We’ve all been told to send out email newsletter – colorful, stylish HTML email newsletters with lots of pictures – in the hope to gain more new customers and bond better with existing ones.

There is a big battle as to which mail system to use and what colors and fonts to choose, but many small businesses fail to recognize their deadly mistakes when they send out their newsletter week by week:

Email Marketing Mistake # 1:

A newsletter full of promotional offers. With “full” I mean 100%. Almost every day I receive a newsletter from differing sources with 100% promotions. Sometimes it leaves me quite annoyed that the sender of the newsletters and emails don’t even want to make an effort to talk to me rather than sell to me.

As a rule of thumb: effective email marketing includes 80% valuable content and 20% promotion, or you can sometimes stretch it to 70% content and 30% promotion, but that’s it. Many well known Email marketers, like Alexandria Brown, teach their clients this rule and their success has proven them right. It simply annoys me when I receive email newsletters that only contain promotions. When I subscribe to a newsletter I want to learn something, get value out of it. I give these companies my contact details so that they actually interrupt my day and send me a newsletter about THEMselves, so the least they can do is to offer you something of value for the courtesy.

In the past people may have subscribed to all sorts of newsletter, but nowadays it’s getting harder to compete with other companies who also want to build their list of prospects.

Always make sure that you include a personal note of yourself and what you are up to during this week. Some quirky personal messages have worked very well for many entrepreneurs. Ali Brown, self-made millionaire and former “ezine queen”, had a major breakthrough when she posted her cat’s “birthday sale”. People love personal stories and want to know more about the person who sends out the newsletter.

Always add one article to your newsletter (or ezine) that contains some valuable information. To find out what your target market wants, survey them or watch their questions on Social Media channels. If your readership finds the information you give them interesting, they will be keen to open your newsletters, otherwise they just press “delete” and off the email goes into the trash. Or even worse, they unsubscribe.

All this doesn’t only apply to Internet marketing companies, but also small businesses. If you don’t know what valuable content to provide, check out these ideas”

• If you are an accountant, write about any GST changes,
• if you are a coach give your readers good tips on how to set goals,
• if you are a psychologist help your readers with body language tricks,
• if you are a real estate salesperson write about homestaging,
• if you are a webdesigner help people with the search engine optimization,
• if you are a dentist tell your patients what happens when they don’t floss,
• and so on.

20 to 30% of your email marketing should be used for marketing or promotional opportunity. Try to tie the promotion together with your content.

2. The second big Email Marketing mistake is:

to solely write content and articles in your newsletter, but no promotion at all. Sometimes you get email newsletters that are long, very long and full of information. After a few minutes you notice you have fallen asleep or you just click “delete”. There is a lot of content, but it’s just too much and the concentration levels of your readers will go down. Additionally, there is no “call to action”, so no reader will actually “do something” after they read your newsletter. They will just continue their day the way they did before reading your email.

You need to make sure you have a good offer for them that they can take up, otherwise you don’t make money with your newsletter. As mentioned before, don’t make it bigger than 20-30% of the newsletter content, but don’t forget about it either. It’s an integral part of your business to make money, so use the chance to convert her loyal readership to buy valuable programs or products from you. Nobody will mind if you add some promotions to your emails if there is also free, quality content available. This can also include affiliate marketing or recommendations.

Occasionally, you may send an email to your list that only offers them something specific and this is fine, but don’t make it a habit. Stick to the 80/20 rule most of the time and you will have a loyal fan base for the next years.