7 Biggest Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid Right Now

Whether you’re a novice or seasoned marketer, you’ve doubtlessly considered email marketing, if not engaged in it. Indeed, this famous marketing endeavor should rightfully be in your sights. Not only does it typically yield excellent Return on Investment (ROI), it’s also a versatile practice to boot.

That is, it can seamlessly integrate with other tools within your workflow, adding a layer of lead acquisition almost effortlessly. All that said, however, there are many ways for email marketing to underperform – or worse, actively hamper your marketing efforts. So, let us use this article to delve into the 7 biggest email marketing mistakes to avoid.

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Essential Email Marketing Assets

But first, let’s qualify our prior claims. Consider the assets you might already be using that can substantially enhance your email marketing campaigns, such as:

CRM. From lead segmentation, management, and scoring features to direct email automation features, CRM can be your ally in this regard. Most CRM solutions offer email integration options, helping ensure success.
SEO tools. Similarly, keyword research and other SEO-centric tools can also help enhance your email marketing campaigns. For a rudimentary example, you may have your keyword research insights inform your subject lines.
Analytics tools. Finally, analytics tools, from Google Analytics to website heat maps and others, can also push your efforts in the right direction. In fact, as we’ll outline later, neglecting to consult your analytics is among the biggest email marketing mistakes to avoid.

Is email marketing worth your time?

Next, before delving into the main subject, let us very briefly demonstrate the effectiveness of email marketing. Should any of the following mistakes have deterred you from this type of marketing, the data to follow might convince you to try again.

First, Neil Patel argues that email marketing is the most effective online tactic for lead generation:

A graph on the most effective online tactics used for lead generation

Then, he continues to find it’s also among the easiest:

A graph on the effectiveness versus difficulty for lead generation tactics

But what about ROI, then? Surely, lead generation is just one factor of final revenue. Well, Lyfemarketing finds that “the median email marketing ROI is 122%”. That, they correctly add, is 4x higher than any other digital channel.

Finally, Digitalstrike agrees and also finds that “customers who purchase products through email spend 138% more” than those who don’t. So, in brief, email marketing is absolutely worth your time.

Biggest email marketing mistakes to avoid

Now, having contextualized the subject, we may explore the 7 biggest email marketing mistakes to avoid. In no particular order, here are our picks.

1. Buying email lists

This is, quite probably, among the most common and grave mistakes any email marketer can make. It’s certainly appealing to buy an email list, at a glance; the short-term benefits seem worth the vague risk.

Well, no – there’s never, ever a good reason to buy an email list. In contrast, there’s a range of reasons not to, from ineffectiveness to penalties. Some, including some Crazyegg identifies, include:

Ineffectiveness. Your recipients haven’t opted into your emails, so they’re far less likely to actually open them – let alone convert.
Negative brand awareness. Unsurprisingly, such tactics may actually have recipients associate your brand with shady behaviors. That’s not the kind of brand image one needs.
Penalties and legality. Finally, there are ramifications. Such email platforms as Mailchimp will actively penalize marketers for using bought lists. Moreover, especially as data protection laws worldwide continue to solidify, in most cases, it’s quite likely illegal.

So, to reiterate, always avoid buying email lists. You’ll get very little out of them while risking a negative reputation, platform ramifications, and even legal woes.

2. Not personalizing your email copy (enough)

Another oversight, more so than a mistake, lies in personalization. Personalization is what makes your recipients open your emails in the first place; would you open bland, generic emails? Most probably not. That’s why email blasts, whether cold or warm, typically don’t pay off as well.

Here, consider how you may personalize your emails with the aforementioned assets:

Use your recipient’s name and information. Simply adding their name in the subject line or copy should work wonders. What’s more, you may use such information as birthdays for further personalization.
Have your recipient’s history inform your recommendations. Should you be using a CRM, you can refer to it to identify purchasing and behavioral patterns. At the same time, you may discover upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Match their interests. Finally, again using CRM and similar tools, you may segment your email lists according to leads’ status. One group may just need to receive your newsletter, while another may be ready for product recommendations.

