Why Email Marketing Still Matters (and How We Mess It Up)
There’s this persistent myth floating around—maybe you’ve heard it—that email marketing is “dead.”
I don’t know who started it, but whoever they are, they haven’t checked their inbox lately. Every single day, billions of emails are sent. Not just automated spam from some questionable “you’ve inherited $2 million” account, but actual, legitimate messages from brands, writers, and small businesses you like. You read them. Sometimes you even look forward to them.
That’s the thing: when email marketing is done right, it still works better than almost any other form of digital communication. It can feel personal in a way social media can’t quite pull off. A well-crafted email lands softly in your inbox like a letter from someone you know. It waits for you, patiently. It doesn’t vanish down an algorithmic rabbit hole the second you scroll past it. It’s there when you’re ready.
And yet, so many businesses—some of them incredibly smart in other ways—keep fumbling it. They’re making email marketing mistakes that don’t just fail to get results… they actively drive people away.
Table of Contents
The quiet power of the inbox
The reason email marketing still matters comes down to control. Social media platforms can throttle your reach, tweak their algorithms overnight, and send your organic visibility into a nosedive. But with email? You own that list. You have a direct line to your audience. That’s gold—if you treat it right.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: a lot of brands treat their email lists like a dumping ground for every half-baked promotion they can dream up. They push messages out without thinking about who’s on the other end. They write like they’re addressing a faceless crowd instead of a real person. And, little by little, their subscribers stop opening, stop reading… or worse, they hit unsubscribe.
Why we slip into bad habits
Part of the problem is speed. Email marketing can feel deceptively easy: type, hit send, and it’s out in the world. No editors, no gatekeepers. That’s a gift, but it’s also dangerous. Without stopping to think about segmentation, timing, or relevance, we can end up blasting messages that feel more like noise than value.
Another trap? Overconfidence. Maybe you’ve got a strong brand and you think, “People love us—they’ll read whatever we send.” That works until your open rates start dropping and your “email marketing mistakes” aren’t theoretical anymore… they’re written in black and white on your analytics dashboard.
The human side of email
At its best, email marketing isn’t about the perfect CTA button color or the exact word count (though those things help). It’s about connection. About making someone feel like they’re not just another data point in your CRM.
Think about the last great email you received from a brand. Maybe it made you laugh. Maybe it gave you something genuinely useful, like a tip you could apply immediately. Or maybe it simply made you feel understood. That’s what we’re aiming for. And if you avoid the common traps we’re going to talk about, that’s what you can achieve.
A little confession before we start
I’ll be honest: I’ve made some of these mistakes myself. Years ago, I sent a newsletter to my entire list without testing how it would look on mobile. Let’s just say that when you’ve got 70% of your readers squinting at microscopic text, you learn the importance of mobile optimization real quick.
So what follows isn’t a lecture from some flawless marketing saint. It’s a blend of lessons learned the hard way, insights gathered from years in the trenches, and a good dose of what not to do if you want to keep your subscribers around.
Below, we’ll unpack the most common email marketing mistakes—things like blasting one-size-fits-all content, ignoring mobile users, and forgetting that a subject line is your first and best shot at getting noticed. These aren’t just theoretical slip-ups; they’re the kind of blunders that silently drain the life out of your email list.
By the time you’re done reading, you’ll know exactly what to stop doing, what to start doing instead, and how to make your emails feel less like digital junk mail and more like messages people want to open.
And yes, there will be some tough love in here. But also a little encouragement—because the truth is, even if you’ve been making half of these mistakes for years, you can turn things around faster than you think.
Mistake #1: Treating Every Subscriber the Same
If you’ve ever been to one of those giant tourist gift shops, you know the vibe: shelves packed with the same “I ❤️ This City” T-shirt in every size, the same keychains, the same snow globes. It’s one-size-fits-all marketing at its laziest. And, much like in those shops, email subscribers can walk in excited… and walk out empty-handed.
When you treat every subscriber the same, that’s essentially what you’re doing: offering one generic message, hoping it resonates with everyone. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t.
The danger of one-size-fits-all campaigns
Here’s the truth most marketers eventually have to swallow: not all subscribers care about the same things. Your list probably contains:
- Long-time customers who know your brand inside-out.
- New sign-ups who have no idea what you offer yet.
- People who joined for a single freebie and haven’t engaged since.
- Loyal fans who open every single email you send.
Now imagine sending the same “20% Off This Weekend Only!” blast to all of them. Some will love it, sure. Others will barely notice. And a chunk will hit delete without reading a word—because the message simply wasn’t relevant to them.
