Nina has anxiety and maybe some attention issues — but at least she knows how to ask for support. She wrote a message in the group chat of email marketers and she found out she’s not alone. Even experts in marketing make mistakes too, and they can be way more serious! Let’s explore the most common email mistakes Nina’s colleagues told her about.
No morning coffee, general clumsiness, the lack of time for preparing the campaign, like in Nina’s case — and now thousands of your subscribers received an email with the subject line that says “Your going to love this”.
Spelling and grammar mistakes in marketing emails may vary in severity. This one is, for example, just unprofessional but it doesn’t radically change the meaning of the sentence: people will understand what you were trying to say.
However, it doesn’t mean you should relax. According to Tidio’s 2022 survey, 97.2% of customers would change their opinion on a company if they found a grammar mistake in its branded content — including emails! That’s why proofreading is important.
Nina’s friend Ally 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, 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:
After talking to her colleagues, Nina is less worried about the mistake itself — now she knows that a typo in an email is not a catastrophic obstacle on the way to success. However, what’s done is done, and she still has to deal with the consequences. She was thinking of sending a correction email to everyone affected by the mistake, including the company’s business partners. If you’re in a similar situation, you might do the same — 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 for making a decision:
Nina used behavior-based contact list segmentation to promote certain products to different people. One of these segments received a marketing email with a critical typo that requires corrections, the rest of your list received emails with no mistakes. Does it mean she has 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. In this case, Nina should send a correction email only to those subscribers who were affected by the mistake in question.
Nina’s friend Ally wrote an apology email after sending an offer to a wrong contact list segment. After a private chat with her, Nina understood that a baseline apology email consists of these four elements:
How to write a perfect correction email that adheres to email etiquette and wouldn’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 you don’t know where to start? To help poor Nina, 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, 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 a right correction email — here’s how to do it the right way:
