You can’t be an email marketer without making some mistakes. Take a funny little look back at some of Liz’s biggest blunders!
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Transcript
Hey friend, Liz Wilcox here, the fresh princess of email marketing. I don’t know why I said it like that, but. It’s kind of a good segue actually, because this episode, episode 48 of the email sound booth podcast is all about the three times I messed up, uh, my email marketing. So I just, I mean, I feel like I messed up this intro by going really deep and low and that’s kind of weird.
Uh, but it is who I am, so whatever. And that, that’s really the lesson. Let me just jump into the lesson. I think this is going to be a quick episode. Um, You know, we all make mistakes. We all flub up. We all look kind of dumb sometimes, and that is 100 percent okay. And this episode really, the premise is like, lest you think you’re alone in making mistakes when it comes to email.
You are not, this is something that actually comes up a lot in our Facebook group. If you’re not in there, uh, it’s called the email sound booth. Check it out in the show notes. Um, but somebody posted the other day, uh, you know, she says, you know, what makes me And then she’s got like a face palm emoji. Uh, when I put my internal note in the preview text of my email, so my subscribers see it instead of putting it.
You know where it’s supposed to go. So, uh, yeah, that’s good. That’s kind of funny. So basically, let’s say, um, If you don’t use an email service provider that has like internal notes uh in kit they do and Um, you know, let’s say my internal note is like sales email number three Testimonial so she’s saying she put that in the preview text of the email instead of the internal note So that people will see it, uh, instead of, you know, it being an internal note.
So yeah, stuff like that happens all the time. Someone posted underneath that, like commented, you know, my preview texts are usually from the previous email. more than they should be, right? So if you duplicate, uh, your emails, sometimes it will also duplicate the preview text and you have to change that. Uh, someone said, Oh, I almost never put anything in the preview text because I found I make too many errors.
Um, another person said my newsletter filter got reset. So I sent to everyone on my email list last week. And then someone else said, um, You know, a client of theirs sent an email to all customers who had not opened an email in the last six months instead of excluding them. So it was, they said it was like 20, 000 sends and a 5 percent open rate.
Cause they sent to people who aren’t opening, right? So moral of the story is it happens to all of us. You really are in great company and I think you’re you’re not being an email marketer Until you make a flub up like that Uh, for example, I think my first big flub up was I wrote a newsletter and I forgot to put a subject line And this was back when kit.
I don’t know if they still do it. But if you didn’t have a subject line The subject line would be new broadcast. And so I sent this out and, you know, of course I’m subscribed to my own email list. So I get the email a couple minutes later and it says new broadcast and I was mortified. I mean, this is the first big flub up.
You know, I probably had a couple hundred people on my list. I didn’t really have any tags or segments. So there was really not much to flub up except this. And I was absolutely mortified. I felt like a big dum dum. Uh, but, y’all, it, it was the largest open rate I had in like three months. I was like, whoa, that’s so funny.
Uh, that, that subject line would garner so much attention. Anyway, uh, the second time I’m, I can think of that. I felt really like cringy about messing up my email, uh, is when I, I had my email marketing membership, right? And every single Monday those people get an email from me. It’s a little bit of encouragement.
It’s saying, Hey, the new template is up in the dashboard. Here’s a little synopsis of it. Um, and then I get out of there, right? If there’s like news, like, Hey, we’ve got a Q and a it goes in there, whatever. Right. Well, I sent this email to every single person on the list. That seems to be a theme. I think someone else said they did that, uh, in the Facebook group, but it was a membership.
It wasn’t a newsletter. It was, hey, this is the thing. And back in the day, my membership was Uh, it didn’t, it wasn’t behind a paywall, it didn’t have a dashboard, like I was just saying. Uh, it was just a Google Drive. So people, every single person, and at this point there was probably 2, 000 people on the list, got the link to the template for free.
And I thought, oh gosh, this sucks so bad. But it actually opened up. A lot of conversations where, uh, you know, very honest, lovely humans on my list that they are, you know, hit reply. Hey Liz, I think this is a mistake. I, you know, I’m not a member of your email marketing membership. Um, I think, I think you made a mistake, right?
So that was very, very lovely of them and it opened up a lot of conversations and some people actually joined the membership. I said, yeah, you know, you can just have it. I made a mistake. I didn’t double check before I hit send. Uh, you know, go ahead, click the link, you know, you can have this. And it led to some sales, not all of them, but it also led to a lot of people, uh, you know, saying, hey, Liz is generous.
And You know, she made a mistake, but she’s not trying to take it back. She’s not asking us to not look at it Uh, this is a generous lady. I want to stick around right and then uh last it actually happened last week. I So as I prep for black friday, i’ve got a lot going on right and i’m also sending near i’d say nearly daily emails And I went to send out an email and literally Literally the subject line was about yesterday because the day before I had sent out an email, uh, you know, at, or telling people, Hey, in 2025, we’re going to talk about list building, list building, list building, list building.
It’s the most important thing. Yes. Let’s go. Let’s go get on the wait list for my product. Right. And then, uh, You know cut to today. I sent out an email about yesterday explaining more of the actual things I have planned on the calendar for my annual pass holders the mistake and what makes it funny about Sending an email that says about yesterday and talking about an email from yesterday is I accidentally sent this to the people that did not get yesterday’s email.
They did not get it. I sent this to people that were in my welcome sequence. So if you don’t know, and I think we have an entire little podcast on this, when someone is in your welcome sequence, usually you don’t send them those emails. You know timely newsletters, right? And so this was only sent to people in the welcome sequence.
It was like, hey yesterday I talked about blah blah blah. Here’s more explanation. Like those people did not get yesterday’s email. I felt again like a big dum dum. Um, it was, you know, things only email marketers can laugh at, um, hopefully you get it. It was a disaster. Well, not, I mean, it felt like a disaster.
I mean, literally, I don’t think I had one person hit reply and say, Hey, I didn’t get yesterday’s email or something. It had, um, it had a high open rate. It had a higher than normal unsubscribe rate. So people were probably just confused and like, uh, this lady’s supposed to be an email marketer and she can’t even keep her email straight.
Like, I’m, I’m out, which I don’t blame them. Anyway, uh, Hopefully this brings you solace, uh, for the next time you make a mistake with your email marketing. It happens. Double check, try to triple check, uh, but you know, mistakes are inevitable. It’s actually the second value in my business because we believe that making mistakes is inevitable and the faster you can accept that, the faster you will learn and grow.
So, Anyway, I’m Liz Wilcox. This has been episode 48. If you are interested in learning from an email marketer that isn’t afraid to make mistakes and you do know that list growth is very important to you and sending newsletters, even if you accidentally flubbed them up is very important to you. I’d love for you to go to lizwilcox.
com slash waitlist and get on the waitlist for the annual pass. 108 bucks. That’s all you’ve got to commit to for an entire year and I’m going to give you an entire year into my membership and all my products, uh, for that price. Anyway, I hope you have a great day and I’ll see you on the next episode.