AAAHHH, how do I overcome email anxiety as an email marketer?

Maybe you fear that your subject line personalization still says {$name} or your CTA links redirect to a 404? Don’t worry, almost every email marketer has been there!

Email anxiety is real, and when you’re sending messages to thousands of subscribers, it’s completely normal to experience it.

If your email anxiety has gotten the better of you, this article is for you. We’ll discuss the different situations in which email anxiety shows up and pair each example with a fitting solution. 

Are you ready to tackle your fears and handle your emails with more confidence?

Email anxiety can show up both when managing your private emails and business newsletters.

In your personal life, you might go into fight or flight mode each time you open your Gmail to check new emails. Ideally, you’d like to see inbox zero, but in reality, your email inbox looks like a tornado has just passed. There are unread emails, flagged messages and follow-up reminders waiting on you. 

How can you possibly organize this email communication chaos and spark joy?

And in your professional life, sending your weekly newsletters might cause you to break out in a cold sweat. Will the images look good? Do the URLs work correctly? And let’s hope people open the campaign and click on the call to action!

Like any fear, the best method to overcome email anxiety is to tackle it head-on. 

If you feel your mental health is being affected every time you have to send a new campaign, you need actionable steps to lower this anxiety so you can hit send with confidence.

Let’s look at all the ways email anxiety can show up when sending email campaign newsletters. And more importantly, what to do about it.

Images are a vital part of many promotional emails. If the email images don’t load, the design won’t look good, and people will miss some of your most important content. What’s more, some people, email clients and businesses block images by default, so images not showing is a legitimate and common worry for email marketers.

The cure

Make sure that whatever information is conveyed in the image is also repeated in the text. For example, if your banner image includes dates or sale discounts, mention this information in your text too.  

To minimize the chances of images not showing, try keeping each image’s file size under 100KB. As a backup, always add ALT text to each image explaining what the image contains. This text will show when the image doesn’t load, so people still know what information the image contains, boosting the user experience for all.

You’ve created this beautiful weekly newsletter! On desktop, everything looks great. But what about mobile? If you’re feeling anxious about what your newsletter content will look like on other devices, there’s an easy solution.

The cure

If you build your email with the MailerLite drag and drop or rich text editor, we’ll automatically adjust the content so it shows perfectly on different screen sizes. You can also use the preview buttons in the email editor to see exactly how the email will look on mobile. 

If you’re importing your own HTML email, you can use the preview option to see how the email looks on both desktop and mobile too. 

Finally, you can always send yourself a test email and then open it on your mobile to check how the content looks.

Email personalization—when you add information from a customer’s profile, such as their name, to your email—is a great tool to build a more personal bond with subscribers. However, a lot of us get anxious wondering whether the placeholders will be replaced correctly for all readers.

The cure

Personalization uses variables that automatically take information from custom subscriber fields. The easiest way to double-check that you added the variable correctly is by checking that the variable in the email matches the content of the field you want to add. 

Alternatively, use MailerLite’s variable button to simply choose one of your existing custom fields and add the text automatically. You can find this in any text block in the email editor.

For extra peace of mind, add placeholder text that shows up when a subscriber’s profile doesn’t have any information in the field. 

For example, by adding the placeholder “friend,” the email will show “Hello [name]” when the person has a name in the name field, and “Hello friend” when they don’t. Find out more about how to use custom fields for email personalization here. 

Another trick is to avoid adding punctuation after the field. This ensures that you don’t get phantom spaces in cases where you don’t add placeholder text. For example, use “Hi {$name}” without a comma to avoid the personalization appearing as “Hi ,” when there’s no info in the recipient’s name field.

It’s not possible to check how the custom fields show up in the email preview or by sending a preview email. If you want to test how the message will look to your subscribers, create the campaign and send it to yourself via the scheduling options. If you’re happy with the email, you can then duplicate the email marketing campaign and send it to your chosen subscribers.

