20 Email Marketing Mistakes You Need To Escape

Email communication became a necessary marketing strategy to connect with individuals, customers, and clients. So, email messages are an effective and quicker way to communicate, share and remarket. Importance of email marketing is great for any organization, but sometimes a lot of people use this great strategy in the wrong way. There are many email marketing mistakes that marketers make and, unfortunately, fail email campaigns. In this article, you can find over twenty email marketing mistakes you need to escape. 

Is it interesting for you? If your answer is yes, let’s get started.  

Why Is It Critical To Pay Attention To Email Marketing Mistakes

Every marketing strategy has its mistakes that you need to avoid, and you can do that only by exploring and recognizing them. In other words, it is crucial to pay attention to email marketing mistakes because each wrong detail can fail your campaigns and give them negative effects. So, you surely don’t want it, Yeah? 

Remember that when it comes to email marketing, you must work perfectly to get enjoyable outcomes. This means it is critical to explore, know and avoid email marketing mistakes to succeed in the market. 

Common Email Marketing Mistakes

Well, now it is time to speak about common email marketing mistakes, explore them, and discuss them in more detail. There are popular mistakes about which you undoubtedly listen. You can also find more specific and untypical email marketing mistakes; if you recognize them, you can work in particular situations and have a successful campaign. So, from poor subject lines to overloading subscribers’ inboxes, we will look at them carefully and in more detail.

Let’s take a closer look and explore these email marketing mistakes to also understand how to avoid them. 

Writing Poor Subject Lines 

The subject line is a primary part of each successful email. And the first mistake that marketers make is writing a poor subject line. Actually, emails’ open rates depend on a subject line. According to many stats, over 50% of users open emails because of a good and interesting subject line. Let’s understand what it will look like with the great subject line. A perfect email subject line must be urgent, exciting, personalized, relevant, and consistent. So, you need to pay deeper attention to all these details to avoid writing a poor subject line for your emails.  

Failing to Use Message Previews 

Emails usually have previews which are short introductions about the messages. With the help of email message previews, readers can understand if email content is exciting and if they want to continue reading. Just like the subject lines, message previews need to be consistent and exciting and motivate readers to continue reading. Sometimes marketers fail to use message previews and think it is unnecessary. But message previews are crucial and if you want your emails to be valuable and relevant, use this little feature in your email marketing campaign. 

Not Allowing Subscribers To Reply

The following common email marketing mistake is not allowing subscribers to reply. In other words, it is about “no reply” messages. It is true that subscribers most likely will trust companies or brands that send emails to which they can reply. We may say that this is part of a call-to-action you need to include in your emails. So, if you want to have a successful email marketing campaign, don’t forget to allow users to communicate with you back with reply messages. You can add a reply back button or something else to guide readers on how to communicate with you about any question. Besides the fact that this will bring you chances to communicate with your subscribers, it also gives your emails more value. 

Forgetting To Target The Right Audience 

No matter which digital marketing strategy or tool you use, it is essential to target the right audience to get the desired outcomes. It is a common email marketing mistake that marketers don’t target the right audience and, unfortunately, fail email campaigns. The first question you must ask yourself to avoid this mistake is, “Do you really know your target audience?” or “Do you know who your buyer persona is? So, targeting the right audience means thinking about your customers deeper. It is important to explore age, gender, and geography, but it is not enough. To target the right audience, you must also know your customers as individuals and analyze their habits. Don’t forget to think about this before starting an email marketing campaign. 

Ignoring Analytics

Analytics, analytics, analytics… yeah, without a doubt, they are crucial, and neglecting them is a bad mistake that makes email marketers. Let’s understand which parts have email marketing analytics and why you do not have to neglect them. The main components of analytics are: 

• Open rate monitoring
• Checking, subscribing, and unsubscribing
• Figuring the highest open and click rates for email messages
• Using email marketing metrics

Without all these parts, it will be difficult for you to manage your email campaign and also develop it based on necessities. So, if you don’t want to hurt your campaign, use analytics and understand how to work your email strategies. 

