Are you on the fence about whether email marketing is worth your time and effort? According to Hubspot, 59% of the users said that email marketing influenced their purchasing decisions. Email marking is a reliable way to keep your target audience aware of your brand, new product launches, discounts, and other relevant information.
Moreover, it has emerged as an excellent way to build stronger customer relationships. Email marketing also plays an important role in reinforcing a customer’s purchasing intent, particularly after cart abandonment.
Whether this is your first foray into the world of email marketing or your current strategies are failing to drive conversions, we’re summarizing some common email marketing mistakes you should avoid.
Users will send your email directly to the trash can if you do not create security and formality with your email signature. This is why you should look up professional email signature examples online and add the one that convinces you the most.
Not Sending a Welcome Email
If a visitor has shown interest in your business by subscribing to your email list, you’re missing out on an opportunity by not sending out a welcome email. As soon as a visitor signs up for your email list, you should send an email introducing your brand. This first interaction is crucial to set the right tone.
Forgetting To Add a Link or Including a Broken Link
Imagine the frustration of a person who has gone through the trouble of reading the entire email only to click on a broken or missing link! Make sure you always check the link to ensure it’s working. It’s a good idea to send yourself a test email. You should also ask someone from outside of the email marketing team to proofread the email before sending it.
Boring Subject Lines
Most people wake up to an abundance of emails every morning, a lot of which are promotional emails. All the hard work you’ve put into creating an engaging email marketing strategy won’t amount to much if no one is opening your emails. If you want users to actually click on your email, pay attention to the subject line.
That being said, it’s also important to keep the subject lines genuine. Using extreme clickbait can disappoint subscribers and even urge them to unsubscribe.
Not Using Message Preview
Apart from the subject line, message preview gives the recipient a peek into the email. Writing a compelling message preview will entice recipients to open your emails.
Flawed Personalization
There’s nothing exciting about receiving a generic email. Personalizing emails is key to grab the attention of your subscribers and make them feel special. Typically, when marketers are drafting emails, they use a placeholder that is later on replaced by the subscriber’s name. However, failing to include the name and other relevant details can create a poor impression on the receiver.
Not Optimizing for Mobile
Since the majority of your users are accessing emails on their mobile, you cannot forget to optimize your emails for mobile. Content or images curated for a larger screen may not look the same on mobile devices.
Poor-Quality, Irrelevant Content
Spamming your subscribers with irrelevant or overly promotional content isn’t going to bode well. Rather than opting for a sale-heavy approach, you should share content that is interesting and valuable for your readers.
Furthermore, proofread your emails like it is your religion. Typos and grammatical errors may seem minor, but they can be off-putting. Run a spell check and get a second set of eyes to go over your emails.
Not Optimizing for Mobile
Since the majority of your users are accessing emails on their mobile, you cannot forget to optimize your emails for mobile. Content or images curated for a larger screen may not look the same on mobile devices.
Always format your emails to fit smaller screens. It is also advised to test your emails on a mobile screen to ensure they look right. This way, it will be easier for potential customers to read your triggered email or product launch email on their smartphones.
Purchasing Email List
Building an email list is not an easy or quick process. It can take months or even years to gain a significant number of paying customers. And because of this, certain businesses choose to purchase email lists.
That isn’t a good idea for several reasons. Firstly, there is no way to ensure that the people on a purchased email list belong to your target audience. Moreover, if your emails are marked as spam by too many recipients, your account can be suspended. The better choice for growing your email list is to invest in your website and utilize other platforms like LinkedIn and email-finding tools such as Voila Norbert.
Not Segmenting Email List
People within your target audience are different in many ways. Therefore, not every email is going to be relevant for all your recipients. You should segment your email list based on gender, location, age, purchasing history, and other factors that will help you create future personalized email sequences. This way you won’t be spamming your subscribers with irrelevant content and increasing your email response rate.
Lack of Consistency
Sending emails regularly for a few days and then going radio silent for months is something that needs to be fixed immediately. If you want a higher opening and click-through-rate, it’s imperative to come up with a consistent posting schedule. When you’re just starting out, you can try sending emails on a weekly basis. And you don’t have to send all these emails manually. Instead of that, try using email automation software. This will save you time and help you prevent your email from ending up in spam.
Overloading Emails
There is no doubt that including graphics and other visual elements makes an email a lot more attractive than just texts. However, overloading your emails with too many images, videos or other graphic content isn’t the right move. Your emails may take a long time to load, especially on mobile devices.
Ideally, you should use images sparingly and always remember to add alt text.
Forgetting CTAs
A subscriber opened your emails and read the content, now what? Your email campaign is incomplete without a clear call to action. A good CTA should be concise, persuasive, and easy to find.
Not Tracking Campaigns
Which emails are driving conversions? Has your unsubscribing rate gone up? How many people are opening the emails? Without tracking, it is difficult to determine the success or failure of your email campaigns. You should make use of various tools available to keep track of email marketing metrics.
Final Words
Considering that there are over 3.9 million email users worldwide, email marketing is essential to nurture leads and encourage them to become paying customers. Emails are one of the most inexpensive and direct ways to connect with your target audience.
If you have made any of the above-mentioned mistakes before, it’s not the end of the world! Recognizing such errors and improving your email strategies will significantly help your conversation rates.
