Mistake proofing your emails

Simple email mistakes are easy to make, but they’re also easy to avoid. Here are three ways you can quickly mistake proof your emails, so that you won’t be on the receiving end of confused customer queries.

1. Test, test, test.

For the last week I’ve been served endless advertisements for a pair of earrings. Honestly, I’d like to buy them: but whenever I click on the ads, I find myself on a general landing page of a website that’s difficult to navigate. I’ve tried to find these earrings, but honestly, the whole thing is a maze.

Before you send out your emails, test your links!

• Make sure that they’re not too general,
• That they’re sending customers to the right place,
• That they’re working,
• And that the sites you’re sending customers to are viewable on all devices.

You’ll also want to double check your templates: do they work on all devices? Does the font look as good on a phone as it does on a desktop? Are your images correctly rendering?

It’s also good practice to ensure that any links in your email signature are up to date and working properly, including the ones to your company’s social media pages.

2. Avoid being labelled as spam.

According to Hubspot email databases deteriorate at 2.1% a month: people might deactivate their emails, or change them, and the actual number of contacts you have may appear higher than it is.

This can result in bad data: increasing your bounce rate, lowering your open and click through rates, and increasing your odds of being labelled as a low-quality email provider (meaning that you’ll be more likely to land in the spam folder).

While it’s difficult (if not impossible) to verify your email contacts by yourself, email verification systems exist which are designed to keep your databases up to date. If you use email marketing, it’s well worth investing in one: although your email provider may already have the service inbuilt.

It’s also important to follow all the laws that are in place when it comes to email, such as the GDPR, and to avoid being misleading. Are you being honest in your emails? Is your subject line accurate?

Avoiding highly common phrases such as ‘Sale! Act Now!’ can also increase the trust servers and customers have in you, especially as they often don’t provide customers with any meaningful information.

Before you send out your emails, make sure you’re being compliant, honest, and transparent with the people on your email list – and check that your list is accurate.

3. Reread, reread, reread.

Their, they’re, there. Well pick your care up from the garage. Sale Sunday threw Monday.

Spell checker alone won’t save you when it comes to email copy: ensuring you’re using the right language and words can only be done through proofreading, rereading, and triple checking your copy before you hit send.

And this is vital: any spelling errors on a website or in an email can turn customers off; making them question the legitimacy of your offerings. Proven to be detrimental to both a businesses SEO and branding, the thirty seconds it takes to double check an email can make a significant difference in the success of your business.

My pro-tip: read aloud.

This can quickly highlight awkward grammar, long sentences, clunky language choices and alert you to errors you may have simply scanned over otherwise.

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By checking that your emails are compliant, well written and functional you can ensure higher success rates and customer engagement. So if you’re marketing via email, take the time to do it right.

Let us know in the comments if there are any other factors you look for before hitting send.

- Lena Klein