Introduction
Even though it is one of the earliest, email marketing is still an important tool in the digital marketing toolbox. Even in 2025, email marketing offers a ROI of 36$ for every $1 spent. For that reason alone, email marketing has become highly competitive in today’s market. And if you are making these common email marketing mistakes I am about to share, its high time to fix them.
1. Ignoring Mobile Optimization
Like almost in every other statistic, more than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices. If your emails aren’t designed to look good on a phone, you’re not going to be effective in your email marketing campaigns. No one wants to pinch and zoom to read your message. Also, if you are an e-com using image-based emails, make sure that they are dark mode optimised. If not, your whole email will look visually unappealing and make it harder to read.
Quick Fix: Make your emails mobile-friendly. Use responsive design that is also dark mode tested, keep your text short and snappy, and make your CTAs big enough to tap without a second thought.
2. Using Generic Subject Lines
Your subject line is like arguably the most important piece of copy in your email—it’s what gets people to open your email in the first place. You can have the best-looking and highest-converting copy inside the email, but if no one opens them, whats the point? Also, if it’s boring or too pushy, it’ll head straight to the trash. One of the email marketing mistakes to avoid is overpromising in the subject line and underdelivering in the body copy. Nothing makes your reader hit that unsubscribe button faster than this one.
Quick Fix: Personalise your subject lines and make them interesting. Think curiosity, urgency, or even a little mystery. Don’t overpromise in your subject line copy. Avoid using terms like sales, free, offer, etc. too much in your subject line that can be seen as salesy.
3. Overloading Emails with Information
Nobody is opening their inbox to read an essay. If your email is packed with too much information, people will skim it or, worse, delete it without reading. Give only enough information that compels people to visit your website or click the link. Getting this right alone can boost your email marketing ROI.
Quick Fix: Stick to one main message per email. Use bullet points, headings, short paragraphs, and eye-catching visuals to keep it simple and easy to digest. Only include links that are necessary. Don’t treat your email like your website.
4. Neglecting Personalization and segmentation
Its no secret that customers like personalisation. They want to feel like the brand experience is tailored to them. If your emails fail to do this as well, they’ll feel irrelevant. Subject line personalisation, personalised coupon code, and personalised recommended lists are all easy to implement using today’s ESP’s. Segmentation helps you keep track of this very easily.
Create segments for buyers in the last 14, 30, 60, 90 days; create segments for active list members who open and engage with your emails; create segments for non-engaging members, etc. Segmentation helps you keep your list clean and organised and also helps with making personalisation easier.
Segmentation is a big topic to cover. If you want to know more about segmentation, check out this article.
Quick Fix: Use tools to segment your list and create personalised content. For example, send product recommendations based on what someone has already bought. Make the email feel like it was written just for them.
5. Sending Emails at the Wrong Time
Just like the subject line, timing is everything in email marketing. Send an email when your audience isn’t checking their inbox, and it’ll get buried under a pile of other messages.
To maximise open rates, you need to understand when your audience is most active. Testing helps, but knowing their daily habits, time zones, and the best days to hit their inbox will give you a huge advantage over your competitors.
Quick Fix: Pay attention to analytics to figure out when your audience is most active. Test different times and adjust based on what works best.
6. Ignoring the Power of a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA)
This is an email marketing mistake most overlook. If your CTA is weak, vague, or hard to find, people won’t take action. Don’t use generic CTA’s such as buy now or click here. The best way to create a strong CTA is to use action-orientated words such as “Download,” “Sign Up,” “Discover,” “Claim,” or “Get.”. Also focus on the benefit and not just action. For example: “Start Saving Time with Our App Today!”.
Quick Fix: Be clear and bold with your CTAs. Use action-driven phrases like “Get Your Free Guide” or “Shop Now.” Also make sure they stand out visually, too—hyperlinks or colour-coding the link and buttons are excellent ways to make them stand out.
7. Overlooking A/B Testing
You will never get the full extent of your email campaign’s effectiveness if you don’t test various parts of your email. Test subject lines, CTA’s, sender names, images, etc to get a clearer picture of what works and what doesn’t. If you find something that works, try it incorporate it into another part of an email, and see how well it performs.
Quick Fix: Test everything—subject lines, images, CTAs, even the time of day you send. The data will tell you what works and what doesn’t.
8. Forgetting to Clean Your Email List
Sometimes, you could be doing everything right but still not seeing the result. Then it is a good time to check the email list. An outdated campaign will hurt your email campaign more than anything. Sending emails to inactive or invalid addresses hurts your deliverability and could even get you flagged as spam. Clean your list every 6 or 9 months.
Quick Fix: Regularly clean up your list. Remove people who haven’t engaged in a while and run re-engagement campaigns to win back those on the fence.
Conclusion
It doesn’t have to be complicated, but you can’t afford to make these common email marketing mistakes. Fixing them will help you boost engagement, drive more conversions, and make the most of your campaigns. It will help you build a list of loyal and engaging customers. Also, if you want to build a solid email list and drive conversions from them and need a professional to do it, check this out.