Posted by Starting and running an eCommerce email campaign is more challenging than one thinks. Planning and implementing ideas and techniques is crucial, but avoiding mistakes is equally crucial. Here I’ll show you 7 huge eCommerce email marketing mistakes
The bad is that this part is mostly overseen, not just by the newbies but even some of the big companies.
Honestly saying, there are many curves where you can slip and harm the overall results of your eCommerce email marketing campaign.
This guide touches on 7 intricacies, which, when perfected, may do magic to your campaigns.
We repeat, these are intricacies, which you may not find anywhere else. So, absorb all vital points, and write the success emails in golden letters by avoiding these Ecommerce Email Marketing mistakes!
Mistake #1: Ignoring the importance of email list verification
Many of the lists of big eCommerce email marketing mistakes may not actually start from here, but honestly, email verification deserves to stand at the top. You can certainly apply a thousand tricks to spice up your email marketing campaign.
However, if you haven’t nailed your email list verification, you certainly won’t be able to attain success the way you want. Ignoring this important part means inviting issues like low deliverability rate, decrease in sender reputation, low open rates, etc., and it may even lead to getting blacklisted.
But what Email verification mean?
It’s nothing but eliminating all the fake, inactive, etc., emails from your list and keeping just the authentic mail in your list, and that directly (and highly) affects the overall results.
But what exactly happens if you skip email verification?
Well, actually, a lot of things might happen to you, and the list below explains the same:
- Your data will not be accurate, and you may make wrong decisions
- Increases email bounce rate
- You’ll have to put more efforts in fixing bounces
- You’ll end up spending more money
- Decreases sender’s reputation
- You will never get accurate campaign insights
- Invites email deliverability issues
- Decreases customer engagement, which harms the brand reputation
- Decreases campaign ROI
- Your sales team will never get a reliable database to work on
- Pushes you towards punishments and fines
- Increases spam complaints
These were the broad negatives, and if we start counting the minor ones as well, the list will never end!
How to avoid this mistake: Purchase an email verification service
There’s no hassle in avoiding this mistake. If you don’t verify your lists sophisticatedly, you’ll lose money for sure. Why not use the same money (actually lesser) in avoiding this mistake.
MEV offers an exceptionally low costing verification service, and once you buy your preferred plan, you can simply drop your email list in the software and wait for a while (depending upon your lists’ length), and you’ll get output. The filtered list that you’ll get will be 98% accurate! Check the PRICING NOW.
Mistake #2: Cutting off subject lines
Next on our “mistakes’ list” of email marketing mistakes is cutting off subject lines. Several companies make the blunder of sending emails where the receiver can’t see the full subject line.
While it may not emerge a big deal, it can strictly impact the subscribers’ mindset to whether to engage with your emails or not.
First, cutting off subject lines is truly unprofessional. They appear sloppy, and even such, the subject line may not make proper sense because of the missing words (predicate). Not to mention, the sender risks the subject line getting cut off at the very wrong point as well, which may entirely change the email’s meaning.
In the example depicted down there, you can notice the difference between a subject line that isn’t and is cut off.
Certainly, the email with a fitted subject line looks more coherent and professional. The email subject line that’s chopped off doesn’t grammatically make any sense. If you want the receiver to take an interest in your emails, the major requirement is to keep your email subject lines within the maximum limit.
How to avoid this mistake: Preview your subject lines.
Take time to preview your email before even launching your emails to your subscribers and figure out how it will appear for your audience. You want to look at each version of your subject line to consolidate that it appears good on every device.
Since the character limit differs widely between email platforms and devices, it’s best to stick to concise and short email subject lines to make sure they don’t get chopped off on any platform.
Mistake #3: Forgoing personalization
Forgoing personalization is one of the most considerable email marketing mistakes companies make. Your subscribers receive emails from hundreds of companies contending for their attention and tough-earned dollars. If your primary aim to grab their attention, you can’t afford to neglect personalization.
Several companies shoot generic emails at their subscribers to add ease to their email marketing efforts.
The issue with this approach, however, is not everybody is interested in your brand for the same reasons. There are numerous emails in your audiences’ inboxes. Hence, it doesn’t pique their interest; they’ll certainly pass over yours.
Don’t make this email marketing mistake at all, as it can cause you to drain thousands of dollars on emails that hardly ever work.
How to avoid this mistake: Segment your subscribers’ list and personalize their emails.
Forgoing personalization is among the most considerable email marketing mistakes. However, avoiding this one is nothing tough. The two things you’ll look to do to deliver a better email experience for your subscribers: personalize their emails and Segment subscribers.
While segmenting your subscribers, you categorize them based on their interests, using other information. From this point, you can conveniently personalize the information you send to all the segments by aiming for what interests them the most.
Let’s have an example here.
If you run a clothing shop, you may have a category of women interested in nightwear and another seg
ment interested in formal clothes. Now, you’re supposed to send them emails promoting the products of interest, and that will drag them to your store.
You can push personalization a level further by including the full name of subscribers in your email. Undoubtedly, it’s a small touch, but it considerably impacts how people recognize your company.
Mistake #4: Unprofessional design
One of the most colossal email marketing mistakes marketers make is neglecting their email’s design aspect. You can’t simply slap together a handful of images, put in a few colors, and call it your day. Your design plays a terrific role in determining whether your recipients continue to engage with your email or unsubscribe you.
When your design looks sloppy or unprofessional, your audience is nowhere going to engage with your emails. Not even considering the bigger fail – unsubscription, you can at least consider that your mails are gonna get closed soo.
How to avoid this mistake: Create professional designs.
