Email Marketing Mistakes that Drive Us Crazy
- Updated on: 2018-02-03
- Read original article here
There are many pitfalls in email marketing, but some are easier to avoid than others. We recently polled some of our colleagues about their biggest inbox annoyances:
One of my biggest pet peeves is an overzealous sending frequency, which seems to happen more often with retailers. Sure, they enchant me with the first few emails. But once the honeymoon is over, I realize that they’ve inundated my inbox. I like to see what my favorite brands are up to, but I don’t need a daily update.
There are a couple of ways to avoid this email fatigue:
My pet peeve is single-column emails that you can’t read on a mobile device without pinching and zooming. These mobile emails are some of the easiest to fix because they don’t require reconfiguring the layout of the email.
To avoid the need for pinch-and-zoom, email marketers can use responsive design to increase font sizes or make tables and images scalable. With so many subscribers checking email on mobile devices, why wouldn’t marketers put in the effort to make the mobile experience better?
It bugs me when I receive an email with bad preheader text. How many times have you seen this in your inbox:
That is a wasted opportunity. Preheader text gives marketers another chance to encourage your subscriber to open the email. Engaging preheader text is one of the easiest things to do for your campaign, yet email marketers often overlook it. Plus, if the preheader text is done correctly, it won’t affect how the email is displayed when opened.
It’s easy to make a positive impact with good email accessibility, and it seems backward that we, as developers and designers, have pushed email into a non-accessible area. After all, an email is just sending words electronically – we over-complicate it with heavily-designed HTML emails.
Some of your email subscribers may be visually impaired or require adaptive tools to help them read email. It’s important that they can understand your message, too.
By making a few small code and design tweaks, we can make a huge difference in how people with accessibility challenges can consume email.
Getting an email that looks like a yard sale is overwhelming, and it’s too much work to absorb when I’m scanning hundreds of promotional emails every day.
It’s just too much!
Email marketers need to grab my attention with:
If I subscribe to your email list, you should know enough about me to make the email relevant and help me make quicker decisions. Too many choices with overwhelming amounts of images or copy will get you a fast ignore, or worse, an unsubscribe.
When was the last time you listened to an email that asked you to “forward to a friend”? Consumers don’t use it. Period.
This ask is a waste of space. Eliminate it from your email and instead, use that space for more engaging, helpful content.
It drives me crazy when a brand makes it difficult to unsubscribe from their emails. Sometimes, they make the link hard to find (ahem, 4-point font that’s the same color as the background). Other times, they require a multi-step process to opt out.
Not only is this frustrating, it also reflects poorly on the brand. If your customers want to say “no,” respect their wishes. Your email lists will be cleaner, and your marketing efforts won’t be wasted on customers who aren’t interested in your product.
While we’re at it – why is the link at the bottom of the email, anyway? Unsubscribing from an email should be as easy as it is to subscribe. Unsubscribe links should be easy to find, easy to read, and easy to use.
At Email on Acid, testing is at the core of our mission. After you’ve finished setting up your email campaign design, make sure the email looks good in every inbox. Every email client renders your HTML differently, and Email on Acid helps you test your email across the most popular clients and devices.
Try us for free for seven days and get access to email, image and spam testing. Make sure your email gets delivered and look good doing it!
