7 Common Email Newsletter Mistakes And How to Fix Them
Forget COVID 19, mind numbingly boring newsletters are the pandemic of 2023. Email newsletters have been around since email was first created and brands have been pumping out weekly newsletters for over 2 decades, attempting to educate and entertain their audience on the countless new goals and objectives they’ve got.
There are some extremely common newsletter mistakes that email marketers are consistently making that well and truly put the reader off opening the email and interacting with your brand in general.
We put together a list of some common mistakes and how to fix them:
1. You’re Pushing Too Hard For a Sale
The first sure fire way to increase your unsubscribe rate is to be too pushy with sales communications. If you do nothing but promote your own products then your “newsletter” is just another ad.
Your newsletter should be a place to build a relationship of trust and respect with your customers updating them with relevant information, recent industry news and product guides etc, not a place to cram more advertisement down the throats of your audience. By asserting yourself as a destination for valuable information and knowledge you will gain the trust of your customers and earn the right to talk about business and conversions at a later date.
2. You’re Not Talking Like a Human
An extremely common mistake across the whole marketing discipline, especially in terms of B2B marketing is forgetting that you are actually talking to a human on the other side of the screen and not a faceless corporation.
At the end of the day it’s the people who make the decisions at a company, so writing bland corporate jargon and hiding behind the brand is not the way to go. By all means be professional and informative but remember that it is another human on the other side reading your communications. While people can feel connected to companies and brands, they will often feel stronger connections with people, therefore when writing your newsletter be emotive and let your audience get to know the person writing the newsletters.
3. You Don’t Have a Goal in Mind
Before sending any email you should be asking yourself what the objective of sending this email is. Every marketing email should include a clear call to action in order to prompt the reader to undertake the action you want them to take in the fewest steps possible.
There are generally 2 key ways brands get this wrong: failing to use any CTA’s or using too many CTA’s. Be sure to identify your goals and narrow them down and you will see better results guaranteed. Click here to read our full guide on how to write the perfect CTA in your emails
4. You’re Talking About Yourself Too Much
This might be the most common of all mistakes brands make with their newsletter. While it’s understandable that you would want to talk about yourself within your own newsletter the fact is that people will only subscribe to the newsletter if they think there is something in it for themselves and this rings true across all marketing channels, people are naturally selfish, its human nature, if there’s nothing in it for the individual then why should they care?
This isn’t to say don’t talk about yourself at all. We would advise using the 90/10 rule. Spend 90% of the time educating and providing valuable information to your audience and the other 10% talking about yourself.
5. You Aren’t Providing Real Value in Your Content
Creating and providing value with your email marketing is no easy task.
Writing engaging informative communications takes time and research as you should be looking to provide value to your customers at every possible opportunity. Providing useful, objective information that addresses common issues and pains your customers are likely to experience is a good starting point and once you get comfortable with providing valuable information that fits your company’s brand values, you will start to find it easy to supplement this info with sales messages that will be well received.
Click here for our full guide on how to provide real value with your email marketing
6. You’re Not Segmenting Your Audience
56% of people say they’ll unsubscribe from an email list if the content isn’t relevant to them. But, still email marketers continue to send the exact same communications and content to their whole email list in hope that they will all like and be interested in the same thing.
Your email subscribers are all very different individuals with very different interests. In order to keep your content relevant to each person it is key to segment your email list into different groups, by: age, gender, location, buying habits, profession etc. This way the content they see is more related to them on an individual level and will therefore keep them more engaged with your brand’s communications.
7. You Aren’t Analysing Your Results
One final newsletter mistake for you is to make the most of the bundles of data that email marketing provides. Email marketing is a highly measurable, cost-effective form of marketing that provides a higher ROI than any other channel.
Reviewing your metrics after every email campaign is crucial if you want to improve the success and effectiveness of your marketing. The data provided gives you valuable insights into what your subscribers are interested in and what captures their attention. Analysis of this data allows you to better understand your customers and create content which will be of interest to them and leave them coming back for more.
Wrap Up
There are millions of boring, poor quality newsletters floating around people’s inboxes nowadays that are simply just taking up space. However, using the tips in this article you should be able to create one that stands out, actually captures the attention of your audience and provides real value to them. When done correctly email newsletters are an extremely powerful tool to build relationships between brand and consumer, just make sure to avoid these common mistakes and you’ll be just fine.
If this sounds like too much effort then leave it up to us. Inbox offers bespoke email marketing services for B2B businesses. Our email campaigns are designed to get you noticed by the people that matter.
Click here to find out how we can help boost your business.
