10 Common Email Marketing Mistakes
You’re Probably Making
By Nick Smith
16th January 2023
Running a profitable business requires marketing, since few are lucky enough to acquire customers by word-of-mouth alone.
As the cheapest & most effective channel, email marketing is something most of us need to get our hands dirty with at some point. Yet its staggering how few small business people get it right, and how many continue making simple mistakes that cripple their results.
In this article we’ll cover 10 common mistakes people make when writing marketing emails, and simple ways to avoid them.
1. Writing Emails That Aren’t Customer-Focused Enough
When writing promotional emails its incredibly easy to concentrate on what you know – your business and your product or service. Unfortunately most prospective customers won’t care as much about them as you do, especially if they haven’t heard of you before.
People are fairly focused on themselves and their problems. So the most effective way to get their attention is to discuss how your product or service will benefit them by solving one of their problems. It may not hurt to mention how severe the consequences of not solving that problem are either.
The better you understand your target audience and the nature of their problem or desire, the more successfully you can appeal to them and frame your product or service’s benefits in language they use themselves.
2. Using Excessively Salesy Language In Your Email
Speaking of language, using too much sales-focused language can come across as aggressive & exploitative. Most people avoid being bullied into making decisions (even those in their own best interest) which is how a pushy sales approach can feel. Putting on the hard sell may result in selling less.
Another dowside is such language is often heavy in spam keywords. These are words or phrases email servers look for when deciding to classify your email as spam or not, and if the answer is yes it’ll be sent to the recipient’s Junk folder or not delivered at all. Common spam phrases include Free Quote, Make Money, Act Now, Exclusive Deal, See For Yourself and so on. You can find a list of them here.
3. Rushing The Email Writing Process
Marketing emails are often written hastily for an email blast that needs to go out as soon as possible, and a consequence can be unnoticed spelling & grammatical mistakes, or even errors preventing links to your website from working.
Not only is it a good idea to have multiple people proofread your email, but a few extra minutes improving your copy is often worthwhile considering the difficulty of convincing online strangers to trust you with their money – even the tiniest mistake could be treated as a red flag, shifting their mindset towards one that’s unlikely to purchase.
4. Not Focusing Enough On Your Heading
Does it surprise you to learn around 80% of people who open your email will read the heading but only 20% will read the body text? This is why the headline is your email’s most vital component.
It should be large, 1-2 lines in length, in an easy-to-read font, and in an attention-grabbing color. Without going over two lines you should convey as much of your email’s core message in it as possible, since it is the only element you can be confident most of your audience will read.
5. Cramming Too Information Into Your Email
Ironically many people who put too little into their heading put too much everywhere else, adding paragraph after paragraph of superflous detail that only serve to bore or confuse readers.
There are two great reasons to keep your emails as brief as possible. Firstly, human attention spans have never been shorter and people will lose interest at the first sign of information they don’t want or need.
Second, the purpose of your email shouldn’t be to describe your business or product. Instead it exists to present the minimum information necessary to convince the reader to click a link to your website. After arriving you can offer them far more information than an email can contain, a menu structure to choose what interests them, and perhaps an online store allowing them to purchase direct.
6. Poor Email Design & Formatting
The appearance of your email affects three things – it allows readers to absorb the content more easily, influences inbox deliverability since it is something email servers look at when deciding if the email is spam, and shapes the reader’s perception of your organization’s professionalism.
A profesionally-designed email template can be a great starting point. Color clashes, body text that fails to contrast against the background & difficult to read fonts are easily-avoided mistakes. Also be sure every image in the email contains ALT text, as embedding images that lack them causes email servers to downgrade your message’s deliverability.
7. Using Too Many Images In Your Email
Speaking of images, including too many is a common mistake for two reasons.
Modern email clients (like Microsoft Outlook) hide images by default and a surprigingly-high percentage of people never bother turning them back on. So you can’t be assured information contained in those images will be received by your audience, making it essential to convey important information via text only.
Furthermore emails containing large amounts of images are actually more likely to be flagged as spam by email servers, leading to them being delivered into Junk folders or not at all. For this reason we recommend including no more than 1-2 images per email.
8. Not Optimizing Your Email For Mobile
Its a changing world with up to 70% of people now reading emails on their mobile phone, with the percentage varying by industry & audience demographic, and generally higher for B2C products than B2B. However anyone marketing B2B products or services to tradespeople for instance (who are famous for business mobile usage) will definitely want to take note.
Complex multi-column layouts & huge images may not display properly on mobile devices. Ideally your email template should be ‘Responsive’, meaning the layout automatically changes to suit the device it is viewed on – mobile, tablet or desktop.
9. Adding Attachments To Your Email
Attaching a file like a .PDF document with additional information or a table of prices to your email can seem like a good idea, when it’s really a very bad one for two reasons.
The most important is that scammers & hackers often employ the same tactic, attaching malicious files containing trojan horse viruses, keyloggers & randsomware tools to emails sent to unsuspecting victims. Understandably many people are conditioned never to open attachments from senders they don’t know, so attaching a file to your email may cause them to perceive you as shady, discouraged from opening your email at all.
Then there’s the more minor issue of server load. Every email you send consumes bandwidth & resources, and thousands of people downloading a large file simultaneously could potentially cause the platform or server you’re sending from to experience issues. Its always a much better idea to host any file available for download on your website.
10. Not Writing Emails With A Clear Purpose
The purpose of your email is neither to educate nor inform your reader – that is the job of your website or landing page where more detailed information can be presented in an interface that’s much more flexible & easier to navigate. Your website is also where people can submit their contact details, book meetings & even purchase direct via your store, so its ideal to get them there as quickly as possible.
Your email should present only the minimum amount of information needed to spark enough curiosity & interest for the reader to click your Call To Action button directing them to your website. You’ll benefit much more from them spending time browsing your website rather than reading your email.
Your Call To Action button should be large, brightly colored, feature clearly-worded language and the reader shouldn’t have to scroll too far down to reach it from the top of the email. Multiple copies of it can be pasted throughout long emails so one is always close to hand.
Implementing these 10 simple principles will improve your results immediately, and the effects will add up over time.
To boost your results even more, you may want to consider using our Email Marketing Platform for your next campaign. Tap here to learn more.