Fix Them) Email marketing can be incredibly profitable – studies show an average return of about $36 for every $1 spent . Yet many businesses see disappointing results due to common mistakes. Avoiding these pitfalls can dramatically improve your email engagement and ROI. Here are the top 10 email marketing mistakes
and how to fix them
The Mistake: Simply asking people to “subscribe” without offering value. Many businesses have a generic signup box (“Join our newsletter”) and wonder why few sign up. With nothing in it for the subscriber , sign-up rates stay low. Why It Hurts: Your email list grows slowly or attracts unengaged contacts. New visitors need a compelling reason to give you their email. Without an incentive, they’ll ignore your form. How to Fix It: Offer an opt-in incentive (a lead magnet ).
This could be a discount, a free e-book, a useful checklist, or exclusive content. Make the value clear . For example, a blogger might offer a free “meal planning cheat sheet” for signing up. Use multiple signup opportunities. Don’t bury your form in one spot – place signup forms prominently on your homepage, at blog post ends, in pop-ups, etc. Over half of visitors use mobile and may never even see a sidebar form .
By featuring sign-up opportunities everywhere (header bar , slide-in pop-ups, dedicated landing pages), you’ll capture far more subscribers. Finally, clearly communicate the benefit (e.g. “Subscribe and get a 10% off coupon”) to entice sign-ups.
The Mistake: Not sending a welcome email (or series) to new subscribers. Some brands collect emails and then wait until the next newsletter or promotion to reach out, giving new subscribers radio silence initially. Why It Hurts: A missed opportunity to engage when interest is highest. The moment after someone subscribes, they’re expecting a response. If you don’t send a welcome, you squander the warmest lead – and they may forget why they subscribed at all.
Studies show welcome emails generate 320% more revenue per email than other promotions and boast extremely high open rates around 84% . By not sending one, you lose out on that engagement. How to Fix It: Set up an automated welcome email or drip campaign immediately after signup. In your welcome email, thank them for joining and deliver any promised incentive (like a discount code or free download). Introduce your brand personality and let them know what to expect in future emails (content, frequency).
This warm greeting makes new subscribers feel valued. It’s often the most-opened email you’ll ever send, so use it to start building a relationship. For instance, include a quick tip or useful resource1 related to why they signed up. A friendly, prompt welcome makes subscribers 66% more likely to engage with future emails (welcome messages often achieve 4x the open rate and 10x the clicks of standard newsletters) . Don’t miss that chance!
The Mistake: Sending emails with dull, unclear , or spammy-looking subject lines. Examples include subject lines that are too vague (“Newsletter Issue 5”), too salesy (“BUY NOW!!!!”), or just plain boring (“Company Update”). Also, using all caps or excessive exclamation points falls in this category. Why It Hurts: The subject line is your first (and often only) chance to grab attention.
Nearly 47% of recipients open emails based on the subject line alone – and a bad subject causes the email to be ignored or deleted. Even worse, 69% of people will report an email as spam just from the subject line if it looks sketchy or irrelevant. Poor subject lines lead to low open rates and can damage your sender reputation. How to Fix It: Craft compelling, concise subject lines that pique interest or promise value. Aim for about 6– 10 words; subject lines in this range have the highest open rates (around 21%) .
Use personalization and include the recipient’s name or other relevant info when possible – for example, “Jack, a special offer for you”. Emails with personalized subject lines are far more likely to be opened (studies show at least a 22–50% higher open rate) . Employ psychology: trigger curiosity (“You’ll love this secret recipe ”), urgency (“24 hours left for 50% off”), or a clear benefit (“How to save $500 this year”). Avoid spam trigger words (“Free!!!”, “Rich offer”, etc.) or excessive punctuation.