Sending Email Messages At The Wrong Time 

The primary part of targeting the right audience is understanding also the best times to send them email messages. Sending email messages at the wrong time is a big mistake that some marketers can make. You can take advantage of testing to understand the best time to send email messages. This means testing the different times and understanding which time brings more open rate. In this case, it comes to help with analytics and metrics. The right time depends on your audience’s behavior, habits, and customs. So, it is essential to explore your subscribers from all sides. 

Forgetting About Personalization

Everyone wants to be special, and this is also about your email subscribers. If you think about how to give your customers similar emotions, the answer is one, and it is personalization. Personalized email messages are a powerful and excellent way to communicate with customers effectively and have a successful email marketing campaign. Personalized emails include product recommendations, dynamic content, the right questions, etc. You can add personalization to transactional email examples and any type of email to communicate with your customers effectively. To avoid forgetting about personalization, you must first collect data about your subscriber’s behavior, segment your email list, send a behavior-triggered email, and so on. Great examples of personalized emails are birthday messages or recommendations, such as those sent by Netflix to its subscribers. 

Avoiding To Send Welcome Emails

One of the popular types of email messages is welcome emails, and one of the common email marketing mistakes is avoiding sending welcome emails. Welcome emails are your first email communication with your customer or subscriber. These emails complete the onboarding emails series and are essential for leaving a good first impression. Besides the fact that welcome emails have a great open rate, they also provide great chances to connect with your subscribers and build long-term relationships with them. Actually, in the world of email marketing, welcome emails introduce new subscribers to your business vision, products or services, values, and so on. So, as you see, the importance of a welcome email is great for a successful campaign. 

Overloading Subscriber Inboxes 

The next most common mistake is about overloading subscribers’ inboxes. The statistic shows that an average of people receive over 120 email messages per day. This number is truly enormous and enough to bore subscribers. Usually, subscribers don’t have time to read and check all these emails, or they don’t receive emails that are interesting to them. So, with many email messages in their inbox, customers most likely will start the unsubscription process, and if you want to avoid this, you must not overload subscribers’ inboxes. In perfect, subscribers must be glad to receive your emails, but certainly, getting to this is difficult. To start, you can include an unsubscribe button in your emails and allow your subscribers to decide if they want to receive your emails or not. 

Neglecting GDPR Considerations

You may have heard about GDPR considerations in email marketing. Starting from 25th May 2018, passed into GDPR consideration which offers a legal framework that will show that the personal data of every individual is safe and secure. This is required for any organization to have a process in place for controlling everyone’s personal information. So, it is simple that neglecting GDPR considerations is the worst mistake that email marketers can make. Besides that, with the consideration you will work legally, it also gives value to your business and will build subscribers’ loyalty. Always remember about GDPR consideration and stay valuable in the world of email marketing. 

Providing Not Relevant Content

Content is one of the crucial parts of every digital marketing strategy, and email marketing is no exception. In simple words, this is a significant factor in your success in the world of email marketing. So, providing irrelevant content is a big email marketing mistake you must avoid. The benefits of good content are many. It will bring

• High open rate
• More sales
• New subscribers
• Long-term relationships with customers

As you can see, the success of your email marketing campaign depends on excellent and relevant content, whether a product recommendation, offer, or any copy you send to your customers; it must be relevant and include good context. 

Having A Not Clearly Defined Call-To-Action

You surely know that the main component of each email message is the call-to-action button. And having a not clearly defined call-to-action is a big email marketing mistake. Simply put, the call-to-action is the following step you encourage your readers to make. The statistic shows that email messages with CTA are more engaging and clear for your subscribers, and therefore they motivate them to take action. To have a perfect call-to-action button, you must make it catchy, and personalized, double-check it, include your subscriber’s pain points and test it. With a good and clearly defined call to action, there is no doubt that your email marketing campaign will succeed. So, always remember about call-to-action and make it perfect. 

