7 deadly email marketing sins (and how to avoid them)

The deadly sins, according to Christianity, are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. Those seven sins can prove tempting to a rushed email marketer, and they can have a negative impact.

If you’re interested in optimizing your campaigns, steer clear of the following email marketing sins:

1. Pride

The results of your most recent email campaign are an enormous success. Not just good, but better than anything you’ve done before.

But incredibly good statistics are just as much a warning sign as incredibly bad ones. Your first instinct must always be to take a closer look at what’s going on, and then consider all the statistics you see. Do those phenomenal open rates also translate into click-throughs? Do those click-throughs translate into conversions? And so on.

Pride in your work is great, but remember that software and people can both act in some very odd ways. Be sure to track every anomalous result to its source before you break out the champagne.

2. Greed

As soon as an email marketing campaign starts delivering real results, I have to resist the urge to expand it to cover a broader list.