not my name!
Come on, it’s 2016 and Unicode was born 26 years ago. It should not be that hard to get my name right. It’s Quân, simple as that. I don’t really feel annoyed with this mistake, but in some cases, a wrongly spelled word can mean a completely different thing and might even be insulted to some customers. Avoid it at all cost – don’t let some stupid encoding mistakes that costs you a customer.
Impressive titles work, to a point
Sometimes it’s good to be creative. Sometimes it’s good a have a refreshing title. But it only works, to a point. The problem is, if your content does not live up with your impressive title, your customer will be unconsciously disappointed. Next time, they will be less enthusiastic for your newsletter, and trust me, you won’t want it happens.
