Top 10 email marketing errors you must avoid at all costs

Top 10 email marketing errors you must avoid at all costs. We want to start this post by referring to the latest statistics of email marketing 2022. According to a study carried out by marketing experts, approximately 4,000 million people in the world use email. By this, we mean that if you have a brand, you should consider the idea of ​​creating an email marketing campaign. This way, you can obtain significant advantages and directly reach your target audience.

However, you must know the most common email marketing errors to use this tool. By doing this, you will avoid making them when sending an email.

What are the 10 most common mistakes to avoid in email marketing?

These are the 10 common email marketing mistakes you must avoid at all costs. Once you see and identify them, you must know how to avoid them:

• Poor quality database

This is more common than it seems. In fact, there are still many brands that buy databases. As a result, you may have already received a commercial email from a brand you’ve never heard of. When this happens, there is a business managing a poor-quality database of poor quality.

To avoid this, your database must have the following elements:

• Explicit data This is the information willingly provided by the user. In this case, the user filled out a form with their primary data such as name, surname, email, telephone, etc.
• Implicit data This would be the information extracted according to the type of material they downloaded, the emails they clicked on, the pages they visited on your website, etc. Once you have your database full of limited user information, you need to figure out how to find what you need. For this, your forms must adapt to the type of data your business needs to meet its objectives. So, suppose your brand needs B2B clients. In this case, you should add a field where you can ask the number of employees in the company where they work. Once you have a well-structured database, you must clean it from time to time to keep it relevant. This way, you will determine which users are still involved with your brand and not.
• Errors in personalization and segmentation This is one of the most common mistakes in email marketing. Most brands find it easier to send the same email to the entire database. The truth is that this is a bad idea. All it will achieve is poor interaction. That’s why we’ll tell you what you can do so this doesn’t happen. Working on the personalization and segmentation of your emails will make your content valuable and adjust to the interests of each person who will receive the message:
• Personalization When we talk about personalizing, we don’t mean saying hello or putting the user’s name in their emails. This goes further and is related to segmentation. For example, within the most common personalization criteria, we can see the contact’s name, previous interactions with emails, previous purchases.
• Segmentation Having a database with the correct categories and a sending history will make it easier for you to send relevant emails since you can adapt them to the different groups of contacts. For example, if you want to promote a product for a sector, or provide more information to your potential customers, go directly to them. This way, you can add more value by sending your message. 
• Ill-advised planning As experts in digital marketing, we can tell you that improvising in marketing brings with it many disadvantages. Although it is true, 99% of brands want users to hire their services and increase sales, and not all emails have to be focused on this matter. The goal is for the user to really feel interested in opening and reading their emails. Then what to do? Find the best way to add value to your recipients through your different email marketing campaigns. Focus on having a generic strategy, both in the automated flows and in each of the sent emails. Similarly, you must first define your audience to have an excellent approach to determine what type of users you plan to target. In this sense, you must know their purchasing process and what kind of messages you can send them.

• Unattractive emails

Once your email is in the inbox, what happens next? If the recipient doesn’t open the mail, it doesn’t matter if your mail is flashy or truly disastrous.

The reality is that thousands and thousands of emails are sent daily, so you will have a limited time to convince the recipient and achieve relevance in their inbox.

Therefore, for opening rates to have a direct influence, it is vital to take into account the following elements:

• Sender Do not use an interpersonal email address such as “noreply,” as open rates will be more beneficial if the sender is familiar with the recipient.
• Preview text This text is the one we can see under the subject before opening the mail. Whether it’s through an HTML code or defined directly from an email marketing platform, those first lines of the preview will be essential to attract the user’s attention and know what they will find once they open the email.
• Business The optimal size for the subject should not be more than 41 or 50 characters. This way, you can ensure that it will look complete on both desktop and mobile devices.
• Shipping time There is neither the exact time nor the particular day to send an email. This will depend on your target audience as B2B or B2C, country, sector, etc.
• Expectations Before sending an email, ask yourself what the users’ expectations are when receiving your emails. When downloading material as a guide, we must wait for an email to arrive automatically to deliver the download to us. In this way, the emails have high openings. Still, this level of interaction isn’t always the same. After all, we don’t know if recipients want to be contacted or will see this as an intrusion.

