Email marketing is a crucial part of your inbound marketing strategy. 

Email is a valuable tool for reaching your target audience no matter what point in the buying process they are at – from awareness through to lead nurturing and conversion.

Emails can be used to promote your brand, open doors, build on relationships and generate leads.  In a long B2B sales cycle, email marketing provides a great way of nurturing prospects until they are ready to buy.

When developing an email marketing campaign, here are some common mistakes to avoid:

1. DULL SUBJECT LINE

An effective email is short, attention grabbing and inspires the reader to open the email.  Your audience will judge an email by its subject line.  What you put in the subject line needs to entice your reader to want to find out more.  Remember to keep the subject short – a maximum of 50 characters.

Add preview texts to email and watch your open rate increase substantially. Usually located near the subject line, the preview text gives viewers a glimpse into the email. Make it count!  Asking a question in your subject line can also draw readers in.

2. NO RELEVANCE

Your target audience probably receives tens, if not hundreds of marketing emails every day, most of which bore them to tears, and are therefore are unlikely to get read. Think about the content of your email – this is your chance to shine and really make an impact.

3. NO CALL-TO-ACTION

Every email your company sends should have a purpose, and it's important that before you send an email you have a clear vision of exactly what your email is trying to achieve. For example, are you trying to get the reader to sign up for a free demo of your software, or register for a webinar or subscribe to your blog.  Make it clear and don’t try and get a subscriber to do several different things at once.

4. NO PERSONALISATION

When sending out emails, the more personalised you can make them, the better. No one likes to receive an email from noreply@anothercompany. So make sure the email comes from a real person and you include the contact's name in the email messages.

For a more tailored approach, you can customise the content of the email that you send to your contacts based on who they are, what their challenges are, what stage in the buying cycle they are in (Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Customer) and what content of yours they have previously engaged with. 

Creating personalised email on such a level can be a real challenge on many email marketing platforms.  Marketing automation software platforms like Hubspot can make a huge difference in terms of personalisation of email marketing campaigns.