“Hi, I’m a Marketer” and Other Reasons People Are Ignoring Your Emails

Email marketing is a great way to get your customer’s attention. You can put together an attractive, eye-catching email, send it out to anyone who might be interested in that product and watch your sales increase. And the great thing about email marketing is that it’s perfectly free, unlike direct mail marketing where you need to make printouts of your fliers, brochures etc.

Of course, email marketing doesn’t always work as perfectly in real life as it does in theory. Your emails might end up in someone’s spam or they might be ignored. Think about how often you do this yourself. When you open your inbox everyday, are there usually a couple of emails from lists you might have signed up for previously? Do you even bother to look at them or do you transfer them to “junk” or “promotions” so that they won’t distract you again? And if there are some emails that you do bother to look at, do they have certain traits or characteristics that the other ones don’t?

Just like personal emails that you send to people, there are certain marketing emails that people really want to look at and others that they delete without thinking. Here are a few reasons people might be ignoring your emails:

“Hi, I’m a Marketer.”

The worst thing you can do when you send out marketing emails is announcing up-front that you’re a marketer. People don’t want to be bothered with products that they’re not interested in and have no use for.

Some people think that writing “Sale, Sale, Sale” or “50% Off” in the subject of your email will make people want to open it. This might be true if the person is already interested in your product. But most of the time, people recognize these as manipulation tactics. They know that the sale is probably going to be limited to a few items and the rest of the email will be devoted to getting them to buy something else. So it’s a better idea to write a subject that will catch people’s attention because it’s cute or quirky, not salesy.

“I Have No Idea Who You Are But This Is Who I Am.”

Really? When has this line every worked for anyone? No self-respecting pickup artist would ignore the person he’s trying to pick up and talk about himself instead. Similarly, you can’t do this in a marketing email either.

People aren’t interested in getting to know you. They’re interested in telling you about themselves. They’re interested in others who understand what they’re going through. They want someone to tell them how amazing they are and how much more amazing they can become.

So make sure you keep your email focused on your customer. How is your product going to help them? How is your customer service going to keep them satisfied? How are you going to save them time or money? Or will you be helping them to be more beautiful and successful? Let them know all this but keep your email sincere. Don’t exaggerate.

“Don’t Call Me. I’ll Call You.”

What? You just read this great email. The product seems like it will really work for you. The price doesn’t seem to be too bad either. And you like the sincere way in which the email was written which made it seem like it wasn’t exaggerating what the product could do. You really want to buy it. But there’s no phone number and the “contact us” link doesn’t work.

You need to avoid a rookie mistake like this in your marketing emails. Here are a few more that people often make:

• Spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes.
• Too much text and not enough images.
• Images that take too long to load.
• Too many colors and a very “busy” email.
• Saying “Dear Customer” instead of using the customer’s name.
• Using an unreadable font.

Make sure you proofread your email a couple of times and show it to a few laypeople who will be able to give you feedback. Don’t get defensive if they suggest changes. You don’t have to do what everyone tells you to do. But make sure you at least think about whether those changes will help you to get more readers.

Contact us for more information about putting together a marketing email campaign that works.