4 Email Blast Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The human touch is both a blessing and a curse for an email marketer. On the one hand, creating and sending email marketing campaigns (aka email blasts) can be effective at reaching and engaging with large audiences. But on the other, as with all humans, we are prone to making mistakes.

Although email mistakes are never 100% avoidable, we’re here to help you get as close as possible! The following mistakes and best practice tips below will help you send mistake-free email blasts.

Mistake #1: Overdoing it—because email fatigue is real

Is your email campaign calendar bursting at the seams? You may feel tempted to fill out your email marketing calendar with consistent promotional emails and newsletters to maintain communication with your recipients. But take a step back and consider a favorite brand of yours. Do you get emails from them every day, and if you do, do you open them?

Tip: this is a great time to ensure that you have a preference center set up to avoid email overload.

Review your email campaign calendar and compare against your current resources. If you 1) have enough quality content and 2) time to create high-quality campaigns, then you may not need to reduce your frequency if your engagement remains steady or improves.

It’s far better to send fewer email campaigns with high-caliber content than to send out emails just for the sake of quantity. Learn more about sending out the right amount of emails and fighting email fatigue.

Mistake #2: forgetting to segment your list

If you send the same email to your entire email list without considering how each recipient prefers to be communicated with, your engagement levels are likely going to drop.

Fortunately, your segments don’t have to be hyper-granular. And the less time you have, the less you will be able to do this. But fortunately, a little bit here can go a long way.

Some ways that you might consider segmenting include:

Demographics – Where do your recipients reside and how can that help you customize content?
Engagement levels – Consider splitting your list into 2 or 3 segments based on how engaged your recipients are with your emails. The less engaged segment receives re-engagement messaging, while the highly engaged may receive special tips or special access to services.
Recent activity – If you can track user activity within your product, consider sending re-engagement campaigns to those who haven’t logged in for over a month.

For a deeper dive on email list segmentation, check out SendGrid’s email segmentation best practice guide.

Mistake #3: sending people to a broken link or a confusing landing page

You’ve likely spent a lot of time designing, creating, and writing copy for your email blast campaigns. If a link you provide 404s or directs users to a page that doesn’t align with the messaging or promise in your email, your recipients will likely become frustrated.

Avoid this costly mistake by taking enough time to ensure that all landing pages align with your CTA and make the conversion path as seamless as possible. If that means having fewer CTAs in your emails, that’s ok too.

Finally, implement and follow a consistent pre-send routine so that you can check these factors before you press send. Check out Your Pre-Send Email Checklist blog post for a good start on creating your own.

Mistake #4: not proofing your email copy

Nothing stings more for a writer than a typo. The pressure that writers usually put on themselves to craft creative content only to have a typo ruin everything is nothing short of a sour experience for both the writer and the reader.

You can avoid this scenario as much as possible by thoroughly reviewing and enlisting at least one other person to proof your copy. An outside party is incredibly valuable and good at catching mistakes that you’ve missed.

Double-checking is great, triple checking is better. Take as much time as you have to review before sending.

Finally, it’s important to not be too hard on yourself when you make a mistake (trust me it will happen to you at some point!). We all make them from time to time and the more pressure and stress you put on yourself can increase not only your overall stress levels, but the chance of continuing to miss typos in your editing phase. No. Thank. You!

Takeaways

An email blast can be a powerful way to send email marketing campaigns. Don’t let mistakes, both minor and major, derail your efforts. Taking the following steps before sending will reduce the number of mistakes in your emails so that you put your best email forward:

• Your content is personalized,
• Sent at the right frequency,
• Navigates users to an expected and consistent experience, and is
• Properly edited and proofed to ensure error-free emails.

For more on perfecting the art of the email blast and other email marketing best practices, check out our 2018 A-Z Email Marketing Guide.