3. Overdoing it

That said, few email marketing mistakes to avoid are as common as, simply, overdoing it. Should you be engaging in social media marketing, you likely know how costly this can be – and SproutSocial agrees:

Of course, emails are not social media, nor are they SEO. However, the exact same principle applies to emails. That is, you can overdo it to the point where you lose subscribers. To address this, consider such steps as the following:

Segment your audiences. Different audiences have different thresholds for what constitutes “overdoing it”. Identify each segment’s limits and try to stay safely within them.
Work smart, not hard. Similarly, well-crafted, well-timed emails can work much better than sloppy email blasts. Consider reducing quantity and increasing quality wherever your analytics offer the opportunity.
Stay relevant. Finally, as the graph above also shows, relevance is key. Audiences won’t mind larger quantities of relevant emails, so try to closely match their interests each time.

4. Alienating your mobile recipients

On the subject of your recipients’ interests, then, have you carefully considered their devices of choice? Statista has, finding that, in 2018, almost half of all marketing emails in the US were opened on mobile devices. Desktop devices accounted for a mere 17%, and the trend hasn’t changed since.

So, catering to mobile devices is absolutely crucial. In this regard, examine and fine-tune such aspects of your emails as:

Text size
Image size
CTA size
Video use and size
Total email length

Understandably, most of these areas directly relate to size; mobile devices have far less screen real estate. To address this and help ensure readability, simply send yourself your emails and examine them on mobile devices. It may take some effort, but it is definitely worth it.

5. Not minding outreach timing

Returning to email relevance and segmentation at once, outreach timing is similarly crucial. It’s so crucial, in fact, that Hubspot found substantial differences in open rates across both days and the times of day. Omnisend agrees and even makes the distinction between the first and second half of each month. Of course, they also identify differences in both open rates and click rates too:

A graph on optimal times of day for email campaigns

So how can you address this data point? Here are some key practices to get you started:

Segment your audiences. This practice is so crucial it bears repeating; segment your audiences as deeply and accurately as possible. Especially if you have audiences across different timezones, segmentation is absolutely essential to timing emails right.
A/B test. Next, you may find optimal outreach times differ across industries and even locations. Thus, it’s very important that you A/B test your schedule to ensure accuracy before committing to your choices.
Automate your email campaigns. Finally, especially if your audiences favor times outside of your regular working hours, you may automate your campaigns. This will allow your campaigns to extend beyond working hours at no extra labor cost. What’s more, automation platforms like CRM can also set up event triggers for enhanced outreach timing.

6. Neglecting holiday opportunities

While not among the most harmful email marketing mistakes to avoid per se, this one is still very notable. Many businesses see considerably more sales seasonally or during holiday seasons. In turn, ignoring this can cost you dearly in missed sales. Here, you may consider the following:

Consult your analytics. Especially if you’re engaging with global audiences, it’s crucial to determine just how valuable this course of action is to you. Preconceptions may fail, but your analytics rarely will.
Create a holiday email marketing plan. It takes little effort, while promising considerable returns.
Discount and personalize. Finally, consult your CRM and other tools to determine your ideal outreach copy, timing, and style. Audience segmentation will work wonders in this regard too.

7. Not monitoring email analytics

Finally, having noted analytics manifold throughout this article, this is arguably the single biggest email pitfall to avoid. Not monitoring your analytics is among the costliest, biggest email marketing mistakes to avoid – and many don’t.

Here, there’s no to-do list to go over. Instead, there’s a brief metric list you should consider:

Open rates
Click-through rates
Conversion rates

Put simply, not monitoring such metrics will leave you in the dark regarding your emails’ actual effectiveness. Email campaigns are never a once-and-done deal, and no strategy will always perform equally well over time. Thus, you should constantly monitor your analytics and adjust your strategies accordingly.

Summing up

To conclude, there is a wealth of email marketing mistakes to avoid. Buying email lists is a primary one, but it’s certainly not alone. You may not personalize emails, or overdo it, or not mind outreach timing. You may alienate your mobile recipients, a massive demographic, or overlook profitable holiday seasons. Lastly, and equally crucially, you may not monitor your campaigns’ effectiveness, leaving you with few actionable insights for course corrections. Hopefully, this article helped highlight why these mistakes are worth avoiding and how to do so.