As consumers, it doesn’t matter what signal we think we are giving; it’s all about our verdict. A single wrong email or page on your site can cause them to click the spam button in their email client or never return to your site.

Following that, you’ll discover the most common crimes against your audience and the marketing methods that negatively affect customer trust and conversions. It will also enable you to enrich your marketing relationship with your customers since they will trust the marketing messages they receive.

Why Trust is Important in Marketing

As one might expect, marketing is a field that revolves around trust. As I was told in the article published in the Entrepreneur, it’s fast becoming ‘the new marketing currency.’ It will therefore come as no surprise that factors related to trust positively correlate to the levels of conversion rates, as known to influence sales positively.

Therefore, as a marketer, you target customers to have a long-term bond with them.

But it’s also easy for the opposite to happen, thus explaining the following: Coarse spamming techniques not only turn your business into a shady wrinkle of the internet to customers, but they can also make people run away from your business for good.

As shocking as it may sound, some individuals get involved in marketing and achieve outcomes opposite to their intended goals. Below are some of the worst things we’ve encountered in marketing.

Spammy Websites

We should begin with websites since these are among the principal channels individuals can use to search for information about your company. Now and then, one may feel the urge to want to click on the back button on a website he/she is visiting. We have to.

Here are some options for website features that do not make people believe that this site is reliable. Things like:

1. Cluttered Design

If your web page is too crowded with too many different elements, inputs, or interface items – it seems like it was made in the nineties. Indeed, even good 90s websites did not look pretty, which is another mistake that should be avoided.

Not only do cluttered web pages look horrible, but they are also inconvenient since their content is messy and difficult to navigate. But they do not linger, unable to find what they’re looking for, and if they can’t find it quickly, they move on. To begin with, while designing your site, it is recommended that you search for popular web design trends.

2. Autoplaying Media

One of the most prevalent taboos on the Web is auto-play media. We have all once in a while taken a perception and been shocked by that of an audio or a video clip – or even a flash animation, on some sites.

While the option of social media autoplay currently exists, many users do not want this feature and are searching for how to disable it. Employers know full well that people enjoy being given an option if they wish to gain their confidence.

4. Poor Navigation

Once visitors have located your site, they should be able to navigate around it with ease. A clear and direct navigation bar facilitates navigation, builds trust, and increases conversion, while poor labels, additional and unnecessary bars, and items in the wrong order can harm.

Secondly, users should always be able to access the website’s homepage, especially when navigating deep interior pages. Most of the sites I have visited do not consider this.

5. Terrible Typography

51 % of individuals stated that they would leave a particular report because the material in the email does not look good on Smartphone Litmus 2017, the State of Email. Therefore, consider what they will do if the entire site is ugly [if they cannot see the individual elements of your site]. The writing is messy, and the text below employs a gazillion different fonts, which is a big no-no.

It’s no longer a desktop phenomenon. Nowadays, to read it, you must use large fonts that stand out clearly on a smartphone. Do not use many different fonts on your site, either. Remember that there can be a lot of elements on a site, and if you apply too many fonts, it can confuse people. This also makes it look spammy, so it needs to be unchecked to achieve our preferred style.

6. Bad Text/Image Ratio

Before we go any further, let me remind you that it is hard to read, and poorly structured web pages filled with text that is kept packed and looks rather messy are not only ugly but also inconvenient. One characteristic of spam websites is a lack of understanding of users’ experiences on a website.

However, avoid too many images between the lines of your text. You can always separate your text into two parts and use images in between. In this case, sites with many images and less text content look extremely beautiful and, you got it right, spamming. In addition, with a large number of images, your site’s loading time is affected, which is not good for SEO.

7. Broken Links

I know there is a direct correlation between trust and conversion, and broken links destroy trust. Well, these only cause frustration, and the only action a frustrated visitor can take is to leave. Having a WordPress-based website, there are several ways that one can use to identify and correct such broken links.

8. Missing Contact Info

Another sign of a broken trust is if you access a site without information about the owner or the main participants. If even a bit skeptical, one may ask why the site owner is trying to remain undiscovered. To solve this, consider:

• They get attraction by using real pictures of people from the company on the site.
• Such as providing emails, physical addresses, or phone numbers apart from the contact form.
• It goes like this: People can view me on the sites by adding social media links.

For instance, the web page describing the basic information about Santa Catalina School is the “Who We Are” page, which contains a photo of the school’s head and contact information at the bottom.

Ironically, the man behind the curtain syndrome is worst for Website Conversions because the more real, the better for the website’s subject matter.

