At Emercury we love to help email marketers boost their profits and results with email marketing. And I find that talking about email marketing mistakes is one of the most efficient ways to help steer people in the right direction.
Fortunately for you, over the past decade of helping email marketers I have picked up on the main patterns out there. In fact, I can tell you exactly what the most common mistakes are, and the easiest ways to fix them for an instant boost in conversions and results. With that said, here are the top 13 mistakes we see in the real world, and how to fix them.
1) Choosing an all-in-one email marketing provider
Marketers are starting to wake up and realize that they have been sold on a big lie. You see, over the past couple of years marketing platforms have gotten popular by promising a dream. The promise was that you would be able to get this one piece of software, and you could handle all of your marketing from inside of it.
That is the promise of an “all-in-one” solution. However, despite years of promises, nobody has managed to deliver on this. And this is why leaner “core-centric” platforms like Emercury are seeing huge growth these days. We keep seeing veterans abandoning their all-in-ones and moving to Emercury.
Why the big shift?
People are starting to realize that with all-in-ones, core email marketing features take a back seat to fancier “bells and whistles” features. Some of these are things that don’t contribute much to your bottom-line, but sound “cool” on a spec sheet. Others are features that are best handled by specialized third-party tools and not your core platform.
The main gripe I hear with people escaping all-in-ones is that you can’t pick and choose which features you want. So you have to pay outrageous pricing that covers things you never asked for. A lot of the time you will already have a great third-party tool in your toolkit, but still end up paying your all-in-one for including a lower-quality version of the same thing.
However, I think the most important problem is that all of this focus on “doing everything” comes at the cost of sacrificing the core email marketing features that bring most of the profit. In essence, you end up paying more, in order to make less money.
When you move onto a “core-focused” platform like Emercury, the opposite happens. You can treat Emercury as the core of your marketing stack. All the most important features that contribute the most to your bottom-line are included. And then, for everything else, just plug in your favorite tools.
2) Sending emails at the wrong time of day
If you have ever run paid ads, you might be familiar with the fact that the time of the day can make a huge difference in your outcome. The exact same ad might produce as much as double or triple the results in the morning than it does at lunch time for example.
A similar phenomenon is true when it comes to email. Your emails (and especially broadcasts) will perform quite differently based on when you send them out.
Now, I’ll be honest here and admit we haven’t talked too much about this topic on the blog, even though it is super important and a common mistake. But there is a reason for this: the advice would be based on looking at your account and what you have tried, and then we would go from there.
In fact, I would caution you away from trying to find out on google “what is the best time to send email” and accepting that you will need to test. Fortunately, a platform like Emercury makes it exceptionally easy to stagger your emails and compare.
If you need more help with this, consider that some of our plans include this kind of personalized and hands-on guidance. And if you would like to get a sense for this kind of personalized attention first, consider requesting a free demo.
3) Shiny Toy Syndrome
This is related to the first point, and it is a case of marketers leading marketers astray. You see, it isn’t very exciting to keep writing and talking about the basics, which is why most marketing platforms and “experts” talk about the “cool cutting edge stuff”. However, this isn’t where the profit lies.
Now don’t get me wrong, we love advanced and cutting edge stuff. In fact, this is why we work very hard to implement all the latest and advanced features that advanced marketers need. However, the bulk of your profits will come from a quality implementation of the foundational stuff.
And in fact, you might notice a pattern in this guide. Most of the mistakes in this article will revolve around not implementing a foundational concept, technique or idea. You won’t see a mistake like “Didn’t try out the latest hyped-up technique quickly enough”. All the biggest mistakes revolve around foundational concepts.
From my personal experience, I find that email marketers fail to implement super obvious stuff due to procrastination. And I find that this procrastination comes from the fact that we’re bombarded with information about the most advanced and complex ways to do something.
We often forget that we can just implement a basic simple version and get most of the same benefits. I know that sounds kind of vague, so I am going to give you a specific example in the next point.
4) Failing to personalize
I think that personalization is the perfect example when it comes to people failing to implement something simple that can give a ton of instant results. And the main reason is that these days we’re bombarded with how cool and advanced personalization can be.
You can make personalization so fine-tuned that no two people have the same experience. You can have intelligent systems that track people’s actions and then adjust the marketing in real-time. While this does sound cool, it can prevent you from doing the simplest form of personalization.
If thinking about “implementing personalization” makes you visualize that most-developed and complicated version, you will never get started on implementing it. So one tip that I love to give to people is that they should just implement the oldest form of personalization first.
The oldest secret
You know how when you get an email from big-time marketers the subject line will contain your name? This is achieved using something called merge tags. And here’s the best part. These are super easy to utilize, and there is no excuse to not start using them today.
You will see an instant boost in open rates, click through rates, conversion rates, and in the end an instant boost in profits. And yet, you can start using them seconds from now, it is that easy.
