4 Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid!

Hitting forward an email you’ve spent days perfecting may be a great feeling, but that marketer’s high comes crumbling down after you see your open rate is less than usual. 😢

What happened?

First, it’s important to understand this happens to almost every marketer. At some point, you’re getting to see less than usual open rates and you’re getting to wonder what went wrong.

Second, it’s necessary to return at this with an open mind able to fix a couple of problems rather than thinking there’s just one problem. This is often very true if you’ve been seeing less than usual open rates for a couple of days, weeks, or months.

Let’s take a glance at 4 different elements of your email which will be causing your email open rate to decrease, and the way you'll fix them so you'll revisit to the open rates you wont to see.

#1: Your Email is just too Big

If you’ve been successfully sending emails and seeing an excellent open rate, but since sending one particular email your open rate has tanked—this might be a really easy problem to repair.

Emails sent to Gmail addresses get “clipped” when they’re bigger than 102KB. Considering Gmail has 1.5 billion users, this is often a worthy problem to specialise in fixing. When an email is clipped, a Gmail user can’t see the whole email like they will a <102 KB email. They have to click on “View Entire Messages” to load the email in their browser.

Here’s what a Gmail user sees when an email gets clipped:

Unless a Gmail user clicks on the “View Entire Message” link, this doesn't count as an email open. From experience, we will tell you that Gmail users don’t favour clicking thereon blue hyperlink. They like to have their entire email accessible as soon as they open it.

To avoid having your emails clipped, confirm their but 102KB large by:

Sending yourself previews that you simply view in Gmail to form sure the whole message loads without the [Message clipped] notification

Using an HTML sizing tool to ascertain how large your email is

There are a couple of reasons your email could also be overlarge. By removing individual blocks from your email (text, images, spacers, etc.) You could reduce the dimensions of your email. For example, if you've got 3 separate text blocks right after one another and your email is getting clipped, attempt to find out how you'll put all of that text into one block.

If your email open rate bounced right back to where it wont to be—GREAT! This tells you that the sole reasons your open rate decreased was that your subscribers were avoiding clicking thereon “View Entire Message” link. Easy fix. 🤓

If your email open rate remains really low, keep reading to ascertain how else you'll push your open rate copy.

#2: You’re Using Too Many Spam Words

This is a very easy problem to run into without realizing it. If your email campaign has too many spam words in it, email providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, Hey, etc.) are getting to toss your email right into your subscriber’s junk folder. It’s their job to guard their users from spam emails that promise them many dollars from a king far, far away.

To protect their users, they mark many words and phrases as spam. Here are just a couple of of the words you'll be using that you simply don’t realize are creating spam red flags:

• Affordable

• Apply now

• Bonus

• Click here

• Free access

• Money

• Promise

• Unlimited

• Win

• Urgent

• Purchase

• Open

• Increase sales

• Increase traffic

• Take action

• Trial

• Order now

Some email hosting platforms like ActiveCampaign will run your email content through a spam test before you hit send so you recognize your email passes the test. Removing as many of those spam words as possible from your emails will keep your email out of the junk folder and within the inbox.

If your email fits sort of a swaddled new-born within 102KB and you’ve taken out anything that would be considered spam—but you’re STILL seeing a decreased open rate, let’s test out a couple of more options starting together with your subject lines.

#3: Your Subject Lines Aren’t Doing Their Job

Your subject lines really have one, single job: get someone to open your email. Optimized at 41 characters or 7 words, they create Tweets appear as if full-on essays. And considering how small they're , they need to pack a punch to try to to their job.

At DigitalMarketer, we’re alwayyyyys testing out new subject line strategies to ascertain what’s working well and what’s not.

We’ve found out there are 5 email subject lines that tend to try and do really well:

#1: The Dead-On Offer Subject Line

These subject lines focus entirely on what you’re offering, and zip else.

Example: Email Marketing Announcement: Enrollment is Back Open (21.56% open rate)

#2: Curiosity/Blind Subject Line

Subject lines that make people interested by what’s inside your email OR totally unsure of what’s happening and eager to know more tend to try and do very well.

Curiosity Example: Netflix’s Huge Homepage Fail

Blind Example: stop (one of the simplest performing subject lines in our promotional emails in 2019)

#3: Self Interest Subject Line

Your subscribers like to know what’s in it for THEM if they open up your email.

Example: Up to 85% OFF our greatest Copywriting Strategies

#4: Urgency Subject Line

A subject line that stresses urgency makes subscribers curious about your offer motivated to open your email in order that they don’t miss out on an honest deal.

Example: LAST CHANCE: DigitalMarketer Lab pops the Market in 3…2…1…

#5: Story/Relevance Subject Line

These subject lines bring the reader into a story they’re interested by , just confirm you’re delivering on the story you promised to inform .

Example: Here’s the important Reason Amazon is Buying Whole Foods

Use your email platform’s A/B testing tool to ascertain which subject lines are ready to improve your open rate. You'll be able to set your A/B test to automatically switch to the simplest performing subject line after a group number of hours so you don’t need to worry about defaulting the simplest performing subject line a couple of hours after hitting send.

If your subject lines are spot on and you’re still seeing a less than usual open rate, it’s time to require a glance at your content.

#4: Your Subscribers Aren’t Excited to Read Your Email Anymore

We know, it hurts to listen to your subscribers aren’t loving your content but at the top of the day—who is that the content for? Them. What does that mean? It’s time to work out what makes them get that tiny surge of pleasure whenever they hear a ping and see your business’s name.

Your subscribers might not be loving your content for a couple of reasons. The most effective thanks to find out what went wrong is to ask them. Employing a survey platform you'll ASK them what they need to read from you. In your survey, confirm to ask specific questions and to offer an option for them to write down their own suggestions.

For example, if we were surveying our audience we’d ask them if they wanted to read more content on:

• Digital marketing trends

• Google SEO updates

• Facebook algorithm updates

• Case studies on successful digital marketing strategies

• Influencer marketing strategies

Then, we’d ask them, “Is there anything you would like us to cover?” and we’d give them the choice to type in their answers.

Another way to make sure your subscribers are getting to want to read what you send them is to segment subscribers as they are available into your list. Rather than having an enormous master list of each subscriber that you simply send every email to, segment your list supported how they came into it.

For example, if subscribers are coming into your list for a selected lead magnet or offer, create a segment for them. Then, you'll confirm the emails they get from you're relevant thereto lead magnet or offer. This is often a win-win because you’re getting to know exactly what content they’re curious about and they’re getting to get read emails they’re actually curious about .

Now that you’ve skilled your email size, spam word usage, subject lines, and content—do you continue to have a less than usual open rate?

If you do, here are a couple of more email elements to require a glance at to urge that open rate copy to where it was:

• Deliverability

• Sender reputation and score

• The frequency that you’re sending emails

• Tracking

A decreased open rate doesn’t mean you've got to offer abreast of your list. It just means something is wrong, and you would like to travel into research mode to work out what it's and the way to repair it.

You’ll revisit to getting excited to hit that send button, knowing your subscribers are BEYOND excited to ascertain your name crop up in their inbox.

Interested?

Designate has consistently increased conversion rates for its clients by engaging the most sophisticated metrics and tools to acquire, engage, and convert target audiences across domains. Get in touch to know how we can boost your ROIs.