Relevance is everything. Without it, your open rates drop, your click-throughs tank, and your carefully written copy might as well be invisible.
How segmentation changes everything
Segmentation is like walking into that gift shop and finding a little corner tailored just for you. Instead of a pile of generic T-shirts, you see something that speaks directly to your tastes. That’s what we’re aiming for in email marketing—tiny curated experiences inside someone’s inbox.
There are countless ways to segment a list, but here are some that almost always pay off:
- Behavior-based segmentation – Who clicked on what? Who hasn’t opened in a month?
- Demographics – Age, location, profession (especially important for time-sensitive or local offers).
- Purchase history – A customer who just bought running shoes might want tips on training, not an ad for sandals.
- Engagement level – Reward your super-engaged readers; re-engage the quiet ones differently.
Even a simple split—say, dividing new subscribers from long-time ones—can dramatically improve your results. Because now you’re speaking to people as they are, not as a generic block of “subscribers.”
But segmentation sounds complicated… right?
It doesn’t have to be. Most email marketing platforms (even the free ones) have basic segmentation tools built in. You can start small:
- Tag people based on the form they signed up through.
- Send a different welcome email to people who came from a webinar versus a product page.
- Create a “recent customers” segment for targeted follow-up offers.
Once you see the bump in open and click rates, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.
A quick story about getting it wrong
A few years back, I worked with a client in the fitness space. They had a huge list—tens of thousands of subscribers—and they sent every single one of them the same “New Yoga Class!” email. Sounds harmless, right? Except a big chunk of that list was made up of people interested only in strength training. Not yoga. The open rate? Miserable. The unsubscribe rate? Let’s just say I got a slightly panicked phone call.
We fixed it by creating two main segments—yoga-focused readers and strength-focused readers—and sent each group content relevant to their interests. Within a month, open rates jumped by nearly 40%, and the unsubscribes slowed to a trickle. Same list, same brand, but a whole new level of respect for the audience.
The takeaway
Treating every subscriber the same is like serving the same dish to a table full of people with wildly different tastes and dietary restrictions. Sure, a few will eat it happily—but most will pick at it or send it back.
Segmentation is the quiet, behind-the-scenes work that makes your emails feel personal and intentional. It’s the difference between feeling like a number and feeling like someone actually thought about what you might enjoy.
And here’s the best part: once you start treating your list like a collection of individuals instead of a faceless mass, everything else gets easier—writing subject lines, choosing offers, even deciding how often to send. Because you’re not guessing anymore. You’re speaking directly to someone, not shouting into the void.
Mistake #2: Ignoring Mobile Optimization
You’d think, in 2025, this one wouldn’t still be a problem. And yet… it’s everywhere. Emails that look fine on a desktop but turn into a mess of squished text, tiny buttons, and images that take forever to load on a phone. The kind of email that makes you pinch, zoom, scroll sideways, sigh, and eventually just give up.
Here’s the cold truth: if you’re not optimizing your emails for mobile, you’re basically telling a huge chunk of your audience, “Eh, you figure it out.” And most of them won’t bother—they’ll just hit delete.
How many emails are opened on phones?
Depending on the industry, mobile open rates hover anywhere from 50% to over 70%. Think about that for a second. More than half your audience—probably closer to two-thirds—are reading your emails on a screen no bigger than their palm. And those people aren’t going to wrestle with a clunky design just to read your latest offer.
We live in a scroll-and-swipe world. If your email doesn’t look good and work smoothly on mobile, it’s not just an inconvenience—it’s a deal breaker.
Design tweaks that make a difference
Optimizing for mobile isn’t about reinventing the wheel. It’s about making thoughtful, simple adjustments that keep your reader’s experience in mind:
- Use a single-column layout – Multi-column designs can look fine on desktop but often break or get awkwardly stacked on mobile.
- Keep text chunks short – Big blocks of text feel endless on a phone screen. Aim for 2–3 sentences per paragraph.
- Make buttons big and tappable – If someone has to zoom in to hit your “Buy Now” button, you’ve already lost them.
- Scale your images – Huge files slow load times; overly wide images get cropped. Aim for lightweight, responsive images.
- Check your font size – Tiny text is one of the fastest ways to get an email closed without a second thought.
Even if you nail all of that, there’s one more thing that’s non-negotiable: test before sending. Most email platforms let you preview your email on mobile, and some even let you send a test to your phone. Do it every time.
