The 7 Most Common Email Marketing Mistakes

Published on: 26 June 2021 Last Updated on: 03 January 2025

Email marketing is crucial in driving brand awareness and bringing quality leads to your website.

Your email list is the most valuable asset you can own in your business, serving as your virtual distribution channel. However, it’s essential to recognize that not all customers will immediately purchase. In fact, on average, you will get less than a 5% conversion rate on purchases, which means you need to follow up with the other 95%. This highlights the importance of understanding the differences between direct mail vs digital marketing and how each strategy can complement your overall marketing efforts.

In short, email marketing provides a powerful tool for encouraging interactions with your brand. When a customer subscribes to your periodic newsletter, it is an indication that they have a desire to engage with your brand. According to marketing tests and studies, email marketing affects consumer behavior and can convince consumers to visit websites for more information or make a purchase.

Unfortunately, email marketing can be quite complex due to the sheer number of variables affecting email marketing campaigns. Therefore, consultants and marketing managers fail to achieve the desired email opening rates and click-through rates. Ultimately, marketing managers tend to ask a question like:

Why did they receive it but never opened it?
Did they open it but never took the desired action?
Why are they unsubscribing?

7 Most Common Email Marketing Mistakes

In this post, we uncover the most prominent email marketing mistakes consultants can make. Therefore, if you have been struggling to increase the CTR through email campaigns, you have reached the right page. Let us jump in straight away.

1. Not Personalizing The Email Campaigns

Personalized email campaigns can be a powerful tool. However, recent research revealed that 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messages. You are missing out if you are not taking the time to customize your email!

Personalizing email campaigns involves collecting data related to your target audience and crafting custom content. Remember that the success of your email campaigns depends on how well you utilize the available data to come up with relevant content that target consumers will be willing to consume.

Here are essential arguments to help convince you of the benefits of personalization in marketing.

Email personalization gives you the ability to reach specific audiences
Personalized emails stand out from the crowd by ensuring better and unique content that leaves special memories for your customers.
Personalizing your email campaigns helps to build stronger and personal relationships with your customers.

Therefore, start researching about your customers and ensure you personalize every email that you send to target customers. Ultimately, you will start enjoying higher email open rates and increased CTR to your money website.

2. Penning Poor Subject Lines

No matter what your goal is, your audience will judge emails by the subject lines. According to Hubspot, 47% of email marketers test different email subject lines to optimize their email performance. Thus, it is essential to create catchy email subject lines to get people to open the email and convert them into customers.

So, what makes a great subject line? Here are essential tips to guide you when creating an email subject line.

Communicate urgency and scarcity in your email subject lines to compel readers to act.
Maintain some sense of curiosity to pique the reader’s natural interest.
People love new things and experiences. Thus, do not forget to mention what is on offer.
Incorporate trending topics to feel relevant and compel readers to click to read.
Mention your audience to show you truly recognize them, and you are not merely after marketing.

As you write personalized email campaigns, do not leave the subject line to chance. A catchy email subject line attracts the audience’s attention and leads them into taking action. But, on the other hand, if your subject line lacks the above qualities, you start on the wrong foot!

3. Not Including ONE, Clear Call To Action

As you already know, your content needs a call to action. Whether you are writing a blog post, a landing page, or an email, ensure your readers know what action they need to take. Without a clear call to action, you leave them to figure out what you want them to do. In that regard, before you compose an email, define a clear vision of its purpose. What outcome do you expect? Do you want them to subscribe, share or buy? Make sure your intention is clear to the audience. So, here are a few suggestions we think will help you come up with a great call to action:

Use bright colors, bold text, or large buttons so that the CTA is easy to find
Use words that foster curiosity and avoid bland or vague wording
Do not end up including multiple CTAs
When appropriate, repeat the same CTA more than once

Remember, the CTA is the magic button that leads the readers into taking the desired action.

