Each one of us has made cringe-worthy mistakes in our lifetime. However, the mistakes made in our personal lives aren’t as public as the email marketing mistakes that we make. I have listed three biggest mistakes that most email marketers make. This way, you can maintain your email marketing campaign and save yourself from embarrassment. Here are the mistakes and ways in which you can fix them:
Bad A/B Testing Decision
Everybody loves to run a good A/B test and the moment you push the send button, you feel a rush of excitement! However, this excitement quickly turns into stress when you see inadequate optimal results from the poor testing decision that you made.
Here are some common testing errors which affect your results:
Small sample size
The size of your data set has to be large enough so that you can roll out any changes in your email campaigns without affecting their performance. Based on my experience, I make sure that I have a minimum 1,000 observations for each test I run, before reaching a statistical significance. This means that I will wait until 1,000 emails are opened before declaring a winner.
You may be wondering what happens if your emails never reach the goal of 1,000 opens?
To ensure that your test reaches the statistical significance, you have to back into the numbers when you are selecting the sample size. You need to check the average open rate for your targeted audience and select the sample size based on the prediction that there will be at least 1,000 opens per emails. You should also run two to three tests to confirm the fact that you have a true winner. Based on my experience, I have learned that a winner in the first round may lose in the second round.
Too many variables:
The most significant thing to do for any A/B test is to normalize the testing environment to minimize the irrelevant variables. You may think by testing multiple variables at once, it will create more impact and optimize your emails faster too. But the problem here is that you don’t know the incremental increases or decreases of every variable. Even a difference of 30 minutes in the send time between the test email and your control could drastically change your results.
Poor Email List Hygiene
Maintaining email hygiene means to clean and maintain everything that enters into your database. Most of the emails enter your database through the opt-in process.
In single opt-in, the web form is filled out by a new name and is added automatically to your subscription list. In case of double opt-in, the web form is filled by a new name and then a confirmation emails gets triggered with a confirmation link for the email address.
If you maintain a proper hygiene practice by cleaning up your database from time-to-time then you will be able to maintain a healthy email list .
Unclear Subject Lines
The subject of your email should be consistent with your email body as it is more likely to get higher number of clicks. The subject line should not contain any clickbait, tricks or questions about what exactly is there in the email. You might wonder if your email subject line should be clear one or clever one. I would suggest you to go with the clear one as they work exceptionally well when you want to achieve the goal of higher click-through rates.
These are the three biggest mistakes that most email marketers make. I know some of you probably have made these same mistakes and many others too! You can share your cringe-worthy email marketing mistakes in the comments below and also explain how you bounced back from it!
