The 5 Deadliest Mistakes You Can Make in Email Marketing

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The 5 Deadliest Mistakes You Can Make in Email Marketing

Most companies these days use email marketing, and it’s no surprise why. Email marketing is easy to track and it’s easy to determine the ROI. There’s even an abundance of email service providers that make it even easier to send emails out to hundreds or thousands of people. You have to be careful though because if you make a mistake, those hundreds or thousands of people will all see it.

Everyone makes mistakes and proofreaders don’t always catch all of them. While spelling and grammar mistakes can slip through the cracks, these common email marketing problems should be easy to catch. If you don’t, they can be deadly to your business. You could lose customers, capital, and even your credibility. You don’t want that to happen.

Check out these 5 deadly email marketing mistakes and make sure you aren’t making them in your emails.

1. No Permission

This is really bad and is actually illegal. Without permission, you can’t send marketing emails to someone. In the United States, it’s called the CAN-SPAM Act. The Act requires that each email meet certain criteria before being sent. Otherwise, you can be fined up to $40,654 per email. So, if you’re sending emails to hundreds or thousands of people, you can see how quickly that fine adds up.

The simple fix to this is to only email people who give you the permission to do so.

2. No Opt-Out

This common email marketing problem is also illegal and also falls under the CAN-SPAM Act. Your email subscribers have to have a way to opt out or unsubscribe from your emails.

Not only are you required to have an unsubscribe option, but you also have to process/honor that request within 10 business days. The good news is that this is something you would want to do anyway. When people unsubscribe to your emails, they are no longer interested in your content or your products anyway. After they have been removed from your list, you can focus more on those who are interested and improve your deliverability rates at the same time.

3. Not Mobile Friendly

If you haven’t optimized your emails for mobile devices, you are definitely in trouble. More emails are opened on mobile devices now than they are on a desktop computer. In fact, 66% of emails are read on either a tablet or a smartphone. If your emails aren’t showing up correctly on a mobile device, you won’t get any responses to them. Or worse, you might lose subscribers.

4. Too Many Emails

Another common email marketing problem is sending out too many emails. When this happens, the subscriber either gets annoyed or just worn out. They will either just delete your emails or unsubscribe entirely.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy for when to send out emails but with testing, you can figure out what is best for your business. It is recommended you send out at least one email a month though. That way your customers don’t forget you.

5. No Test Email

Many email marketing problems can be solved by sending a test email, either to yourself or to a coworker. You will be able to see if there are broken links, subject line mistakes, image loading issues, or design problems. By sending a test email, you give yourself the chance to fix any mistakes you notice and prevent any potential embarrassment.

Don’t Make Mistakes

When it comes to email marketing, you want to stay away from making these mistakes. Sure, they may still happen but do your best to catch them before they go out.

Use this list as a checklist of what not to do. Don’t send without permission, make sure you have an opt-out option, optimize for mobile, don’t send too many emails, and always send a test email. These five things will help your email marketing efforts pay off.

What other common email marketing problems do you usually see?