How to Prevent 10 Most Common ECommerce Email Marketing Mistakes

Even though email marketing is such a common thing in e-commerce businesses, there are still so many marketers making mistakes that cost them engagement and sales. Some of those mistakes are not so bad and they are easy to fix while some are a bit harder to change.

Here are some of the most common mistakes and ways to fix them.

1. Not sending any emails/ Sending too many emails

If you already have information on your users, the biggest mistake you can make is not sending them any emails. Maybe they would be more interested in your products if they would just be reminded that you are there and that you care about them. There are so many types of emails that you could send and your audience would enjoy them.

On the other hand, sending too many emails is not good either. This can overwhelm your users and annoy them enough to unsubscribe from your email list.

Find a happy medium and stick with it.

2. Sending to contacts that are not engaged

Sending an email to a customer that never engages with your brand is useless. There are two options for you in this case: try to send them re-engagement emails with discounts or coupons or some way of making them interested in your products or remove them for your contact list.

You should always try re-engaging with them but in case that this doesn’t work, remove them and save yourself some time.

3. Not segmenting

Stores often make this mistake – they don’t segment. It’s no use if you, for example, send an email with an offer on male trousers to a female user. She won’t be interested, you’ll lose engagement and a sale. She may not even open your next email because she’ll believe that you are just informing her on products for males and that’s of no use for her. Use the information your subscribers give you and segment based on that.

4. Not being consistent

You need to be consistent if you want your users to engage. If you start sending them emails on a monthly basis and then move on to send them maybe once a year and then you start sending them more often again, that’s not going to do your business any good. Diverging from your schedule is only allowed if you have some unexpected new offers or deals. Other than that, stick to your schedule and be consistent.

5. Sending poorly written emails

Writing emails packed with spelling and grammar mistakes, poor formatting and overall poor style of writing doesn’t paint a good image of you. It makes you seem unprofessional and inattentive to details. People tend to stay away from brands that do this, especially because these mistakes are such an easy fix:

– StateOfWriting is a content copywriting guide that can help you write the copy for your emails.

– Essayroo is a tool that you can use to generate email subject lines.

– Viawriting and Boomessays are tools that you can use to proofread your copy before sending it to your audience.

– Bigassignments is a tool that generates power words and professional language phrases that can make your email look amazing, as mentioned on WriteMyAustralia blog.

– Study Demic is a grammar guide and checker that will help you once you are done writing your email.

– Australian help and Academized are email content formatting tools that can make your email content look visually better and more readable.

6. Making it hard to unsubscribe

You may think that making the unsubscribe option hard to find is a good thing and that it will help you retain more customers. However, this is far from true. Remember that there is a spam option and that takes about two seconds – your unsubscribe button should be much faster than that.

It’s much better to include some of your products and/or posts with the unsubscribe page that can maybe convince the user not to leave you yet.

7. Not optimizing for mobile

Most of the emails nowadays are being read on mobile devices. If your beautifully designed email full of content is not easy to look at and navigate from mobile, then there is really no point in it. Optimize your emails for mobile with all of the features that can be seen on the desktop screen too. This can lead to more conversions.

8. Forgetting to set ‘preview’

If you really want to improve your email open rates, you should always set preview text. Along with your subject line, this is one of the first things that your audience will see. “You have much better chances of getting a good response if your users can first see what your email is about. If they see ‘ Hello Alex, We wanted to let you know that… ‘ they will be less interested. However, if they see ‘Are you looking for new high quality shoes? We offer you a discount. ‘, they will open the email to see what you have to say”, – explains Margie Isley, an Email Marketing Strategist at EliteAssignmentHelp and Ukwritings.

9. Not personalizing

Nowadays, customers expect that you use the information given to you. If they have already subscribed and given you some basic information, you should address them by their name. A good practice is to sign the email as a person, not as a company. Another thing you could do is replace that ‘no-reply’ email address for a more personal one. Make it easy for them to contact you and be welcoming.

10. Creating emails that are too long

Your users understand that you have a lot to offer – but an email that goes on and on showcasing products is too much. They will probably not stick around that long. What you could do instead is present a few products that are relevant to their segment and provide them a link that they could click on to land on a page with more of your products – it’s simple and effective.

Wrapping Up

If you want your email marketing efforts to actually provide you with some results, you need to learn how to fix your own mistakes. First step is always recognizing them. You can then move on to utilize some of these tips and see how your improvements bring you better business.