Conquer email anxiety: 4 tips to overcome your fear of sending emails

By Kelly Forst October 22, 2020

Ta-da! You crafted the perfect email. 

You’ve proofread it, tested it, and even double checked your pre-flight checklist. Everything looks good, and you’re all set to press send.

But you hesitate.

“Maybe I should check again,” you tell yourself.

Then, 20 minutes later, you’re still stuck in a cycle of checking everything over and over and over…

Sound familiar?

If you’re nodding your head right now, you’ve experienced what we call email anxiety. And it’s actually incredibly common. Take it from me; I send hundreds of thousands of emails a week and I still get the email jitters sometimes.

So why is sending emails so scary? And what can you do to overcome this fear?

What is email anxiety?

Email anxiety is the feeling of discomfort you get before you send an email. Maybe it’s your first time sending a marketing email to your audience. Maybe you’re worried about typos or feel that your copywriting could be stronger.

Or maybe you’re nervous about the response — or lack of response — you may get from your email.

Whatever the reason for your nerves, it’s normal to experience a bit of anxiety before pressing the send button. But there are psychological tricks we can use to overcome it.

Why do we experience email anxiety?

Understanding these common fears about email marketing can help us better understand why we feel email anxiety. And sometimes, knowing why we’re anxious is enough to help us conquer it.

Fear of typos

Typos, while usually harmless and unintentional, can come across as unprofessional and sloppy. However, they’re often hard to catch on our own. 

When you’ve spent lots of time and energy writing an email, you should get another person’s perspective. In fact, get more than one person to help proofread your email before sending.

Fear of missing, broken, or wrong links

Including links to your website, to blog articles or social media channels is a great way to drive traffic and sales. But there’s a risk that you forget to add a link, the link is incorrect or is broken, or you — gasp — accidentally link to the wrong site.

Thankfully, AWeber’s built-in link checker will tell you if a link is broken. And other email testing tools like Email on Acid can help give you peace of mind.

Fear of poor formatting or design not rendering

No matter how many times you test your email, if you’re only viewing the email from one email provider (i.e Google), there’s always the risk that an email appears differently in different email provider (i.e. Outlook or Yahoo! Mail). 

Make sure that everything renders correctly — including imagery, videos, fonts, colors, the template, logos, and more — by checking your email in multiple email clients and on a mobile device. 

Fear of getting started

Don’t know where to start? When you’re busy running a business or side hustle, it feels impossible to find the time to learn a new skill or platform. 

Don’t let fear of the unknown prevent you from marketing their business. Remember, email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. 

That’s why we built AWeber to be as easy to use as possible. Sign up for AWeber Free, and not only will you have powerfully-simple email marketing, but you’ll also have a team of email experts by your side 24/7. 

Fear of rejection 

In email marketing, fear of rejection is essentially fear of not getting positive results or feedback from your audience. 

But avoiding email marketing out of fear of your audience rejecting you is — for lack of a better word — silly! Growing your list organically means your list is full of people who want to hear from you.

Keep that in mind — along with the following 4 tips to overcome email anxiety — the next time you hesitate to press send.

Tips to overcome email anxiety

1. Write like you’re writing to one person.

Imagine you’re speaking to a friend. Now imagine you’re standing in the middle of a football field giving a speech to tens of thousands of strangers.

Writing a marketing email to a large list of people feels like that.

But when you imagine writing your email to a friend or family member, you’re able to write more casually (and with less pressure). Even Ann Handley — one of the top copywriting and content marketing experts in the industry — advises email marketers to approach writing this way.

2. Every mistake is a learning opportunity.

Mistakes happen. Human error can and will happen occasionally. 

First, recognize your mistakes for what they are — a learning opportunity. Reflect on what went wrong and use it as fuel to not make the same mistake twice.

Second, there are steps you can take to rectify the situation if needed. Depending on the mistake, you can send an apology email. This helps you own your mistakes and honestly communicate with your audience.

3. Remember, unsubscribes are a good thing. 

Your email list is full of people who want to hear from you. If someone eventually wants to unsubscribe, trust me, they are doing you a favor.

Inactive subscribers — or those who don’t open or click on your emails — actually hurt your deliverability. If someone unsubscribes from your list, they’re doing the work of cleaning your list for you. 

4. It gets easier. You just need to start. 

With anything in life, the more you do something, the easier it gets. 

Malcolm Gladwell wrote that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. And while you may not spend 10,000 hours on email marketing with a simple tool like AWeber, practice and time will help you feel like an expert all the same. 

Ready to overcome your email anxiety?

Get started with AWeber’s free email marketing today!