Have you ever had that niggling wave of doubt about an email that is scheduled to be sent? “Was that link OK? Did I spell check the preview text? What about the personalisation – was it correct?” Mistakes happen, we’re all human, some can be avoided though. Take a look at some of the most common email marketing mistakes and how to avert them.

Majority of the time when we have these moments they turn out to be completely irrational and everything is actually perfect however, it never hurts to be slightly more cautious when sending emails. There’s no doubt about it, email marketing creates a lot of opportunity for mistakes.

Broken Links

Emails tend to contain multiple CTAs that link to lots of different places so it’s easy for the links to get mixed up or even broken. Before sending an email you should always preview and check that all links are working and linked to the intended destinations. Every email marketing platform should have a testing area where you can send preview versions to others to proof.

Wrong Information

Marketers often have an array of information planned for numerous lists at different times and dates so it’s very easy for the wrong email to be sent at the wrong time or to the wrong audience.
To avoid errors like this you need to ensure you sit down and plan your email marketing strategy thoroughly. Many Marketers work by a quarterly schedule to focus on what needs to be completed within the upcoming 3 months.
Find out more about building a winning email strategy here.

Dead-End Page

Emails are supposed to encourage recipients to visit your website to make a purchase or to obtain more information. Once they click a link from an email they expect to be taken to a page relating to the content within that email. Noone wants to be reading about chocolate chip brownies, click the corresponding link to be taken to a web page about one-pot chicken dinners. You need to ensure you keep the content remains along the same subject so that users stay engaged. Afterall they have clicked a CTA to find out more specific information or to make a specific purchase.
To avoid dead-end pages ensure your website and email content match up and only send users to pages that are relevant to the email subjects. Try to keep your website as up to date as possible so users access the newest information/products.

Unthought About Content

There’s nothing worse than receiving an email that is completely irrelevant to you or your interests. Why would you want to know about the latest ham and bacon deals when you are a strict vegetarian?
To combat this nightmare think about including segmentation and dynamic content within your emails to allow the content to be tailored to its recipients.

Wrong Personalistation

With personalisation becoming a primary part of email marketing, we’re seeing more and more mistakes made with names. This could include simply forgetting to replace the placeholder or actually getting a recipients’ name wrong.
A recent example includes an email from Matalan with the subject line and title both addressing me as ‘Keith’ – ‘Welcome to the family Keith’. Obviously, my name is not Keith, it’s Rupert, so this is clearly a personalisation mistake.

Matalan

To avoid this from happening you should always use the preview tool before scheduling an email. This way you should be able to flick through the names of recipients to ensure the field is appearing correctly.
You should always remember to add default text in case there is no data in this field, this could simply be ‘Subscriber’ or ‘Recipient’.