Even experts in marketing make mistakes, and way more than you know. So let’s look at the most common mistakes there are.
No morning coffee, general clumsiness, or a lack of time to prepare the campaign — click! — and thousands of your subscribers have received an email with the subject line: “Your going to love this.”
Spelling and grammar mistakes in marketing emails can vary in severity. This one, for example, is just unprofessional — it doesn’t drastically change the meaning of the sentence, and people will still understand what you meant.
Weirdly, in the AI era, your mistake might even work in your favor — it shows there was a human behind the message. Still, that doesn’t mean you should let your guard down. According to Tidio’s 2022 survey, 97.2% of customers said a grammar mistake in branded content — including emails — would change their opinion of a company. The stats are a little old, but unfortunately, this topic isn’t researched often. And since changing opinions isn’t a regular thing either, proofreading is still important!
Another regular mistake is the wrong recipient. Imagine marketer Ally. She sent an upsell email to the contact list of partners who already claimed the offer — that was embarrassing! The human factor or technical issues, sending an email to the wrong segment or the wrong list can happen to anyone. Even automated marketing emails can go wrong. For example, marketing software brand Emma’s subscribers received confirmation emails although they already opted in the brand’s newsletter:
Mobile email clients don’t have a lot of space for subject lines — and, if there’s not enough space, they get cut off to fit in the page layout. And, sometimes, trimmed subject lines can become misleading or even embarrassing…
This one is the most serious email mistake on the list and may end up in a lawsuit against your company. Data security issues can be as consequential as accidentally violating your company’s NDA or mass mailing customer information, or as minor as using a street picture with no blur over cars’ license plates.
Data leaks can be detrimental to the success of your business — but it doesn’t mean you can’t recover from them. A right correction email and crisis PR efforts can get you out of many things. However, better safe than sorry — we’d suggest proper email testing and improving data security before hitting send instead.
Imagine working hard to design a good-looking email, choosing beautiful, carefully curated pictures — but your subscribers will see an email that looks like this:
It may happen because of HTML code errors or tricky email clients that don’t support certain image formats. To prevent that from happening, you can use image validation tools like the one from Email on Acid to ensure that all your content displays correctly, regardless of the device. And for better email accessibility, make sure to write proper alternative text for visual content so people with visual impairments or poor internet connection don’t miss out. This is how you can ensure the success of your email design efforts — even if something happens on the recipient’s side.
Broken or missing links in marketing emails can seriously plummet your revenue and worsen customer experience. For example, if you send a pre-order link that leads to a 404 page or an announcement of a new collection with an unclickable CTA button, your subscribers will be frustrated. In this case, an apology email is a must — like this one from Mi Piaci:
If you’re planning a limited one-day-only sale or — even worse — a live marketing event, sending an announcement email with the wrong date could create chaos, trigger hundreds of questions, and ultimately lead to a loss of trust from your customers.
You might think this is a rare occurrence, but you’d be wrong — it’s fairly common. Here’s an example from Ready Set Romper with incorrect Instagram Live details.
Sometimes, you might get a holiday date wrong — especially for those that change annually, like Easter or Mother’s Day. In 2025, Interflora had to issue a correction after mistakenly listing the wrong date for UK Mother’s Day in their campaign.
Names, dates, missing pictures, and links — your customers can probably tolerate a lot. But the most frustrating mistake? A discount or promo code that doesn’t work! The perfect deal was right in front of them, yet they couldn’t use it — what could be worse than that?
Let’s look at an example of an email like this.
Here’s an example from Ready Set Romper with incorrect Instagram Live details.
A typo in an email is not a catastrophic obstacle on the way to success. However, what’s done is done, and you still have to deal with the consequences. So, let’s walk through the process.
A typo is a minor error, and sending an apology email may draw more attention to something most people wouldn’t even notice. Yet, not all typos are alike — ask yourself these questions to make a decision:
You’ve probably used segmentation to promote certain products to different people. That might mean only one of your segments received a marketing email with a critical typo that requires corrections, and the rest of your list received emails with no mistakes. Does it mean you have to send an apology email to everyone?
Admitting you messed up doesn’t mean screaming about it all over the internet. Drawing unnecessary attention to an error in your newsletter can make it worse and rob your business of potential success. So, send a correction email only to those subscribers who were affected by the mistake in question.
The baseline apology email consists of these four elements:
How to write a perfect correction email that adheres to email etiquette and won’t annoy your subscribers even more? Ally shared some great tips for effective apologies:
Unlike promotional campaigns, correction emails leave less room for creativity when it comes to email subject lines. This type of email is more structured, and it should be easily recognized in the inbox. Typical subjects for such emails include:
Need to write a perfect correction email but don’t know where to start? We found five correction email templates for different kinds of critical typos. You don’t need to follow them letter by letter, but they can be a great starting point for your email.
Typos and other email mistakes look unprofessional and can lead to brand reputation issues, customer frustrations, money losses, higher opt-out rates — and hinder your company’s success in general. But making a mistake in your mass emails doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world and your business. The solution is addressing your mistake with the right correction email — here’s how to do it the right way:
Вy the way, when we say that everyone makes mistakes, we mean it — we made them, too! Here is our FWD Newsletter apology email.
If you are looking for a super-honest email marketing newsletter — FWD is the way to go! We are here to help you experiment, get inspiration, and share everything we know about email marketing.
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