9. Poor Content

Yes, it is a bore when you expect a lot of great content after clicking on a website link, only to find a site with boring content.

This is exactly why when you have made a call to action, the content you place must meet this requirement to avoid or reduce the conversion rate. It is also pretty difficult to convince the same person to subscribe back after concluding that he doesn’t like your feed.

Spammy Marketing

Let’s further consider certain marketing practices employed by individuals that violate the users’ trust on the Web.

10. Unoptimized Popups and Overlays

If you did not know, the OptinAble team is indeed a big fan of popups, but even we have to agree that sometimes the way that they are done can indeed be a definite suck. The same applies to welcome gates slide-ins and other areas of the brand’s activity.

People will get irritated if such opt-ins appear constantly for first-time and repeat visitors, no matter what they signed up for before.

Reduce the spam and irritation factors based on rules or engage them as they leave your website, as in the example:

11. Complicated Signup Processes

This reveals itself when one plans to expand the business. The urge to gather as much customer information as possible is quite understandable.

There’s only one problem: Short forms presumably have higher conversion rates. If it takes more effort to capture customers, they will not do it, for instance, signing up or opting in.

The solution? Two options exist here: keep the line of the form short if possible or use a form filled across multiple pages rather than a lengthy single form.

12. Asking for Registration Too Soon

Here is the list of what is considered annoying. This is one main reason why one should not ask people to register on their site. Most people have not had the chance to explore the site and thus do not understand the significance of registering.

It is much more effective to let them surf and then use the section 964 page-level targeting to offer something related to the category they visit. That is how it would build trust and potentially convert into better business and more sales.

13. Fake Reviews

Sometimes, the recommendations on some websites seem so fabricated that they resemble those in fiction.

That’s because they are.

Well, yes, social proof in particular, but the REAL one may help.

As mentioned earlier, real fake reviews can be detected in minutes using the Fakespot tool below; therefore, it is advisable to concentrate on obtaining organic reviews for your site instead of writing fake reviews or paying others to write them for you.

Effective social proof for your site is hard to get, but one of these great social proof tools can help you do it (TrustPulse is great).

14. Freebies That Cost

We have all experienced that experience where, for instance, we registered for some so-called free newsletter only to discover that the bits of valuable information came at a fee. The “non-free freebie,” as seen in this study, is as underhanded as low-level marketing can get. As a product, it should be free; it should not come with any cost or be charged in any way.

When it comes to freelancing, the customer is always the loser in a scam, so grab that freebie lead magnet to convince the customer about the value of your services.

Spammy Mobile Marketing

Portable gadgets have provided slogans for marketers to reach out to their consumers. However, that also means there are new techniques and methods to spam them, something important and genuine marketers will not want to do.

15. No Mobile Version

According to a survey conducted in the United States, about 36 million members only used a mobile device to surf the internet in 2016. Globally, 15 percent of Web users access it only through mobile devices. This means it is high time that you had a mobile version of your website, and that means that you need … It doesn’t look like this site got the memo; this is a screenshot taken on a smartphone:

Your site is inaccessible on mobile. The mobile device users will bounce, and the likelihood of them coming back again is very slim. After all, having a site that doesn’t think about what will be good for it, why put trust in the people behind it?

16. Unwanted Messaging

At every site you visit today, the owners want to notify you of something. At least, there is often an opportunity to reject what is proposed, but this is not always possible for apps.

The last two actions might often mean that you want to be informed about something; however, they do not mean that you want to be forced to receive push messages. Another is that you provided your phone number to a certain company, yet they should not include you in the list for which they send the SMS.

As important as it is to push the messages, one can end up annoying people, and within no time, you will find that people have deleted your app or have logged out of your site. Thus, as in the case of email marketing, don’t start advertising – first, politely request permission.

Spammy Emails

We’ve written a lot about email marketing here on the OptinAble blog, so you’ve probably heard us mention a few of these spammy email marketing practices before:

18. Buying Lists

As said before, purchasing lists is a very bad idea. You risk coming across as a spammer and could be mailing through a list used by as many as a gazillion companies. Moreover, your email marketing provider will not be very pleasant either!!! The former is less effective, but building your list is better.

19. Unsolicited Emails

Regarding that, Emails sent without the recipient’s consent are also considered typical spammy marketing. Someone can import subscriptions from one list to another without people’s consent and subscribe to the second list.

That’s a no-no: Instead of clicking on the ‘X’ button and uninstalling the apps, I get them to agree to be part of the advertisements. As Haden Media says, this quote has proven to be quite informative, especially in understanding the nature of spam as more of a consent than a content issue.

