This is a guest post by Michelle Smith, a freelance writer in Florida. 

Direct marketing through email isn’t a new concept, but email marketers continue to make crucial email marketing mistakes every day.

Here are a few of the email marketing mistakes I’ve seen recently that you should watch out for to protect your brand.

4 Email Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

1. Ignoring the CAN-SPAM Act

This is the big one. There are a lot of pieces to the CAN-SPAM Act, but the big takeaway for marketers is that you must give readers a way to unsubscribe from your messages. Most email marketing services providers, such asMailChimp, Constant Contact and Emma, provide a link for readers to unsubscribe in their standard email templates.

What if you don’t abide by the CAN-SPAM Act? Not only will you annoy your intended audience, but the Federal Trade Commission could fine you as much as $16,000 for each violation. If someone requests to opt out of your email database, you have 10 business days to honor their request. Bottom line, if someone doesn’t wish to receive further communication from your company, have their information scrubbed from your database immediately.

Pro tip:  Don’t purchase email lists – it violates the CAN-SPAM act and could get you locked out by your email service provider.

2. Not linking to your website or social accounts

This should be a no brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many emails I receive that don’t include links back to the company’s website or buttons for social sharing.

Email marketing should be part of a holistic communications strategy that involves your social media networks and website. When you include links to these key venues of communication, you give your audience other ways to learn about your company and services, and you help them stay up to date with your organization.

Pro tip:  Think carefully about the purpose of your email before adding your social links on a whim. If your objective is to drive recipients to your website, make those links more prominent and don’t bury them in the social media noise. 

3. Emailing the wrong people

This is an easy mistake to make. Regretfully, I’ve done it myself in my early days of email marketing. If email marketing is one of the major forms of communication with your audiences, chances are, not every email you send will relate to everyone in your database.

For example, if you work for a university, an email sent to alumni when the content is geared toward faculty and staff will decrease the trust the recipients have in your communication abilities.

4. Not editing

Although the formatting and imagery layout might look perfect in the preview format, when you see it on a tablet or on a smaller screen, your email can appear very different. Always check for spelling and grammar, ensure your links work and that your images aren’t distorted when you view them in another browser or on a platform other than the PC.

While we’re on the subject of imagery: Don’t include large file sizes in your email. Not everyone has fiber-optic Internet, and those with slower connections will have to wait longer for your email images to download. The longer it takes, the less likely they are to wait, and you can probably expect a higher bounce rate.

Michelle Smith is a freelance writer with a focus on social media and marketing. She can be found typing away on her laptop in sunny Boca Raton, Florida. Michelle welcomes your feedback at [email protected].