Seven Sure-Fire Ways To Ensure Your Emails Will Be Ignored

By Guest Blogger, Mary Schmidt, Marketing Troubleshooter

It's been one of those weeks.  I keep getting emails from well-meaning people who are utterly clueless about email marketing.  And, note to my fellow women: Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I want or need life coaching, advice on raising children or fashion notes.

So, here are seven of about 50 ways to lose your reader:

1. Sending something "interesting" to everyone in the address book. I've got both the Lt. Governor of NM and my mechanic in my address book. They're both wonderful people, but they're not likely to be interested in the same things, particularly if they didn't ask for the info.

2. Hitting "reply all" with no thought given to the other recipients. There are emails I never bother to open these days, since I know the sender blithely hits this on all email responses.  I really don't need to read "good job!" fifty times.  

3. Sending an email with nothing in the subject line.  Is it spam? Who is this? Why should I open it?

4. Doing all kinds of fancy graphics and images in the standard email software. All that fancy stuff triggers spam alarms and, if it does make it, can look hopelessly jumbled on the receiving end.  Keep it simple if you don't want to use email software such as iContact. 

5. Sending an attachment with "for more information, see attachment."  If it's really important and you really want people to do something, put the info in the body of the email. 

6. Sending an attachment with nothing in the body of the email telling me why I should open the attachment.  So, you're doing a membership drive.  Why would I be interested? 

7. Sending a "Fw: Re: Re: Fw: Fw:" string.  It it's really good, stop for a second and add a note - and clean up the subject line. Otherwise, it looks like one of those "everyone knows; a friend of a friend had this happen" urban legend sort of junk.

Here's a quick sanity check.  Would you feel comfortable knocking on someone's front door with the message you're about to send?

Comments

[Mary Schmidt]

Andrew,

As you note, I'm talking about the live people who do these things. However, they should also not be excused when they use software that bombards people.

[Andrew]

Mary/Bruce,

I think a lot of the shoddy methods you describe above are the work of computers set up to send spam to anyone and everyone.

Since I realize here that you are talking to those who are trying to exploit email as a genuine marketing platform. These marketers would be well advised and heed your common sense advice in an effort to try to ensure that recipients do not give their message similar treatment to that of spam - i.e. the delete button.

[Bruce Peters]

Great reminders. Have been guilty of most of these at one time or another. Have found all incredibly annoying when thrust at me. Thanks.