Email marketing is still one of the strongest weapons in every marketer’s arsenal. If you’re a business owner, or part of a large corporation, emails are a direct path to your audience, where they provide an opportunity to nurture leads, convert sales, and so much more. While email has great potential, many marketers fall into some major mistakes that undermine email marketing effectiveness. Below, we’ll discuss 20 email marketing mistakes to avoid to make sure that your email campaigns are truly successful.
1. Ignoring to Segment Your Audience
The biggest email marketing mistake you can make is sending the same email to every subscriber on your list. Segmentation of your audience is the only way to tailor your message for the right type of people. If you’re not segmenting your list around demographics, purchase history or interests, you’re not getting the most out of your email marketing campaigns.
Segmenting your audience will allow you to send more personalized and more relevant emails. And this will boost open rates, click through rates, and the overall engagement. Let’s say you have an online store, for instance, and you may want to send a set of emails to first time buyers one set to repeat customers offering special offers or rewards for your loyalty.
2. Ignoring Mobile Optimization
At this point in time at least, most people check their emails from mobile devices, meaning that your emails need to be optimized for mobile reading. One of the most common email marketing mistakes is to fail to do this. A mobile unfriendly email can infuriate recipients who will most likely unsubscribe or in general ignore your future emails.
Make sure that your emails are following the responsive design rule, in other words, making sure that they adjust to the screen size. Your layout should be clean, simple and your fonts should be big and your calls to action should be clear. Also, don’t go crazy with large images that take a long time to load and clutter up your email when viewed on mobile screens.
3. Overlooking the Subject Line
Your recipient will see the first thing they see, and that’s your subject line and it makes a huge difference on whether or not they open you email. If your subject line is poor, it could be ignored, or even trashed. One of the most common mistakes in email marketing is that.
Attention grabbing, concise, and relevant to the text within, is what a great subject line should be. It should be appetizing or presents a clear value proposition. Don’t use all caps, spammy language as your email might be placed in the spam folder. With A/B testing run different subject lines test and see which works best with your audience.
4. Emails sent too often or not at all.
With email marketing, timing is everything. If you send too many emails, your audience will overwelm and will unsubscribe or classify your emails as spam. Having too many emails sent, however, could cause you to be marked as spam or your subscribers may get tired of the emails.
The frequency of your emails depend on the audience you are reaching and the type of business you are in. For a first time subscription, send a welcome email sequence and then follow with some periodic emails that provide valuable content, updates and promotions. Never send emails to your subscribers unless you allow them to change your preferences to set the frequency or remove yourself from your mailing list.
5. Leaving out an obvious Call to Action (CTA)
A CTA-less email is a missed opportunity. Despite whether you would want the recipient to buy something, sign up for a webinar, or download an eBook, you’ll need to have a particular CTA that would direct them to the subsequent advance.
The CTA should be contrasted with other colors, and seen in many spots of the email (e.g., at the top and bottom of the email). Use action-oriented language like “Get Started,” “Shop Now,” or “Claim Your Offer” to drive engagement.
6. Lack of Personalization
Sending generic emails is something no one likes to read in an age where consumers expect a personalized shot. Personalization means hitting the send button and the greeting may have their first name but that’s not all. This means the content, recommendations and offers are tailored according to the recipient’s actions and preferences.
For example, if a customer who has clicked on a specific product in your E mail, you should send them a special email where the product is mentioned or similar items. By creating personalized emails, the recipient will feel that the email was written for them, which will then lead to a lift on the engagement and conversion rates.
7. Ignoring the analytics and feedback
Email marketing isn’t just a one and done sort of marketing. So to make your campaigns shine, never stop analyzing analytics and listen to what your audience has to say. One of the greatest email marketing mistakes companies make is ignoring the data regarding performance.
Measure open rates, click through rates, conversion rates and unsubscribe rates so you can see what’s working and what’s not. This data lets you know what types of subject lines or what types of content types are doing better than others, and use that data to try and steer future campaigns in a certain direction. Additionally, you should also be sending surveys to your subscribers asking for direct feedback as to what they do or don’t like about emails that you send out.
8. Not Testing Your Emails
Testing is an essential part of any email marketing plan, and most marketers fail to test this. A/B testing is a way to experiment with different parts of_emails, like subject lines (subject line), CTAs, and designs, and find out which version hits the most with your audience.
You can test variables like:
Subject lines: Try different phrasing, or a different sense of urgency.
Email layout: Test single column vs multi column designs.
CTA buttons: Place and wording of your call to action.
Testing allows you to optimize your campaigns and you know you’re always improving email marketing efforts.
9. Lack of Compliance over Email Regulations
The other mistake comprises failure to comply with email regulations like CAN-SPAM Act or GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). They are designed to protect the consumer from spam and to protect their privacy.
When sending emails include your business’s physical address and an easy way for the recipient to opt out of your email. To comply with the GDPR, you need to get explicit consent before you send marketing emails, and you need to offer the user to opt in or out of their data by default.
10. Focusing Only on Sales
Email marketing is great but shouldn’t be your sole focus on campaigns. If you’re constantly pushing for a sale, this can cause email fatigue which means your audience will distance themselves from your message.
Instead, balance your promotional emails with value served content. Use share to share industry insights, tips, or customer stories which will build trust and credibility with your audience. The trick is that, when you provide value beyond sales, you’re going to have a stronger relationship with subscribers who are more likely to convert when you finally start sending sales focused emails.
Conclusion
Email marketing is an incredibly powerful way to engage with your audience, send traffic and increase sales—given you do it properly. If you avoid these 7 common email marketing mistakes, you’ll improve your campaigns results and ultimately have better relationships with your subscribers. Each of these steps is important toward segmenting your audience, personalize content, test your emails and optimize for mobile devices to create a successful email marketing strategy.
Now is the time to evaluate your currently email campaigns if need be, and make changes. Listen to your audience, continually optimize your approach and you’ll make fast progress towards Email marketing success.
