Sure, you may have worked for days on your newsletter content, and it looks great, doesn’t it? The truth is, a newsletter is only an effective marketing tool if it’s opened. How do you avoid “trash,” “unread,” or even worse, “reported as spam?”
Here are some of the top things to avoid:
1. Making Your Newsletters too Generic
Your newsletter is your chance to appeal to not just any audience, but your audience. A great way to do this is by list segmentation, the process of creating smaller, more targeted email lists for special news and events. Once you do this, you can create the content that each segment will want to read rather than generic content that doesn’t focus on any targets at all.
2. Accidentally Triggering Spam Alerts
On a personal level, you know the words that make you delete emails unopened, or report them as spam. These words include “free,” “promotional,” and “buy now.” To make things even more complicated, Gmail has a tab that specifically filters messages containing certain trigger words into a “Promotions” tab. It’s a pretty sure bet that your Gmail readers rarely, if ever, open this tab. You can bypass these disastrous results by avoiding the common spam trigger words and encouraging your readers to whitelist your email to keep it out of spam or promotional folders.
3. Ignoring The Wonders of Modern Technology
It’s estimated that over half of all users access email through their smartphones. If you haven’t designed your emails with these users in mind, they won’t engage with your content. Designing emails for mobile devices includes formatting to fit screens, compressing images, and using shorter, more pointed subject lines.