Choosing The Right Email Software: Pitfalls To Avoid
If you want to buy email software or change your current tool, you have many options to consider.
Many email platforms are centred around a specific niche, like email marketing tools for events and SaaS email marketing tools.
There are even tools specifically designed for accounting businesses and blog marketing. But how can you know which email platform suits you best?
Choosing the wrong software can create more issues than it solves. For example, a platform with a low deliverability rate but a versatile email designer will eventually stifle your growth, no matter how lovely your designs are.
This article will explore common email marketing needs and pitfalls when choosing email software.
From feature overload to hidden costs, this piece will give you a comprehensive idea of the critical parameters to look for and what to avoid before making an informed decision.
1 – Not Planning for Scalability

One of the most common pitfalls of users just starting with email marketing is focusing too much on short-term goals. Don't just think of where you want your business to be now. Instead, plan for the following 12 months.
All email platforms have solid basics like automation tools and template libraries, which are a good starting point. However, other tools will benefit you in the long run, as they offer advanced solutions for a growing email list.
For example, Mailchimp and its competitors give access to intricate features, like product recommendation options and AI-powered content generation.
Letting your current needs dictate your future tools can stifle your growth and disrupt your marketing strategy. You will soon seek a new tool if you outgrow your email platform quickly.
And changing tools means you have to migrate your data and learn how the new platform works all over again. This could hurt your budget, too, if you had committed to a multi-year plan.
How To Avoid It: Think Long-Term
Thinking long-term and choosing software that can grow with your needs and help you scale your efforts with minimal to zero disruptions can remedy this issue.
Analyse Your Goals
The first step is to define the primary purpose of your email marketing efforts.
Why are you looking into email marketing? What do you need to achieve? Is it something that you need to investigate at this moment in your marketing journey?
Entrepreneurs might focus on generating leads, nurturing prospects, or converting customers with sales-driven campaigns.
On the other hand, designers may use email to highlight new projects, feature case studies in their new blog, or send newsletters that keep their audience engaged with the latest trends in the industry.
Your email marketing platform needs tools and features that align with your business goals so you can make the most of its capabilities.
Identify Your Audience
After setting and understanding your needs and goals, move on to your second step: understanding your audience and its needs individually and as a whole.
At first, your audience will include only a few people with definitive characteristics, but this is bound to change as you grow. Therefore, you'll need features to help you with segmentation and effective targeting.
With advanced segmentation, you can send tailor-made messages to each group and, in some instances, messages that resonate with the recipient one-on-one.
You could segment your list based on behaviour, demographics, or website interactions. For entrepreneurs and designers, personalisation is critical to standing out in crowded inboxes.
Customising your content for different segments can be a factor that increases your open rates, but it is also a powerful PR tool for new partnerships and extra visibility.
Some platforms offer audience management options, either basic or more advanced.
The takeaway is that Personalised messages always stand out in a full inbox. Therefore, you need to be able to customise your emails to different audience segments.
Thinking long-term will help you understand your audience and organise your segmentation actions in a way that boosts your email marketing efforts.
A good segmentation plan with your email marketing efforts will bring you the desired ROI. Ensure your email marketing platform supports these efforts regarding features and cost.
2 – Choosing Features That Look Good Over Functional Features
It’s easy to opt for fancy features that promise the world but overlook key features like comprehensive workflows or no-code editors that will simplify your day-to-day.
Going for buzz-worthy tools like AI-powered segmentation or social media integrations is tempting.
But they might not be necessary for your email marketing goals when you’re not a seasoned email marketer or when your needs are simple.
Features that sound exciting but don’t serve core needs can’t be your first focus point. Go for email marketing tools that support email best practices, like tools with list-cleaning, automation, and testing features. Start small and build your way upwards.
Also, be wary of common limitations to critical features. Some platforms come with deliverability issues, while others lack core integrations, A/B testing options, or sub-par analytics functionality that doesn’t dive more deeply than a simple open and click-through rate.
Don’t rush your choice. Test various tools and ensure all the platforms you consider carry the core features you need as an entrepreneur or creative. That way, you will nail long-term success.
How To Avoid It: Prioritise Must-Have Features
Email platforms help your efforts and work in tandem with your goals. This means you need a tool that prioritises must-have features, like an effortless editor, or features that cover specific requirements, like A/B testing and advanced analytics.
Let’s get into more detail:
Look for a drag-and-drop editor that requires no HTML knowledge
Whether you’re a seasoned email marketer or a novice, having one less thing to worry about can help you concentrate on creating stunning email designs.
A drag-and-drop editor allows you to create an email—or customise a template—ensuring your emails reflect your brand identity and tone.
No-code functionality and flexible design options should be given.
Also, don’t forget mobile responsiveness. Here’s why:

The global mobile email market is showing continuous growth, and you don’t want to miss out on valuable conversions because of broken email elements.
