5 Email Marketing Mistakes to Know Before You Begin

In this article, I’ll uncover 5 of the most common email marketing mistakes that could be hurting your campaigns. More importantly, I’ll show you exactly how to avoid them so you can win more open, click, and conversion rates.

But if you’re in a rush, here is a quick snapshot. 

Top email marketing mistakes: a snapshot

• Lack of strategic planning. Sending emails without a defined goal, audience, or structured plan will lead to inconsistent messaging and poor results.
• Poor email list management. Failing to segment lists, keeping inactive contacts, or using low-quality email lists will harm your email deliverability and reduce open rates.
• Ignoring email marketing laws. Sending emails without proper consent, failing to include opt-out options, or violating GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and similar laws will get you into legal issues and increase spam complaints.
• Sending emails with poor design and content. Emails that are not mobile-friendly, visually cluttered, or lack clear call to action (CTA) will only frustrate recipients and reduce engagement.
• Not having the right email infrastructure in place. Using outdated or inefficient email marketing tools, failing to track key metrics, or not testing emails properly will lead to your email not being delivered to the intended audience.

Lack of strategic planning

To make your email marketing work, you need a clear plan. That means knowing who you are emailing, why you are reaching out, what action you want them to take, and what results you expect.

You’re likely to fail in your email marketing efforts if:

You don’t have clear campaign objectives or goals

The best email marketers start with the end in mind. Your goals can include:

• Increasing sales
• Driving more signups
• Boosting brand awareness
• Growing your email list
• Nurturing leads
• Engaging with existing customers, etc.

Setting specific goals will help you determine what emails to send and what metrics to measure. You can use the SMART framework to keep your goals clear and trackable.

For example, if you want to drive sales, you could set a SMART goal like:

 “Increase sales of Product Y by generating at least 100 purchases through targeted email marketing campaigns aimed at engaged subscribers within 30 days.”

• Specific. The goal focuses on increasing sales of Product Y through email marketing.
• Measurable. Success is defined as achieving 100 sales.
• Achievable. It targets engaged subscribers who have shown some interest.
• Relevant. It aligns with the company’s revenue objectives.
• Time-bound. The goal must be achieved within 30 days.

You don’t know whom to target

Imagine you’re throwing a party. You wouldn’t invite just anyone off the street, right? You’d want guests who enjoy the same music, share similar interests, and vibe with the atmosphere you’re creating.

If you don’t know who your audience is, your emails might end up like party invitations sent to the wrong crowd. They will likely annoy the audience.

For example, in 2014, Shutterfly, a U.S. photography brand, sent an email congratulating recipients on their new babies to promote baby-related products. However, it went to a wide audience, including many who hadn’t had a baby. This led to confusion and backlash.

To avoid this, take the time to research and define your ideal audience. Ask yourself:

1. Who are they? 
2. What problems do they have? 
3. What type of content do they find useful?

Then create buyer personas based on this information. For instance, the user personas of an eCommerce store selling organic skincare products could be: 

• Eco-conscious millennials who prefer sustainable beauty;
• Middle-aged consumers looking for anti-aging solutions;
• Budget-conscious buyers seeking affordable organic skincare;

Note: You can start with assumptions about your buyer personas. Later, when you gather some real data on your existing customers, you can refine the profiles. 

You don’t properly time your campaigns

Many marketers send emails without considering when their audience is most likely to check inboxes. They either:

• Send emails randomly, hoping for the best.
• Follow outdated advice that no longer works.
• Assume their audience checks emails at the same time as they do.

For example, a B2C company might schedule emails at 10 AM because that’s when the marketing team starts the day. However, their audience might not check emails until lunchtime or after work.

Ignoring time zones is another major issue. A brand with customers across the US, Europe, and Asia might send an email at 9 AM Eastern Time, assuming it’s a great time, only to realize later that it arrives at 2 AM to European subscribers.

Here’s a vivid example. I received this email at 2 AM from an online security company Norton. Imagine my frustration.

A 2025 research by Mailerlite shows that Mondays and Tuesdays between 3 PM and 7 PM tend to have the highest open rates for most industries. You can take this timeframe as your baseline. However, the best approach is to use your historical data to determine when your audience is most engaged. 

Note: If you don’t have this data yet, start tracking it immediately. 

You fail to align email marketing with the overall business strategy

Some business owners also treat email marketing as a separate task rather than integrating it into their overall strategy.

For email marketing to work, every email should support your business goals. If you’re promoting a new product, your emails, social media, website, and ads should all highlight it naturally and consistently.

