5 common email marketing mistakes even the pros make

What most creators ignore in their email marketing

Sinem Günel increased her subscriber list by 30% and generated an extra $6,000 in revenue in just three months. And she did this by fixing a critical yet common issue with her automatic email introductions. Also known as her welcome sequence for new subscribers. The problem is most creators totally ignore this.

How are you welcoming your subscribers?

There are some very key mistakes they make which lead to lower open rates, and as a result, fewer conversions for their business. So today we’re going to reveal what these mistakes are, how you can avoid them, and what you can do differently to supercharge your own results. The first thing we’re going to cover has caused so many creators to lose email subscribers as fast as they gain them, meaning that you can put in days of work and energy only to see very little results from your efforts.

But before we dive deep into why this is and how to prevent it, we first need to understand the feature that helped Sinem Günel gain 4583 subscribers to her newsletter in just three months, and this feature is Recommendations. Recommendations allows you to grow your audience with collaboration, but it comes with its unique challenges, especially when welcoming new people in.

If we think about traditional subscribers, they already know and trust you. They’ve engaged with your content and they already kind of like you. On the flip side, subscribers that come in from Recommendations are most likely only hearing about you for the first time. And this is where the first mistake comes in: Welcoming your Recommended subscribers the same way that you do your traditional subscribers.

If you make this mistake, you risk losing them before they even reach your second email. how did Sinem manage to overcome this issue? With one simple strategy, she created a unique welcome sequence for her Recommended subscribers, differentiating it from the one that she has set up for her traditional audience.

This approach is crucial because it helps catch the Rrecommended subscribers up to speed with who you are and what value you can bring them. Here’s a quick idea on how you can get started with this unique welcome sequence. Email #1: Say hello and share some of your proudest evergreen content. Email #2: Introduce yourself and what you do.

Are you using email automations?

And email #3: Tell the story behind your brand and why you started your business. However, there is a crucial step closely tied to our goals that, if we overlook it, will ruin any chances of our carefully crafted welcome sequence reaching its intended audience. As creators, we all have ambitions. For me, it’s important that I get to spend regular time with my wife and kids and friends, but I’ve got my responsibilities here as a social media and YouTube strategist, and I’m building up a brand on the side for work-from-home dads

As content creators, it’s not just life, you have to shoulder multiple jobs as well. You have to be a content creator, a product developer, a marketing strategist, a social media manager, a customer service representative, a networker, an educator, and so much more. So you might be thinking, how do we manage all these responsibilities? It’s an impossible task to be everywhere at once.

Which brings us to mistake number two: Overlooking the power of automations, or worse, setting them up incorrectly. Automations are like your digital clone, working around the clock without need for rest or sleep. But if we mess up, say, by bombarding our audience with too many emails we risk pushing our subscribers away.

But when automations are done correctly, they can save us invaluable time and significantly increase engagement with our audience, Which is exactly what Sinem used to achieve her results. Sinem realized that every new subscriber coming through Recommendations is automatically associated with a form called ‘Creator Network’ in her ConvertKit account.

How soon are you selling?

By connecting this form to a new automation, she ensured that everyone that came in as a Creator Network Recommendation received a tailored welcome sequence. Alright so let’s get into what else might be causing people to hit the unsubscribe button before they even get to know you. So they’ve joined your list through a Recommendation and they got your welcome email and they’re learning a little bit about you.

Maybe something is starting to brew there, but they’ve still just met you. You haven’t really taken them out to coffee yet, so to speak. So you wouldn’t want to metaphorically go in for the kiss quite yet because that’s way too forward. But it’s the exact way that some marketers treat their subscribers.

Think about how you normally interact with subscribers who’ve discovered you through your other content. These people come in warm, familiar with who you are and what you stand for, ready to deepen that connection and probably buy something. But what happens when we drop a subscriber who has been Recommended to you into this very same pipeline? Suddenly the experience changes for a Recommended subscriber who might not be as familiar with your work, getting pitched with a product right away is going to feel abrupt and a bit awkward.

It’s easy for us as content creators to forget that not all audiences are created equal and treating them as such leads to missed opportunities and mixed signals. And that leads us to mistake number three: Selling too quickly. The key here is to understand the unique journey of these subscribers. Unlike your regular audience, they might need a little bit more time to trust you and what you have to offer A useful strategy is to implement a temperature check within your sequence a way to gauge their engagement and readiness.

