The 6 Most Common Mistakes in Email Marketing Campaigns

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

It is easy to get started on creating an Email Marketing Campaign however, it is also easy to make these mistakes when sending it out.

In this article, we will share with you the 6 most common mistakes when creating and sending your Email Marketing Campaign. Let’s get started!

1. Not checking your campaign’s email subject line

It is important to always check your subject line, it will determine whether your email will be open by your subscribers.

Most Email Service Providers(ESPs) will check if the email subject line is empty before you launch your campaign. However, you should also check if your subject line is correct.

2. Not having a Preview Text for your Email

This is one of the most common mistakes in Email Marketing because Email Preview Text is actually optional. Even on most ESPs, they are not considered as a required field.

Below is an example of the preview text in an iOS Apple Mail Inbox,

Example of iOS Apple Mail Inbox

Email Preview Text is shown after the subject line, as you can see it can hold more text than the subject line in Apple Mail. This means we can use it along with a catchy line to improve our open rates!

Did you know that preview text is actually set inside the HTML email template? Our Mailworks Email WYSIWYG Editor helps you to include the preview text easily from our settings panel.

If you haven’t tried our editor yet, you can do so by signing up an free account here.

Better open rates? YAY!

3. Images do not have an alt text

Another common mistake is that images in your email templates do not have an alt text. Having an alt text for your image is still considered important, some email clients block images by default.

Do note that, there are subscribers who block images by default too. Since we can’t be too sure about when images are being blocked, we want to make sure our images have an alternate way of conveying it’s message.

If you’re using ready made templates within an ESPs make sure you check that you add an alt text to your image. A good rule is to add alt text to images that has a message.

A good example will be hero images or even your social icons.

If you’re a developer, make sure you add the “alt” attribute to your <img> tags. Something like the following:

<img src="http://www.myawesome.com/image.jpg" alt="My Awesome Image">

Did you know that Mailworks Email WYSIWYG Editor is capable of doing this easily? You can read more about the feature here.

Below is an example using Litmus to test an email from Uniqlo with its images turned off,

A section of Uniqlo’s Newsletter Email

As you can see, their emails have a lot of images and they’ve added alt text to the images they deem important.

You can view the original email here.

4. Failing to check if your hyperlinks are correct

Similar to Image Alt Text, it is very common to have missing/incorrect hyperlinks. Always make sure all your links are tested, you can use email testing tools like Litmus or Email On Acid.

Also note that, if you’re using any tracking links, it’s good to also check if your tracking links are working.

5. Failing to check if your merge tags are correct

Most email marketing campaign includes personalisation and merge tags help to make it possible!

Note that, there are many kind of merge tags and this is because different ESPs have their own set of data and conventions on writing these merge tags.

So make sure you double check on any typo before sending it out because it can be very embarrassing when you’re sending out “gibberish” to your loyal subscribers.

6. Not doing email template testing

We can’t stress this enough, always test your email templates. There are over 30+ email clients and if your target audience spans across these 30+ email clients then you want to make sure that your email works across these clients.

By testing your emails, you can understand your audience better on what they see when they receive your emails.

Similar to image and hyperlink testing, you can use Litmus to test your emails. They provide an overview on which hyperlinks are accessible and which are not.

Summary

We hope that by sharing this article with you, it can help you correct these mistakes before sending out your perfect email campaign.

Make sure you bookmark this article as part of your checklist before sending our your campaigns.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to follow us on Medium. We are working hard to produce helpful articles for anyone interested in Email Marketing and Development.

More about Mailworks:

We are working hard to improve our existing Email WYSIWYG Editor, we encourage users to sign up with us to help us by providing more feedback.

If you haven’t sign up with us, you can do so here. We have a free plan for you, perfect for anyone who are interested in creating high quality emails.