Small Business Email Marketing Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Email marketing is one of the best tools for small businesses to connect with their customers. It builds trust and drives sales. Yet many small businesses fall into common traps that can kill their email campaigns. Neglecting list management or not optimising email design can be the difference between a successful campaign and a wasted opportunity.

In this blog, we’ll look at six small business email marketing mistakes and how to fix them. 

By following these tips and taking the time to fix your email marketing mistakes, you’ll have those business objectives achieved in no time. 

Neglecting List Management and Hygiene

A healthy subscriber list is the foundation of email marketing. Unfortunately, many small businesses overlook list management and end up with low engagement and deliverability issues, we’ll take a look at the most common mistakes made with list management and how to fix them. 

Mistakes: Not removing invalid or inactive email addresses, not verifying new subscribers’ email addresses and not having a clear opt-in process. 

How to fix it 

Clean your list regularly: Remove hard bounces and consistently inactive subscribers. Use email validation tools to catch invalid addresses early. 

Double opt-in: Only add genuinely interested subscribers to your list by requiring a double confirmation, this way you’ll have better-engaged recipients of your emails. 

Run re-engagement campaigns: Use automated emails to win back inactive subscribers. If they don’t engage after a set period, remove them. For example, if a subscriber hasn’t opened or engaged with your emails over a period of six months, it might be best to remove them.

Keep your list fresh and relevant and your campaigns will reach people who actually care about your business.

Lack of Personalisation and Segmentation

We’ve all received generic, bland emails that are irrelevant to us. 

We probably deleted them straight away. Small businesses underestimate the power of personalisation and segmentation and end up with campaigns that don’t resonate with their audience. 

One of the main objectives of email marketing is to better connect with your audience, so you should take the time and effort to make personalised emails for different audience segments.

Mistakes: Sending the same content to your entire list, limited or no personalisation and ignoring valuable customer data like purchase history or preferences. 

How to fix it

Segment your list: Group subscribers based on interests, location, past purchases or behaviour. For example, create separate campaigns for first-time buyers and repeat customers. 

Go beyond first names: Personalise emails with tailored recommendations, location-specific offers or relevant content. 

Use dynamic content: Create emails that adapt to the recipient’s details or actions. 

Gather data: Use sign-up forms or surveys to collect information that helps you refine your messaging, you can do this by using lead magnets for your business, where you offer your audience something in return for more information on them, something like a discount on future purchases or a free trial on a service. 

Subpar Email Design and Content

Even the most relevant email can fail if it doesn’t look good or doesn’t work on mobile. Poor email design and weak content can confuse or frustrate your audience and result in fewer clicks and conversions.

Not sure if your email design is up to standard or not sure if your emails are mobile optimised? Book a call with us and we can take a look at it for you. 

Mistakes: Not optimising for mobile, weak calls-to-action (CTAs) that don’t grab attention and inconsistent branding across emails. 

How to fix it 

Optimise for mobile: Use responsive email templates that adapt to different screen sizes. Make buttons and links easy to click on smaller screens. 

Focus on clear CTAs: Your call-to-action should stand out with clear language like “Shop Now” or “Claim Your Discount.” Limit yourself to one primary CTA per email to avoid overwhelming readers. 

Consistent branding: Align your emails with your website and other marketing materials. Use your logo, brand colours and a consistent tone of voice. 

Better subject lines: Craft attention-grabbing subject lines and preview text that gets people to open your emails.

When your emails look good and deliver a clear message, more people will click through to your website or landing page, to take that required action on your webpage. 

Inconsistent Email Frequency and Timing

How often you send and when can have a big impact on engagement. Send too many and subscribers will feel spammed. Send too few and they’ll forget about you altogether. You need to find the middle ground where they don’t feel too spammed and also don’t forget about you as a whole.

In a Hubspot blog survey, emails sent between Monday and Wednesday get the most engagement while the weekend is a dead zone when customers don’t tend to open their emails. 

Your email-sending frequency depends on the industry you’re in. It would be a best practice to research other businesses in your industry to see how often they send their emails, or even sign up for their email marketing campaigns and see how they do it and what you can do better. 

Mistakes: Bombarding subscribers with too many emails, irregular sending schedules and ignoring time zone differences. 

How to fix it 

Stick to a schedule: For most small businesses one to two emails per week is a good starting point. 

Let subscribers choose: Offer email frequency options so people can choose how often they want to hear from you. 

Optimise send times: Use analytics to find out when your audience is most likely to open emails. Experiment with different send times to get the most engagement. Consider time zones: If you have an international audience, segment your list by location and send emails at a suitable local time.

Consistency and timing builds trust and familiarity so your emails are expected not ignored.

Not Testing and Optimising

Many small businesses take a “set it and forget it” approach to email marketing. Without regular testing and analysis campaigns will stagnate and you won’t achieve what you sought after with your email marketing campaign. 

Mistakes: Not A/B testing campaigns, not tracking performance metrics like open rates or click-through rates and ignoring new trends or best practices. 

How to fix it: A/B test regularly: Test subject lines, CTAs, visuals and email content to see what works with your audience. 

Monitor key metrics: Use analytics tools to track opens, clicks and conversions. Identify underperforming campaigns and adjust. 

Stay up to date: Keep up with industry trends and adapt your strategy to new tools or practices.

Testing and optimisation should be ongoing processes to keep your email marketing fresh and working, not a one-and-done deal. 

Not Considering Email Deliverability

Deliverability issues mean your emails might end up in the spam folder or not get delivered at all. Unfortunately, many small businesses don’t pay enough attention to the factors that affect deliverability.

Mistakes: Using an unreliable email service provider, not authenticating emails and triggering spam filters with certain language or practices. 

How to fix it: Choose a reputable email platform: Providers like Mailchimp, Klaviyo or ConvertKit have good deliverability rates. 

Authenticate your emails: Use SPF, DKIM and DMARC to show email providers you’re legit. 

Avoid spam triggers: Don’t use phrases like “Buy now!” or excessive use of ALL CAPS. 

Encourage whitelisting: Ask subscribers to add your email to their contacts or safe senders list.

By considering deliverability you ensure your emails actually get to your subscribers’ inboxes where they can drive results.

Final Thoughts

Email marketing for small businesses is an art and a science. By avoiding these mistakes and implementing the fixes you’ll create more engaging and effective campaigns that deliver value to your subscribers.

As long you take the time to go through this list and make the corrections to your email marketing campaigns, you’ll be in a much better place than you were before. 

If you’re looking for a marketing agency in the UK that can optimise your email marketing campaigns with a proven success rate in email marketing consider booking a call with our founder Matt, we promise no sales jargon just a friendly chat to see what we can do for you. 

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