The wrong autoresponder email marketing can collapse your business, not build it.

A lot has been said about email marketing as an excellent tool for web marketing but few have been said about its pitfalls. If you plan to use auto responders as a booster for your online sales effort, you should pay particular attention to how your information is delivered to the readers. Basically, you should be concerned about the format in which the information is carried over.

In this article, we try to look at some of the much overlooked points that are a recipe for an email marketing campaign disaster.

Text format

When it comes to text on the internet, there are principally two main types that you can use in your email auto responders as part of your email marketing – plain text like the one we see in notepad and html, the commonly used format on the web. Plain text normally contains no formatting but html text has formatting, variable background and can contain graphics.

Now let’s look at the reasons behind your choosing one or the other.

If you are reaching a simple readership without the need for extensive formatting and illustrations in your materials, then the best way to go is plain text for your email marketing. This style of text is easy to read  ( as it has a white background) and loads easily because there are no graphics.

However, if you need to put links in your email marketing auto responders that readers will click on, then a problem emerges. People usually associate long links with affiliates. Even if you own the product being offered for sale, many people will shrug at the idea of clicking on a link because they know you are trying to hide behind an ezine or article to sell them a product. The fear is well-founded because the affiliate benefits from the sale of such a product and may not be sincere in the recommendations given.

Another shortcoming of text-based email in email marketing  auto responders is that, you are unable to hide the url of your links. With a text- based email, you cannot simply say “Click Here” and thus hide the website address.

HTML

Using HTML in email marketing with a lot of advantages. You can hide the URL and say Click here. You can also track the email to see if it is making progress, in terms of sales or not. Most importantly, you can mask the URL in the address bar so that people do not see the destination of the website address. This is important if you are selling a product belong to someone else and you do not want your readers to know that from the resulting website address.

You may however have to use html email with great care. Some readers cannot read html emails and other have a limitation of storage space. If the email auto responder has a lot of pictures, it may take some time to open and many readers will not want to wait for a long time.

With that said, it is essential that you choose a flexible and dynamic auto responder so you can effectively reach your varied readership and make good gains. It is highly recommended that you choose autoesponders with html capabilities and advanced scripting functions.