بونوکس

برچسب: Avoid

  • The Costly Email Mistake Too Many Founders Make — and How to Avoid It

    The Costly Email Mistake Too Many Founders Make — and How to Avoid It


    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    There’s a reason every website you visit wants your email address: it’s the most valuable type of contact info in the digital world. Last year, email marketing revenue surpassed $9.5 billion, and by 2028, it’s projected to reach $18.9 billion.

    But here’s where so many founders get it wrong: they treat email like a loudspeaker. Build or buy a list, send a “blast,” and repeat whenever you want to make more sales. Only email doesn’t work like that — at least, not if you want to connect with people and see your revenue increase. Your email list isn’t just a collection of email addresses. It’s a living system, and when you neglect it, your sender reputation suffers.

    Related: Don’t Sleep on Email Marketing — Here’s Why It’s Still Your Business’s Most Powerful Tool

    What taints your email sender reputation

    Every email sender has a reputation with inbox providers – services like Google, Yahoo or Outlook that make email communication possible. That reputation helps their algorithms determine whether an email should go to the inbox or the spam folder.

    In simple terms, it’s like your email trust score. The better it is, the more likely your messages will reach your audience. The worse it gets, the harder it becomes to land anywhere near the inbox.

    Unfortunately, many well-meaning founders damage their reputation without even realizing it. Here are some of the common mistakes they make:

    • Buying or scraping lists
    • Never cleaning or validating email addresses
    • Skipping email warmup altogether

    Whenever you send an email, you’re building – or tarnishing – your reputation with email providers. And once that reputation is damaged, fixing it is a lot harder than protecting it in the first place.

    So, what can you do today to improve and maintain a strong sender reputation and get your emails into the inbox? Follow this checklist below, and your email marketing will become one of the most reliable channels in your business.

    Use your own email list

    Purchasing a list of contacts and dumping it into your CRM or email platform may feel like a quick win, but it almost always backfires. I’ve seen countless business leaders take this shortcut and pay the price – bounces, spam complaints and dismal engagement.

    To reap the benefits of email marketing, build and nurture your own email list. It takes more effort, but the results are real and sustainable.

    Make sure everyone opts in

    Building your own email list doesn’t mean you can simply add people to it. Customers and prospects need to subscribe to your emails and grant you explicit permission to reach out. It might take longer to grow your list this way, but the payoff is huge: higher engagement, better deliverability and a list full of people who want to hear from you.

    Warm up your domain and IP

    Many founders get so excited about sending that first email that they skip a crucial step: warming up their domain and IP. That can tank your email deliverability before you even get started.

    Email warmup is closely tied to your sender reputation:

    • If you’ve never sent a mass email, reaching out to thousands of people out of the gate is a huge red flag to email providers.
    • Instead, start slowly. Increase your volume gradually to build trust with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and other providers. Or find a good email warm-up tool.
    • Even regular senders can benefit from warming up their emails, especially after switching platforms or letting their lists go cold. It helps re-establish credibility and improve inbox placement.

    Check your contacts regularly

    Even if everyone on your list has opted in, that doesn’t mean their email address is still valid or that they’re still clicking on your emails. An astounding 28% of the average database degrades every year. People change jobs, abandon their inboxes or mark your messages as spam if they’re no longer interested.

    Regular list pruning helps you filter out:

    Email providers are watching how your list behaves. High bounce rates, spam complaints and low click rates affect your sender reputation. Clean your list at least once a quarter — or more often if you send campaigns weekly.

    Look at the big picture

    Open rates used to be the end-all-be-all of email marketing. But thanks to privacy updates and stricter data regulations, those numbers are less reliable than ever.

    If you want a true picture of how your emails are performing, shift your focus to metrics that offer more in-depth insights:

    • Click-through rates — are people taking action?
    • Bounce rates — could your list be outdated?
    • Spam complaints — are your messages annoying your audience?
    • Engagement over time — are people clicking or tuning you out?

    These numbers reveal how your audience feels about your emails and whether inbox providers perceive you as trustworthy. Focus on long-term engagement, not just one-off opens.

    Related: 8 Simple Email Marketing Tips to Improve Your Open and Click Through Rates

    Think like your subscriber

    Before you send your next email, stop and ask: Would I open this? Would I care?

    So many brands write for themselves, not for the person on the other side of the screen. But if you want people to engage, you have to earn their attention. That means being clear, consistent and genuinely helpful.

    Email marketing isn’t dead, but lazy email marketing definitely is.

    Treat your list with the same respect you’d want in your own inbox. Build trust over time. Show up regularly. Say something worth reading. That’s how you stay out of spam — and in business.

    There’s a reason every website you visit wants your email address: it’s the most valuable type of contact info in the digital world. Last year, email marketing revenue surpassed $9.5 billion, and by 2028, it’s projected to reach $18.9 billion.

    But here’s where so many founders get it wrong: they treat email like a loudspeaker. Build or buy a list, send a “blast,” and repeat whenever you want to make more sales. Only email doesn’t work like that — at least, not if you want to connect with people and see your revenue increase. Your email list isn’t just a collection of email addresses. It’s a living system, and when you neglect it, your sender reputation suffers.

