Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote your business and sell. But it can be difficult to write and design without following some professional tips, tricks and best practices. Read this article to learn what not to do in email design, content and setup. 

If you want to be taken seriously and get the most out of your email marketing, then it’s important that you avoid these common mistakes.  

Here are five things that you should never do when designing, writing and sending an email marketing campaign.  

• Don’t send emails that are too long, especially if they contain a lot of text. Most people will only read the first few sentences, so make sure to include a catchy headline and attention-grabbing subheads. 

• Don’t use too many colors, especially red, blue and green (these are also the most common colors associated with spam). It’s easy to get carried away with colors, but you want to make sure that your emails are easy for readers to read and digest — not difficult. If you’re trying to convey a lot of information in one email, it can be tempting to add a bunch of colors and animations just so it looks pretty. But be careful — too many colors can actually hurt the readability of your email. 

• Don’t use a lot of images or images with too much text. Images are great for adding visual interest, but images that contain too much text within it (like a flyer), will be hard to read on a mobile device. Too many images can also slow down your email and make it hard to read. Your subscribers will appreciate having the option to view your content in a more streamlined, text-based format by choosing to read your emails on their mobile devices. 

• Don’t send to people if you don’t have their permission. It’s spammy and will get you blacklisted by ISPs. If you send to people who have not subscribed, chances are that you may annoy them and hurt your reputation when they mark the email as spam or complain to their ISP. 

• Don’t send junk! If you are sending an email marketing campaign, make sure it’s relevant and valuable to the people on your list. Segment your list and send relevant content to specific segments so they are more likely to open and click. 

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