To make that happen:

• Set clear business goals and align all marketing efforts, including email.
• Keep messaging consistent across emails, social media, your website, and ads.
• Integrate email marketing with your CRM for a seamless customer experience.
• Ensure sales, marketing, and customer service teams work together.

Pro tip: Your emails should also match your brand’s style and tone. If your website and social media feel friendly and professional, but your emails sound robotic or pushy, it creates a disconnect.

Poor email list management

Neglecting proper email list management can lead to many problems. Here are the main issues you should avoid at all costs.

Send emails to purchased or scraped lists

Buying an email list might seem like a quick way to grow your audience, but it’s one of the worst mistakes that can ruin all your email marketing efforts. 

These contacts never signed up to hear from you, which means they are far more likely to ignore, unsubscribe, or even mark your emails as spam. This hurts your sender reputation and can even land you on a blacklist or a spam list. 

Scraping email addresses from websites is even riskier. Not only is it unethical, but it also violates privacy laws like GDPR (EU), CAN-SPAM (US), PDPA (Singapore), APPI (Japan), CASL (Canada), and can result in hefty fines.

For instance, Kellogg Canada, a subsidiary of a multinational food manufacturing company, was fined $60,000 in 2016 for sending marketing emails to people who never gave consent. This was a direct violation of Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL), so the company had to pay up and change how it handled email marketing.

That’s not all. Here are some other drawbacks of purchasing an email list:

If you’ve already purchased an email list, the best thing to do is not use it. Sending mass emails to people who never signed up will do more harm than good.

Instead, focus on building an organic list. A smaller list of engaged subscribers will consistently outperform a large, unengaged one.

Pro Tip: If you’ve sent emails to a purchased list, your sender reputation may have suffered. Check it immediately, and if you notice any damage, follow the tips from our guide to help restore it.

Skip segmenting your list 

Imagine signing up for a software company’s email list after downloading a beginner’s guide, only to receive advanced-level product updates you don’t understand. 

You’d feel lost and probably unsubscribe, right?

People expect relevant, personalized content. That’s why you need to properly segment your email list to group subscribers by interest, demographics, engagement level, etc. This video will give you a brief overview of what it means to segment your email database: 

The way you should segment your email list largely depends on your business type. For example, an eCommerce brand can define segments like first-time shoppers, repeat buyers, and VIP customers. While SaaS businesses need to divide users by engagement levels, job titles, and subscription plans.

Pro Tip: You can create a preference center on your website or within a signup form that allows subscribers to choose the content they want to receive and the frequency.

Failing to clean the list of inactive or invalid emails

Over time, some subscribers will naturally lose interest, change their email addresses, or stop engaging with your content. If you keep sending emails to these inactive contacts, it’ll hurt your sender reputation and skew your campaign metrics.

A high number of unopened emails lowers your deliverability, meaning that it will affect inbox placement, even for the people who genuinely want to receive your emails. 

This means that you must constantly: 

• Monitor key metrics. Track open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates to identify inactive users.
• Try re-engagement campaigns. Send targeted emails to inactive subscribers with special offers, surveys, or reminders to confirm their interest.
• Remove inactive subscribers. Identify contacts who haven’t engaged in 3–6 months and remove them.
• Verify email addresses in the first place. Use email verification tools to eliminate invalid, duplicate, or fake addresses that increase bounce rates. Or use the double-opt-in method.

Check out this video for tips on how to clean your list:

Sending emails with poor design and content

You only have a few seconds to grab the attention of subscribers when your email gets to an inbox. People will quickly move on without reading your email if it has:

Unclear or overly promotional subject line

Some marketers believe that adding urgency, clickbait, or excessive punctuation in the subject line will drive higher open rates. However, this can damage credibility and trigger spam filters.

Think about it, does this email subject line from my inbox look trustworthy?

Instead of using hype and pressure, a great subject line tells the reader exactly what to expect without sounding desperate or misleading.

When crafting an email subject line, you should:

• Clearly state the value of the email.
• Avoid excessive capitalization, exclamation points, and spam-triggering words like “FREE” or “WINNER.”
• Create curiosity without resorting to clickbait.
• Be concise — 50-60 characters maximum.

Poor layout or unreadable design, especially on mobile

Almost half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, but some marketers still don’t pay enough attention to mobile email designs. 

If your emails have messy layouts, tiny fonts, and images that won’t load, it will hurt the user experience. 

