Common Email Writing Mistakes That Kill Your Sales

Author: Jessica Fender

Email marketing has enormous potential when it comes to promoting your products and services and increasing sales. When done properly, email marketing can turn leads into customers and boost your sales rates significantly. But, not everyone knows how to write professional and effective emails. Businesses and even marketing professionals tend to make some basic email writing mistakes that are killing their sales.

To ensure your emails are flawless, we’ve put together a list of the most common email writing mistakes you have to avoid. Study each of them to polish your email writing and increase your sales.

1. Cold Subject Line

To make sure your email copy is a success, you first have to make sure people will read it. Having business representatives and potential customers open your email is one of the hardest steps in this process, and your subject line is your single and most important weapon.

If you have a cold and unexciting subject line, you’re risking not having your emails opened. So, what do you need to do to ensure this doesn’t happen?

Write a subject line that is:

• inviting- providing a strong reason for people to open the email
• explanatory- giving a glimpse of the important information it contains
• specific- define what’s in it for the potential customers
• promising- be honest about the content of the email
• urging- add pressure

For instance, the subject line “Educate Your Employees- Team Copywriting Course on Discount!”  is certainly better than “Copywriting Course Application”.
The potential customer needs to know the email is relevant to their needs and their business needs, which will make them want to open it. Be creative and add spice to every subject line you’re writing.

2. No Clear Goal

If you start writing your email but you don’t have a clear goal set in your mind, you won’t get very far with it. Your email needs to have a clear purpose, so make sure you decide your main goal before starting writing. 

You can have goals such as:

• introducing a new product/service
• rewarding loyal customers
• promoting an event
• raising brand awareness

Whatever your goal is, decide on it at the beginning of the writing process and focus on making that one goal clear and strong.

3. Little or No Visuals

An email without visuals is an email that kills your sales. Everyone’s a fan of visuals, and people love being given instant context by looking at the visuals you’ve included.

Choose the visuals that will help you achieve the goal you’ve set and help you support the main message you’re trying to send. Some of the best email visuals include:

• images
• infographics
• colorful design 
• interesting fonts
• brand colors

Your visuals need to be speaking for you, telling the potential customer what to expect and preparing them for the content and the message you want to send them.

4. Too Much Text

Once your potential customer opens that email to see what it’s about, you’ve got them where you need them to be.  But, the next challenge is to have them read the content of your email. 

The next common mistake you have to avoid is having too much text in your email. Huge chunks of text are extremely repelling to people and might result in email abandonment.

Instead, you need to make your email a combination of:

• short paragraphs of text
• headings and subheadings in larger fonts
• bullet points and lists
• links to click on

Organize your email body to make it less monotonous and more exciting. Keep it brief and include nothing but important information. Visit DissertationCapital, if you feel like you need a professional help.

5. No CTA

CTA (call-to-action) should be a regular part of your perfected email copy, especially if you aim to have the potential customers perform a desired action. CTAs are a powerful tool that influences people to make the decisions you want them to make.

Your email needs to have a CTA that is:

• visible and dominating the email design
• intriguing
• brief and clear
• clickable and takes the customer to a specific landing page

CTAs help customers perform the action you’ve intended by asking them for no more than a single click. Plus, they add the extra pressure your customers need to make that decision and go for it.

Therefore, don’t miss a chance to seal the deal and move your potential customers one more step down the sales funnel.

6. Not Proofreading

A single typo can ruin your entire effort to write a witty, effective, and winning email copy. Proofreading is not supposed to be optional. It’s mandatory if you want to show you’re professional and trustworthy.

When proofreading your email copy, you should use a combination of tools and techniques:

• use a spell and grammar checker
• use a readability checker
• ask a friend or a colleague to check it for you

Polish your copy to perfection before you send it, or else you’ll risk damaging your reputation and coming across as sloppy and unprofessional.

Final Thoughts 

The writing mistakes we’ve listed above can seriously damage your sales rate and turn your emails into worthless pieces of content. Study those mistakes and use our advice on how to avoid them.

Investing in better email marketing is a decision you won’t regret making.

Jessica Fender is a copywriter and blogger at GetGoodGrade with a background in marketing and sales. She enjoys sharing her experience with like-minded professionals who aim to provide customers with high-quality services.

Experience and a lot of testing have shown us that it is possible to create email templates that people actually resonate with.