A personal facepalm moment
A few years back, I sent out what I thought was a gorgeous email campaign. Clean design, beautiful images, a call to action that popped. On desktop, it was flawless. On mobile? The hero image took up half the screen, the headline was cut in half, and the CTA button was pushed so far down you had to scroll twice to see it. Engagement tanked.
It was one of those moments where you realize the obvious: it doesn’t matter how beautiful your email is if people can’t actually read it in the way they consume most of their email—on their phone.
Why mobile optimization affects more than just looks
This isn’t just about making your email look pretty. It’s about respect for your reader’s time and experience. A mobile-optimized email loads quickly, is easy to read, and lets someone act without friction. That’s the difference between a quick tap on your link and a quick trip to the trash folder.
It also affects your bottom line in a sneaky way. If your email is clunky on mobile, people don’t just ignore that email—they subconsciously start to avoid future emails from you. It’s like a bad first date. You don’t get a second chance to make them want to see you again.
The takeaway
Ignoring mobile optimization is like opening a new store and forgetting to unlock the front door for half your customers. The foot traffic is there, but you’ve made it too much work for them to come in.
Make mobile-friendly design the default, not the afterthought. When your email looks and works beautifully on a small screen, you’re removing obstacles between your message and your reader. And in a world where attention is scarce, that might just be the thing that keeps them clicking instead of closing.
Mistake #3: Overloading with Sales Pitches
We’ve all been there—you sign up for a newsletter thinking you’ll get valuable tips, maybe a behind-the-scenes peek, maybe even the occasional offer. Instead, your inbox turns into a non-stop parade of “BUY NOW,” “LIMITED TIME,” and “HURRY BEFORE IT’S GONE.” After a while, you don’t even open them. You know exactly what’s inside.
The irony? The more a brand tries to sell in every single email, the less people actually buy. Why? Because email marketing isn’t just about the sale—it’s about trust. And trust erodes fast when it feels like the only reason someone’s talking to you is to get your money.
Why constant selling kills conversions
Think about your favorite shop or café. If every time you walked in, the owner immediately shoved a product in your face—no “how’s your day,” no small talk—you’d eventually stop going, right? The same principle applies to your subscribers.
Too many sales pitches:
- Make your emails predictable – If readers know it’s always a promotion, they stop opening.
- Erode value perception – When everything’s on sale all the time, “special offers” stop feeling special.
- Burn out your list – Your subscribers are human beings, not vending machines.
People buy from people (and brands) they like and trust. And trust grows through consistent, relevant, and useful content—not an endless stream of discounts.
The power of story-driven content
Sales don’t have to be stripped of humanity. In fact, some of the best “selling” emails barely feel like selling at all. They tell a story—one that makes the product or service feel like a natural part of the narrative.
For example: instead of “Our new blender is on sale,” you could share the story of how your team tested 27 smoothie recipes to find the perfect consistency—and, by the way, that’s the blender you’re offering this week. Suddenly, the product isn’t just a product—it’s part of an experience the reader wants to be part of.
Mixing stories with sales works because stories are how humans naturally connect. They pull the reader in, lower defenses, and make your offer feel like a helpful suggestion rather than a hard sell.
Finding the right balance
I’m not saying you should never promote. You’re running a business, not a charity. But the sweet spot for most brands is something like:
- 70–80% value-driven content (tips, insights, inspiration)
- 20–30% promotional content (offers, launches, discounts)
That balance keeps your audience engaged and gives them a reason to open your emails even when they’re not in buying mode.
A quick lesson from a failed campaign
I once worked with a home goods brand that ran a three-week “mega sale” campaign. Every single email in that stretch was a variation of “HUGE DISCOUNTS—ACT NOW.” Open rates dropped steadily each week, click-through rates fell off a cliff, and by the end, they’d conditioned their list to tune out.
We switched things up for their next promotion: sprinkled in home décor tips, DIY guides, and stories about customer makeovers in between the sales emails. Result? Higher engagement, more clicks, and—ironically—more sales.
The takeaway
Your subscribers didn’t join your list just to be sold to. They joined because they thought you could offer something useful, interesting, or inspiring. Overloading with sales pitches is the fastest way to make them regret that decision.
So, give before you ask. Tell stories before you sell. And when you do make an offer, make it feel like the natural next step in an ongoing, human conversation—not the only reason you showed up in their inbox today.
Mistake #4: Neglecting Subject Lines and Preheaders
If your email were a house, the subject line would be the front door—and the preheader would be the little welcome mat in front of it. You can spend hours decorating the inside (the body of your email), but if the door looks uninviting, no one’s coming in.
