bad email marketing ideas

14 Bad Email Marketing Ideas: How to Fail This Holiday Season (E-book Included)

Looking for some bad email marketing ideas to help you fail this holiday season? Follow these at your own risk.

It’s almost that time of year again. A time for cocoa with marshmallows, sitting by the fire in our sweaters, and pumpkin spice marketing emails (which you either love or hate).

Some of you may be on the receiving end, but most of you reading this are email marketers. If you’re like us, this is a time you’re glued to your laptop, drinking coffee by the quart, and rationalizing one too many sugary pick-me-ups.

You probably have a pretty good idea of what your email campaigns will look like this year. But how about some bad ideas?

That’s why we’re here.

With these 14 email marketing ideas, we’re hoping to relieve some of the pressure and give you a good chance to fail this holiday season.

14 bad email marketing ideas you could steal

So, do you need some help polishing up your holiday email plan? Here are 14 bad ideas you can steal if you want your email marketing to fail.

#1. First and foremost, procrastinate as much as you can. Why start getting those emails ready now? Wait until Thanksgiving: you’ll get better ideas right after a big, fat, turkey dinner.

#2. Buy an email list. It’s not too late!

#3. Add more people to it without permission – the more subscribers you have, the more you’ll sell!

#4. Send irrelevant, spammy content.

#5. Use lots of caps locks and exclamation points, especially IN YOUR SUBJECT LINES!!! Spam filters love that.

#6. Do not ever write back when someone replies to your email. Companies don’t talk to people.

#7. When people unsubscribe, don’t remove them. Keep emailing them over and over.

#8. Actually, don’t even include an unsubscribe link in your emails. (Who does that?)

#9. Someone marked you as spam? Try again. And again. They’ll convert eventually.

#10. Same for inactive subscribers. You gotta keep trying.

#11. Avoid personalizing your content. Especially if you’re in retail, blast out the same email to everyone.

#12. Send many emails – every day. Ideally, about one an hour. Don’t worry, people won’t unsubscribe. (How could they since you don’t have an unsubscribe link?)

#13. Don’t ever clean your list. Keep all those bad contacts, you never know when you’re going to need them. Plus, they may turn good again.

#14. Ignore bounces. After all, you’re reaching everybody else.

See? It’s easy. Follow these golden rules and your holiday marketing emails will fail successfully.

Or you could reach out to us and we’ll help you succeed instead.

Still not ready for the busiest marketing time of the year? We can help with:

  • email list validation
  • catch-all email scoring
  • email server and inbox placement testing
  • blacklist monitoring
  • email list Activity Data

… and all things deliverability.

See how ZeroBounce works – It’s free

Also, you could save this free checklist!

email marketing mistakes
Want your copy? Get it here.

We know the stress of getting those email campaigns right. There’s so much to do. From planning and execution, it’s not easy to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

So, how would you feel about having a checklist you could save on your desktop for the following weeks? One that you could read fast – like in 12 minutes – and learn a lot?

We wrote it for you, here it is: The 12-minute email marketing checklist. 5 steps to flawless holiday campaigns.

Get your copy now, save it and check it anytime you feel stuck.

There’s an audio version, too.

P.S. It’s our first e-book and we’re pretty stoked about it. ? Do you know anyone else who’d find it useful? Send them the link so they can get it, too.

Now, that is a good idea.

You know what else is? Starting a ZeroBounce account.

Get 100 free email validations every month