Take Witt Weiden, a German online retailer who realized that their newsletters weren’t optimized for mobile. It turned out, that was a big reason why their emails weren’t performing well. Once they switched to mobile-friendly email designs and templates, the open rates jumped by 8%, and the click rates increased by 4% within a few months.

Here is some advice on how to optimize your emails for mobile users:

• Use responsive email templates so emails automatically adjust to different screen sizes.
• Keep a simple, single-column layout that is easy to read on mobile.
• Use large, readable fonts to prevent users from having to zoom in.
• Make buttons large enough to tap.
• Optimize image sizes to prevent slow loading and formatting issues.
• Test your emails on mobile devices before sending them to subscribers.

Irrelevant or spammy content that doesn’t provide value

Even if a subject line gets your email opened, irrelevant content inside can push readers away.

Content is irrelevant when it doesn’t align with the recipient’s interests. This is especially true for promotional content. Emails that sound too pushy or overly “salesy” can trigger spam filters. Even if they make it to the inbox, such emails might annoy recipients, who may then send them to a spam folder.

In 2022, RNC claimed Gmail was unfairly marking its fundraising emails as spam. However, experts pointed out that their email content used spammy tactics. Gmail’s filters flagged them as spam, just like all other overly promotional emails. A judge later dismissed the lawsuit.

For a full list of spam words that trigger a spam filter, click here. 

To keep email content valuable and engaging:

• Segment your audience and investigate their pain points to send emails with valuable information.
• Personalize your content to make emails feel relevant and engaging.
• Use spam checkers, like Mailtrap Spam Checker to avoid spam filters.
• Save and reuse tested templates—brand them for a consistent, great user experience.

Ignoring email marketing laws

It might cost you your reputation and money if you are not compliant with data privacy laws. Here are the actions that regulations like GDPR (EU), CAN-SPAM (US), PECR (UK), CASL (Canada), and PDPA (Singapore) consider violations: 

• Sending marketing emails without clear permission.
• Making it hard to unsubscribe or hiding the opt-out link.
• Holding onto customer data longer than needed.
• Not being upfront about how they collect and use personal data.

In 2019, Google was fined €50 million under GDPR for not being clear about how it collected and used personal data. Users didn’t have easy access to clear consent options as they were hidden in multiple settings.

Here are some tips on how to stay compliant and protect your company from fines and lawsuits:

• Always get clear permission before collecting someone’s data.
• Be transparent with a privacy policy that explains how you use their information.
• Only collect the data you actually need and store it securely.
• Allow users to access, update, or delete their data upon request.
• Include a simple, easy-to-find unsubscribe link in every email.
• Immediately block unsubscribed contacts and stop sending them emails.

Not having the right email infrastructure in place

If the platform you choose doesn’t offer reliable email infrastructure, your email campaigns will be ineffective and potentially at risk.

A solid email infrastructure should include:

• Secure data centers. Ensure your platform uses secure, compliant data centers with certifications like ISO 27001 or SOC 2. If it doesn’t, you risk exposing sensitive customer data to breaches.
• Email authentication protocols. Proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is necessary to prove your emails are sent from a legitimate source and not spoofed. Check that the platform offers easy setup for these protocols and verifies email domain ownership.
• Scalability. The infrastructure should be able to handle increasing volumes of email without compromising performance. Check if the platform offers scalable plans or features that allow you to easily increase your sending limits, server capacity, or throughput as your business grows. Look for a separate steam for bulk emails.
• Compliance with laws. Check that the platform offers tools to help you manage GDPR consent, opt-outs, and data retention policies.
• Reliable deliverability. A good platform works to ensure that your emails are accepted by major email providers. Look for tools that track inbox placement and help identify any issues.To find a platform with the best deliverability rates, check independent deliverability tests, like the one we ran recently. For the methodology and full results, check out this post.

Additionally, you can check if the platform offers automation, A/B testing, detailed analytics, and personalization features to further optimize your email campaigns and drive better results.

Wrapping up

Remember that nobody gets digital marketing 100% right all the time. Not even the pros. 

Mistakes happen, but they don’t have to throw off your entire strategy. What really matters is what you do next for your future campaigns. 

Now that you know the common mistakes to avoid, you can fine-tune your approach to create emails that engage, convert, and build lasting relationships with your target audience.

To help you keep the momentum, here are some insightful resources, that might help you:

• 19 Benefits of Email Marketing: Is It Worth It? 
• 16 Email Marketing Challenges & How to Overcome Them
• How to Create an Email Marketing Strategy that Converts 
• 20 Email Marketing Trends
• Types of Email Marketing Explained
• Email Marketing Funnel Explained