Not Meeting Your Subscribers’ Expectations

Yeah, this is the truth. Your campaign will fail if your email messages don’t meet your subscriber’s expectations. Even if you provide perfect content in your messages, if they don’t meet readers’ expectations, they most likely will unsubscribe because no one wants to receive that kind of message. Meeting subscribers’ expectations mean

• Emailing timely,
• Not boring subscribers,
• Making emails more personalized,
• Suggesting unique solutions for each of your subscribers. 

So, it will be great to explore more about your subscriber’s expectations to meet them in your emails.   

Not Planning Your Email Marketing Campaign 

Planning is the most crucial factor to success in every digital platform and not only. Every successful marketing strategy is based on a good plan. An email marketing campaign without planning is a bad mistake that marketers make. To plan your email campaign, you must first understand your goals, define your KPIs, and target your audience. With this, you surely, step by step, will make your goals a reality. Each email marketing strategy requires great planning, and you need to pay attention to this to have a successful email campaign. So, start your planning today. 

Using More Sales-Heavy Language

Usually, email marketing campaigns consist of various types of emails like promotional, informational, sales emails, etc. The problem is that many marketers use more sales-heavy language in email messages and boring subscribers. Each of your customers wants to have messages that not only want to sell them something but also emails that give them value and relevant information. So, it is essential to avoid using more sales-heavy language in your emails. The best email marketing practices show that it would be best to create a content plan for your emails and send subscribers emails with multiple contexts to avoid this. 

Forgetting About Your Mobile Users

Another common email marketing mistake is when you forget about your mobile users. According to statistics, over 70% of users read email messages with smartphones and mobile devices. This means that your emails must be mobile-friendly. So, what can you make in this case? 

At first, it would be best to design your emails with mobile principles and also use visuals that are no more extensive than 600 pixels. Also, your message content will be with single columns. The best way to understand your emails’ mobile friendliness is by testing. Certainly, test your emails on mobile devices to know if they are mobile-friendly or not. 

Using So Much Visual Content

Using so much visual content is also a common mistake in the world of email marketing. Some statistics show that emails have a high click-through rate with three or few visuals. So, you can pay attention to this when designing your email marketing campaign. Besides that, you must not use many visuals; it is also essential to use the right file type for your images. You can explore and use different chart types to understand which one is the best for your visuals and ensure that the file supports text with images. Visual content does not mean only pictures but also icons and infographics with which you design your email messages. Actually, in this case, email templates play a significant role. So, select a template carefully and pay attention to design elements.  

Not Making Website Signups a Priority

The typical way users subscribe to your email is through website signups; it is crucial to make your website signups a priority. This means it must be eye-catchy, well-designed, easy, and intuitive. In this case, you must follow UX design practices. You need to design your website signup based on user experience principles and also include it on every page of your website.  

Website signups will be a priority because they are the first action users must take to have an experience with your brand. So, we may say that your success truly depends on that impression. 

Waiting Until I Have “More” Subscribers

You may have heard that some marketers wait until they have “more” subscribers to send them emails. This is a common email marketing mistake, and you need to avoid this as soon as possible. Even with a small number of subscribers, you truly can start your campaign and have successful progress. It is simple, the more you work and engage with your subscribers, the more chances you will have to target new ones and raise the number of subscribers. 

Starting Email Marketing Late

And the final email marketing mistake is starting email marketing late. Although email marketing is a common and popular marketing strategy, many businesses and organizations don’t use this fantastic platform to communicate, engage and achieve success. So starting email marketing late is a mistake that every marketer needs to avoid. The benefits of this platform motivate you to start it today and enjoy excellent outcomes. So, if you don’t start it yet, it is time. 

For The Final Thoughts

Well, as you see, there are a number of mistakes in the world of email marketing that you need to explore and avoid. By avoiding all these mistakes, there is no doubt that you will enjoy fantastic results in the future and have a successful business. So, learn from these mistakes, explore different areas of emails and start your email marketing campaign today.