Dear First-name Placeholder

It’s officially the most wonderful time of the year…when every young business’ (and some of the older ones) thoughts turn to email marketing. “I’ve got a list” and “I’ve got a sale going on” so “I must send emails.”

I’ve already received more than one Dear First-name Placeholder email this year.  And I am sure I will receive several more.  There’s also the Dear ________. I like that one.  It’s second cousin to the Dear (    ). There’s my all-time favorite greeting, spotted a few years ago: Dear (Jane, make it use everyone’s first name). Name changed to protect the innocent.

I get broken links, misspellings and the usual assortment of just plain wrong stuff.

I’ve also received lots of broken and/or smooshed images (for some reason I get a lot of Mailchimp emails with smooshed images. It doesn’t like Outlook?)

My absolute favorite is still the holiday greeting email that went out to one of my clients’ entire list the year before I came on-board. The previous marketing firm had created a special email blast that used the oh-so-touching “Put holiday greeting here”.

No one is perfect (we’re certainly not) but the holiday flurry of emails often seems especially designed to show us how often things go wrong in email marketing.  Some advice?

  • If you are unfamiliar with email marketing platforms, create a test list with your email address at various email services – Gmail, Yahoo, mobile, and Outlook.
  • If you haven’t done this before, use the test list.
  • Don’t rely entirely on the test email. Send out your first few rounds of emails to your test list and make sure you have the hang of it.
  • Check your links
  • Have someone else read your email – practice “second set of eyes” on everything.
  • Read the CAN-SPAM rules.
  • Need help? Ask for it.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *