What (not) to do in email marketing

1. Send emails to people who are interested in them
Think of the emails as if you were their recipient and send them only to those who are actually interested in them. These are the relevant recipients, the ones who will bring you profit. If you irritate them, they will mark the message as spam and next time you will be out of luck.

2. Before you send, ask yourself if it is really necessary
Email marketing evaluation tools will tell you how the recipient reacted to the email they received. This will help you decide whether to send it again. There is no use in trying to force someone to do something. You should keep in mind that you do not want to bother people. After all, you want them to come back!

3. Send emails from dedicated addresses. Never use no-reply!
The recipient must be able to answer. Use dedicated addresses for transactional and marketing messages.

4. Personalize and test
Take care of your recipients and make sure that you only send them things they are actually interested in. Think of them as if you really knew who they were. You can learn a great deal from the data, so take advantage of it. You will gain relevant and interested recipients in return.

5. Think of the subject line
The subject line is what the recipient sees first. It should be brief and clear. Subject lines containing various emoticons and pictograms are particularly inappropriate. They will not even appear on most devices, or they make the message stand out among other emails, making people want to delete it.

6. Monitor how people react. Anyone can have a bad day.
Test, test and test again. Each recipient is different, so adapt accordingly. Send content to each recipient as much as he enjoys it - to some twice a week, to others once a month. The minimum should nevertheless be once in three months. Also adjust the frequency distribution according to customer life cycle (when bought, complaints, etc.).

7. Do not send unnecessary emails to those who have previously not responded
Stop trying to approach people who have not shown interest for a long time. That way you can devote more money and time to those who buy from you. They are important, because they bring profit.

8. Do not worry if people opt out
Unsubscribing is the natural reaction of a recipient not interested in your message. Do not try to complicate the process - unsubscribing is always better than marking a message as spam. If people want to leave, let them. You would only be hurting yourself.

9. If recipients stop opening emails, quickly find out why
Monitor the statistics, test, take care of your recipients and try to reactivate them. Offer them a discount, or remind them that you have not seen them in your e-shop for some time.

10. If there is an issue with message deliverability, stop sending immediately
Too high a number of complaints can cause a provider to block you. Stop sending emails and investigate, or your reputation and that of your e-marketing tool might both suffer. Reputation is very difficult to regain and having bad reputation prevents delivery.

You also need to determine whether your emails contained a visible unsubscribe link. Each recipient has the right to opt out at any time. Do not hide the link and do not try to prevent recipients from unsubscribing.