Especially for creatives, each email newsletter you send is an extension of your portfolio and a showcase of your skills as a freelancer.
Therefore, you should be mindful of customisation features. These could include image insertion options or even custom fonts.
Don’t skip on automation and workflows.
When you want to generate leads and boost your brand’s awareness through email marketing, you can’t afford to spend hours sending out emails manually. This is why you need automation.
An email marketing tool should allow you to set up workflows that can be customised and optimised to your liking. That way, you’ll automate repetitive tasks, like welcome emails and newsletter sequences.
For creatives and entrepreneurs, automation can streamline meaningful communication and ensure you nurture leads and smoothly move users through the various stages of the funnel.
Look into the platform’s segmentation and personalisation capabilities
Segmentation and personalisation, as we mentioned before, are essential to standing out in a full inbox. Audiences expect to receive messages that are at least personalised by first name.
Your software should allow you to personalise based on various data, like browsing activity or subscriber preferences.
Use personalisation to send targeted recommendations, build stronger relationships, and increase engagement with timely and relevant content.
Explore the tool’s A/B testing options.
A/B testing isn’t optional anymore. It helps you refine your email marketing strategy by testing variations of one component of your email—your subject line or copy, for example—and see what performs best.
A/B testing is a powerful tool for improving open and click-through rates and boosting conversions.
Use it to experiment with various copy and design styles or test how your audience responds to seemingly minor changes, like one extra emoji in your subject line.
The best email software will offer easy-to-set-up A/B tests and provide precise results, allowing you to optimise your campaigns for better performance continuously.
Invest in the power of data.
Advanced analytics give you insight into key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Look for software that offers detailed reports to track subscriber behaviour and engagement over time.
Use analytics to understand the campaigns that drive the desired result- sales or engagement with your content. The more you know, the better you can transform your data into actionable insights to help you maximise your email marketing.
3 – Over-Complicating Your Needs

When selecting an email tool, potential users could get overwhelmed by the features and forget one of the most critical factors: ease of use.
An easy-to-use platform can make or break your email marketing efforts. A steep learning curve can lead to frustration and discourage users from making the most of the tool they’ve bought.
It’s easy to believe you need a tool with intricate workflows. Or with an editor that allows you to design an email from scratch and then play around with the HTML code. Or one with integrations for many tools—whether you use them or not. But do you need all that?
One of the most common mistakes many entrepreneurs and creatives make is thinking they need feature-rich software immediately. Of course, this might sound counter-intuitive, as you need a platform with advanced capabilities.
Just be mindful of picking a tool that gets too advanced too fast. A steep learning curve can lead you to manage your resources in a way that is not optimal, as you could underuse the platform because it’s too difficult to set up or navigate.
The platform should allow you to craft and send emails quickly without technical requirements, while features like automation sequences and segments should be simple enough to set up and use.
At the same time, you might be looking for more advanced tools with time-saving options like plug-and-play workflow templates or a writing assistant for your email content.
How To Avoid It: Check the Training and Support Availability
If you’re creative, you’ll need intuitive email software to translate your vision into stunning email designs. On the other hand, an entrepreneur will need a platform that will help generate and nurture contacts.
Both requests come down to looking for software that offers ease of use, is simple enough to navigate, and features are designed and work straightforwardly and efficiently.
But how will you know whether a platform is easy to use before using it?
Start with a demo or a trial version of the platform, test it, and see if it matches your skill set. You should make sure you’re comfortable with its interface and the design.
And find the right balance between functionality and ease of use. A feature-packed platform that lacks an intuitive interface will slow you down, while a platform that’s easy to use but lacks core features will not help you reach your marketing goals.
This is why you need to look into customer support and training materials. Before committing to a platform, check its onboarding, whether tutorials and detailed documentation are available, and its overall knowledge centre.
Some platforms offer extensive training, webinars, and support to guide you, while others only provide their knowledge centre.
4 – Ignoring Deliverability
If there is one thing that can break your email marketing efforts, it’s deliverability. Yet, this is one often overlooked factor in choosing an email marketing platform for your business.
Email deliverability is the metric that shows how successful the placement of your emails is. There are many factors at play when it comes to email deliverability, as Moosend’s handy infographic shows:
You could create the perfect email campaign, but your efforts will be in vain if your messages don’t reach your audience.
This is why choosing software that can guarantee high deliverability rates and applying email marketing best practices that will keep you out of the spam folder is essential.
Several factors influence email deliverability, many directly tied to your email marketing platform. This is why not all platforms offer the same deliverability rates.
Here are some of the core factors you should know:
- Spam Filters: Email platforms with poor infrastructure could get your emails straight into the spam folder if their servers are associated with low-quality senders. A platform worth the effort will have processes that minimise risks and ban spammers, ensuring your emails pass through spam filters and land inside the inbox every time.
- Domain Reputation: When you have a good domain reputation, ISPs will consider you a trusted sender and deliver your emails straight to the users’ inboxes.
