7 Common Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2024

Intro

Email marketing is one of the most proven customer acquisition channels for businesses. Most businesses use email marketing to some extent, but it’s extremely underutilized and under monetized. This is vastly due to businesses making common mistakes with email marketing and this prevents them from fully realizing the ROI of this channel. Proper email marketing execution requires an understanding of your audience, thoughtful segmentation and targeting, strong creative copy, and robust analytics to continuously optimize your efforts. In this post, we’ll identify pitfalls to avoid as well as provide actionable tips and strategies to elevate your email marketing. Avoiding just a few of these can help improve the ROI of your email marketing dramatically.

1. Not doing email marketing

The first and largest mistake most people make with their email marketing is not doing it. Email marketing is on average the highest ROI channel for businesses with an average of $42 generated for every $1 invested. Yet many businesses fail to utilize email marketing at all or don't dedicate enough resources to do it properly. This is a missed opportunity, as a strategic email marketing program can become a powerful engine for lead generation, sales, and overall growth. An engaged email list provides a direct line of communication to your audience without relying on external platforms.

The main value propositions of email marketing are:

• Additional channel for revenue: The vast majority of acquisition channels for businesses are borrowed. Platforms like LinkedIn, Google, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok can choose to deactivate your channel and campaigns at their discretion. If you rely heavily on these, you have a massive risk of being subject to their algorithms. Your email list is yours forever and you cannot lose it.
• Direct communication with your clients: Many platforms have an array of things you can and cannot use in your advertising. With your email list, you can go directly to consumers and market to them anyway you want. This allows you to continue to add value to your email list while promoting your products and services.
• Compounding returns: As your email list grows, the ROI of your email marketing will also grow. This is because the cost of email marketing does not increase along with a larger email list. You can continue to market and sell to more clients while keeping your overhead relatively low.

2. Not tracking metrics:

You cannot improve what you cannot measure. Tracking metrics in email marketing is crucial to evaluating the performance of your campaigns. With metrics, you can get insight into how engaged your audience is. Specific metrics like open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates will help show you if the actions you’re taking are helping improve your sales or not. Additionally, metrics can help identify trends within your email marketing. If specific metrics are beginning to slip, you can quickly take actions to remedy the root issue. Some of the most important metrics to track include:

• Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open your email out of the total number of emails delivered.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who click on at least one link within your email. It measures the effectiveness of your email content and call-to-action.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of recipients who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form, out of the total number of recipients. It shows how well your email campaigns are driving desired outcomes.
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails that were not successfully delivered to recipients' inboxes. Bounces can be categorized as either hard bounces (permanent delivery failures) or soft bounces (temporary delivery issues).
• Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of recipients who opt-out of receiving future emails from your list after receiving a particular email. It indicates dissatisfaction or disengagement with your email content or frequency.

3. Poor or no email segmentation

Email segmentation is the backbone of email marketing. When you first start building your list, you’re going to have just one large list of anyone who’s willing to give you their email address. Email segmentation allows you to divide your email list into smaller and more targeted segments. This allows you to personalize your campaigns while improving your conversion rates and list engagement.

Email segmentation is key because it allows you to A/B test with your list repeatedly. You can segment your audience based on demographics, how they’ve responded to your campaigns, whether or not they’ve purchased from you, etc. With segmentation, you can tailor your campaigns and significantly increase the ROI of your campaigns.

Effective segmentation requires planning and strategic thinking about your ideal customer personas. Break your list into granular segments based on attributes like age, gender, interests, past purchases, and engagement metrics. This level of targeting allows you to create hyper-personalized messages and offers. For example, send new product updates specifically to previous buyers, or promotional discounts to lapsed subscribers. The more refined your segments, the better chance you have of resonating with subscribers and converting them into loyal customers over time.

Good example of email design by Melinda’s Foods

4. Bad email design

You’ve likely got multiple emails that are too colorful, engaging, don’t fit in your mobile email app, etc. Email design is one of the most underrated aspects of email marketing. A good email design reflects the brand identity of a company while being visibly pleasing to the reader. In addition to aesthetics, the design has to be optimized for mobile devices. The vast majority of users open emails on their phones, so it’s best to optimize for that.

Some elements of your email design to keep in mind include:

• Loading time: The email design should allow for quick loading by optimizing image sizing and any other interactive elements. A few extra seconds in loading time can dramatically hurt your bounce rate
• Clickable buttons: Many times email marketers use email designs for their call to actions. This is generally a large visible button at the end of the email. It’s vital to make sure that the button has a link to your landing page or you can lose out on all the conversions in your email marketing campaign.

Your email design also includes your exit-intent pop-ups. You can personalize your pop-ups to something that’s relevant to your site. Here’s a great example by Couch.com:

As you can see, it’s creative and it’s concise. Since the site primarily reviews the best couches, it takes that theme into its design for pop-ups as well. Using a design that’s complementary to the theme of your website is key to maximizing the conversion rate of your emails and any opt-ins to use to grow your list.

5. Sending emails at wrong time

Sending emails at 8PM on a Sunday for your business is not the smartest time. The average person is subscribed to hundreds of email lists and sending them when they are least likely to take action is a bad strategy. The best time to send emails is typically during the workday and work week. This can vary dramatically depending on the industry you work in, so it’s best to get some customer feedback to adjust this for your campaigns. For example an email sent to tax professionals may differ from one that’s sent to gyms. Each niche has its own nuances, so it’s best to cater to your audience.

6. Lack of personalization

Many customers are subscribed to email lists that don’t even address them by their first name. It's very difficult to establish a personal connection or build rapport with subscribers when emails lack basic personalization. With companies like Amazon, Walmart, etc. who have years of customer data, the bar for personalization is very high. There are a few things you can do to help personalize your emails. They include:

• Collect relevant data: The first step to personalization is collecting data. You need to collect all the data important to your email campaigns. This can include their name, age range, business email address, etc.
• Personalize subject lines: Incorporate the recipient's name or reference their recent interactions to make subject lines more engaging and relevant.
• A/B Test personalization elements: You can experiment with personalizing different parts of your email and see what your list responds to best. Then you can use the proven methods in later campaigns.

7. Poor copywriting

Copywriting can make or break your email marketing. Everything from your subject line to your call to action is heavily influenced by your copywriting ability. A great email will use good copywriting principles to attract, engage and convert the client. A telltale sign that you need to improve your copywriting is when your metrics like your open rate, click-through rate, etc. are low

This means that although your emails are being delivered to your subscribers, there’s not enough incentive for them to open it. Great copywriting will not only entice them to open the email, but it will actively provoke emotion and provide value. This ultimately helps your email stand out in a crowded inbox.

Avoiding these pitfalls is a great first step to take in improving your email marketing results. By avoiding common mistakes like bad email design, poor copywriting and no segmentation, you can help improve your engagements and conversion rates dramatically. You don’t need a super expensive software or billion dollar agency to fix any leaks in your email marketing. Just sticking to the basics of marketing to your list consistently and making your emails readable and valuable will put you ahead of most competitors. Taking these steps will help you develop an email marketing channel that drives repeat visits, sales, and loyalty over the long haul.