Skip to content

The 5 Most Common Mistakes Email Marketers Make

I receive a lot of emails and as a marketing writer I study much of what I get. In marketing, it’s important to stay curious and notice what attracts your attention and what misses the mark. There’s a ton to be learned from all that spam.

The 5 Most Common Mistakes of Email Marketers

I’ve compiled a list of the most common things I see across industries. How many of these common mistakes are you making in your business emails?

  • Your email is coming from a big box. 

Subject and sender are the two biggest reasons people open your emails. If you’re using a generic contact name, people won’t open it. Make the sender as human (sounding) as possible, unless your brand is the reason they would open it.

  • Not explaining who you are. 

Most people get a lot of webinar invites and spam. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which is which. If your business has a generic name that is not industry specific, it can be difficult to understand who it’s coming from. For instance, I received an email invite to a “must-attend” webinar to help with my “dream path.” The business name had the term “mastermind” in it. Was it for me as a business owner, me as a fiction writer, me as a chamber member, or me in one of my self-improvement phases. I guessed it was the latter. It turns out—I realized once I missed the webinar, and the replay showed up in my inbox—that it was for my college-bound son. Missed that. 

If you want to be successful in building a relationship over email, assume they don’t know you, and give your recipient a clue as to which part of their life you’re involved in. 

The trend these days is a casual tone but that makes people feel crazy when they can’t put a name with the business, especially when the business shares its name with a dozen out there.

  • Not using personalization. 

Come on. Mail merge technology has been around since DOS days. It’s okay to use a first name in a subject line. Believe it or not, it does make people pay attention.

  • Not cleaning your database. 

There are some email marketers that I get 2-3 emails from every time they have an offer. Why? Because I receive ads or emails from them asking me to sign up for a webinar or a freebie and I don’t realize which email they have so I accidently give them a second (or third) one. That’s on me. But they can run dupe checks on their database periodically, especially if they’ve collected something other than a name and email. 

Sometimes I even get duplicate emails when I’ve given them the same email because they’re treating each freebie or event as a new list of names. Some of us are return visitors. 

Don’t make that mistake. It messes with your open rates. Clean your database for dupes.

  • Not making the unsubscribe button visible. 

All mass emails need an easy way to unsubscribe. Otherwise, people will get frustrated and hit the spam button, affecting your send rating. If you make people hunt for it, they will choose the easiest route, which will also be the most unpleasant for you.

So, do these mistakes sound familiar? Are you guilty? It’s easy to overlook these common mistakes when you’re trying to get your message out. Just remember, email is about connections. Anything you can do to improve that will help you become a better email marketer.