It’s wild how many marketers still treat these two elements as an afterthought. They’ll pour their creativity into the main content, then slap on a subject line like “Newsletter #47” and leave the preheader as the default “View this email in your browser.” That’s like inviting someone to dinner and then leaving a sticky note on the door that just says “Food.”
The psychology of the open rate
Subject lines and preheaders aren’t just labels—they’re your only shot at convincing someone to open your email. And in a crowded inbox, they’re competing against dozens (sometimes hundreds) of others for attention.
A great subject line does one of three things:
- Sparks curiosity – “The mistake that’s killing your open rate”
- Offers clear value – “3 quick fixes for your Monday morning chaos”
- Feels personal – “Sarah, I made this just for you”
The preheader is your secret weapon. Think of it as the supporting actor—it doesn’t steal the spotlight, but it sets up the star. A strong preheader builds on the subject line, adding context or intrigue:
- Subject: “The mistake that’s killing your open rate”
- Preheader: “And no, it’s not what you think…”
When those two work together, they create a little itch in the reader’s mind that can only be scratched by opening the email.
Crafting curiosity without clickbait
Here’s the catch: people are tired of bait-and-switch subject lines. If you promise one thing and deliver another, you’re training your audience to distrust you. It’s like a movie trailer that makes you think it’s an action film, and then you find out it’s a slow-moving drama about a goat farm.
Good curiosity doesn’t mislead—it teases. It gives just enough information to make the reader want more, while staying completely truthful about what they’ll find inside.
Some safe bets:
- Use questions (“Are you making this email mistake?”)
- Hint at a benefit (“One change that doubled our click-throughs”)
- Reference something timely (“Before you send your next campaign…”)
A/B testing: your secret lab
The good news is, you don’t have to guess which subject lines will work. Most email platforms let you A/B test them—sending different versions to small segments of your list to see which performs better. Sometimes the results are humbling.
I once tested two subject lines for a productivity tips newsletter:
- “5 habits to get more done”
- “The trick that freed up 2 hours of my day”
Number two won by a landslide. Why? It was specific, personal, and hinted at a benefit without giving it all away.
The takeaway
Neglecting your subject line and preheader is like skipping the headline on a news article—it doesn’t matter how brilliant the content is if no one ever reads it.
Treat them like the make-or-break tools they are. Write them last, when you know exactly what your email delivers. Test them. Refine them. And remember: your email’s success starts not when you send it, but when someone decides to open it.
Mistake #5: Sending Without Testing
There’s a special kind of dread that hits when you open an email you just sent to thousands of subscribers and notice a glaring typo in the headline. Or worse—your main image didn’t load. Or your CTA link… doesn’t work. At that point, all you can do is watch the mistakes pile up in real time and brace yourself for the replies: “Hey, your link’s broken.”
This is what happens when you skip testing. And while it might feel like testing is just an extra step you can cut when you’re in a rush, it’s one of the most important parts of email marketing.
The underrated value of A/B testing
Testing isn’t just about catching errors—it’s also about making your emails better over time. A/B testing lets you experiment with:
- Subject lines – Which gets more opens?
- Call-to-action wording – Does “Buy now” or “Get started” work better?
- Email length – Do your readers prefer short and snappy or long and detailed?
- Send time – Morning? Afternoon? Tuesday? Friday?
Even small changes can make a huge difference. I once saw a campaign’s click-through rate jump by 22% just by moving the CTA button higher up in the email.
What to test (and what not to overthink)
There’s no shortage of things you could test, but not all of them will give you meaningful insights. Focus on the elements that impact engagement the most:
- Subject line and preheader
- CTA placement and wording
- Image choice (or no image at all)
- Layout for mobile vs. desktop
On the flip side, don’t get bogged down testing tiny details that your audience probably doesn’t care about—like whether your button is light blue or slightly lighter blue. Test what matters.
The simple “pre-flight checklist”
Before sending, you should always run through a quick test routine:
- Send yourself a test email – Read it like you’re a subscriber.
- Check it on desktop and mobile – Different devices, different surprises.
- Click every single link – Twice.
- Proofread out loud – You’ll catch awkward phrasing you’d miss otherwise.
- Check load speed – Especially if you have heavy images or GIFs.
It’s not glamorous, but it’s a lot less painful than sending out a broken email to thousands of people.
A personal “oops” moment
I still remember one of my early big client campaigns—a holiday sale email to a list of over 50,000 people. I hit send feeling pretty good about it… until someone replied, “The coupon code doesn’t work.” Turns out I had mistyped the code in both the text and the button link. By the time we fixed it, the initial surge of interest had passed. That one mistake cost the client thousands in lost sales.
