How Not To Make Your Newsletter Annoying?

You probably do not intend to annoy your contacts with your newsletter. However, it is possible to unwittingly partake in marketing behaviors as a result of which your credibility and trust with your contacts gets undermined, and your newsletter gets branded as “annoying.” The hard-hitting hard sell is no longer effective, and the game is not about numbers anymore. If you want to build rapport with your contacts, never take a flamethrower approach with your newsletter, it will only annoy them. You can avoid this by doing some of the following:

1. Never subscribe contacts automatically

The fact that you received an email from someone just once does not mean that they want to be a part of your mailing list. Instead of spamming them, it is more preferable to invite them to be on your mailing list. Subscribing contacts automatically is poor etiquette and your subscribers will not appreciate it.

2. Include a clear unsubscribe link in your email messages

In the past, it was considered a dirty tactic to bury unsubscribe link, and it still is. If you do not want your newsletter to annoy your contacts, then make sure that the email messages you send them contain an obvious unsubscribe link with a thoughtful message on top. Your contacts are more likely to stay subscribed to you if they realize that you respect their wishes and have the option to unsubscribe whenever they might want to. However, if a subscriber wants to unsubscribe and cannot find the unsubscribe link because you buried it, it will surely annoy them.

3. Establish a structure with the newsletters you send every week

The first time you send your newsletter to your subscribers, the structure that you have used establishes an expectation in their minds. If all your newsletters have that same standard format, your subscribers will know what to expect from you every week and will be eager to read it. If you do not continune using that standard format each time, it will appear to your readers as if you are sending them a bunch of rambling words and they will never take time to read it.

4. You newsletter is not about you it is about your subscriber

Sure, you are using your newsletter to promote your own work and to ultimately benefit from it. However, you are also writing to your subscribers in order to to feed information to them that they cannot find anywhere else. If the information that you send to your subscribers is all just about your company is all about your company, it will most likely annoy them and force them to unsubscribe. Your subscribers want content relevant to them, that speaks to them, and if it is all about you, they will look for relevant information somewhere else.

You may not know this but newsletters are the most effective way in which you can drive business to your website. However, you will not be able to do this if it ends up annoying your contacts who have subscribed to it. Therefore, be wary of the above to ensure that your subscribes continue to anticipate the information you have to offer.

Of course these are the basics you keep hearing about all over the Internet and probably this post is no better then one of those pesky newsletters you get in your mailbox every now and then. The rules above is like a mantra for every email marketer, so I guess it wouldn’t hurt much to repeat them every morning just to be on the safe side. Besides, you can always reach me and my buddies (we are quite an experts in all things email marketing) and ask us any questions that come to your mind. You can check out our blog for some tips and tricks too.

 


 

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