While words like “free” can sometimes boost opens by about 10% , they can also trigger spam filters – so use them sparingly and in context. It’s also wise to steer clear of overly generic terms like “newsletter” – subject lines containing "newsletter" see significantly lower opens (about an 18% drop) . Instead of “March Newsletter”, try something like “ Fresh tips for March gardening”. In short, be interesting, be relevant, and sound human.
Test different approaches over time (A/B testing subject lines is great – see mistake #9 below) to learn what your audience responds to.
The Mistake: Sending emails that lack a single, clear call to action. Perhaps your email is full of news or multiple offers, but it’s not obvious what the reader should do next. Or the CTA is weak (e.g. a bland “click here” link buried in text). Why It Hurts: Without a clear CTA, your email’s effectiveness plummets. Readers might find your content mildly interesting but then move on without taking any action.
Emails that include a focused, prominent call-to-action get far more clicks – emails with a single CTA button can boost click-throughs by 371% and sales by 1617% . Conversely, if you’re asking for too many things (e.g. “read our blog, check our products, follow us on social media”), the reader does nothing due to choice overload. How to Fix It: Decide on one primary goal for each email – and design everything (copy and layout) to drive that action.
Whether it’s “Shop the Sale,” “Download the Guide,” or “RSVP Now,” make the CTA obvious. Use a prominent button or a clearly hyperlinked text call-out. Keep the action specific and compelling: for example, “Get 50% Off Now” or “Reserve My Seat >” are better than a generic “Learn more.” It’s fine to have supporting links (like secondary articles or a postscript), but they should not distract from the main action.5 Also, visually highlight the CTA – use contrasting colors and whitespace so it stands out.
If appropriate, create a sense of urgency or scarcity in the wording (“Today only – Grab your deal”). A well-crafted CTA gives subscribers a clear next step, driving engagement and conversion. In fact, simply having one prominent call-to-action can make your emails much more effective , as the dramatic uplift in clicks shows .
The Mistake: Using email solely as a megaphone for your marketing messages and never inviting interaction. This includes “no-reply” sender addresses (which discourage responses) and content that doesn’t encourage any reader engagement or feedback. Why It Hurts: If subscribers feel they’re just being talked at, they’ll lose interest. Engagement is a two-way street. Emails that feel personal and conversational build loyalty, whereas blast-style announcements do not.
Moreover , lack of engagement (no replies, no clicks) can signal email providers that your messages aren’t valuable, harming deliverability. Studies have found that making emails more interactive and two- sided can boost engagement rates by up to 73% . Ignoring this means you miss opportunities to connect with customers and learn from them. How to Fix It: Write in a more conversational tone and invite replies or interaction.
Use a real email address (e.g. jane@yourcompany.com) rather than a donotreply@ address – this makes it feel like a real person sent it. Encourage readers to respond: you might ask a question (“What’s your biggest challenge? Hit reply and let me know – I read every response.”) or include a one-click poll or feedback link. Some ideas: include a short survey, a poll (“Which product color do you like best? Vote now.”), or solicit reviews/testimonials in your emails.
Ensure someone monitors and answers any replies you get – subscribers will be pleasantly surprised to get a human response. By treating email as a dialogue, you make subscribers feel heard and valued. This strengthens relationships and keeps them engaged. Even simple tactics – like asking for a reply or opinion – can significantly increase engagement.
For example, a B2B company found that adding a one- question survey in emails led to a much higher response rate and deeper subscriber interaction (some research shows interactive emails result in much greater engagement than static ones) . In short, encourage conversation, not just consumption.
The Mistake: Sending email too frequently or making every email a pure promotion. If every message is a “SALE!” or you’re emailing multiple times a week without clear value, subscribers experience email fatigue. Why It Hurts: People quickly tire of constant selling. If your emails are all about you (your products, your sales) and offer little benefit or interest to the reader , they’ll tune out or unsubscribe. In fact, overwhelming people with frequent offers erodes trust and increases unsubscribes .
