5 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Emails

Email marketing is an indivisible part of every business’s activity. It’s hard to imagine a company that doesn’t send emails to its customers.

And various statistics prove the importance of email marketing. For instance,

• 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers.
• 41.5% of brands say that email marketing is very critical to business success.
• 37% of companies are increasing their email budget.

Taking into account the constant use of email marketing, you cannot fail this activity. So, you need to know what mistakes to avoid.

In this article, you will learn the five most common mistakes that can spoil your emails.

1. Poor or irrelevant email subject

The truth is that 47% of email subscribers open emails based solely on the subject line. That leads to one conclusion - your subject line can’t fail.

This way, do not consider the email’s title as something unimportant. Instead, write a couple of options, show them to the team, and choose the best option.

How do you know that your subject lines are doing fine??

Well, you can refer to some further statistics. In fact, Statista reports that an average open rate is 18%. Of course, this metric can slightly differ based on the industry you are in.?

Nevertheless, if you notice that your open rate is much lower than the average rate - you are doing something wrong.

Let’s check some examples to understand what’s better for your subject line. For instance, you run a houseplants store. What can you say about these subjects?

• Buy cool plants
• We have many plants - pick what you want
• WE HAVE MANY PLANTS

One thing that characterizes them is that they are too generic. Though you can get some open rates, you still won’t use your email’s potential to its fullest.

Instead, I recommend trying the following topics:

• How to take care of your Zanzibar Gem
• 15% Discount on all Zanzibar Gem

These subjects are clear and let clients know what they can expect when opening an email. So, be specific when mastering your subjects. Try and test various approaches to understand what your customers prefer the most.

Moreover, you check the article dedicated to creating effective subject lines in 2022 .

2. Low-quality content

There are more essential data about email marketing I have to share with you. Optinmonster reports that

• 40% of B2B marketers report email marketing is a critical strategy for their success. It's also the main source of lead generation.?
• 80% of B2C professionals say that email marketing grows customer retention.

That depicts email marketing's importance once again. So, there is room for creativity and testing; thus, you can let yourself be unattentive or irresponsible when mastering letters.??

After clients open your email, you should grasp their attention with the broadcast’s content. In any possible way, your texts should be average or poorly written. Anyway, what content is low-quality, in my opinion:

• Totally irrelevant content. That’s when the letter’s text doesn’t match the subject line. Avoid this situation, or you risk lowering your CTR and growing bounce rate.?
• Content without editing. Just like your articles, emails require editing & proofreading. Avoid misspelled words, grammatical errors, etc.
• No formatting. Emails should be easy to read and understand. To make this possible, use headings, numbered and bulleted lists, different fonts. (Sure thing, do not go overboard.)
• Half-assed design. Design matters as it can get you more clicks through and stand out from competitors. So, take your time and create an awesome visual presentation of your letter.

Accordingly, if you avoid the mistakes I mentioned above, you can achieve better results with your email campaigns.?

And, of course, there is always a space to grow. So, check how to excel content for your email letters .

3. Too many links and CTAs

Any activity you make should have a final goal. That means your landing pages, articles, emails, etc., should urge customers to take certain actions.

Once again, statistics prove this - 50.7% of users make a purchasing decision under the influence of emails. So, your email without CTAs is useless in a predominant number of cases.

Nevertheless, should you put a link or a button after every abstract? My answer is no! Instead of motivating your consumers to take some action, you will overwhelm them with too many opportunities.

So, what can you do to balance your links and CTAs?

• Put only vital links. Every letter you send should have a goal. The links and buttons with CTAs you add to your email should serve the goal. That said, put two to five links based on the letter’s length and type.
• Ensure readers can read the goal of the link or button. When you add links and buttons, create a straightforward call to action. Your clients should understand what to expect after clicking the link or button.

These short tips will help your letters be more effective and clear. It’s always a good idea to A/B test your email campaigns to find the perfect combination of text - visuals - buttons & links.

After all, it should be easy for your subscribers to navigate through your emails. Thus, have enough CTAs to direct email readers where you want them to go.

4. No segmentation

The biggest mistake most beginner email marketers make is not making a segmentation for the company’s email subscribers.?

If you don’t segment your audience, you lose a lot. To be honest, 78% of professionals assume subscriber segmentation to be the most effective strategy for email marketing. Moreover, it’s essential because,

• 85% of companies use segmentation for lead generation,
• 84% of firms use segmentation for sales,
• 78% of businesses use segmentation for lead nurturing,
• 74% of companies use segmentation for customer retention.

So, if you don’t divide your subscribers into specific groups, you won’t achieve any results. You risk getting really low open rates and no conversion.

How can you optimize your email delivery and create the correct groups? Firstly, create subscription forms that allow multiple choices. Let’s refer to our example (house plant store).

You can create the next segments:

• Shoppers who want to receive discounts and special offers,
• Shoppers who want to get tips about plants’ care,
• Shoppers who are willing to know about new products.

Then allow multiple choice for these categories. After this, you will be able to divide your subscribers into various groups and send correct emails to each segment.?

This way, every subscriber of yours will receive useful emails they are truly interested in. And when you build trust with your subscribers, you can try upselling or offering some other products to check or buy.?

(Yet, any way, ensure everything you suggest correlates with the letter’s topic and is valuable for your customers.)

5. A too long or short text

Not only content quality but also its length will influence your success. Just think how frustrating emails with too much text in them could be. Or how uninformative too short letters are.

Anyway, do you have any examples to stick to? Well, the average email letter length is 435 words . So, you can go by this number.

Yet, as always, you should remember common sense. If 235 words are enough to uncap the main idea - go for it! The same refers to the longer text. Do you need 535 words? Fine, but then don’t forget to make a really thought-out structuring to make everything easy to read.

Nevertheless, if you feel like your email is going to be way too long (like 700+ words), it’s better to divide it into two parts. This way, you will still provide interesting and useful information for your readers. Plus, you will get two email broadcasts for your content plan. Or you can share a part of the information in the letter and direct readers to your blog to read the rest.

But what if you feel that your email is complete with 200 words? That’s fine (as we said earlier). Yet, you can make it more informative/professional/pleasant-looking by adding visuals. Images, videos, gifs - all of them are your great assistants, especially in this case.

Conclusion

Email marketing ROI numbers a whopping 4200%. In other words, you can earn $42 for every $1 you spend. That’s why email marketing is an extremely effective channel, and I strongly recommend using it.

In this article, I showed the most common mistakes you can make when writing emails.?

Check them attentively and ensure you DO NOT MAKE any of them. Don’t forget to extend your knowledge and mastery by reading helpful articles , testing new approaches, and getting feedback from your subscribers.