Every company that’s serious about growth knows that email marketing can be a real game changer. Despite the many other communication avenues, email remains a highly effective channel for reaching existing and potential customers and promoting a brand’s products and services, consistently yielding one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) in digital marketing.
However, that doesn’t mean all companies get it right. In fact, a lot of them either don’t know how to take full advantage of email marketing or still make rookie mistakes when running their campaigns, which can result in lost opportunities and revenue.
Even when things seem quite alright on the surface, a closer look may reveal hidden gaps and oversights that could cause your business to waste valuable resources. That’s why it’s important to spot these issues early on and fix them before they can cause more damage.
Knocking on the wrong door
Sending messages to an audience who is not interested in what you have to offer and will never care enough to read what you wrote is a massive waste of emails on your part. You can have killer subject lines and the most interesting and engaging content, but if it’s addressed to the wrong people, it will fall on deaf ears.
That usually happens when companies add random contacts to their email list, trying to grow it at all costs. Some even resort to buying addresses or adding them directly without previous explicit consent just to reach more people. You may wonder what the harm is in doing that. Those who don’t want to hear from you can simply ignore your emails or unsubscribe. In reality, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Importing contacts that never explicitly opted in goes against privacy laws and regulations, so it is at best an unethical practice.
Also, when people who haven’t subscribed to your emails start receiving messages, they’ll mark them as spam. When a large enough number of contacts do that, it can impact your reputation and land you on a blacklist. Email providers might step in and send future messages directly to the junk folder or block them entirely. So, this is a reminder that bigger is not always better and an encouragement for you to focus on the quality of your email list rather than just chasing more subscribers. Collecting contacts through transparent and fair methods like sign-up forms is the smarter and safer approach.
The batch and blast strategy
Even if your email list consists of people who actually want to engage with your company, it doesn’t mean you can craft a message and send it to your entire list without any regard for their individual needs. Recent buyers have different interests and communication expectations than first-time visitors or loyal customers who are already familiar with your offering, so it’s no surprise that one-size-fits-all campaigns fail.
The fact that one should not send the same email to everyone is common knowledge, and yet so many companies continue to do the exact opposite, usually because it takes less time and effort than creating tailored emails for each category of subscribers.
However, if you want your emails to bring results, you can’t skip segmentation. Organizing your list into smaller, distinct subgroups based on their specific characteristics and requirements ensures that the right messages reach the right people. That will help you increase open rates and engagement, as well as lower unsubscribe rates.
Prioritizing campaigns over automation
Another mistake that many companies are guilty of is relying on individual campaigns to do all the heavy lifting and treating automation as an afterthought. Now there’s nothing wrong with running targeted campaigns; they are very effective when done right, but they can’t cover all the shifts in customer intent or respond to them in real-time.
But automation flows can. Setting up email sequences for abandoned carts, abandoned browsing sessions, new sign-ups, or inactive subscribers can fill in the gaps in your email marketing and take advantage of changes in consumer behavior as soon as they happen. Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp are exactly the tools you need to establish effective automation flows that work for you while you focus on other tasks. You can also look for Mailchimp alternative solutions if you want to compare different providers and the plans and features they offer.
No regard for mobile users
Nowadays, people spend considerably more time on their smartphones than they do on computers, so it stands to reason that most individuals read their email on their mobile devices (between 41% and 55%). In theory, that should make it easier for brands to communicate with their audiences, as they can reach them anywhere.
But problems arise when companies don’t optimize their emails for mobile users – and it happens more often than you might think. This means the subject lines and messages might not display well, making it difficult for recipients to read the content; CTA buttons may be too small to be tapped with ease, images might not load fast enough, and so on. Needless to say, all these small inconveniences can be extremely frustrating for users and prompt them to send them straight to the trash bin.
Post-purchase radio silence
Every subscriber that turns into a buyer represents a small victory, but that’s not where the email story ends, nor is it the right moment to relax. You obviously want that customer to come back and purchase from you in the future as well, so you need to act fast before they start losing interest.
Some companies forget about follow-ups and let their relationships with new buyers grow cold, although studies reveal that right after a purchase is when customers are the most receptive. That’s why you should never neglect post-purchase emails, as these can help you create a stronger bond with your customers and improve retention.
Email marketing can be tricky to master, and mistakes are easy to make. But once you identify them, you can learn how to avoid and fix them, so you can get better results in the future.