There’s a fine line between staying top-of-mind and becoming annoying. Too many emails (or too salesy in tone) can push even interested customers to hit “unsubscribe” or mark as spam. Additionally, sending excessive emails can hurt your sender reputation and deliverability. How to Fix It: Balance your content and frequency. Instead of constant promotions, mix in value-driven content.
For example, share helpful tips, how-to articles, or stories that relate to your audience’s interests – without an immediate sales pitch. Provide entertainment or education occasionally so subscribers actually1112 enjoy your emails. When you do promote, ensure the offer is relevant and genuinely valuable (and don’t cry wolf with “urgent sale!” every other day). Also, monitor your send frequency and adjust based on engagement metrics and feedback.
It’s often better to send one great email per week than four mediocre ones. Many industries find that 1–2 emails per week is a good cadence, unless subscribers have explicitly opted into more. Pay attention to unsubscribe rates or declining opens – those can indicate you’re emailing too often. Consider letting subscribers choose email frequency or topics (via a preference center) so they feel more in control. By respecting subscribers’ inboxes and focusing on quality over quantity, you’ll maintain interest.
Remember: focus on providing value , not just making asks. When every email delivers something worthwhile (a useful insight, a special offer tailored to them, a bit of inspiration), people won’t mind hearing from you regularly. In fact, mixing content can increase engagement and trust over time .
The Mistake: Sending “one-size-fits-all” emails to your entire list without any segmentation. In other words, treating all subscribers as identical, regardless of their demographics, interests, or behaviors. For example, blasting the exact same content to customers and leads, or to people interested in different product categories. Why It Hurts: Irrelevant emails lead to low engagement. If a portion of your list always gets content that doesn’t apply to them, they’ll stop opening emails.
Worse, they might unsubscribe or mark you as spam. In fact, 56% of people unsubscribe from emails because the content is no longer relevant to them . Without segmentation, you can’t personalize effectively – and consumers expect personalization. If you send a winter boots promotion to someone who lives in a tropical climate or already bought boots, that email will flop (and appear tone-deaf).
Ultimately, failing to segment means missing out on huge performance gains: marketers report that segmented campaigns can yield far higher open and conversion rates (one source attributes a 760% increase in email revenue to segmented campaigns ). How to Fix It: Start segmenting your email list into meaningful groups and tailor your messages accordingly.
Useful segmentation strategies include: Demographics (e.g. separating B2B vs B2C customers, or segmenting by region/climate if relevant); Past purchase or behavior (e.g. an “customers” segment vs “prospects,” or targeting emails based on products/categories someone showed interest in); Engagement level (e.g. a segment for highly engaged subscribers vs. one for those who haven’t opened lately – and then sending a re-engagement campaign to the latter).
Even basic segmentation can have impact – for instance, sending different welcome series to new leads vs. new paying customers. Use whatever data you have: if someone signed up via a specific interest form, or bought a certain product, leverage that. Personalize the content for each segment. This can be as simple as changing a few words (e.g. referencing their recent purchase) or as involved as entirely different emails for different groups.
The effort is worth it – segmented and personalized emails are consistently more effective. Marketers have found that targeted emails drive significantly higher engagement (one study noted segmented emails result in 30% more opens and 50% higher click-through rates than non-segmented sends ). You don’t need advanced AI to do this – even simple segment criteria like “interested in Topic A vs. Topic B” will boost relevance.
Over time, consider more advanced segmentation (like combining multiple criteria: e.g. female customers in NYC who purchased in last 6 months ). But even starting small will show results. The payoff: subscribers get content they care about, so they engage more.
Your metrics improve across the board – and importantly, you build goodwill by showing you understand your audience’s needs. (On the flip side, blasting irrelevant emails frustrates people – 74% of consumers say they feel frustrated when content isn’t aligned to their interests .) In short,15 segmentation is one of the simplest, most powerful ways to boost email performance – over 90% of marketing professionals credit segmentation with improving their campaigns . Don’t leave those gains on the table.
