3 Most Common Email Design Mistakes

Hey, Michael here.

We’re back with another edition of The DTC Letters.

In today's newsletter, we are going to over:

• The 3 most common design mistakes I see

• AB Test of the week

• Email Design of the Day

• Some FREE training videos

If you haven’t already, check out this new training I posted on YouTube about The EXACT Strategy We Used To Add $1.6M in EXTRA Yearly Revenue To Our Clients Ecom Brand In Less Than 90 Days (link)

+$24,000 Split Test of the Week

This is less of a “AB split test” and more of one of our agencies best practices.

This is hands down the easiest test to set up and one that doesn’t even require you to create an additional email with new copy and designs.

In the image above, what you are looking at is what we call a Welcome Email #1 Resend.

And yes, this test alone has generated an extra $24,000 since we started working with this brand only a few months ago.

What is the test?

Essentially what we are doing is after someone receives the first email of the welcome flow, we are:

• Waiting 45 minutes

• Using a conditional split to say

  • Someone who has opened email 1 (yes path)

  • Someone who has NOT opened email 1 (no path)

Those who HAVE opened the first email will get sent to the next 1 day time delay to go on and receive email #2 as normal.

But…

Those who have NOT opened the first email in the last 45 minutes since receiving it, they will get sent the welcome email #1 AGAIN but with a new subject line.

The reason we use a new subject line is so that it doesn’t get sent in a thread with the email the received 45 minutes ago.

The rest of the email is the same so go ahead and great your conditional split and time delay, then clone your email #1 and change the subject line.

Why does this work?

Most of the time, the people who opt-ed into your list from a pop-up check the first email.

But sometimes they get distracted or get busy and miss it. After 45 minutes, their inbox probably received another 15+ emails so the chance of them seeing your welcome email #1 is pretty slim.

By sending it again after 45 minutes to ONLY non openers, you basically double your chances of getting seen.

It’s not uncommon for our clients see this email generate 50%+ of what their main welcome email #1 generates with this resend.

Give it a shot for your brand. (feel free to shoot me a message if you need help getting it set up)

The Best Links of The Week

Graphic Tweets

• A graphic tweet on how increase your Welcome Flow revenue (link)

• How to do customer research to generate more sales with your emails (link)

• Why sending emails to your list more frequently will make you more money (link)

Threads

• A detailed breakdown of why you shouldn’t be afraid of people unsubscribing from your list (link)

• The 7 most common Klaviyo mistakes I’ve seen after auditing 30+ DTC Ecom brands (link)

• 6 ways to increase your AOV with Emails (link)

Interesting Things In The Space

• Make sure you are prepared for all the new google changes that started a few days ago, most brands emails are about to get wrecked! (link)

• 7 Trends for DTC Brands Looking to Stand Out in a Crowded Field (link)

3 Most Common Email Designs Mistakes

After auditing over 30+ Klaviyo accounts, I have seen more mistakes then brand would like me to admit.

A lot of these mistakes happen at the email design level and could be easily be avoided in order to generate more sales literally over night. (if the brands would implement our suggestions from our free audits)

So here are the 3 most common mistakes I see that brands could fix asap.

1. No CTA’s in the Above The Fold Section

Imagine this, you go to the mall to buy some new shoes. You walk into Footlocker and they shoe you the latest drop they got shipped in yesterday.

They help you find you size and tell you how swaggy you look in them and mention if you buy them today you get 20% off.

Of course you’re gonna buy them now. So you head to checkout and…wait what…

There is now register in site…you can’t find out where to pay. You’re in a rush so you end up putting the shoes down and walk out the store.

This is essentially what brands are doing when their CTA isn’t in the first 600-800px of their emails.

You are hiding the cash register so of course you are going to make less money when you do this. You are adding friction to the buying process.

After all, something like 95%+ people never scroll your email so if they don’t see it in 2-3 seconds they are walking out the door.

2. Too many ideas crammed into one email

After sending several hundred emails for our clients and having 100M+ customers see them, what we’ve found is that the best converting emails have a few things in common. (and so do the worst ones)

The worst emails always have too many ideas within the email.

Why is this bad? It confuses people. Picture this…

Email #1 has:

• 3 ideas (Jackets, sunglasses, and backpacks)

• 3 CTA’s ( Buy our jackets, Or our sunglasses, or maybe you need a backpack)

• 3 Offers ( get half of sunglasses, or 5% off jackets, or maybe buy one get one free for backpacks)

Email #2 has:

• 1 topic (The new jacket you launched)

• 1 CTA (Shop Now) ps. you can have multiple buttons

• 1 offer (aka buy the jackets today for 5% off)

Do you see how confusing email #1 is and how simple and understandable email #2 is?

The first one creates decision overload, causing more friction in the buying journey.

Increased Friction = Less Sales = Less profits

3. Emails not being skimmable

We are in the TikTok era, meaning people have well… TikTok brain.

The average person is so amped up on dopamine that they are quite literally getting worse at speaking and understanding complex things. Their attention span is fractions of a second.

Combine that with the zombie state that your email subscriber is in when scrolling their inbox for catchy subject lines that feel like TikTok hooks, you have no shot at people reading your emails from end to end.

Your emails need to be skimmable to the max!

Even your plain text emails need to have enough line breaks, bullet points, and curiosity messaging to get the job done.

Fix these mistakes and I can guarantee that you make more money next week from your email list or I will overnight you my 19lbs french bulldog Rocket…

How I Can Help You

If you like this newsletter and want to work with me, there are a few ways we can do so:

1. You can apply to work with my Agency, AdSumo Digital (link)

2. I will be posting free weekly training videos on my Youtube channel (link)

3. I have over 7,000 tweets on scaling your DTC brand using your brands Email List (link)

4. If you are looking to better monetize your DTC brands email list, we have worked with brands in several niches from Health & Wellness to Luxury brands and helped Country Life Natural Foods increase their email list revenue add $1.6M in EXTRA yearly revenue in less than 90 days. (Apply Here)

or, so can just reply to this email.

I reply to absolutely everybody who replies to me :)