- Dedicated or Shared IPs: Your platform could use a dedicated IP address or shared IP address. The latter case could cause problems when other users use poor sending practices—spam emails, for example, or low-quality, non-personalised content. This could damage the IP’s sending reputation and harm your deliverability rates.
- Email Content: Non-optimised content can be picked up by spam filters. Avoid spammy words like “free” or “Buy now”, sentences in all caps, and too many exclamation marks.
- Email List: A clean email list can boost your deliverability rates. Remove inactive or non-engaged subscribers and email addresses with typos. Most email platforms will help you manage this through list hygiene tools that identify and remove invalid or unengaged contacts.
By prioritising deliverability, you can increase the success of your email marketing campaigns.
How To Avoid It: Look For High Deliverability Rates
One of the most common misconceptions regarding deliverability is that the deliverability rates are the same—or very similar—across all platforms.
The reality is that platforms have different levels of deliverability, which can vary depending on the email list cleaning practices users follow, the tools they provide, and their infrastructure.
Look for a transparent platform about the deliverability rates that offers the tools and knowledge base to help you monitor and improve deliverability.
Platforms with solid deliverability records invest in measures that help you avoid common deliverability issues, like falling into spam traps or getting blocked by ISPs.
When evaluating various email platforms, don’t assume all have the same deliverability levels.
Look into online community platforms that can give you testers’ insights, ask about deliverability rates, and check the tools they use to ensure high deliverability.
5 – Focusing On the Upfront Cost

There is a common problem when trying to balance costs and make the right purchase, which you’ve undoubtedly come across as an entrepreneur or a creative.
You went for the high-cost choice. It offers excellent features and advanced functionalities that increase your budget. And you did not use half of them because you never needed them.
Or perhaps you went for the affordable—or even free—tool. It seemed fine initially but was not scalable, making it pricey as you grew or unable to meet your long-term needs. So, you found yourself paying extra and increasing the initial cost.
Budget constraints are expected, especially when you’re just starting with any marketing action. However, it would help if you went forward with a clear understanding of what you’re getting for your money and whether your choice of software can grow with you.
One of the most common pitfalls is focusing only on the upfront cost and ignoring what an email tool has to offer in the long term.
While staying within budget is essential, choosing a platform based on price will not work for you in the long run.
When evaluating software, look into the features and consider how quickly you can outgrow them. Sharing your content with your audiences is a fantastic marketing tactic that can increase engagement and conversion, but you may need an AI writer or dynamic content options.
The immediate price tag is just one of the things to worry about. Look for any hidden fees, the scalability of your platform, and the expected ROI.
Every tool is an investment to meet your business needs, and if you can’t balance cost and value, this tool isn’t for you.
How To Avoid It: Be Thorough With Your Research
When seeing a low price, it’s easy to go with it. Free and affordable email tools can be appealing, especially if you’re an entrepreneur or a freelancer. But how big does the financial commitment end up being?
Consider that free tools come with a slew of limitations: While free plans offer the core framework of the tool, they can often cap the number of emails you can send per day or month, or they can restrict access to features you need, like landing pages, analytics, or even personalisation and segmentation options.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that paid options are always worth the investment. Paid email marketing platforms may offer more features and be more scalable. But sometimes they can get too pricey, too fast.
When investigating paid options, make sure to look for the following:
- Sophisticated personalisation
- Advanced automation
- Advanced reporting and analytics
- A variety of integrations with the tools you already know and use daily
- Priority support, both live chat and email
Since you’re willing to take the step to commit financially, make sure your preferred platform offers all of the features that will bring you the necessary ROI without any hidden costs, such as:
- Email limits, either daily or monthly
- Core features behind the “Premium” paywall
- Hidden integrations costs
- Extra costs for specific templates or customisation options
The pricing structure is essential, and you must understand what you’re paying for, both at the moment of the decision and as your business grows.
Consider your email volume—both projected and existing—as well as your subscriber growth and future needs. This will help you avoid unnecessary costs.
Making An Informed Choice
Choosing the right email software platform can significantly influence your email marketing strategy.
Therefore, consideration, planning, and looking into essential email marketing features like automation, design customisation, and deliverability are required.
Testing and continuous research will help you avoid common pitfalls like underestimating scalability or opting for fancy features not meant for you and your unique business needs.
Before committing to an email tool, start with a free trial. This will help you understand the software’s functionality, explore its interface, and check out the various integrations.
And before we go, one pro tip: Always check verified reviews by credible sources and review websites. Social proof is a fantastic tool for brands. Online communities might give you first-hand experience, but a review website is just the thing if you don’t have time to go through your testing phase.
Author Bio: Téa Liarokapi is a Senior Content Writer for Moosend, an email marketing and marketing automation platform, and an obsessive writer. In her free time, she finds new ways to stuff more books in her bookcase and content ideas – and cats – to play with.