10 Email Marketing Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

There’s a reason why Email Marketing Specialist is a whole-ass job title. Since email marketing is one of the most effective conversion methods in marketing, there’s a lot of pressure on an email’s shoulders. Plus, email is both an art and a science. Brands need to be great at both creating engaging content and managing the technical aspects of platforms and email construction.

Below are 10 sins that may be destroying your email marketing’s effectiveness. Warning: some of these might make you cringe at your last campaign.

1. The Bought Email Lists

What draws businesses to purchase email address lists? The alluring promise of instant scale and a ready-made audience at bargain prices. We see the appeal. However, if you look closer, you'll see it's rooted in impatience rather than strategy.

Sure, there are pros and cons to buying an email list, but what it boils down to is this: when you buy a list, you're paying to potentially damage your reputation. Each spam flag is a tiny vote of no-confidence in your domain. Stack enough of these, and email providers treat your messages with suspicion.

The worst-case scenario isn’t that the cold leads you buy are uninterested; the worst outcome is that they are actively hostile to your unsolicited content. Every unwanted email trains them to see your brand as an intruder rather than a welcomed sender. It’s better to have 100 warm leads who trust you than 1,000 cold leads who do not care.

2. The Frequency Fatigue

Businesses tend to overestimate how many emails their audience wants. Silent subscribers aren't engaged, they're simply too busy or too polite to unsubscribe. What you don’t want is to get a portion of your audience to learn to ignore your brand. Unnecessary emails. Like a friend who always asks for favors, you become someone to avoid.

Study your metrics and watch for the subtle signs of fatigue:

• Are opening rates dropping? You're hitting inbox saturation.

• Are click rates declining? Your content isn't landing anymore.

• Unsubscribe spikes? You've crossed the annoyance threshold.

One action item you should take is to define and watch your competitors. You don’t want to copy them but to spot the gaps and opportunities in your own content strategy. If everyone blasts on Mondays, your Tuesday emails may stand out more. The goal is to find optimal impact.

3. The Bait-and-Switch Blunder

Do you know that sinking feeling when a movie trailer promises action but delivers drama? Your email subscribers feel the same way when you pull a content bait-and-switch. If your audience signs up for "exclusive discounts" but gets bombarded with company updates about the company picnic and that podcast you were on, they check out. Unrelated messages lead to an "expectation violation.” And once trust breaks, it's game over. However, the fix is simple:

• Stick to what you promised.

• If you want to share different content, create a separate list.

• If you need to expand, ask permission first.

Being reliable beats being irrelevant every time.

4. The Testing Time Bomb

No one ever got fired for testing an email. But some unfortunate souls who sent a "Dear {FirstName}" to 100,000 people? Well, that’s a different story. Your biggest failures won't come from being new and novel; they'll come from cruising, thinking, "I've done this 100 times, so I don’t need to review this email before I send it." A quick pre-send routine saves your bacon. Here’s what to do:

• Open on mobile.

• Check different email clients (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Apple Mail)

• Test all links.

• Send a preview to yourself.

It takes 10 mins. That’s it! The alternative is looking like an amateur to everyone who trusts you enough to give you their email.

5. The "Spray and Pray" Syndrome

Pop quiz: What's worse than no email list? An unsegmented one.

Imagine this: you're having a get-together. Grandma Betty, your CrossFit friend and your vegan neighbor all show up. You serve everyone kale smoothies with milk. Grandma Betty asks too many questions, CrossFit bro is stoked, and the vegan leaves because she can’t have any. That’s what it’s like to have an unsegmented email list.

You're playing email roulette by sending identical content to the entire list. Many marketing "gurus" will tell you to grow your list. We will tell you to fix your segmentation first. Here are some ways to segment your lists:

1. Demographics (gender, location, age)

2. Relationship to brand (new user, long-time subscriber, inactive user)

3. Consumer habits (never purchased, recently purchased, haven’t purchased in a while)

4. User type (individual, B2B, B2C)

5. Store activity (purchased in-store, purchased online, abandoned online cart)

6. Spending (small spenders, users with big budgets)

Once you’ve segmented your list, be sure to track what people click and note when they open your emails. You may need to modify your segmentation to be successful.