Email marketing is one of the most efficient ways to stay in touch with customers while also increasing your ROI (return on investment). According to statistics, you can expect a $42 return on investment for every $1 spent on email marketing.

Email marketing can be quite beneficial to your company. With so many marketers attempting to establish a successful email marketing campaign, it’s not surprising that some of them fail.

The good news is that you can benefit from other people’s mistakes. Understanding the most common email marketing failures will aid you in creating a faultless email campaign of your own.

The top five email marketing campaign mistakes
Mistakes and mishaps are common in the field of email marketing. Learning about the most common email marketing blunders can help you take steps to avoid having your campaign ruined by these errors.

1. Greetings, [user name]

Personalized experiences matter, according to much research. In fact, 74% of consumers agree that customization in marketing influences their decision to open and read emails.

Is there anything more emotional than receiving an email that begins with “Dear [user name]” from a client anticipating a personalized approach? A common email marketing mistake is failing to include a customization token, which has a detrimental impact on customer experiences.

Because personalization testing involves extra effort, this critical stage is frequently missed. As a result, businesses continue to send emails to customers with blank or erroneous customization tokens.

This email example can teach email marketers a thing or two. Broken customization speaks louder than words in this scenario.

What could you have done to avoid this blunder?
Broken personalization happens all the time, but the good news is that you can do something about it. Personalization testing is an important part of the overall email quality assurance process. Despite the fact that personalization testing differs amongst email providers, this step should not be skipped. But, if you’re going to do something about it, do it properly. Take your time and send a nice, personalized “sorry” email that explains what went wrong. Here’s an excellent example to get you started.

2. CTAs that aren’t working

Another typical mistake is failing to include a call to action (CTA) or inserting an erroneous CTA, which will have a direct influence on consumer satisfaction and your campaign’s click-through rate (CTR).

Can you imagine sending a nicely designed email sequence with a broken call to action or a non-functional voucher? Or sending an email announcing the introduction of a new product with a link to a page that doesn’t exist yet?

CTAs that aren’t there are inconvenient for both you and your clients. As a result, it is preferable to take action in order to avoid making this error in the first place.

What could you have done to avoid this blunder? To prevent making this error, make sure you test all CTAs before sending out emails.

3. Inadequate segmentation

Email segmentation has been shown to be really useful. Marketers who use segmentation in their email campaigns see a 760 percent increase in revenue. Audience segmentation, on the other hand, might lead to client churning if done incorrectly.

Consider how perplexing it would be to get an email congratulating you on being a new parent when you have no children on the way. This is exactly what happened to Amazon consumers after their baby registry email campaign was unintentionally delivered to the wrong audience segment.

In most circumstances, this error has no major implications other than client confusion. However, email segmentation can go badly wrong in other circumstances, causing considerable offense to some people.

For example, sending a baby registry email to clients who have recently lost a baby or are having difficulty having children, for example, is not suitable.

What could you have done to avoid this blunder?
Check your email segmentation numerous times before sending out emails to avoid making this error. Even if it means checking your campaign twice or three times before it goes live. This ensures that your email does not end up in the spam folder.

When you’ve detected the segmentation error, don’t jump to conclusions. Instead, spend some time crafting a well-thought-out email copy to express your regrets. You might also consider giving a bonus to help mitigate the poor impression.

4. Disseminating inflammatory material

Some errors, such as transmitting the wrong personalization token, are often overlooked and forgotten. When it comes to more serious errors, such as posting unpleasant or unsuitable content, one mistake can cost you a lot of money, clients, and reputation.

This Adidas email marketing campaign is an excellent example of marketing that has gone wrong. The participants of the 2013 Boston Marathon received an email with the positive subject line, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!” There would be no problem with the language if it weren’t for the fact that two bombs went off during the marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds more.

Adidas issued an apology after realizing the magnitude of their error. Nonetheless, the company’s reputation had already been tarnished.

What can you do to avoid this blunder?
The difficulty with the Adidas marathon campaign was most likely caused by email automation. Long before the 2013 bombings, Adidas most likely sent this exact subject line to many other marathon participants. What was once a harmless message took on new meaning as the events unfolded?

5. Improper design solutions

The final email marketing misstep we made was using an inappropriate design at the wrong time. Context can lend secondary meaning to the phrase or, in this example, design, as the Adidas Boston Marathon campaign demonstrated.

The “floating world” email campaign from Airbnb is an excellent example of a bad design solution. The email campaign for the floating world was launched just as Hurricane Harvey was wreaking havoc on Texas. Stay above water,” said one of the email’s subheadings, which isn’t exactly the ideal tagline at a time when Houston is flooded due to the terrible hurricane.

What can you do to avoid this blunder?
Before starting any campaign, proofread it well and keep the context in mind. This helps you prevent sending offensive content or images to your email recipients.