Back in the day, if you called someone a 'man of letters' (or woman, if you will), it meant they were smart and creative. And they could put it in writing. So, why do so many companies today neglect their letters, especially their emails? Instead, they crank out sloppy copy and design, and overmail them, to boot. It makes subscribers feel like companies just don't care—and that kills the love in any business relationship.

So, in advance of tomorrow's FREE virtual conference on email marketing, I wanted to learn more about what kills the love for subscribers (that is, what annoys them and gets them to unsubscribe). I asked our Facebook and LinkedIn friends what their biggest email marketing pet peeves are, and here's what they had to say:

1. "Long emails. Keep it short and sweet, and I'll click on the larger article if it's relevant to me and if I have time that day."  (Catherine Cervantes)

2. "Typos."  (Ashley Hin)

3. "I hate getting an email that has a merge field filled in with incorrect data." (Andrea L. Bierly)

4. "Emails that are too frequent and seem to be taking over my inbox." (Kimberly McCabe)

5. "When I get an email that is addressed to the wrong person ... for example, 'Mr.' instead of 'Miss' or something similar. Happens quite frequently actually! Bad practice." (PRWeb)

6. "When the whole email is HTML. If I don't download the pictures, I have no idea what it's about. Text is a good thing or you've lost me. Especially on my mobile." (Heather Arneson Caldwell)

7. "Not personalized and with no incentive for continuing my subscription (informative info, special promotion, free treats for loyalty, etc.)." (Social Butterfly Marketing)

8. "Bad design." (Randy Califf)

9. "For me, it is also frequency. After repeatedly receiving 3 emails each day from a toy store, I unsubscribed. Once a week would have been acceptable but not 3 in the same day." (Suzi Weidenhof)

10. "Email marketing in general. There are those rare exceptions, in which I actually don't mind receiving emails from a business. But they had better be relevant, and have some SIGNIFICANT value to me. Otherwise, they are destined for the unsubscribe, block/filter as spam or both. I receive a constant barrage of email as it is (and most of them are actually things I want to read, but don't have time)." (Michael Windham)

Now, it's your turn. What's YOUR biggest email marketing pet peeve?

Ready to inject some love into your email marketing? Join us tomorrow for our FREE virtual conference, Digital Marketing World: Email Marketing, and learn how to build better relationships with your email subscribers.