What annoys your clients the most when receiving an email?

Chart of the Day: Adobe Consumer Email Survey Report 2017

We are all guilty of it

As email marketers, we don't like to admit it, but we all do it at one point or another. We will annoy our customers. This is, unfortunately, part and parcel of email marketing, my little email geeks. You can't please all the people all of the time.

What do we do that annoys them?

So what annoys our clients? What are their pet peeves?

In our chart, we can see the main irk is getting emailed too often at 47%. This is no surprise. But what are the others? Let's look at the other top 3.

1. 32% are annoyed by too wordy/poorly written emails.
   This is a really good point. Long worded emails are boring and no one reads them. We need to write for emails, not an essay. Make your copy work for your clients.
2. 22% get emails urging them to buy a product they have already purchased.
   This is a common problem. It can be the data isn't available or dynamic content isn't being used.
3. 20% complain that an email offer makes it clear that the data held is wrong.
   We all sometimes fill out a form and just choose any information, correct or not. Surely we can't be held responsible for that? No, but it's up to us to keep our customer's data correct.

Final thoughts

You won't know what your clients think unless you conduct your own survey. So before you begin with your email marketing strategy, do your research - don't guess! Research may prove that emails should be short, but your clients may prefer long and detailed copy. Do the research and you may be surprised.

• Source: Adobe Consumer Email Survey Report 2017
• Sample Size: 3,028
• Recommended Resource: Email deliverability hub page