The Mistake: Never pruning or “scrubbing” your email list. Continuing to send emails to outdated or unengaged addresses indefinitely. Also, failing to remove hard bounces or invalid emails promptly. Essentially, treating a 3-year-old list as if everyone is still active. Why It Hurts: A dirty list harms your deliverability and engagement metrics.
Inactive addresses (people who never open) drag down your open rate and can even get your emails flagged by ISPs (internet service providers) as low-engagement (which can mean more of your emails go to spam). Worse, some old email addresses might turn into spam traps. If you keep sending to a big chunk of unengaged or dead emails, your sender reputation deteriorates – meaning even your engaged subscribers might stop seeing your emails (as they end up in junk folders).
Moreover , you’re likely paying for the number of subscribers on your list – so keeping thousands of ghosts is a waste of money. Note that email lists naturally decay over time: roughly a quarter of the contacts on an email list go bad each year due to people changing addresses, abandoning accounts, etc. . If you’re not cleaning, that accumulation of bad addresses can become significant. Marketers report that regular list maintenance can improve email campaign performance by up to 20% – it’s that important.
How to Fix It: Implement a routine list hygiene process. At minimum, remove or suppress addresses that hard-bounce (an invalid address that fails to deliver). Your email service provider should flag these – don’t keep sending to them. Next, identify chronically inactive subscribers. Define what “inactive” means for you (e.g. no opens or clicks in 6 months). For those contacts, attempt a re-engagement campaign: send a special email asking if they still want to hear from you, maybe with a perk for confirming.
Many won’t respond – if they continue to show zero engagement, consider removing them from your main list. It may feel counter- intuitive to voluntarily cut subscribers, but a smaller list of engaged readers is far healthier (and more profitable) than a bloated list of ghosts.
This practice will boost your overall open rate and click rate (because you’re no longer weighed down by uninterested recipients), and improve deliverability – mailbox providers see that a higher percentage of recipients engage, so they’ll be more likely to route your emails to the inbox. One study found that companies doing regular list scrubbing saw up to a 20% boost in campaign performance metrics .
Additionally, use double opt-in for new subscribers if possible (where they confirm their address), which helps ensure you only get valid, truly interested contacts from the start . Lastly, maintain compliance by always including an easy unsubscribe link (never hide it – hiding or omitting the unsubscribe is illegal and also a surefire way to irritate people). In fact, trying to prevent unsubscribes by hiding the option is a mistake some make – it only leads to spam complaints.
It’s far better to let the truly uninterested go than to have them mark you as spam. Keep your list fresh and filled with people who want to hear from you. Your deliverability, open rates, and sender reputation will thank you.
The Mistake: Sending out emails “blind” – never testing elements or reviewing performance data to learn and improve. This includes not performing A/B tests (e.g. sending two subject line versions to see which21 works better) and ignoring metrics like open rate, click-through rate, and conversions. Essentially, flying on Why It Hurts: Without testing and analysis, you’re leaving improvements on the table.
What if a different subject line could get 10% more opens, or a different email design could double your click-throughs? You’ll never know if you don’t experiment. Not testing means you keep making the same mistakes or suboptimal choices. Likewise, failing to monitor email reports can let problems fester – for instance, you might not notice that a certain type of content is underperforming or that a segment of your list never responds.
Marketers who regularly A/B test and iterate often significantly outperform those who don’t. In fact, A/B testing of emails can boost engagement rates by up to 49% . If you’re not measuring results, you can’t improve them. How to Fix It: Embrace a culture of continual improvement with your email marketing. Start with A/B testing one element at a time.
Common easy tests: subject lines (try two different approaches – perhaps a question vs. a statement, or adding an emoji vs. none), email send times (morning vs. evening), or call-to- action button text (“Shop Now” vs. “See Deals”). Many email platforms make A/B testing simple: you send two variants to a small portion of your list and then send the winner to the rest. Use these tests to learn what your audience responds to.
