This beginner’s guide will explain what email marketing is and how it works. By the conclusion, you’ll have a firm understanding of the fundamentals as well as the know-how to establish an efficient email marketing campaign for your organization.
Email marketing is the most successful and cost-effective direct marketing channel, with a $42 average ROI for every $1 spent (DMA, 2019).
Email should be a crucial component of your digital marketing plan for this reason alone. Not using email marketing is equivalent to leaving money on the table.
But it’s very reasonable to be unsure about where to begin. Email is a broad subject. Beginners might easily become lost in a sea of tools, techniques, and terminology.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the practice of sending business emails to a list of contacts who have expressly agreed to receive email messages from you.
Like a newsletter, you may use email marketing to enlighten your contacts, increase sales, and establish a community around your business.
Modern email marketing has evolved away from mass mailings that are one-size-fits-all and now focused on consent, segmentation, and personalization. While this may appear to be time-consuming, marketing automation does the heavy labor for you.
Examples of various types of marketing emails
Emails might be promotional, informative, or serve a purpose in the buyer journey.
Promotional emails
Email marketing campaigns are used to advertise special discounts, new product releases, gated content such as ebooks and webinars, as well as your overall brand. A campaign could consist of three to ten emails sent over the course of several days or weeks.
Promotional emails include a clear call-to-action, or CTA. The CTA reflects the precise action you want the reader to perform, such as visiting a page on your website or making a purchase using a discount.
The frequency of this form of marketing email should be determined by your company’s sales and marketing rhythm. You may send numerous promotional emails in the same 24-hour period at critical occasions such as Black Friday. There may be a few weeks between promotional efforts during quiet periods in the marketing calendar.
Informational emails
Newsletters: As the name implies, a newsletter shares news about your company. Consider new product milestones, new product features, or showcasing important content such as case studies regarding your product. Newsletters, when sent at regular intervals — weekly, biweekly, or monthly — assist in maintaining consistent touch points with your email subscribers.
But did you know that newsletters don’t have to be all about ‘news’? Focus on the letter, as email guru Ann Handley suggests. Assume you’re writing a one-on-one letter to each of your subscribers about something that piques their interest.
Simply defined, a newsletter is a chance to share insights, views, and tips with your target audience.
Announcements: Email is an excellent tool to notify customers about corporate announcements, new product releases, service modifications, and so on.
Email is frequently used to communicate vital messages. If there is a problem with your website, shipment delays, or a system/software outage, emailing your contacts is the best method to stay in touch. It’s safe, quick, and can match the formality of even the most essential announcements.
Re-engagement emails
The re-engagement email is another key sort of marketing email. Re-engagement emails, as the name implies, are used to reconnect with consumers or subscribers who haven’t been active in a while.
Is email marketing relevant in 2022?
Email is not a new way to communicate. In fact, it was one of the first ways to communicate digitally when it came out in 1971. But here’s the thing: Email marketing is 50 years old, and more people are using it now than ever before.
You might be wondering, “Does anyone still use email? Isn’t marketing today all about social media?” Social media is an important part of any digital marketing strategy, but email has a number of benefits.
First, email marketing campaigns can be customized more than social media campaigns. Next, the costs of email marketing are much lower than those of other channels, especially when you consider its reach and conversion rate. This is one reason why email marketing is a great choice for small businesses.
Lastly, email marketing is so effective and profitable because it gives you direct, individual access to the inboxes of your audience.
Still not convinced? Let us look at the numbers:
- There are around 4 billion global email users in 2020.
- Eighty percent of Americans check their email at least once each day, with over a quarter checking it many times per day.
- Email was recognized as the most preferred communication method with small firms by 62 percent of consumers.
Given the statistics, failing to implement an email marketing plan means passing up sales possibilities and the opportunity to develop long-term client relationships.
What Email Marketing Can Do for You
From order confirmations to newsletters, emails are an important part of growing your business and running it well.
You can do three important things with email marketing:
1. Conversions
Having a sale or running a promotion? You can use an email marketing campaign to get people to buy from you. Also, try these email marketing strategies to boost conversions even more:
- Personalized coupons or special offers for the birthdays or anniversaries of subscribers, in welcome emails, and as a way to get people interested again.
- When a visitor puts something in their cart but doesn’t check out, abandoned cart emails are sent.
2. Brand awareness
Email is great because it lets you talk to someone right away. It’s the best way to talk to someone one-on-one. And these days, people don’t just let anyone into their email. It’s a space set aside for brands and publications that people like.
By showing up in someone’s email inbox, you will help them remember your brand. A personalized marketing email is more effective than a post on social media, where you can’t be sure if anyone saw it.
One of the best things about email marketing is that it can be scaled up. This means that emails can be sent to a lot of people without costing too much (compared to other marketing channels).
3. Customer loyalty
Email keeps customers loyal at every stage of the buyer’s journey: nurturing leads, converting them, getting them started, and keeping them as customers. Email marketing is also an important communication tool that should be used with sales CRM systems.
Why is email marketing important?
Accessibility
Email can be used by people of all ages. It opens the door to a wide range of people, even those who aren’t very tech-savvy.
Even though we live in the digital age, not everyone is great at using the internet. Most people know how to check their email, though. Because of this, it is the most common way to market online.
Affordability
Email marketing is a very cheap way to reach people. Most email marketing tools have different price plans for people with different budgets. You really need an email marketing service to get the most out of your marketing.
