As technology advances, it somehow affects everything, and email automation is no exception.

The best thing about email automation is that it offers unparalleled opportunities to send personalized messages at scale. As a result, it accelerates efficiency and fosters meaningful connections with customers.

“Among marketers, two-thirds (65%) employ automation for email marketing.”

But what will happen if you ignore some common mistakes? Consequently, you will face severe effects that damage your reputation and frustrate your customers.

To help you identify and handle email automation mistakes like a pro, we bring this blog to inform you about the most common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Let’s dive in!

List of 10 Most Common Email Automation Mistakes

When it comes to email marketing automation, eliminating common issues is additionally a must. Here are the 10 most common email automation mistakes you should avoid:

1. Not Segmenting Email List

Segmentation involves the classification of subscribers based on criteria like demographics, interests, behavior, or preferences. Although, many businesses neglect the need to segment their email subscribers and end up triggering negative influences such as:

• Losing subscribers as you send a generic email that amounts to a total waste of time for them.
• Ignoring, deleting, and marking emails as spam results in a waste of time and resources.
• Missing out on the opportunity to target a particular segment with offers, promotions, or content that align with their needs.

You can create a win-win situation for yourself and your customers by segmenting your email list. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Go with a reliable platform that allows you to create and manage segments hassle-free.
• Gather relevant data from subscribers during sign-up or surveys.
• Define your segments based on your target, like boosting conversion, referral or retention, etc.
• Ensure you regularly test and optimize your segments to keep them updated and accurate.
• Make personalized email campaigns for every segment, highlighting customer needs, aspirations, or challenges.

Take the case of Netflix, one the best action examples that do email segmentation right. They used this approach to send customized recommendations based on users’ preferences, tastes, locations, etc. Also, they have high open rates.

Quick Solution – To make contact segmentation effortless, use Aritic Pinpoint, evidently a top marketing automation tool.

2. Lack of Personalization

What does every business desire? Obviously, higher engagement, better customer retention, focus targeting, increased relevance, and improved customer experience. 

But what can stop businesses from achieving all this? The answer is a lack of personalization and sending the same email to each subscriber. In this case, customers will ignore such emails or mark them as spam. It creates hurdles in email campaign succession and minimizes open, click-through, and conversion rates.

Therefore, to overcome the element of personalization in email marketing, you can follow these strategies:

•  Create a segment list based on preferences, behavior, etc.
• Use dynamic content blocks that change according to the recipient’s information or behavior.
• Used data from past purchases or browsing history to give personalized product/service recommendations.
• Create a compelling subject line, like adding a name or location to catch attention and make the email feel more tailored.
• Set up automated emails triggered by particular actions, like cart abandonment or previous purchases, to deliver relevant messages promptly.
• Customize transactional emails such as order confirmations or shipping notifications to add a personal touch.

3. Overlooking A/B Testing

A/B testing, also named split testing, compares two email elements to see which works better. It plays a crucial role in optimizing email campaigns and boosting performance.

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Ignoring A/B testing simultaneously results in missed opportunities for improvements. Without testing the element, a business cannot detect the effective subject line, content, CTA buttons, or sender names. It will result in lower engagement and limited insight into customer choice.

To implement A/B testing in email automation, follow these strategies without a doubt:

• Define clear objectives.
• Test one variable at a time.
• Random sample selection
• Consider the larger sample size.
• Allow enough time to run the test. 
• Analyze the result and draw a conclusion. 
• Implement winning variation
• Keep testing regularly

4. Failing to Optimize for Mobile

Over the past decades, the usage of mobile phones increased dramatically. So surprisingly, more people are accessing their emails with smartphones rather than relying on another option.

According to Adobe, nearly nine out of ten (85%) users use mobile phones to access their emails.

This trend is likely to continue, with an increasing number of users using phones as their primary source of email communication.

Now you know how much optimizing email for mobile phones is necessary. In fact, failing to optimize for multiple devices can affect your email marketing. 

Here are the consequences you can face if you don’t consider mobile optimization.

• Cluttered, difficult to read, and not-so-smaller screen-friendly interface.
• Interrupt engagement level and cause lower conversion rate.
• Failed to capture attention in the inbox
• Negative brand perception
• Limited reach

So, to ensure success, it’s good to go with optimized email for multiple devices, especially mobile phones. You must be questioning how? 

Meanwhile, try these useful suggestions for email optimization:

• Create a responsive design that adjusts its layout and format based on the user’s screen size.
• Avoid complexity and go with the single-column design.
• Pick legible fonts and font sizes that are easily readable.
• Use a compressed image to ensure faster loading time on mobile.
• Involve short and engaging content.
• Avoid pop-up.

