Teaching Email Marketing Best Practices With What NOT to Do

Teaching Email Marketing Best Practices With What NOT to Do

In keeping with yesterday’s post on the forgetful From address and vague subject line in an email from a company that should have known better, another example of what not to do—if you’re trying to adhere to email marketing best practices.

Today’s email marketing best practice? Don’t be annoying!

This morning’s inbox presented me with an email threatening to lock my account. Or rather, saying the company had locked my account because I hadn’t been using it.

Now, I don’t care, to be honest, because I didn’t ever want the account anyway. I don’t know how I got signed up for it, and I certainly never used it. So to receive an email saying my account was locked was humorous. But there are several things about this email we can learn from.

One, why didn’t I ever get emails saying, “We notice you haven’t been using your account. If you need help, watch a demo….” Or the email could have told me why I should use their service. Or anything to encourage me to do so. Instead, after not using it, I get a rather menacing email telling me my account is locked. Think of the relationship building they could have done with a drip campaign educating me about their product and all the whiz bang wonderful reasons for using it! Or telling me stories of how other professionals are using it. Or anything helpful!

Two, if I’m not using the service, why even tell me my account is locked? Do you think I have any warm fuzzies for that company now? Not a one! If I’m inactive as a user, I’m obviously not a big fan. And now they’ve made me an annoyed non-fan.

Three, in the email, it says not to reply to the email and directs me to the company’s Contact page on their website if I want to contact them. That is one big, huge, unnecessary barrier to customer communications. Why not simply give the recipient the contact information in the email itself rather than make them look for it?

Yeah, you take all that and add it up together and that company did nothing but annoy. Even if I were to be interested in their service now…I wouldn’t be.

Some people do learn better by seeing what not to do vs. what to do. Thank goodness there are email marketers out there making it easy to teach email marketing best practices that way!