The Biggest Email Brand Killers

One of the biggest mistakes to do is to use email like the electronic version of direct marketing media such as postal mailers, catalogs, radio, television, newspaper inserts and even brochures. A world class brand builder can become a sure fire brand killer in no time if it is treated with ignorance, carelessness, and laziness. The brand killing capability is very much dependant on the email's relationship with the recipients. The relationship is more personal because of the intimate relationship between the people and their computer. And because of this intimacy, positive and negative feelings are encourages by the company's name. No mail is as irritating as junk mail and the penalties for such emails are getting much stiffer. A flood of spam complaints can affect the email program to the extent of shutting it down.

The email is becoming a personal medium, slowly. The recipient should be made in charge, he should be able to decide from whom he should receive email from, what kind of email he wants to receive and when he can stop receiving those emails. An email program which dose not includes all these conveniences will do severe damage to the company's or brand's name.

The first thing to concentrate upon is to remove poor permission practices. If this thing isn't taken care of, nothing done after that will make up for the loss. In simple words, it is completely wrong to email a commercial message to anyone who hasn't given the permission to do so. Sometimes, a person is simply signed up for receiving email while registering on the website because of checking boxes in a hurry. Thus, it is important for the registration page to display the privacy policy which says that the registration also includes agreement for receiving emails. And in spite of this, there is a high chance to get large complaints because of the unclear opt-in process. Some companies send emails to a person who has downloaded whitepaper or brochure form the website. It is better for the check box be not checked before hand. The job of checking the box should be left to the visitor.

In spite of taking these precautions sometimes it happen that the recipient will head straight to the report spam button when they do not want to receive email anymore. This happens when the recipient dose not trust the unsubscribe process. The first reason for the loss of trust is because of not sending the message in the desired format: text or HTML. The readers subscribe intrusting the company and when their email program fails to honor their trust, the company has to pay for this. It is very important to give the reader the option to choose from text or HTML format. Usually technical people prefer only text messages where as the teenagers prefer messages in the HTML format.

The content of the email should exactly meet the requested information. If a subscriber has asked for sales announcements then do not send them company news. Similarly, the frequency of email should also be kept in mind. If request has been made to receive a weekly newsletter, do not send bi-weekly newsletters. An occasional exception such as sales bulletins or news can be used sparingly. Customers complain a lot about the pouring of emails during the holiday season. It is better to focus on the quality rather than quantity.


It is not a compulsion that the content of the email look like spam and considered as a spam. If the recipients able to recognize the sender or dose not consider him to authentic, the mail directly goes to the spam folder. Three things should be considered to keep away from this problem. The sender or the subject shouldn't appear vague. The content should be relevant to the brand name and its products. The unsubscribe procedure should be checked regularly. Failed unsubscribe and repeated requests for unsubscribing not only blocks the email program but also kills the brand name. Along with checking this link, it is highly recommended to check other links as well. Clicking on the link should take directly to the landing page and not on home page or a 'Page Not Found' page. Also, effort must be made in reducing the number of clicks done to achieve a certain action.