5. Not Adding Clear Call-to-Action

Call-to-action is a small but the most powerful element when persuading customers to buy, sign up, or download. Every email without a clear and powerful CTA can be a time waste, as even if customers want to avail of the offer, they don’t know how to.

So, if your target is to boost engagement, drive conversion, and direct user attention toward the primary goal of the email, CTA is necessary.

What will happen if you don’t add or add too much CTA? Without a doubt, you will experience the following:

1. Lower Engagement
2. More Confusion 
3. Irrelevant Actions
4. Weak Persuasion

Hence, if you want to create compelling and irresistible CTAs, feel free to take these points into consideration:

• Clear & actionable language
• Urgency & time-sensitivity
• Mobile-friendly size
• Personalization & relevance 
• Interactive visual contrast 
• Social proof and testimonial

6. Neglecting Email Marketing Laws and Regulations

Complying with email marketing laws is necessary for businesses & markets to maintain audience trust, secure consumer privacy, and avoid legal penalties. 

You must be thinking of what are the top most crucial email marketing automation laws to adhere to. Here are the essential laws:

• GDPR ( General Data Protection Regulation)

GDPR, enforced by the European Union, necessitates explicit consent for marketing emails, ensuring email recipients willingly opt-in—transparency about data usage and respecting user rights to safeguard privacy.

Adhering to GDPR lets users access, rectify, and delete their data. Also, it fosters trust and privacy protection.

• CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act)

CCPA, a privacy law in California, empowers users to control their data. Global businesses with California customers must comply with opt-out options and privacy rights.

Adhering to this law requires businesses to inform users about data collection and usage.

• CAN SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography & Marketing Act)

Can-SPAM is a U.S. law regulating commercial email communication for non-U.S. businesses targeting local recipients. Its compliance demands clear identification, preventing deception, and promoting consumer trust.

7. No Human Touch

Whenever emails sound robotic, recipients take it as impersonal and disengaging. Using such emails can cause communication and force people to delete them without much consideration.

So, to not make your email sound robotic, adding a human touch can do wonders. It helps to maintain a genuine connection, nurturing engagement and trust.

Here are a few amazing ideas to make your emails sound more human than ever:

• Personalizing the sender’s name
• Conversation email copy
• Infusing personal experience or story to make it more relatable
• Two-way communication

Overall, the human touch in emails helps the recipient feel valued, leading to meaningful interaction and increased success.

8. Ignoring Analytics and Metrics

Putting your 100% without tracking and analyzing email metrics is not a wise decision because gaining valuable insight into the performance and effectiveness of campaigns lets businesses make data-driven decisions to optimize their strategies.

Here are the standard metrics you must keep up with : 

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates

Besides this, you can also use analytics to boost email automation. Here is how:

• Conduct A/B testing to refine the automation sequence.
• Leverage data insight to optimize automation workflows.
• Schedule email strategically for optimal engagement.
• Analyze past email performance to improve data segmentation.

Important – To perfectly analyze email marketing data, the use of the Aritic Mail tool would be a great help.

9. Sending Email at the Wrong Time

Just like social media in email marketing, timing also matters. Following the right time directly impacts email opening and engagement rates.

Moreover, if you pick random timing without considering what is correct, your emails may get lost in crowded inboxes and fail to get customers’ attention. So perfect timing is the best way to pick and influence customers. 

So, how do we know which timing is adequate for our campaign? Here are the elements you need to determine the optimal timing for sending emails.

• Try to understand your potential audience’s behavior and when they are most active.
• If your targets are in different time zones, adjust email deliveries to suit each time zone’s peak activity hours.
• Consider A/B testing with multiple time zones to detect patterns of higher engagement.
• Use data analytics to understand trends & patterns in email open and click-through rates based on timings.

10.  Not Cleaning Email List

Sending emails to non-active members increases the bounce rate and creates deliverability. So, neglecting it is not an option. If you do so, you face negative impacts, including:

• Harming sender reputation
• Decrease open rates
• Block successful reach

To keep your email list healthy, the best practices you can take into consideration are:

• Regularly removing inactive or unengaged subscribers
• Implement a double opt-in process to verify and validate email addresses
• Email list segmentation
• Using automated cleaning tools like Aritic mail.

Wrapping Up

Being good at automating your email is essential to make marketing campaigns successful. But you also need to avoid common mistakes that can cause loss. Doing that lets you establish significant customer relations while maintaining your positive reputation.

Further, divide the email list properly, customize messages, try different versions to see what works best, ensure it looks good on mobile, clear action prompt, and follow email marketing laws. Also, it must have a personal touch, keep an eye on the data, and send emails when it’s most suitable.

To make your email marketing journey even more efficient, consider utilizing top marketing automation tools such as EasySendy, Omnisend, and MailerLite. Good luck with automation!