
40 Email Marketing Mistakes To Check And Avoid Before Clicking Send
There are a ton more mistakes you can do with your entire email marketing program… but this infographic focuses on the most common mistakes we make before clicking send. We’ve added a few of our own recommendations here before you ever even start building your first email.
Deliverability Checks
Before we begin, are we set up for failure or success? You should absolutely ensure that you configure your email marketing infrastructure properly.
- Dedicated IP – don’t let your deliverability be destroyed by a bad sender on the same IP network of your email service. If you’re sending millions of emails, you want to order a dedicated IP address with your email service provider (ESP).
- Inbox Placement – Email platforms will report on how many emails are delivered… but don’t distinguish if the email is sent to the inbox or routed to the junk folder. You must use an inbox monitoring solution to verify your emails aren’t just being delivered to a junk folder, they’re making the inbox.
- Deliverability – don’t leave a good email service for a bad one and destroy your deliverability.
- Blacklists – make sure your IP address isn’t on a sender blacklist, or else you may get poor deliverability or inbox placement.
- Domain – send from and maintain a good email domain so you can build your reputation (along with your IP).
- SPF – Sender Policy Framework configuration is a must so ISPs can ISPs can authenticate and will receive your emails.
- DKIM – DomainKeys Identified Mail lets an organization take responsibility for a message that is in transit.
- DMARC – DMARC is a proven authentication model for ISPs to ensure that your email isn’t a phishing email and that it’s sent from an authorized source.
- Feedback Loops – make sure you have feedback implemented so that information from the ISP can be reported back to your ESP for improved email deliverability.
Subscription Checks
Subscriber management is an essential component of a healthy email marketing program.
- Permission – don’t get yourself in trouble with ISPs. Ask for permission to email.
- Preferences – provide and set expectations on frequency for your subscribers.
- Inactives – remove inactive subscribers to reduce unsubscribe complaints and lack of engagement.
- Frequency – don’t turn up the frequency so high that your subscribers leave.
- Segmentation – have you double-checked the counts and accuracy of your segmentation?
Content Checks
This is where the money is but many companies make some disastrous content mistakes.
- Boring subject lines – if you want someone to open, give them a reason! Check out ActiveCampaign’s Subject Line Generator for help.
- Proofing – did you proofread your text for grammar and spelling issues? How about the tone of voice?
- Strong CTAs – make your Calls-to-Action stand out on mobile or desktop!
- FNAME – if you don’t have names for all your subscribers, don’t use a substitution string in your email! Some email service providers offer scripting where you can use a salutation if the first name isn’t available.
- Merge Fields – test all your data before sending otherwise mapping and dynamic content will embarrass you.
- Backgrounds – test backgrounds across email clients… many don’t use them.
- Buttons – use images as buttons so that your buttons look great across all email clients.
- Internationalization – are you using the proper language settings and symbols for your subscribers?
- Typography – utilize fonts with a fall-back for devices and clients that don’t support them.
- Social – do you have links to your social media accounts so people can friend and follow?
Design Checks
- Snippet – test the email to see if your first few lines in an email preview are compelling. You can even code the first few lines so they show up on the email client but aren’t visible when viewing your email.
- Alt – utilize compelling alternative text with every image.
- SSL – ensure your images are hosted via a secure site and accessible externally. We work with several organizations who block images… and when they send an email, their own company can’t even view the images. You’ll want to at least whitelist your image domain internally.
- Test – test subject lines, links, CTAs, personalization, authentication, and variations.
- Unsubscribes – small fonts and obscured Unsubscribes make me avoid ever doing business with you.
- Accordions – incorporate accordions for long, sectioned emails to look great mobile.
- Retina – utilize high-resolution images optimized for retina displays that modern Apple devices use.
- Responsive – make sure your email looks great on mobile and tablet devices. You may want to add wearables, soon!
Email Send Checks
The mechanics of the email and how it functions when it gets to your subscriber’s inbox can impact your credibility as well as your click-through and conversion rates.
- From Address – use a recognizable ‘From Address’
- Reply To Address – why use noreply@ when there are opportunities to connect and sell?
- Trigger Logically – make sure your drip campaigns are executed logically.
- Links – did you test all the links in the email before sending to all subscribers?
- Landing Pages – build high conversion landing pages with few form fields.
- Reporting – capture stats, analyze them, and improve your email marketing efforts.
- Compliance – do you have all the necessary information for full legal compliance in your footer?
- Campaign Tracking – do all of your links have analytics campaign tracking appended to them? Many email service providers integrate this automatically.
Download Email Monks’ Quick Review Checklist
If you’re having deliverability issues, don’t hesitate to contact Highbridge. We assist our clients with their deliverability, email design, email inbox placement, and campaign management.
Completely agree with these email marketing mistakes.
I also feel that these are the most common mistakes which most of the email marketers make. Sending emails with boring subject is very much common mistake.
I never open any email which don’t attract my eyes. I always ignore or delete such emails instantly.
Email marketers should understand that nobody wants to waste their time in reading boring emails. If you really want to convert them then you must have to send emails with having eye catchy, attractive and promising subject line. Because It is the only line which readers read first.
So taking care of it can improve your skills.
I am glad that you have listed all the major email marketing mistakes here so that we can learn them and can avoid them. Thanks for sharing it with us. 😀
Most people make these mistakes, but every mistake can never be avoidable. Still, the important ones like strong cta spelling and grammar should always be checked. How can anyone create an engaging email? Can you suggest something?
There are a number of headline recommendation engines out there, many powered by artificial intelligence. Perhaps check out SlayerAI?