Top 5 Email Marketing Mistakes

Email marketing is still the most effective business communication channel to your target audience. But with almost 300 billion emails sent and received daily worldwide, your email content must stand out in order to illicit the engagement response you’re expecting. There’s a smarter way to do email marketing.  

Here are the top five mistakes email marketing mistakes to avoid.  

1. Using bad sender info

   
   “I look forward to receiving an email marketing message from someone named Do Not Reply” – says no one. Ever. So why would anyone send something to a target audience using an email address donotreply@yourdomain.com? 

   It’s not just incredibly uninviting and unwelcoming. This top email marketing mistake literally drives people away, completely eliminating any chance to turn prospective leads into sales. 

   What to do instead: Always send an email that recipients can contact and/or reply to. Regardless of who created the email content, it should be sent from a recognizable name – like from your organization!  In fact, there is a 64% chance of getting your email opened if the sender can see your company’s name on it. 

    

2. Overlooking customer segmentation

   
   Did the “one size fits all” approach really ever work? Resist the temptation of sending one email template to your entire database. This common email marketing mistake is a one-way ticket to losing content relevance and email reputation. 

   When recipients receive an email that doesn’t offer any value to them, here’s what Campaigner found out:

   60% went directly to Trash
   27% of recipients hit the ‘Unsubscribe’ button
   23% are marked ‘Spam’

   What to do instead: Customize your messages for each group of recipients. Determine your brands voice and mission so you can better communicate to your target audience in your own “voice”. Segmentation is a key to increasing subscriber engagement, higher click-through rates, and increased revenue. 

    

3. Not optimized for mobile

   
   Everyone nowadays spends hours on their smartphones – whether checking app notifications, browsing social networks, inquiring on a topic via search engines, and even for taking selfies or creating vlogs! Regardless of how relevant your email content is, one of the most common email marketing mistakes you can make is to render it a mobile-unfriendly way. 

   What to watch out for:

   Visual-heavy display image that increase bandwidth and load times
   Too large, or too small, display image that compromise email content
   Not leveraging HTML to give value to the image description 

   What to do instead: IBM’s 2018 Marketing Benchmark Report says that almost 50% of all email is accessed through mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly email design must be at the very top of your email marketing strategy. We live in a mobile first world!

    

4. Making your emails complicated

    

   Your email content has one goal: turn leads to sales. It must require very little thought from the reader to understand what is in it for them. It must convince them that you can provide exactly what they want – or need. It must be interesting enough to have them click the call-to-action (CTA) button.  

   What to watch out for:

   Poor or misleading headlines
   Long, wordy paragraphs
   Clunky sentences and difficult-to-read statements
   No opt-in offer
   No clear CTA

   What to do instead: Know what to say and who you’re talking to. Leverage apps and tools that can help accomplish your email marketing efforts the smarter way. 

    

5. Hiding the unsubscribe link

   
   Even the best email marketing strategies won’t stop people from unsubscribing. Don’t hide the unsubscribe link – it will just cause the target audience to get frustrated or resent you. Believe it or not, un–subscribers are a good thing, because it shows: a) they read your email and, b) helps you hone who you should pursue and who to let go. 

   What to do instead: Make the unsubscribe link easy to find. Respect their decision to click on it and focus your efforts on those who are actually interested in what you have to offer.  

The Smarter Way to Plan and Execute your Email Marketing Campaign 

Email marketing is the best way to communicate with your target audience. Avoid these common email marketing mistakes and use the best email marketing tracking tool available so you can execute your email marketing campaign the smarter way. Improve your email marketing performance with Riptide. Sign up now!