Common Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

It’s important to know Common Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid. Email marketing is a powerful tool and is a vital part of the larger digital marketing toolkit.  On the surface you might think otherwise, but email marketing is here to stay.  In fact, email marketing has the highest ROI of any digital marketing channel.

There are countless tips, strategies, tactics, and best practices to incorporate into your email marketing campaigns.  In this article, we’ll run through a few common Email Marketing Mistakes that email marketers make.  Being sure to avoid these follies will reduce unsubscribe rates and increase audience engagement.

Email Marketing Mistakes: Clickbait subject lines

You know exactly what we’re talking about here, this is for sure one of the biggest Email Marketing Mistakes.

“One weird trick MIT mathematicians are using to win the lottery every time!”

“Wall Street hates this man, find out how he’s gaming the stock market!”

These examples might be a bit over the top, but the point stands.  Yes, you want to use interesting and enticing subject lines to get your audience to open your emails.  You might be tempted to use similar clickbait style subject lines – especially because they work.

The main issue is that using clickbait is a tactic that is successful in the short term, at the expense of the long term.

Secondarily, if the content of your email doesn’t match the subject line, you’re going to disappoint your readers.  You might increase open rates temporarily, but you’ll lose the trust of your audience over time.

Not only that but consider how clickbait will affect the perception of your brand.  Trust?  Authority? Expertise?

Rather than trying to trick and shock your audience into reading your emails, put in the work to understand them.  What sort of content are they engaging with?  Create useful, relevant content that your audience will want to read – and base your subject lines on that.

Email Marketing Mistakes: Boring subject lines

Clickbait is bad, but so is the opposite end of the spectrum.  Another common mistake is using generic subject lines that are too boring.

“The Box Company’s Weekly Newsletter #343”

Not very enticing.

As we mentioned earlier, understand your audience and figure out what resonates with them.  Write emails that they will want to read, and craft your subject lines based on what makes the emails compelling.

Email Marketing Mistakes: Lack of personality

Just because your main goal is to sell to your audience, doesn’t mean you need to sound like it.

Nobody wants to read a dry, generic, marketing letter.

Incorporate your brand’s style and personality into the writing.  Tell compelling stories.

Remember there are real humans at the other end of those email addresses and communicate accordingly.

Email Marketing Mistakes: Personalization errors

Email personalization is a great way to improve engagement.

Personalization is basically a necessity in order to stand out with today’s crowded inboxes.  Part of that is including the user’s first name in the greeting with automation.

For example, an email starts out with:

“Hi Janice”

Which is great and personalizes the experience for the reader.

However, all too often, emails will be sent without proper testing, and the greeting will literally read:

“Hi [First Name]”

This is incredibly unprofessional and can easily be avoided by testing your emails before sending them out.

Email Marketing Mistakes: Inconsistent sending

As with many things in life, consistency is key when it comes to email marketing.

Blasting out emails every day for a week during a promotion and then radio silence for over a month?

Figure out a schedule that works for your situation and stick to it.  Once or twice a week is a good reference point.

Email Marketing Mistakes: Unclear call to action

Whether it’s a banner ad, a blog post, landing page, or an email – you need to employ a clear call to action.

In today’s busy, distracted world – users need a clear call to action to get them where they want to be.

Before you begin crafting your email, decide what the primary goal of this email is.  Is it a certain promotion?  Are you launching a new product?

All your text and imagery should guide the reader to that call to action.

Regarding the call to action itself, here are a few tips:

• Keep it simple, only have one call to action per email. More than that will dilute your message and confuse the reader.
• Make it clearly visible, use bright colors, bold text, or an easy to see button. It should be prominently displayed within the email.
• Use direct language, this isn’t a time to be vague
• Use repetition, while you don’t want to have multiple different call to actions, it’s a good idea to repeat the same call to action throughout your email if it is appropriate. This way there is no confusion, and the reader has multiple opportunities to follow through.

Email Marketing Mistakes

Oftentimes email marketing is left to be an afterthought, and errors like the ones we’ve mentioned can make their way through the cracks.  If you’re not optimizing your emails, you’re leaving money on the table and giving your audience a lower quality experience.  If you’re running a business, attempting to handle the email marketing at the same time can simply be a burden.

We at Affix pride ourselves as being expert email marketers.

Contact Us to learn how we can help you craft optimized email campaigns and succeed with your business goals.