20. Missing Unsubscribe Link

Similarly, some people continue to send their emails within which it may be difficult to find any ‘unsubscribe’ button, or there is no button at all. We get that you don’t want people to unsubscribe, but sometimes it happens, and it’s good practice to make it easy:

21. No Identifiable Sender

Notably, most email marketing services will alert you when you have omitted sender details from your messages. It is good that you provide an email address if you want people to reply to you, and a mail address is also good.

The sender—Users must understand who is sending the email, whether it is an individual from the business or the business itself. To establish some familiarity, it is also good to include a header image with a logo.

22. Lack of Personalization

The new key to successful marketing is said to be personalization, which means it is not enough to send an email like Hi John and then write whatever we want.

Customers to whom you send emails are people, and such people always want to think that you are in touch with them personally. E-mail correspondence can be done in a way that is specific to their communication with you, improving trust and conversion.

23. Looking Like Spam

You’ll see many practices that hurt trust and conversion rates but nail deliverability. These include:

• Putting the subject lines of the messages in all caps.
• Too many exclamation marks.
• A spam filter triggers words. A list of words should not be used while emailing the company.

The following suggestions should be avoided if a company wants its subscribers to believe in it.

The fix for spammy emails: Ensure you respect the regulation in the CAN-SPAM Act or whichever regulation applies to email spamming for your recipients. You can also read our Getting Started with Email Marketing to ensure the right start to your email marketing campaign.

Spammy Link Building

Building links has been seen as one of the significant ranking factors, and it dictates that you build quality links. In other words, most cases of link building that can be attributed to spam like techniques will not assist businesses in gaining the trust of their customers.

24. Hidden Links

Some sites camouflage the links by writing the code or cloaking the link while making it blend with the website’s colors. Oh, that was dirty. Spammers do this, and it is so bad. That’s why it should be clear to anyone what they must find if they click the link.

25. Links from Bad Neighborhoods

Likewise, it will not be beneficial if your site receives inbound links from other sites that may act as affiliates. You have to learn many things about link-building, and one of the most important is that your link-building strategy has to be centered on earning those links from relevant and authoritative sources. So if one connects you to another person and your customers or potential customers trust, then you reap the benefits of that trust.

26. Comment Spam

Long-time bloggers also know about comment spam. Such comments are not necessarily meaningful; they are just a cover-up to post a link. For others, they are short, and for others, they are long. All are silly and can be categorized as black hat SEO. Ensure that anyone assisting you with the outreach strategy does not use this slightly questionable approach.

27. Low-Quality Guest Blogging

Guest blogging can also be very effective in link building,, but the places to do it and how it is done must be stringently observed. If improper blogs or topics are selected, there will be no advantage of quality, relevant inbound links, which is the goal of this strategy.

28. Poor Linking

So, it makes no sense to stick to the topic, and there is no doubt that link schemes are evil. Google’s been cracking down on them for years, but somehow, they still live on in the form of:

• Sitewide links
• Paid links
• Link schemes

Such links negatively impact your SEO, which means that potential customers cannot even find you, not to mention those who cannot trust you. You can ask a webmaster to check your site and help you find out what links are pointing to your site using ahrefs. com or site moz. com.

Spammy Social Media

Kudos for honesty here: while modern society continually states that social media is our generation’s marketing goldmine, it’s not immune to being a spam wasteland. The following information provides a couple of things that make it difficult for followers to gain your trust.

29. Spammy Follow-up

These questions could be asked: When people request to be your friend on Facebook, how do you accept their request? Something as simple as tweeting on Twitter or posting on LinkedIn will prompt an instant call for people to subscribe to a product and be informed when a certain item, be it a resource, product, or service, is available.

In our opinion, that is the fastest way to end any new relationship which people may be willing to explore. While it is true that people build trust to gain power, it is far more effective to try to be helpful and human.

30. Untargeted Social Ads

If you contemplate using ads to reach your customers, it must be relevant to what they see or hear. If not, they will not pay attention to the message at all. Whether this is done intentionally, subconsciously, or because of apathy, the result is that the receiver does not pay any attention to the message or the information being conveyed. As said before, consumers expect individual treatment, which also goes with the advertisement.

Each social site offers targeting features; maximize these to ensure the promotions reach the right people. Here is our step-by-step tutorial outlining how to create high-converting ads on Facebook.

Now you know some of the biggest do-not when it comes to marketing, and all those tricks are considered spam, but if you want to increase the level of trust and get more conversions from your website, mobile, email, and social media marketing.