How Not to Send a Marketing Email

Today I got an email from a company here in the UK that I just had to share with you.

Subject : hey there

“Hey there

Just a quick email to yourself. We are one of the best at what we do and we are proud of our services. Internet Advertising/SEO is the best way these days to gain more customers and clients for either local or national for business. Company’s who do advertise well online receive over 80% of their custom through the internet. We know we could help you with a great online marketing campaign.

Our Services:
Web Development – Starting from £149
Internet Marketing/Advertising (Targeted) – Starting from £30 pcm
Search Engine Optimization – Starting from £249

Would you be interested in any of our services?

If you think you may be interested in our services or want more information on web development, SEO or Internet Advertising, Please email us back or phone our office on xxxxx xxxxxx

Kind Regards”

Now there are so many things wrong with this email that is supposed to be from Internet marketing experts, and I have listed below just a few of them.

1. For a company that is offering targeted marketing they have failed as I have been in the net business since 1995 and have been working in SEO since 1999 (before it was called SEO) and my website plainly says this.
2. They have obviously brought a list of email addresses and just broadcast the email to the entire list.
3. The subject and salutation of “hey there” is, in my view, much too informal – although this is not as bad as a marketing email I got yesterday that started “Dear Colleague”.
4. There are spelling errors in the text of the email “Company’s” as opposed to “Companies” for example.
5. If you are not interested there is no way to remove yourself from the list – not that this often works anyway.
6. For a UK Ltd company they have fallen foul of the Companies act 2006 which states that every email has to have the company details on it.
7. But…  the killer for me is that the “to” address was 44 lines long and contained maybe 200 email addresses – all were plainly visible.  If they understood or even thought about email marketing for a nano-second they would have at the very least used the BCC function, or even better would have sent the email individually to each recipient.

The whole thing made me think “cowboys” – then I went to look at their website and it seems that they must be special – they have the following partners listed on their website :-

• Google
• Yahoo
• Bing
• Ask
• Fast Hosts
• Joomla

I wonder if the big search engines know that they have this partner?

So. if you are thinking of sending an email out for marketing purposes make sure that they are targeted and are invidually addressed at the very least and are spelt correctly, at least that is if you are expecting any replies.