SEO Hosting Blog

With Black Friday behind us and Christmas ahead of us, we’re right in the middle of the holiday shopping season. If you’re a consumer, you’ve probably noticed your inbox is constantly being bombarded with special holiday offers from your favorite companies. If you run a business, you’re probably one of those companies feverishly sending out offers to drum up holiday sales.

Make no mistake. Now is a great time for email marketing. But if you don’t approach holiday marketing correctly, you could miss out on some big opportunities.

That’s why I’ve come up with this list of holiday email marketing mistakes to avoid. Feel free to add to this list by leaving a comment.

1. Emailing way too often—It’s only natural to increase the frequency of your emails during the holiday season. After all, this is when customers are most interested in making purchases, and for many companies, the holiday season can make or break their entire year. While there’s nothing wrong with ramping up your email campaign during the holidays, you have to be careful not to overdo it. Remember, other companies are increasing the number of emails they send too, so consumers’ inboxes are exploding. Sending too many emails could cause the subscriber to unsubscribe rather than buy.
2. Sending multiple messages in a single email—We get it. You offer a lot of great products and services. That doesn’t mean you need to detail all of them in a single email. Trying to send multiple messages in a single email confuses the reader, and it causes all of the key messages to get drowned out. Keep it as simple as possible, and separate your messages across multiple emails.
3. Not getting to the point—Remember earlier when I said your readers’ inboxes are exploding with holiday offers from other companies? This means they have even less time than normal to read your email. So, don’t waste time in your email. Get straight to the point. Place your most important offer above the fold so that your readers see it as soon as they open your email. Keep it short and simple.
4. Not playing up the holiday theme—It sounds like common sense, but when you’re launching a holiday email marketing campaign, you need to play up the holiday theme. This means emphasizing that your offers are “holiday offers” or “Christmas offers.” It also means changing the design of your messages to get readers in the holiday spirit. Ignoring this will make your emails seem like all the other ones you send throughout the year. Now is the time of the year for them to be special.
5. Treating the subject line as an afterthought—I’ll say it one more time: Your readers are getting more emails than they can handle right now. They won’t read every single marketing message they receive. That’s why you need to focus on crafting irresistible subject lines that beg to be clicked. Check out these tips for writing effective email marketing subject lines.

Which holiday email marketing mistakes would you add to this list? Share your thoughts in the replies.

A well-placed image in an email marketing message doesn’t just add aesthetic appeal…it also can motivate readers to take the action you desire. On the flipside, haphazardly adding images to your messages can decrease readership, create severe layout issues, and distract from your main call to action.

To sort out how to use images properly in email marketing, I’ve come up with this list of 5 common mistakes I’ve seen. Avoid these and you’ll be on your way to email marketing success.

1.    Using generic and/or irrelevant images—Placing a picture in your message simply for the sake of having a visual element is pointless. Images should be used to help you better make your point, to attract attention/grab the interest of your reader, and to motivate your reader to take action. For the love of all things holy, don’t toss in a few clipart images because you think they’re cute.

2.    Not resizing your images—All images in your emails should be resized for both their appearance size and the size of the file. A general guideline for file size is to keep it below 25kb. If you can get it lower than that, great. This will keep your emails light and fast to load. As far as the size of the actual image, keep it under 470×150. You don’t want the reader to have to scroll for 5 minutes to see your image.

3.    Putting too many emails in one message—Putting too many images in your email causes a couple of problems. First, it makes your emails load more slowly. And we all know how impatient internet users are. Your readers will not wait around for your images to load; they’ll click “delete” instead. The other problem with using too many images is that it can clutter your message and distract the reader from your call to action. Use no more than 1 image per section/offer in your message.
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