Email marketing continues to be a proven method for reaching customers, building relationships, and driving sales. There are over 3.8 billion users worldwide, making it one of the best methods for maintaining customer correspondence. 

There are endless possibilities when it comes to creating content for email marketing. But, this also means there are lots of easy mistakes you could be making. Here are 10 email marketing mistakes that we often see. It’s important to be aware of these so that you can avoid making them in your own marketing methods.

1. Ineffective calls to action

The call to action is one of the most important parts of an email because it directs customers to the next step and tells them what to do after reading your email. Having a successful call to action is important for a successful campaign. Your call to action may be ineffective if it is not easy to see or is unclear.

Make it legible by using a contrasting color background, and clearly state what you want the user to do. Examples include “Sign Up Here,” “Shop Now,” “Watch This,” etc.

2. Choosing the wrong send times

The days and times that you choose to send your emails have a big effect on the success rate. The right time is not the same for every audience, so it’s very important to research who you are targeting. As a general rule of thumb, emails are more likely to be opened during the work week between 8 am and 5 pm.

3. Content that doesn’t match the audience

The easiest way to ruin an email’s open or click-through rate is to send information the recipient doesn’t care about. So how do you send content that they do care about? Know your audience! Do the research and learn what they care about to ensure that your content meets those interests and resonates with them.

4. Too much sales content

The next common mistake that we see is emails focused 100% on sales. Sure, sales are important, and sending out a sales email here and there is a perfectly fine method to include in your strategy.

However, every email should not be sales focused. While sales may be your goal, the customer needs a “why” in order to follow through. The best way to meet that “why” is to provide value in your emails. Create content less focused on sales and more focused on value so that you can become a trusted source of information within your niche.

The rest should follow!

5. Ignoring mobile users

About 40% of users open their emails on their mobile phones. Ignoring mobile optimization can be detrimental to your email success rates. Consider all screen sizes and use short copy and minimal images. If a CTA can appear “above the fold,” that’s even better!

Note: Above the fold applies to both mobile and desktop and refers to the area of the screen or email that the user can see before they need to scroll down the page.

6. Image-focused content

Many people try to keep their emails interesting with lots of images and graphics. But, cutting down on image-focused content can help improve email loading times and also make it easier for recipients to see what is important in the email. Don’t overload your email with images, and instead pick 1-2 that will keep recipients engaged.

7. Overly long emails

When there is too much text to sift through in an email, recipients are more likely to just ignore it. Research has shown that the sweet spot is around 200 words for marketing emails. While you may want to pack in as much info as possible, this will likely deter recipients from reading the email and could cloud the call to action.

8. Hiding the option to unsubscribe

It may be easy to think that hiding the unsubscribe button in your email design will make it hard for users to unsubscribe from your mailing list. This is a very poor approach! 

Hiding the unsubscribe button is not only wrong, but it can also lead to increased “spam” rates. If a user can’t find the unsubscribe button, they may simply report your email as spam to avoid receiving more of your emails in the future. This is detrimental and can cause your emails to stop hitting recipients’ primary inboxes.

9. Sending too many emails

The average person receives around 100 emails per day – that’s a lot to sort through! It is very important to make sure you are not spamming your subscribers with an extensive amount of emails. On the other hand, it is important to send emails frequently enough that subscribers don’t forget about you! You can use testing to find the right frequency for your audience and take the guessing game out of your strategy. 

How to make the most of your email marketing

A/B testing can help you make the most of email marketing and avoid some of these common mistakes. This is when you test two variations of an email and compare data to see which resonates better with your audience. Testing email frequency, call-to-action copy, send times, and more can help you create a strong email marketing strategy and avoid mistakes. When you avoid these common mistakes you will see that email marketing is extremely effective!

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Yours in success,

Sarah x