Email marketing strategies may be found all over the internet. Even with enough resources, errors may occur. These are little and major errors that are easy to ignore but may cost you email openings and click-throughs.

To save you from making the same mistake as everyone else, here’s a list of the most frequent email marketing blunders and how to avoid them.

Subject line is overhyped

Most people despise headlines that indicate something and then reveal that it is not the same thing when you click through. This undermines confidence and is not worth the click.

Consider Buzzfeed as an example. This email’s subject line is “Hi, You’re Fired.” The newsletter’s top piece contained footage of individuals making mistakes on the job, so the subject wasn’t completely unsuitable.

BUT THE SUBJECT LINE WAS SUPER AGGRESSIVE

When you send emails like “Hi, You’re Fired,” you might soon lose that trust.

Message preview is overlooked

Pre-headers are a great way to augment the subject line and offer the subscriber another incentive to read the email.

They’re particularly significant for businesses that utilize extremely short subject lines, since the pre-header takes up the character space that would be used for a subject line. You only have a few seconds to capture a subscriber’s attention, so why not utilize all of your available tools?

Most of the companies in this snapshot from a random portion of an inbox utilized pre-header text to offer context to their subject line, while others used virtually the SAME wording as their subject line, and one (Dillards) complemented a monotonous subject line with even more boring pre-header text. Which email would you choose to open?

Email address or From Name is “noreply”

It is not acceptable to use a generic email “from name” such as “admin” or “noreply.” People want to communicate with other people rather than inboxes.

When a company sends an email from a “noreply” account (or one that is never checked), it’s actually stating, “We don’t want to communicate to you.” Many teams overlook this engagement opportunity.

Email focused on the product, not the customer

Emails should be used to benefit the consumer, not the product. The marketing team, not the product team, is often in control of the email flow, and their objective is to expand.

This email from Squarespace is excellent in this regard.

This email by Home Depot fails at this.

Email contains too many calls to actions (CTAs)

There are far too many requests to action in emails (CTAs)

Most email marketers strive to accomplish too much in one campaign email since they don’t want to send more than required out of fear of unsubscribes. Trying to achieve too much in an email requires readers to perform too much effort to determine whether or not your communication is relevant to them.

It is preferable to keep things simple, with just one piece of material and a clear call to action to download.

Here’s an example of an email from HubSpot that accomplishes this well.

While Wistia’s email fails by embedding the video itself in the email. It is preferable to have clickable thumbnail pictures that instantly lead to a landing page containing the movie.

Emails miss out on power of plain text

Don’t undervalue the power of plain text email! Beautifully designed emails for newsletters and product updates may sometimes boost conversion rates. However, for your initial onboarding email, consider sending a brief, plain text letter from a genuine person on your team.

Popular style of designed welcome email.

However, if these emails become more basic like this, they will be more individualized and easier for the readers to obtain.

Conclusion

Email marketing tactics vary from one business to the next. What matters is how you display your subject line, preheader, and CTAs to fit your subscribers’ interests. You will become smarter in your email marketing initiatives by learning from the errors of others.

Still up for learning? Watch this video from Hayden Bowles about the four reasons you fail in email marketing by doing these tragic mistakes.