• Bad anti-spam practices

Even if you have a quality database and have prior permission to address your contacts, some practices can cause your emails to end up in your contacts’ spam folders.

How to do good practices to avoid falling into the spam folder?

• Make sure bounce rates aren’t too high.
• Avoid the use of words that can trigger anti-spam filters, such as discount, free, urgent, offer, etc.
• Activate the SPF and DKIM protocols to be able to authenticate.
• Do not abuse suspicious links and URL shorteners.
• Avoid excessive use of images.

These details are essential even if it doesn’t seem like it. Your domain’s reputation is maintained and you don’t end up on the blacklist, and your messages are led to the spam folder.

• Incorrect email design and structure

When sending an email, many details must be taken care of, including their design and structure. Ideally, your emails can be viewed optimally on any device or screen, and for this, we will give you some essential tips:

• Check the mobile version of your email to make sure it will look good on small screens.
• Since many clients can’t load images by default, make sure the mail makes sense even if the pictures can’t be seen.
• Look for a consistent style with your brand in terms of the type of colors, typography, icons, types of images, etc.
• Follow the AIDA methods that the recipient through the 4 stages when reading the mail: attention, interest, desire, and action.
• Do not abuse the textual content since the idea is that contacts can quickly scan the information and interpret the content. Therefore, add bullets, bold, etc.
• Don’t forget to provide the web version so that recipients who wish to view the email from a browser if they prefer.

• Shipment may or few emails.

This question is very common to avoid email marketing mistakes since all brand owners want to know the ideal email frequency.

The reality is that no one solution works for all niches and all types of customers. Now, suppose we are guided by the trends and the studies carried out by digital marketing specialists. In that case, it is recommended that you send your contacts 3 to 5 emails per week.

However, before sending your emails, you must think about your brand and your type of audience to make the right decision.

• Emails not optimized for conversion

Suppose the planning for your email marketing campaign has been correct. In that case, it is expected that your emails have clear and measurable objectives. Besides, you must make it clear to your recipients the next step. For this, you can include a call to action; in this case, it could be an image, a link, or a button in a visible area so that users can quickly access it.

Now, you need to think about where you will send users to after clicking the call in the call to action. The best recommendation is that they can reach a landing page that works as a good conversion point and helps you meet the objective of your email.

• Campaign settings bugs

Any marketing strategy needs these three elements:

• Measurement
• Comparison
• Settings

Likewise, email marketing also needs this loop so that you can calculate the ROI of your strategy. For this, you can choose a considerable and manageable number of metrics to observe how the evolution of the different campaigns is going.

What do we usually measure? These would be the 8 most used metrics in marketing:

1. Openings.
2. Clicks.
3. Low.
4. Clicks on openings or CTOR.
5. Bounce rate.
6. Conversions.
7. Deliverability.
8. Database volume and growth.

Once we get this data, we look at these numbers to see if their results are being positive. Everything will depend on the countries and sectors to determine what is being done well or poorly.

Similarly, to be aware of your brand reach, run A/B tests and test with different send times, subject lines, calls to action, colors, etc.

• Mishandling of technology

Today, when we don’t have the right technology, it’s hard to create an effective email marketing campaign.

Because of this, we recommend hiring a platform for the automation of email marketing actions.

Thanks to this platform, you can also get information related to your contacts’ behavior with your brand. This way, you can then integrate it through your database.

Besides, you don’t have an excuse to use technology. After all, there are many tools available for handling it. All with different levels of difficulty and with additional adjustable costs depending on the company’s size.

Blucactus, your ally in Digital marketing

Blucactus international marketing agency serves clients all over the world. Our specialty? The creation of web designs and SEO positioning in online searches. Our group of experts focuses on helping businesses and brands succeed in one of the most competitive sectors in the market, the digital world.

Blucactus will accompany you in every step that your brand takes. This goes from creating your business’s branding to the creation of content. Our focus is supporting you in making your website or administering your social media accounts.

Based in Dallas, TX, this online marketing agency seeks to strengthen your image as a brand and take it to the next level. Don’t wait any longer to get the help of the best specialists in digital marketing. Contact us now through our social media or website!

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