    Related: Don’t Sleep on Email Marketing — Here’s Why It’s Still Your Business’s Most Powerful Tool

    The rest of this article is locked.

    Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.



    Source link

  • How to Avoid the Perils of Short-Term Thinking For Long-Term Success

    How to Avoid the Perils of Short-Term Thinking For Long-Term Success


    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    At my company, Jotform, our intern program is serious business.

    When a new class of interns signs on to work with us, their first week is spent in training, getting them up to speed on who we are, what we do and how we do it. Then, we team them up with experienced staff and get them working on their own projects. By the time they depart our offices to return to the classroom, we’ve planted the seeds to make them successful employees.

    Working with interns is a time- and resource-consuming proposition. But it’s also an investment. Some of our best employees are former interns; standout workers who we knew had the potential to learn and grow into bigger roles.

    Sometimes, it might be easier to hire candidates with the experience we’re looking for. To me, that’s a prime example of short-term thinking, a mindset that can seriously harm your company in the long run. By nurturing young employees, we not only save money on recruiting a prestige hire that may or may not work out; we also develop the talents of someone we already know we want on our team.

    Too often, though, leaders go with the easier-sounding option; the one that sounds most appealing right now. Here’s why that’s a mistake.

    Related: Why Long-Term Strategic Planning is the Lifeline Your Business Needs Right Now

    Focus on sustainable growth

    If your company, like mine, is built around Software as a Service (SaaS), building a subscriber base requires a lot of time — and a lot of happy customers — to reach sustainability. This is one of the hazards of taking outside investment — it creates the illusion of success without actual organic growth.

    The cautionary tale that looms largest in my mind is that of Theranos, the doomed blood-testing startup that was valued at $9 billion. Theranos was subsumed by hype, but in the end, the technology the company was theoretically built around didn’t even exist. Eventually, Theranos evaporated into a giant cloud of fraud allegations and even a lengthy prison sentence for its founder, Elizabeth Holmes.

    Theranos is an extreme case of VC funding gone awry, but it does show what can happen to a founder under extraordinary pressure to produce results quickly, and the mirage of success that VC funding can create.

    Rather than taking outside funding, I advocate for bootstrapping. It’s less glamorous, sure, but it also fosters real, sustainable growth, enables innovation and builds resilience. Most importantly, you have the freedom to operate on your own timeline, gather user feedback and focus on developing a product that really works.

    Related: Focusing on Speed When Building Your Company is a Mistake. Here’s Why.

    Beware of the scarcity mindset

    Short-term thinking doesn’t just come from a desire for instant gratification. It can also come from fear.

    In particular, the scarcity mindset, an idea developed by Princeton University psychology and public affairs professor Eldar Shafir and Harvard University economist Sendhil Mullainathan, explains how having limited resources — be it time, capital, etc. — narrows our mental bandwidth, creating a tunneling effect that allows only the space to focus on short-term goals.

    “Every psychologist understands that we have very limited cognitive space and bandwidth,” Shafir explained. “When you focus heavily on one thing, there is just less mind to devote to other things.”

    Founders, especially in the early days of starting a business, are constantly at risk of developing a scarcity mindset. After all, who ever really feels like they have enough resources? But the consequences of caving to scarcity can be grave: Short-term thinking not only stifles creativity, it can lead to knee-jerk, ill-conceived decisions you wouldn’t have made if you were thinking clearly.

    Don’t let a scarcity mindset become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, practice cultivating an abundance mindset. A great place to start is by focusing not on what you don’t have, but on what you do. If you’re a bootstrapped founder, you have the greatest of all resources: Time. Give yourself the luxury of trying out different ideas, and not beating yourself up if they don’t work out the way you hoped. The best ideas come from experimentation.

    Remember also that change is incremental, so don’t assume you can overhaul your way of thinking in a single day. Pick one area in which you feel like a scarcity mindset is holding you back, and start there.

    Related: This Is How Thinking About Abundance Has Helped Me Build a Success Mindset

    Envision the future

    Short-term thinking is an easy trap when the future seems so theoretical. Maybe you love pizza — sure, you know it’s not great for your health. But when presented with the opportunity to enjoy eating it today, your future self has a way of dimming from view.

    Researchers have found that those with the ability to see and empathize with their future selves possess the quality of “self-continuity.” In other words, if you can see your future self as clearly as your present self, you’re more likely to make decisions that are beneficial in the long term.

    So how do you make the future seem less abstract? Try conducting a self-interview. You can do this by envisioning sitting down with your Future Self, and asking them where they would advise your Present Self to focus your time and attention. What do you want to accomplish in 10 years from now? In 20 years? In 50 years? By identifying these long-term goals, you can start to plan accordingly in the present.

    It’s easy to fall into the trap of short-term thinking. But by focusing on sustainable growth, practicing an abundance mindset and making the future as tangible as the present, you can make decisions that will serve you in the long run and keep your business growing for years to come.



    Source link