Over time you might test more nuanced things like email copy length, images vs. plain text, personalization vs. generic, etc. Additionally, dive into your analytics . After each send, review the open rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate. Which links got clicked? Did one segment respond more than another? Track key KPIs over time and aim to improve them. For example, if you see a trend of declining opens, that’s a red flag – you might need to rework your subject lines or list strategy.
If a particular email had an unusually high unsubscribe rate, examine it for what might have turned people off. Also track conversions if possible (e.g. how many sales or sign-ups each email drove). Tools can tie revenue back to emails, which is incredibly useful for refining your strategy. The goal is to move from “set it and forget it” to an ongoing optimize-and-learn mindset. Even small tweaks learned via testing can yield big results when scaled.
For instance, if testing reveals that including a customer’s first name in the subject boosts opens by 5% or a certain call-to-action color increases clicks by 10%, that can translate to thousands of extra opens or clicks over time. Continual improvement is the name of the game. In email marketing, data is your friend . Use it to make each campaign better than the last. The marketers who do so are the ones who achieve the best results.
The Mistake: Designing emails that look great on desktop but render poorly on mobile phones. This includes emails with non-responsive layouts (e.g. multi-column formats that don’t shrink, or wide images that force horizontal scrolling on a phone) and overly long subject lines that get cut off on small screens. Why It Hurts: A majority of people now check email on their phones – often before anything else.
Over 50% of all emails are opened on mobile devices , and some surveys even show around 61% primarily use mobile for email . If your email isn’t mobile-friendly, those users will have a frustrating experience: tiny text that’s hard to read, images that don’t load or fit, buttons that are too small to tap. Most won’t bother pinching and zooming – they’ll just delete it. Even worse, 42% of users will delete an email that isn’t optimized for mobile .
You could lose nearly half your audience by neglecting mobile optimization. Plus, a bad mobile experience reflects poorly on your brand’s professionalism.25 How to Fix It: Design all your emails with a “mobile-first” mindset. Use responsive email templates (most modern email platforms offer these) which automatically adapt to screen size.
Key tips for mobile optimization: use a single-column layout or a stacked layout that reflows nicely on small screens; ensure font sizes are legible on a phone (generally 14px or larger for body text, 20px+ for headlines); make buttons big enough to tap easily (bulletproof buttons with ample padding – touch-friendly); keep your overall email width around 600px or use fluid percentage-based widths. Also, keep subject lines short and punchy – aim for ~40–50 characters or less, so they don’t get truncated on mobile .
Test your emails on multiple devices and email clients if possible (most email tools have previews for mobile). Check that images resize properly and load quickly (consider compressing images for faster load). Also, consider the context : mobile readers are often on the go, so structure your content to be concise and highlight the call-to-action prominently near the top. By optimizing for mobile, you cater to the majority of email users and improve engagement.
In fact, simply ensuring your emails display well on mobile can dramatically boost results – you avoid the instant deletes and make it easy for subscribers to act. A mobile-friendly design leads to higher click-through and conversion rates from those on phones. Remember , an email that is beautiful and effective on desktop but broken on mobile is broken , period. Prioritize the small screen. When you do, you’ll likely see more people actually reading and interacting with your emails (instead of tossing them).
In today’s world, mobile optimization is no longer optional – it’s essential for email marketing success .
- Failing to Offer a Clear Opt-In Incentive
- Skipping the Welcome Email Sequence
- Writing Poor or Generic Subject Lines
- Not Having a Clear Call to Action (CTA)
- Treating Emails as One-Way Broadcasts
- Bombarding Subscribers with Too Many Sales Pitches
- Neglecting List Segmentation and Personalization
- Ignoring Email List Hygiene (Not Cleaning Inactive Subscribers)
- Not Testing and Analyzing Your Emails
- Not Optimizing Emails for Mobile Devices