Here are the three most common email marketing mistakes and how you can avoid them.

Not having their permission

The most important point first, not having permission. Suite26 is based on permission marketing. This means a recipient must have opted-in to receive emails from you or given you their permission directly, because they are interested in what you have to offer.

Purchasing a data list is definitely a no go area. If a recipient hasn’t given you their direct permission to contact them, they shouldn’t be emailed.  It is more beneficial to contact those people that do want to hear from you, than those that don’t and could report you as a spammer.  Plus those data lists are never as accurate as the vendors will have you believe.

Assuming your customers remember who you are

It’s easy to assume that your customers will remember who you are. However, your customers could be receiving plenty emails from several companies like yours, and so, we recommend that you include a sentence at the top of your emails reminding them who you are and why they are receiving the email from you.

This will immediately help hem indentify you and therefore, your customers may be more inclined to read your email, click the links and respond to your message or offer.

Incorrect links and spelling errors

We would always recommend including links in your email as they ultimately provide a way of tracking the success of your emails, using the click through stats. However, it’s important to use relevant links that the recipient will be interested in viewing and directs them straight to that webpage. Don’t just assume that the reader will navigate their own way to the relevant page from your site’s homepage.

It is very easy to make a spelling mistake in your email, or even type the wrong word completely and not notice it yourself. Always get a second pair of eyes to look over your email.  If possible ask a colleague or friend to read through your campaign and test your links before you send.

Do you want to grow your email list quickly and get your marketing out to as many potential clients as possible? Been approached by a "reputable" list vendor offering you thousands of "legitimate" opt-in addresses?

However tempting it may seem, just don't go there. We're not just talking here about the dodgy providers who offer millions of addresses for peanuts, but the more professional looking ones who will provide you with a segmented, opt-in list from people who have agreed to receive "3rd party" marketing about your chosen subject.

The main problem here is that the recipients on these lists will not have the slightest clue who you are. No matter what permission they gave to receive "3rd party" mailings they have not given you their permission to email them. Sending mail to these people will have many of them hitting the Report Spam button in their email client and if too many do that your domain is going to end up on spam blacklists. Can you afford for your brand to become blacklisted and have your reputation tarnished?

The next problem is you have no idea when and where the address was collected - it could have been added to the list years ago and may no longer even be in use. Sending email to non-existent or dead addresses will also count against you and you could again end up on one of those blacklists. What's more, if you receive a complaint and are asked to prove where you got the address, which site they opted in on along with date/time/IP address - could you provide that information?

Then you run into the relevancy issue. The recipients who do actually receive your mail, don't report you for spamming and open it up may not even find the content relevant to them (after all they have no idea who you are) - they'll just delete it.

So, you spent all that money on buying/renting a list then money on sending it out only to find most did not arrive, the ones that did weren't opened, you've got a ton of spam complaints and your domain is on a number of blacklists - now it doesn't seem like such a tempting idea after all!

Oh and finally using a purchased/rented list will break the Ts and Cs and anti-spam policies of almost any ESP - us included. So just don't bother - we can see purchased lists a mile off.