But that’s not all! At Emercury we’ve thought very hard about how we can take the simplicity of merge tags, but infuse them with the power of more advanced personalization. This is how we came up with “smart personalization”.
It is as easy to utilize as merge-tags, but instantly gives you some of the more advanced coolness of more advanced personalization technology. To learn more about smart personalization, check out the announcement post here.
5) The big one: lacking consistency
If there is one thing that does the most damage to most email marketers, then it has to be this one. What I find common amongst email marketers is that they tend to do email marketing in “spurts”.
They will have a super-motivated period where they get all excited about email marketing, and send a bunch of emails and campaigns. They will often also test all the latest techniques and features all at once.
This is often followed by periods of “radio silence” where they focus on other parts of their business or marketing. They might go for months of sending very few or even no emails at all.
As you might imagine, this kind of inconsistency can do you damage in a lot of ways. Your subscribers won’t take you seriously, and neither will the inbox providers. In fact, this is almost the perfect recipe to destroy your reputation and deliverability.
Fortunately, the solution is simple
Relying on motivation is the culprit here. So the easy fix is to set a consistency guideline for yourself. For example it might be running 1 campaign a month, and sending 1 value-driven email a week.
What if you’re not motivated and can’t come up with ideas every week? Well, this is where the second secret comes in. Since you know that your motivation will come in spurts, just stockpile your output.
By this I mean that you should prepare your campaigns and write emails months in advance. It also involves erring on the pessimistic side and doing some math. If you think you can produce 8 emails a month, set your plan to email at least 4 times a month. And then prepare material (or at least ideas and drafts) based on this frequency.
6) Not letting go of dead-weight
Look, nobody likes saying goodbye. You’ve spent money, time and effort to get leads onto your list. So it’s normal that it feels like “defeat” or “throwing money away” to remove subscribers.
However, this is just an illogical emotion, and you have to remind yourself that keeping them around is counterproductive and hurting you in many ways.
The biggest issue is that it hurts your reputation with the inbox providers, which in turn means more of your emails end up in the spam folder, resulting in lower profits and ineffective campaigns.
The fact is that if you have a lot of “dead weight” in your list, what the algorithms see is that “you’re sending a bunch of email and getting ignored”. This is a very bad signal, which creates a downward spiral which destroys your deliverability.
Fortunately, it is possible to give inactive subscribers one last chance at revival, and do so effectively, but more on that in the next point.
7) Failing to utilize re-engagement campaigns
I am often surprised by how many email marketers fail to utilize re-engagement and win-back campaigns. Especially since all the knowledge to do this is right at your fingertips. In fact, we put up a super popular guide called How to Make a Killer Re-engagement Email Series and Win Back Lost Subscribers, so feel free to check that one out.
It covers everything you need to know, step-by-step, with an action guide that tells you exactly how to go about it, how to tell it’s time to remove people from a list, and when to give them another chance.
All in all, there is no excuse to keep committing this mistake and failing to at least give revival a chance. You’d be surprised how many people you can win-back with a well crafted re-engagement campaign.
8) Using too much hype or clickbait
I know that it seems like clickbait is all the rage these days, and it might just be. We see it in YouTube video titles, and even media outlets are slowly starting to utilize more and more hype in an attempt to garner more clicks.
However, you have to realize that email is different because it is a lot more personal. The greatest secret behind the effectiveness of email is just how personal it feels. If you betray the subscriber’s trust by trying to trick them into opening an email, they will feel betrayed.
In fact, by utilizing hype and clickbait tactics you are doing the exact opposite of the number one strategy that makes email successful. You see, email is all about building trust and deepening a relationship. Utilizing tricks to get a couple of boosts in open rates will just end up hurting you in the long run.
Now, I’m not saying you need to be boring
The best email marketers can produce exciting click-inducing subject lines, and do storytelling in such a way that it is exciting, and comes close to clickbait. But, it never crosses that line, and that right there is the secret.
Now, let me be honest with you, that is not an easy skill to master. Having an ability to entice people into clicking and reading your emails, whilst not crossing the line takes time to develop. It’s not a skill you’re going to acquire overnight.
Fortunately, the good news is that email marketing works just as fine even if you’re not a master marketer. And in fact, it’s ok to err on the side of being “boring” rather than risk coming across as spammy. With practice, and over time you can become better at emails that are exciting, yet not spammy. Until then, err on the side of caution.
9) Failing to do warmups and stagger sends
This is another one of those things that has brought a flock of email veterans and their huge lists to Emercury. We are kind of famous for our expertise and strategies on warming up email lists. This is one of those things that email veterans love to utilize as it is crucial to improving deliverability, and that in turn boosts profitability many times over.
If you’re just starting out and your lists are still kind of small, I wouldn’t say that this is a huge mistake. However, as your list grows, you will want to learn more about the concept of staggering your emails.