Testing wouldn’t have just caught the error—it would have prevented the entire scramble.
The takeaway
Sending an email without testing is like serving a meal without tasting it first. Maybe it’s fine. Or maybe it’s missing salt, undercooked, and about to ruin someone’s evening.
Take the extra five or ten minutes to test. It’s the cheapest insurance you can buy against embarrassing mistakes and lost revenue. And once testing becomes a habit, you’ll wonder how you ever sent emails without it.
Mistake #6: Inconsistent Sending Schedule
One week you’re in their inbox on Monday morning, the next time you show up, it’s a random Thursday three weeks later. This kind of unpredictability might be fine for surprise party invitations, but it’s deadly for email marketing.
Your subscribers get used to a rhythm. If you break that rhythm without explanation, engagement drops. People forget who you are, why they signed up, or—worse—they mark your email as spam because they don’t remember ever opting in.
Why inconsistency kills engagement
When you’re inconsistent, you interrupt the trust-building process. Your audience wants to know they can rely on you to deliver value regularly—whether that’s weekly tips, monthly updates, or quarterly offers. Without that consistency, your open rates suffer, click-throughs decline, and unsubscribes rise.
Finding a rhythm your audience loves
The key is balance: not too often that you become annoying, but not so rarely that they forget you.
- Pick a realistic schedule — weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
- Stick to it like clockwork — even if you send fewer emails overall, reliability is more important.
- Let them know upfront — set expectations in your welcome email about how often they’ll hear from you.
Remember, in email marketing, consistency isn’t boring—it’s reassuring.
Mistake #7: Neglecting Website Security and HTTPS
In the age of cyber threats and privacy concerns, website security isn’t just about protecting your data—it’s also a key SEO ranking factor. Google has confirmed that HTTPS encryption is part of its ranking algorithm, meaning insecure sites can lose both search visibility and user trust.
If your site still uses HTTP, visitors will see a “Not Secure” warning in their browser, which can dramatically increase bounce rates. Even worse, it signals to search engines that your site isn’t prioritizing user safety, which could push you further down the rankings.
How to fix it:
- Install an SSL certificate—most hosting providers offer them for free.
- Redirect all HTTP URLs to HTTPS using 301 redirects to preserve link equity.
- Update internal links to ensure they point to the secure version of your site.
- Regularly scan for malware and security vulnerabilities to maintain trust.
A secure site boosts credibility, improves user experience, and gives search engines one more reason to rank you higher. Neglecting it is like locking your front door but leaving the windows wide open.
Avoiding Email Marketing Pitfalls
So here we are, at the finish line. Seven common email marketing mistakes, all laid out like a roadmap of what not to do if you want your emails to get read, clicked, and appreciated.
It’s easy to forget sometimes how personal email is. Despite the automation, the scheduling tools, the fancy templates, at the end of the day there’s a real human sitting behind that inbox. And that human doesn’t want to feel like a target or a number—they want to feel seen, understood, and valued.
Avoiding these mistakes isn’t about perfection or spending hours obsessing over every little detail. It’s about respect—respect for your subscribers’ time, their attention, and their trust.
- Segment your list so you’re talking to them, not a crowd.
- Optimize for mobile because most folks will open your email on their phone.
- Give more than you take—don’t turn every email into a sales pitch.
- Craft subject lines and preheaders that actually get people curious.
- Test everything to catch errors before your audience does.
- Send consistently so you build a reliable relationship.
- Use analytics and feedback to learn, tweak, and grow.
Sure, it’s a lot to keep in mind. But here’s the good news: none of these require rocket science. Most are just about slowing down, paying attention, and putting yourself in your subscriber’s shoes.
You don’t have to nail every single email. But if you avoid these seven common traps, you’ll be well ahead of most marketers who keep shooting in the dark.
So take a breath, roll up your sleeves, and start treating your email list like the valuable community it is. Because when you do that, your email marketing won’t just be “another task” — it’ll be one of your best tools for building real, lasting connections.
Gabi is the founder and CEO of Adurbs Networks, a digital marketing company he started in 2016 after years of building web projects.
Beginning as a web designer, he quickly expanded into full-spectrum digital marketing, working on email marketing, SEO, social media, PPC, and affiliate marketing.
Known for a practical, no-fluff approach, Gabi is an expert in PPC Advertising and Amazon Sponsored Ads, helping brands refine campaigns, boost ROI, and stay competitive. He’s also managed affiliate programs from both sides, giving him deep insight into performance marketing.