6 Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid
Email marketing can be an incredibly effective tool for businesses to engage with their audience, drive sales, and build brand loyalty. However, if not executed properly, it can also lead to decreased engagement, unsubscribes, and even damage to your brand’s reputation.
Keep reading to see a few of the most common mistakes we see when our clients hand over the keys to email marketing to us.
#1: Failing to Segment Your List
One common mistake is failing to segment your email list. Sending the same generic message to your entire subscriber base can result in low engagement rates because it doesn’t address the specific needs and interests of different groups. Instead, segment your list based on factors such as demographics, purchase history, or engagement levels to ensure your messages are relevant and personalized.
#2: Mobile UN-Friendly Design
Another frequent no-no is neglecting mobile optimization. With a significant portion of users accessing their emails via smartphones, it’s crucial to ensure that your emails are mobile-friendly. This includes using a responsive design, concise subject lines, and clear, easy-to-click call-to-action buttons. Emails that are not optimized for mobile can appear cluttered or difficult to read, leading to frustration and decreased engagement from your audience. Be sure to preview your designs across mobile and desktop platforms, in dark and light modes.
#3: Unclear CTAs
Lastly, overlooking the importance of a clear call to action (CTA) can severely undermine the effectiveness of your email campaigns. A well-crafted email should guide the reader towards a specific action, whether it’s making a purchase, learning more information, providing some sort of value. Make sure your CTA is prominent, easy to understand, and aligns with the overall goal of your email. Avoid using too many CTAs in a single email, as this can confuse or overwhelm the reader.
By being mindful of these common mistakes, you can enhance the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts and achieve better results. Need help with setting your email strategy? Let’s chat. Or, are you ready to finally take the reins on your email marketing but not quite ready to work with our team, check out the RP(ec) - our monthly membership that helps you take your email marketing to the next level. Monthly email prompts, design templates, editorial calendars and more to help you see a real ROI on email marketing for your brand.
#4: Buying Email Lists
Don’t do it. Just trust us on this. DON’T DO IT. Of course we all want a list of 500k subscribers but there’s a right way and a wrong Besides being illegal in some countries and against the terms of service for most email providers, it’s important to remember that the people who own email addresses from a purchased list won’t have a relationship with the list buyer and cold emails are rarely effective. Should you go down this route anyway, you risk annoying potential customers and ruining your otherwise good reputation. Beyond that fact that its fully illegal in some counties and against many email service providers rules and regulations sending emails from a purchased list will hurt your sender reputation in the long run. Check out our 7 Ways to Grow Our Email List blog post for a few simple ideas.
#5: Adding Images That Are Too Big
Check your image sizes. Rule of thumb, make sure your entire email is (way) less than 2MB. Also add alt text (there’s a section to do this in your email service provider) to make sure you’re recipients know what the image is should there be loading issues.
#6: Don’t be a SPAM Trigger-er
Here’s a good list of things to avoid, but a few of the ones we see ALL THE TIME are as follows:
Using waaaay to many exclamation marks in subject lines
Using all caps all the time in subject lines
Not sticking to you branding
Alway selling way. too. hard