For example, the moment you start having decent-sized segments, you will want to utilize a simple strategy such as for example sending to the warmer segment an hour before you send to the colder segment.
Now, I know this all sounds a bit vague, however unfortunately I can’t get more specific without looking at your actual list and needs. Fortunately, this kind of personalized attention is included with some Emercury plans. And if you want to get a sense for this kind of one-on-one attention, feel free to request a free demo while I still have time for free demos.
10) Lacking a proper welcome sequence
This is another one of those core mistakes that I see way too often. I often find that it tends to come in tandem with the issue of inconsistency. And that right there is a deadly combination that guarantees you will destroy your deliverability.
However, if I had to choose what to fix first, I would go with making sure that you implement a welcome sequence of some sort. Ideally you would do this from day one. This is for several reasons that I will go into now.
The first thing you have to understand about welcome emails (and sequences) is the secret behind their massive power. It all comes down to the fact that your very first email, if sent right after sign up, will always be your most engaged email. It will always have the highest open and click through rates.
This means that it is imperative to leverage this and write a good welcome email that starts off the relationship and prepares them for future emails. Even if you did nothing else, this alone would improve long-term engagement by a measurable degree.
And even if you procrastinate later on (which you shouldn’t), the damage will be much smaller if you made a good first impression. The worst thing is if you fail to welcome them to your list, send no emails for months, and then out of nowhere send a sales campaign. They will have no clue who you are, and very likely to mark you as a spammer.
Why stop at a single welcome email though? That is the bare minimum and something I think every list owner must implement from day one. But if you really want to leverage the welcoming window, consider creating a full-on welcome sequence.
To learn more about this, check out our super popular guides on best practices for welcome emails, and how to create a welcome email series.
11) Never looking at your metrics
To be fair, not every platform makes metrics as easy and simple as Emercury. However, in any case, not paying attention is a big mistake. Remember: if you want to get the best possible results in email marketing fast, you have to utilize the iterative process. And tracking your metrics over-time is at the core of this process.
But what is this iterative process? Well, it is simply the fastest and most straightforward way to get better at email marketing. It is a way to ensure that you keep getting better at all aspects of email marketing, and boosting your conversions and profits along the way.
The process is simple and only involves two steps. Look at your metrics to find out what is and isn’t working. Then, iterate on it and try something else. Repeat this process, and you will become a master email marketer in no time.
12) Failing to A/B Test
This is another of those things that Emercury makes really simple to use and implement. And if you want to iterate faster, A/B testing is your best friend. Why wait for the results to come back, and only then try something else? With A/B testing you can try two alternatives at the same time and understand what works much faster.
If you haven’t gotten an Emercury account yet, I warmly recommend getting one of the plans that supports it and giving A/B testing a go. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to use this feature. So there is not much of an excuse to procrastinate on this one.
13) Clicking send without doing a test first
We all get a little excited and want to click that send button as quickly as possible. But please remember that even small mistakes in your email can cost you a lot in terms of lost revenue and results, or even worse, hurt your deliverability.
In fact, you can look at this as a rule: never send an email without doing your two major tests first. The first kind of test is the manual one. In Emercury you just click the “send test” button. Also don’t forget that you can choose your “test group” in case you want to send the test to multiple email addresses.
Next, open those inboxes, and give the received email a quick glance over, just to make sure there aren’t some obvious mistakes. The funny things is that with most mistakes, they were right there in the editor, but you never noticed. It is is only when you see the email inside of an inbox environment that you notice the mistakes. It happens to all of us, so just make a habit of sending test emails.
The second kind of test you will want to do comes courtesy of Emercury research and development. We’ve worked very hard to implement all the best practices and checks inside of a “one-click automated test”.
Just click the “content scoring” button, and our automated testing system will send the email to a special testing server, and check it against all the important criteria. You will then be given both a score and a checklist of everything that’s done well or needs improvement.
Bonus Mistake: Trying to do it all on your own
There is no need to go at this alone. While we do put out a lot of free content to help you, nothing beats a one-on-one conversation. In these articles we try to help clarify things as best as possible. However, every business is different, so we have to generalize.
Do you want to understand better how to implement all the best practices in your specific business? If so, let’s have a chat. At the moment I am still able to do some free demos, so be sure to book one while I can still do these.
I would love to hear about your specific needs, challenges and any confusion you might have about best practices. And then, help you see how you can use Emercury to improve your bottom-line.
Alternatively, or in addition to booking a free demo, you can also grab a username for our forever-free-plan while we still have it. It’s probably the most generous email marketing automation plan on the planet. We include almost every feature in this plan, with very few restrictions.
Remember, you get to keep this plan for life, for free… Provided that you grab a username while registrations are still open. Be warned, we might decide to pull this way-too-generous offering at any point. So click that link to check if we still allow registrations.
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