4. Not Looking Professional

The fourth and worse mistake that consultants do is sending emails that appear sketchy or amateurish. Most readers will not be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Thus, so long as you are not sending professional emails, you can forget about conversions. To maintain a high level of professionalism with every marketing campaign, follow these tips:

Proofread every email and correct spelling or grammar mistakes
Avoid attachments
Use respectful and easy to understand language

Professional emails attract higher conversion rates and encourage readers to share your message.

5. Sending Emails from A Donotreply@domainname.com

Emails from no-reply are uninviting and often end up marked as spammy emails. Thus, if you send marketing emails from a no-reply email address, do not be surprised if your open rate is still low.

Always allow your recipients to get back to you, and include a phone number to reach you or the relevant persons quickly. Include your name and designation and links to social media to help the customers contact you. Sending an email from a person within your company could be a competitive advantage.

6. Ignoring Mobile

According to statistics, 85% of users use Smartphones to access email. Thus, it is imperative to make marketing efforts seamless on mobile. Unfortunately, mobile email marketing is a calling that most consultants tend to resist for far too long because they do not understand what it means to go mobile. The reality is that emails that do not display correctly on mobile end up in the trash folder within seconds.

To optimize your email marketing for mobile, follow these essential tips:

Use a responsive or scalable mobile template
Utilize a pre-header that includes a summary of the purpose and call of your email to action
Keep the email short, sweet, and to the point
Ensure finger-friendly and easy to find CTAs
Leverage images to enhance your emails

Ignoring mobile when designing an email marketing strategy is the worst of the mistakes you could be making. Instead, talk to an Email service provider to find out the various enhancements you can include in your email campaigns to ensure mobile-friendliness.

7. Wrong Links, Broken Links, Or No Links At All

Sending out emails with the wrong link is as good as not sending the email in the first place. For example, you could create a beautiful and professional email, but you will not measure the CTR if no links direct the visitors to a landing page.

Therefore, make sure you include relevant links. Then, test the links to make sure they direct the reader to the right page, and the page loads fast. Otherwise, your email campaign will not be fruitful.

Conclusion

We have looked at the top mistakes coaches and consultants make when it comes to email marketing. While email marketing offers a huge potential to your business, making these mistakes repeatedly will hurt your campaigns. Talk to email marketing professionals for assistance when it comes to email marketing campaigns, creating automation, and developing a solid follow-up system.

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6 Shameless Examples of Product Placement in Movies We’d Like to Forget

