If you were to ask what the best thing in marketing is at the moment, you’ll be given a whole barrage of different answers.

Lots of people will tell you all about the latest tech, like how Facebook Messenger is awesome, or how push notifications are the absolute best.

But at the end of the day, there’s nothing like good, trusted email marketing to push your revenue and growth.

It’s still #1. 🙂

Ultimately though, we’re all only human. Despite how awesome email marketing can be, it’s very easy to make mistakes. I know I’ve made many of them over the years.

Which brings us to the point of this video & blog post 🙂 

You don’t want to be caught in those same traps, right? I know you don’t! That’s why in this post, I’m going to highlight some of the most common mistakes that email marketers make… so that your email marketing campaigns continue to grow your business.

Let’s jump right in!

1. Not Using Segmentation

I was definitely late to the email list building party… but it’s still changed my whole business and life. Up until that point, I relied solely on finding new traffic in order to generate any sort of revenue.

As you can imagine, it wasn’t very easy to do.

So when I got my email list up and running, it became so much simpler to build relationships with people and get more things off the ground. Things were going really well!

But things were also very different back then.

Starting out with my email list back in 2010 meant that all the tools available to me at the time were practically all the same: you broadcast one email to the entirety of your email list… as though everyone were the same person and there weren’t any differences between them.

…Which was kind of bad. But hey, it was 2010. 🙂

These days, it’s a lot better! There are so many tools out there, and it makes all the difference. You can now segment your email list to an insane level of detail.

For example, you could send a different email to the people who have opened your previous email from the people who have visited your pricing page.

Your audiences can be uniquely tailored by the use of segmentation. This means that you can target specific information to the right people and give them something relevant and valuable… instead of just sending an email broadcast to the general public.

With segmentation, you can have a great focus on so many different factors… what your audience is or isn’t interested in, what they’ve already seen…

Which is why you can never go wrong with it. 🙂

2. Forgetting You’re Talking to Humans

I always see people sending out emails that look like this…

“Hey everyone! How are you all doing?”

…As if someone at their desk is going to call their family and friends over to read the email with them.

Yeah, not gonna happen! 😛

You have to remember that regardless of the size of your email list… be it 10 or 10,000 people, you’re talking to specific human beings– you’re still sending it to one person.

Keep things personal. Try picturing your email going out to a specific person… and go from there.

It just helps make things more human in this world of automation and impersonal interaction. 🙂

3. Not Tracking Sales

Regardless of what you are trying to do with your email list, at some point, you’re probably going to try and use it to generate revenue.

Here’s the thing though.

If you are sending out a lot of emails but don’t know which one is generating revenue, then how can you improve over time?

Some people might think, “If I send out an email on one particular day, and if I get more revenue on that day, then it’s from that particular email.”

And that might be true… but it isn’t always.

This is why I highly recommend that everyone track each and every email for the sales those emails created.

The easiest way to do this is by using Google Analytics. Google it, you’ll find it!

4. Not Bringing the Right People on

I’ve made this mistake quite a few times myself. It happens way before you email anyone, and that’s the point where you want to get them on your email list.

Usually, you give people something in return for entering your list. This is often a bribe, opt-in, or lead magnet. This is great, and gives people an incentive to hop onto the list!

But if your incentive isn’t related to your business… you’re probably attracting all the wrong people.

I see this happening with my customers at UpViral. They create a viral contest… and they give away something like an iPad, when their business isn’t even remotely related to iPads!

You can then imagine that everyone subscribing wants to win that iPad, even without being the least bit interested in the actual business.

Because of this, it’s so important that in your business, you give away something that is related to your niche… something only someone truly interested in what you have to offer will want to have. Give away something that is highly relevant to your ideal customer, and you’ll keep the wrong people away.

If you aren’t bringing the right people on, you can segment your list to your heart’s content, be as personal as you can be, and track all your sales for as long as possible… but you won’t be seeing much in the way of revenue.

So get the right people onto your list. You want people interested in what you have to say, because those are the same people who are going to be buying what you have to offer.

5. Not Building a Relationship and Adding Value

I know I’ve just said that email marketing is an incredible tool to drive revenue for your business. That’s 100% true, trust me.

…But it becomes a problem when you start seeing it solely as a sales channel. You have to look at it from the perspective of being able to build an audience, and then a relationship with that audience.

At the end of the day, the money isn’t in your email list. The money lies in the relationship between you and the people on the list.

You know what’s annoying? When you get emails from marketers who blast promotion after promotion. This happens to me every single day!

No one likes getting spammed. Use your email list as an avenue to building a good relationship with your audience by giving them value in your emails. I guarantee you that the results will be far better and far more effective if you do this than just blasting through your list.

6. Not Cross-Platform Retargeting Your Email List

Email marketing simply isn’t a world on its own. You have to combine it with other marketing channels for it to be at its most effective.

For example, I use ConnectAudience to make sure that whenever I send out an email promotion, I retarget anyone who opens my email on Facebook as well!

This drives another 50% revenue on top of my email promotions, just because I took the time to cross-platform retarget! 🙂

This goes for other channels too! Just because you send out an email doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send stuff out on Facebook as well.

It’s really important to do cross-channel promotions ALONGSIDE your email marketing campaigns.

These were the six biggest mistakes I’ve made as an email marketer– mistakes I want YOU to avoid so that you can use your email marketing campaigns to grow your business to its highest potential. 🙂

Did I miss any other mistakes? Let me know in the comments below. Share your experiences with email marketing!