There are some email mistakes I see time and time again that can really hinder performance.

The senders of these emails can’t be blamed too much though. After all, if no one tells them there’s something wrong with their email, how are they to know?

If you’re new to email marketing, or consider yourself to be a bit of a casual sender, there’s a good chance you may be making some of the mistakes below, that could be harming your email.

You’ve Got Too Many Calls-To-Action

The first way you could be killing your email is by including too many CTA’s (Calls-to-Action). These are buttons that contain a link prompting an action.

As people go through their inboxes, their attention is often fleeting. They move quickly from one email to the next, deciding on how to deal with it e.g. read it now, mark it as unread or flat out delete it.

As time spent on each email is small, it’s vital that subscribers can interpret, understand and engage with your email in mere seconds.

One way to keep this process fast and fluid is to reduce the of number calls-to-action in your email. Research from Elizabeth Yin discovered that click-through rates had a large drop-off after the first couple of calls-to-action.

If your email is brimming with calls-to-action you’ll want to think of breaking your message down. Keep subscribers focused on your main goal by using as few calls-to-action as possible.

Below you can see some B2B & B2C examples from Adobe & Netflix. By keeping their calls-to-action to a minimum, they are making it easier for customers to engage with their email.

You’re Sending Your Email as One Big Image

Another way you could be killing your email could be by only sending your content as one big image.

This is something we see all the time. It usually occurs when a business has a design for print and wants to share it. These usually come in the form of flyers or brochures that have been dropped in an email as a jpeg without adapting it first. Email is a totally different communication medium compared to print, so it’s important to take advantage of email’s strengths.

Emails sent as one big image will:

• Not display in email clients that block images
• Won’t contain any searchable content
• Have an increased change of being identified as spam
• Look unprofessional
• Are not suited for email (No CTA, too much text, huge images)

Adding in best practices for image heavy emails will:

• Make sure calls-to-action work with images blocked
• Increase deliverability
• Increase clicks
• Look great!

You’re Sending the Same Content to Everyone

The third and final way you may be killing your email is by sending all recipients the exact same content.

I’m about to let you in on email marketing’s biggest secret; only send people the content they really want. Obvious huh?

The biggest ‘secret’ to email marketing isn’t really a secret at all, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t take this into consideration when sending emails.

Sending relevant content is the be all and end all of email marketing. You can send a wonderfully designed, responsive and timely email, but if your subscriber doesn’t care about its content, it’s all for nothing.

By segmenting your list, you’ll make it easy to send content that your subscribers are interested in – as opposed to sending the same emails to all of your subscribers.

Sources:
Elizabeth Yin – Launchbit