Segmenting your email list is a great way to send better-targeted emails, but if you use segments often and in a large number of emails, it can get confusing. You can easily get anxious, doubting whether your email will appear to the right subscribers.

The cure

You need a good naming system for your email segments and groups. Make it a habit to name each segment clearly, stating the conditions used to create the segment. For example: “Signup <14 days” or “Free user, NY, <30 y/o”. 

Though you don’t want to make the title too long, try to add the conditions within the name so you see at one glance what the segment is about. Of course, you can always double-check how the segment is set up, but a descriptive name will help to make things clearer when creating your targeted campaign and browsing through the list of titles.

Are you nervous about hitting the send button because you’re not sure about your grammar or spelling? This one is easy to tackle!

The cure

There are plenty of ways to check your content for typos. 

First, spell checkers like Grammarly and the ones built into Word and Google Docs can check your email text and highlight grammatical errors.

Another option is to use an AI tool like ChatGPT or Gemini. Paste your text into the tool and ask the AI to identify any errors and provide fixes. You can also ask your coworkers to give your email a final proofread. 

If you take these steps, you know it’s likely that your emails are free of typos. Easy peasy!

Email campaigns often aim to drive people to a page with an offer. That’s why a common email anxiety-inducing worry is whether the links actually lead where they are supposed to. 

If the link points to the wrong page, even the most opened and clicked campaign will be ineffective. Fortunately, there are effective solutions. 

The cure

Sometimes the simplest solution is the most effective. Before sending your email, open a preview and click on all the links. If they lead where they are supposed to, you know you’re in the clear. 

If your email has a lot of links that you don’t have the time to click on, hover over the link and then check if the URL preview that shows up at the bottom-left of your browser window is correct. 

If you do all that, yet still notice a broken link, don't worry! We’ve got your back!

Head to the links section of your campaign overview and then click the Edit links button. From here, you can enter the correct link and hit save. This option is available for the first 12 hours after sending. Find out more about editing links after sending here.

When you’re an email marketer, your job is to send email campaigns that drive conversions. It’s understandable that you want each campaign to get a high level of engagement, such as people clicking the call to action (CTA) or buying your product. If the desired conversion rate is disappointing, this can definitely lead to anxiety.

The cure

Don’t panic! Email marketing is all about learning what types of emails work for your audience—which takes time and constant tweaking. There’s not one email strategy that fits all (yes, you can use this quote to show your boss). 

There are, however, many ways to get a good idea about the content types that people respond to.

First, look through your previously sent emails to see the topics, offers and subject lines that generate high opens, clicks and sales. If you have a lot of content to analyze, connect your MailerLite account with your AI tool (ChatGPT or Claude) using our email marketing MCP server. You can then ask the AI to analyze the metrics for you to discover exactly what works.

Another way to discover what people like is to ask them! Send a survey asking people what they want to hear from you. Just add the MailerLite survey block to your email and customize the questions. 

When we did this, we kept it short and asked for the following information:

• Business type

• Level of email marketing knowledge

• Biggest email marketing challenge

• Why they read the newsletter

• What they’d like to read more about

This gave us a ton of insight we could use to tailor our future content. We added the survey to our newsletter, but you could also send a dedicated survey request email. 

Finally, consider setting up A/B tests to compare two different versions of your marketing emails and see which one performs best. This lets you dive deep into the exact designs, subject lines, offers and messaging that your subscribers respond to. By creating an A/B test every time you hit send, you’ll quickly build a strong idea of exactly what leads to big results. 

Remember that even with the above tips, testing comes with trial and error, therefore, you need to have bad results in order to reach better email performance. See it as part of the game, and make sure you take notes and learn from the insights.

We hope the above tips help you get from email anxiety to email positivity! 

Tackle your fear one step at a time and in the meantime, keep calm and carry on. Don’t get too worked up when you send out a wrong link or your unsubscribe rate increases. We all occasionally make email mistakes or get disappointed with our email results, but these mishaps are only there to improve your craft!

What makes you anxious about sending your newsletter campaigns? Let us know in the comments!