How are you using your data?

For example, Jason Resnick helps creators with their email marketing and automations. He created something called the Quick Wins email. It’s an email that contains three links and each one links to a resource that tackles a major issue the subscriber might be facing. If a subscriber clicks on any of these links, Jason tags them with “Click – Quick Win” and whatever the specific issue is that they clicked on and then they’ll get an email sequence that pitches one of his offers.

Basically, he doesn’t send that sequence to someone until they’ve shown interest by clicking. But imagine pouring your energy and passion into crafting the perfect nurture sequence, gathering data on your subscribers, tailoring every detail to keep them engaged, only to overlook a crucial step that renders all of your efforts pointless.

So many people miss a chance to get this right, and by not doing this, they’re throwing away an opportunity to have the maximum impact on their results. So picture this: You’re super pumped to start binge watching this hilarious new comedy show that you found. it’s even starring an actor that you like, you really try to get your friend excited about this comedy gem.(06:24) But no dice. Your friend has really been into this mystery thriller series all caught up in the suspense and the dark plots and their mind is stuck on those mysteries and all that effort that you’re putting in to switch their focus… turns out it’s just kind of bugging them. and instead of bringing you closer over a shared show, it feels like you’re pestering them.

Do you see the misstep here? When we’re not on the same page, even the best intentions can backfire. So what does this have to do with email? It’s all about getting on the same page as your subscribers. Take Jason for example, by making one tiny change, he managed to take his open rate of Recommended subscribers from 27% to 56%.

In other words, he got on the same page with his new subscribers and all it took was a change of his subject line from this… to this. You see he could tell from his results that the original subject line wasn’t resonating with the audience. So he took note and made the right change. He also did a couple of things like moving links higher and making emails shorter to increase engagement.

But this wouldn’t have been the case if he made mistake number four: Ignoring the data. We think we know our followers, especially the loyal ones. But those new faces, they might see things differently. And we’re missing out if we’re not listening. So make sure you use your data to help you get on the same page as your new subscribers.

When do you send your emails?

But there’s one more mistake which could make all of this hard work come toppling down. It’s something that’s really easy to fix. But when left un-noticed, it can cause so much damage to your subscriber count. Let’s say you’ve got your email sequence working like a well-oiled machine.

Then you shoot out of broadcast and you’re unsubscribes increase. Part of that is normal, the average unsubscribe rate is 0.5%. But if you’re getting a lot of folks unsubscribing, here’s what may be happening. Your subscribers start feeling like you’re everywhere and not in a good way. If they’re hearing from you too much, it can lead to unsubscribes or worse.

The “This is spam” button. Setting up that automated sequence felt like a win, but then you want to send your normal weekly newsletter as a broadcast and you’re like, “Uh oh, don’t want to be that annoying friend. Am I sending too many emails? Did they get that automated sequence? Is it still too soon to send my normal weekly newsletter? On top of that?” So what’s the move? While there isn’t one standard that applies to all creators, as some creators are sending daily emails, others are sending weekly

and some are sending less frequently than that. Here are a couple of things you can do Jason emails six times per week, and it’s a mix of automated email sequences and broadcasts. He knows his sequence emails go out every day except Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. So those are the days that he knows that he can send out his broadcasts.

Kyle Adams, a creator growth manager here at ConvertKit who has his own newsletter, does something different Using visual automations, before someone enters a new sequence such as a welcome sequence, he adds the tag ‘Do Not Disturb’ to that subscriber. Then when he sends his broadcast, he sends it to everyone except anyone with the ‘Do Not Disturb’ tag.

Whenever they finish the sequence, he has the visual automation remove the tag, so now they will receive his broadcasts. Doing either of these will help you avoid mistake number five, which is overwhelming your subscribers Create that breathing room between your automated sequences and your manual broadcasts.

But overwhelming your own subscribers isn’t the only thing that causes you to lose subscribers. There’s actually an even bigger mistake email marketers make that’s having a huge impact on their revenue. So check out our video Beginner vs Pro newsletters here to find out how to avoid it. We’ll see you over there