To avoid this email marketing error, you should begin considering the importance of investing in design for your upcoming email campaigns. While crafting your emails, you’ll need to choose a design that displays your business’ image well.
Mistake #5: Neglecting your CALL TO ACTIONS
Moving further in the list of eCommerce email marketing blunders, here we talk about neglecting the CTAs (call to action) in your email.
Now, what’s the benefit of investing in any email marketing campaign where you’re unable to get your desired action completed.
Your CTA is among the most critical parts of your email as it helps guide your recipients to take the next step. Not having a CTA in your email means users won’t know how and where to proceed.
There are actually numerous mistakes companies make with their CTA buttons, and some common mistakes include:
- Misplacing CTAs
- Using CTAs that aren’t clear
- Using CTAs that aren’t descriptive
- Choosing the wrong or unmatching color for your CTAs
How to avoid this mistake: Optimize your CTA buttons like a pro
To avoid this CTA blunder, you should start optimizing your CTA buttons. While crafting a CTA button, you should ensure that it stands out on the page, and the eye should automatically catch it.
In this example from Target, you can notice that the red CTA buttons simply stand out on the page and aren’t a pain to find.
Besides that, the user knows what exactly will happen after clicking on the button. You can notice, subscribers know that after tapping the “write a review” button, they’ll be sent to a page where they’re free to review the product they purchased.
While crafting your CTA, ensure the text is clear and notifies your audience what exactly you’re proposing them to do.
Besides that, be mindful of the placement of your CTA in the email. People may not see it If you put it at the deep bottom of the email.
Mistake #6: Neglecting the welcome email
Sixth on our list of email marketing mistakes is neglecting the welcome email. When someone considers signing up your email list, you shouldn’t leave them hanging. The very first action after the subscription is done appreciating their action of joining your email list while also offering them more information about your company and offerings.
Many businesses neglect the importance of sending a welcome email, leaving the new subscribers hanging. Never make this email marketing blunder, or else it may send a negative message to the subscriber and make them feel like your business doesn’t find them important.
How to avoid this mistake: Send a well-designed welcome email.
The best technique to avoid this email marketing blunder is – simply to send a welcome email in which you’ll want to:
- Thank you the subscriber for being a part of your email list
- Explain what they’re likely to receive in the future after signing up for your emails
- Highlight a few main services or products of your business
Mistake #7: Sounding desperately salesy
This next blunder is one of the commonest email marketing blunders modern-day companies make while doing email marketing. While sending emails to interested prospects, your target is to turn those prospects into customers, which actually needs to style, and even more importantly, patience.
To get sales faster, several companies will get desperately sales with their emails, and that’s something that deters subscribers.
Now, it’s crucial to remember that email is an awesome place to pitch your services or products. However, you don’t want to overdo it. Now, in case you’re always bombarding your subscribers with desperate pitches for your services or products, you risk annoying them, and that’s a great way of losing subscribers.
How to avoid this mistake: Stay mindful while framing your emails.
While crafting your emails, stay mindful of what exactly you’re saying and in what style. When you’re crafting more sales-focused emails, consider that you’ll have subscribers at various points in the buying cycle.
What about having an example?
You may have somebody who freshly subscribed to your emails and is keen to learn more about your offerings. Lush’s email, shown below, is a superb example of what would be delivered to subscribers who aren’t that ready to convert and have the desire to get to know your brand deeper and better.
This email touches on the pain point of the subscriber and pitches products from the Lush’s brand as a solution. Undoubtedly it does have a salesy touch, but it’s not overdone, and that’s where the beauty lies.
They’re merely proposing the subscriber to get deeper info about their products, which can highly help that subscriber move further the sales funnel and lead to a conversion.
For someone who’s on the verge of conversion, you might get an inch more salesy with your emails. Here’s a cool example from June offering a discount for people looking to pre-order their smart toaster.
Here also, the email pitches their product a bit but isn’t in any way overly pushing it. While craft your emails, you should balance information with the product’s or service’s pitch.
Key takeaways
Consumers’ top problems with accessing messages from brands on their mobile devices are waiting for images to load, disliking scrolling, etc. People have less time and patience concerning email, and several studies agree with the same.
That’s, fundamentally, at the root of several of the biggest complaints. Putting it simply: consumers are busy and aren’t obligated to go through marketing messages in their inboxes.
Today, emails come in too frequently, have bad writing and design, aren’t what’s expected, render poorly on mobile devices, aren’t what’s expected, then they will be ignored, unsubscribed, or even flagged as spam.
Are you looking to avoid such fates? Marketers should do the following to mitigate and eliminate those subscriber irritations:
- Begin with the emails’ writing and design. Now, if writing and designing aren’t exceptional, then the rest of your email strategy is actually irrelevant. Read your campaigns out loud, and send them to colleagues to review. Further, you can utilize online tools to catch your mistakes and attain perfection.
- Focus on frequency. Test various cadences and volumes to figure out what audiences will and won’t tolerate. Monitor unsubscribes closely and gauges whether you’re going too far.
- Relevance is the key. Invest in segmentation and personalization to ensure audiences aren’t receiving irrelevant emails. You should examine metrics such as click-through rate and open rate to assess relevance for diverse audiences.
- Get clear permission. Undoubtedly, permission is important. Comply with legal guidelines ( GDPR, CAN-SPAM, etc.) and be frank when onboarding subscribers. You should understand regulations across various jurisdictions in which your audiences live, not just your home base. It will save you!
- Optimize for mobile. Never just look at the design, and the size of the images and length of the text is equally considerable. View test emails on multiple devices with different-sized screens to figure out the exact experience of your subscribers.