We all are selling something. Maybe you don’t realize it but you are selling something . Consultants are selling their time, candidates are trying to sell themselves, men and women constantly try to sell themselves to the other (or the same) sex. We are all marketing something, some better than the other. The moment you realize that everyone is trying to market themselves, the scale of competition automatically becomes clear. It is huge. There are a lot more people trying to market the same thing that you are trying to push and all of them are your competition.

It is scary.

We like to be praised. We want our blogs to be shared, wall posts to be liked and tweets to be retweeted. To fulfil this desire we start to create content which we think would be liked by others. Sometimes it works but mostly it doesn’t. It doesn’t work because our writing stops representing us. According to Seth Godin, the marketing guru, a marketer has to firmly believe in the story he is telling to sell his product. We are all marketers trying to sell our posts and jokes to gain likes, shares and tweets. It is hard to believe a story which you made up just for others. You do not live it and it does not represent you. And when it doesn’t represent you your readers will know. At that point the quality of the post will not be sufficient for them to appreciate it.

David Ogilvy, the advertising legend, said never make an ad that you wouldn’t watch with you family ( I am paraphrasing here). I have a derivative of this. Never write anything you wouldn’t want to read yourself. Even if writing is your job, you can only succeed as a copywriter if you truly believe in the topics you write about.

Email marketing is one of the oldest and yet most effective ways of generating business online. It is extremely cheap compared to any kind of advertising and if done correctly can generate a lot of revenue for you. But off lately it has lost a lot of reputation due to unscrupulous marketers spamming people to generate business. People are shying away from email marketing fearing that their domains will get blocked without actually understanding how it happens. As an internet marketer I am a big fan of email marketing and I think if done correctly it can be great source of revenue. In this post I would like to share a few don’ts which if followed will lead to an effective email marketing campaign

• Don’t SPAM : this is the first and the biggest don’t that is to be followed. Never send marketing emails to an email id which has not subscribed to your email lists. As a matter of fact, never send emails to an email id that you haven’t yourself verified. By following this you would achieve a very low bounce rate and you would never run the risk of getting your domain blocked by major email providers.

• Don’t buy lists: There are a lot of services out there that will sell you premium verified data with a guarantee of minimum bounces. Do not get tempted by this. This is still SPAM. If a lot of people in your email blast mark your email as spam, you run the risking of getting your domain blocked. Don’t buy;build.

• Don’t forget/hide the unsubscribe button: A subscriber always has the right to unsubscribe from your emails if he feels that they are of no use to him. Not only is it your responsibility to provide him the ability to subscribe but also to honor it. The damage to your brand image is beyond repair if you continue sending mails to a subscriber who has unsubscribed.

  [caption id=”attachment_536” align=”alignright” width=”240”] Poor Unsubscribe Form[/caption]

• Don’t ask an unsubscriber for his email: Many a times when I click the unsubscribe link in an email, I am taken to a web form which asks me to fill my email id. This is a strict no-no as it projects your reputation as a spammer. It also gives an impression that you might not do anything about the unsubscribe request. Always use a system which can handle unsubscribes effectively.

• Don’t try to fool the customer: A lot of unscrupulous marketers now a days add fake “report spam” link in their emails so that the customer does not report the email as spam through the official channels. Unless you are actually going to collect this data and take actions against it do not try to fool the customer just to keep your domain unblocked even when you know you were spamming.

• Don’t try to fake your identity: If you are not spamming, which you never should always send emails from an email id of the domain name that is being represented in the email.

• Don’t keep your lists dirty: Every now and then you will get bounces in even your properly and ethically built email lists. These could be anything from soft bounces due to temporary unavailability or permanent bounces due to expiry of email. In any case, always make sure that you keep your email list clean. Use a good system that can detect and handle bounces.
  If as an email marketer, no matter how big or small your list size is, you take care of these few points you will never face the wrath of email providers and will be able to enjoy the fruits of this efficient and economic online marketing channel for a long time.