Imagine you're on the edge of your seat in the middle of an action-packed, spellbinding movie. After a few climactic scenes, the main character makes a frantic phone call. He then cracks open a can of soda. Nothing about this scene seems out of the ordinary. The character is simply quenching his thirst after a big police chase or a kung fu brawl. That is until some familiar brand of soda appears on the can in a big, bold, unapologetic font. Talk about a plot twist. But product placement in movies is nothing new. Old school marketing techniques show how far companies will go to advertise. They'll even go as far to pay directors and producers to feature them in films. There have been great instances of advertising that worked well in films. But there have been plenty of others that were so shameless and unnatural, we wish we could forget them. Here are 6 of the silliest, most cringe-worthy moments of advertising in movies. 1. Starbucks (You've Got Mail): 'You've Got Mail' may be the first film to portray online romance. Given that it takes place in 1998, AOL was practically its own character in the film. Without it, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan's characters would have never "met" and fallen in love. But AOL wasn't the only company to get prime ad space in 'You've Got Mail.' At the beginning of the film, Tom Hanks quips about the obscurity of Starbucks. His character's snarky commentary doesn't serve much to the plot. But it does help to give the audience somewhat of an introduction to his character. All while appealing to pretentious coffee drinkers like his character in the process. 2. Designer Brands (Sex and the City): Curious which movies with the most product placement made our list? It shouldn't come as a surprise that the 'Sex and the City' film featured dozens of fashion labels. After all, fashion was a constant theme throughout the hit TV series. The series has long appealed to women in the 20-30 age bracket. So, when it went to the big screen, tons of the biggest fashion labels came calling. You better believe Louis Vuitton and Chanel made a handful of cameos throughout the film. But some other products made the cut, too. Nike, U-Haul, Apple, and Marie Claire are just a few of many brand name drops in 'SATC'. Producers and creator Darren Starr were clearly not ashamed. 3. Reese's Pieces (E.T the Extra-Terrestrial): Not all instances of product placement in movies are bad. Certain films have done it so subtly we hardly pick up on the smell of advertising. Steven Spielberg's 'E.T the Extra-Terrestrial' is undeniably one of those movies. Who could forget when Elliot entices E.T by scattering Reese's Pieces around the woods and back to his house? Hershey's certainly cashed in when E.T became a box office hit. But this was back in 1982. So, can product placement still hold merit today as an advertising technique? The technique may actually be more effective than ever before. You can discover more about the different ways this technique continues to work. 4. Popeyes Chicken (Little Nicky): Whereas E.T is a good example of subtle product placement, Adam Sandler's 'Little Nicky' is not. It's one of several Happy Madison comedies that wasn't well-received by critics. But it gained a cult following for its ridiculousness and quotability nonetheless. In one scene, Adam Sandler, who plays the kindhearted son of Satan, learns how to eat with the help of a talking dog. What does he learn to eat with? Popeyes fried chicken. And the large takeout box of it sits in the center of the shot. Even a big K-mart bag makes a small cameo, as well. The scene concludes with Nicky proclaiming how awesome Popeyes chicken is. Not subtle in the least, but the scene is something fans continue to quote to this day. 5. "I Will Not Bow to Any Sponsor" (Wayne's World): Is it any less shameful when a movie calls itself out on its attempts to advertise? Few films are able to make fun of themselves about their blatant attempts to advertise. But the first 'Wayne's World' film provided a plot where it was possible to do so. Wayne and Garth sell their public access show to a big-time TV producer. In the build-up to the climax, the producer confronts Wayne and Garth about their contract. They agreed to air an interview with the show's new sponsor, but Wayne insists otherwise. What follows is a satirical scene of obvious advertisements all surrounding Wayne's opposition. While opening up a box of Pizza Hut, Wayne proclaims, "I will not bow to any sponsor." Wayne goes on to explain that he doesn't believe in "selling out" while holding a bag of Doritos and drinking a Pepsi. Garth also gives his two cents on the idea of selling out while clad in Reebok gear from head to toe. 6. Heineken (James Bond Franchise): The character James Bond has always had an affinity for dry martinis. This trait has inspired fans of the franchise to become martini drinkers for decades. But over the years, James Bond has dabbled in other commercial alcoholic drinks. In 1997, the famous film franchise partnered up with the Dutch beer company, Heineken. Heineken has advertised the James Bond films since 1997's 'Tomorrow Never Knows.' The ads have always been over the top, contributing to the promotional side of the Bond franchise. But Bond himself never drank the Dutch beer until 2012's 'Skyfall.' In one scene, while James Bond is in bed cuddled up with his latest love interest, he drinks a Heineken. For any fan who has ever wished to be like James Bond, this scene is definitely inspirational. At least that's the kind of association Heineken had intended to portray. The Power of Product Placement in Movies: If you've ever watched a movie and noticed an advertisement, you may have reacted one of a couple of ways. You may have hardly noticed or didn't care all too much. You could've felt preyed upon as a consumer or felt the ad ruined the experience. Or, you may have thought to yourself, "Wow. That was actually a great instance of advertising." Product placement in movies allows companies to reach a worldwide audience. Depending on how big the film is, these audiences can reach into the millions. When characters we love use certain products, we're more inclined to buy them. But there are other lots of other innovative and clever ways to advertise in movies - and beyond. If you're in need of some inspiration, check out more advertising news and ideas. Read Also: Online Marketing: Selling Your Product And Services Important Things To Consider When Packaging Your Product

How To Start A Pharmaceutical Company

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The 7 Most Common Email Marketing Mistakes