What To Avoid - List Building Mistakes

You can avoid potential Unsubscribes by making sure that people understand your opt-in message. You will be building a powerful list when you are sending marketing messages to people who have specifically requested them. Your list will be quality and not quantity.

There will always be Unsubscribers however, so make sure your link takes the recipient directly to the Unsubscribe page where they will be courteously removed from your mailing list, effective immediately. Nothing enrages a person more than to go to the trouble of Unsubscribing and then to have your unwanted messages turning up for days and weeks afterwards.

People will click the Junk Mail button before even opening when using an email address that looks like spam. People open emails in first place when they know who the sender is. And don't bother to personalize the subject line - as according to email marketing statistics, this does not significantly increase results. Jupiter Research (2006) said that putting the recipient's name in the subject line increases the open rate by as much as 10%, but this has been overdone since and today can be a signal of sophisticated spam.

Personalized messages in the body of the email can be effective however, as it shows the reader that you think the specific message or offer meets the person's needs. You will want to capitalize on this by giving subscribers a way to reach you and ask questions, send comments or let you know if something on the website is not working. For keeping a good relationship with your list members it is vital keeping their email address updated.

Avoid emailing images that are meant to be downloaded from the web as these are automatically blocked by most software programs and do not nest scripts in your HTML message. Also avoid using capital letters in the subject line and spam-popular words such as Free, $$$, Discount, Save or Money. Spam filters will delete these emails before they even reach the recipients.

Avoid having your emails blocked by checking your mail provider rules. Most server providers prevent spam by requiring that you do not send too many emails in a short period of time. GoDaddy for example will not let you send more than 1000 emails per day. Try to keep your email delivery rate as high as possible and avoid that your emails end up in junk or spam folders. Avoid these basic mistakes and you are on your way to a successful email marketing and list building campaign.