Many email tools offer free plans. These are great for people who are new to email marketing and want to try out the software before buying it. Since you have nothing to lose, there’s no reason not to try it.
Your email list belongs to you
Think about it: if your social media went away, so would all of your followers. You’d have nothing left. But the fact that it is yours is also what makes an email list unique.
So even if everything else fails, you’ll still be able to talk to the people who care most about your brand. This is why it’s so helpful to have your own email list. And the one-on-one nature of email will help you get even closer to that audience.
How do you market with email? ESPs: An Introduction
Email service providers (ESP) are what businesses use to send marketing emails.
A program that sends and manages email marketing campaigns is called an email service provider.
It is also called an email marketing platform, email marketing tool, email marketing service, or email marketing software.
Now, you might be wondering, Why can’t I just use my regular email service to send marketing emails? Do I really have to pay extra for a product?
Technically, it could be done. But, be careful. You are likely to have trouble with limited email bandwidth, design, and, most importantly, the ability to send emails. This is why:
ISPs like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc. are made for personal use, not for sending out email blasts. So, when an ISP sends out a mass email, it’s easy for spam filters to pick it up, and your account can be shut down if it looks like you’re up to no good.
On the other hand, ESPs have the infrastructure in place to ensure good email deliverability rates, or the ability to get your emails into the inboxes of your subscribers. Get a dedicated email marketing service if you want to be successful with email marketing from the start.
What do I need to get started with email marketing?
To keep things simple, you really only need two things to run email marketing campaigns.
1. Email marketing software
As we just said, the best way to do email marketing is to use a company that specializes in it. If you send marketing emails through an ISP, your brand and reputation as an email sender will be at risk.
2. An email list
This list should have the email addresses of subscribers who have asked to hear from you by email and agreed to do so.
Yes, you can choose to join. The thing about email contacts is this:
Everyone on your email list must have given you permission to put them there.
What’s the meaning of that?
It means they agreed to get emails from you when they put their email address into a signup form on your blog, website, landing pages, social media, or anywhere else. This kind of permission is called a “opt-in” in the world of email. (“Opt out” is the same as “unsubscribe”).
Permission-based marketing is important if you want to follow data protection laws and keep your brand’s reputation intact. After all, nobody likes a spammer.
Still around? Great, because now comes the fun part: learning how to launch your first email campaign as part of an email marketing plan.
The 8-Step Guide to Getting Your First Email Marketing Campaign Up and Running
1. Choose the right email marketing software
The first step is to find an ESP to send your email campaigns and keep track of your email subscribers.
Klvaiyo, Sendinblue, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Convertkit, Mailjet, Mailerlite, and HubSpot, just to name a few, are all popular email tools.
There are so many ESPs on the market that it can be hard to figure out which one is best for your business.
And it’s easy to get drawn in by flashy features you probably don’t need (not yet, anyway).
Think about what you need. Make a list of features that are must-haves and features that would be nice to have. Make a list.
Here are some questions you can ask to help you choose:
- How much can you spend? If it’s not very much, you should start with cheap email marketing services.
- How often and what kinds of emails do you want to send? This will give you an idea of how many emails you need to send (i.e. number of email sends).
- If you already have a list of people who have agreed to be on it, how many are on it?
- How good are you when it comes to making emails? If you’ve never made an email before, you’ll need a drag-and-drop editor. Email templates are also useful. If, on the other hand, you’d rather code emails from scratch, you’ll need an HTML editor.
- Do you want to set up email workflows that run on their own? Check to see what the ESP has to offer in terms of automating email marketing. Some solutions only have simple autoresponders to offer.
- What contact list segmentation options are there if your business talks to different types of buyers?
- Will your business send emails about transactions? (Keep in mind that these are not email marketing.) Some people like to use a separate service to handle these emails, while others like to keep all of their emails in one place with a tool like Klaviyo or Sendinblue.
You should also think about what you will need in the future. You like an ESP you found? Try some mock-ups: How much will this ESP cost if my list grows to x? Does this ESP have the features I need if I want to add x to my strategy? What kinds of apps and integrations will I be able to add?
Pricing by subscribers vs. pricing by number of emails sent
As you look at different options, you’ll notice that most providers price their services based on how many people sign up.
Many email marketing services try to get you to sign up by offering cheap plans for a small number of subscribers (often 250 or 500). What is it? When your list grows past these limits, the prices tend to go up a lot, as is the case with Mailchimp.
And I hope your list grows, since that’s kind of the point. But in the long run, it would be a shame to pay too much for email.
2. Build your email list
You can’t send email campaigns to people who haven’t signed up for them, so it’s time to start building a list of people who are interested in what you have to say.
Most ESPs let you build sign-up forms that you can put on your website.
When making a subscription form, be very clear about what people will get when they sign up. For example, what kind of email content will they get and how often?
If you say you’ll send a newsletter with content marketing tips every two weeks, make sure you do it. If you send out ads that have nothing to do with your business, people will likely unsubscribe or, worse, mark your emails as spam. (This is very bad for rates of delivery!)
Remember that people gave you their email address because they trusted you, so don’t break that trust.
Put forms to sign up on your website and other places.
Put your sign-up form for email addresses in places where people will see it for sure.
Blog posts, the homepage, and the contact page are all good places to put subscription forms. You might also want to add a pop-up form to your website. Just try not to get in the way of the user’s experience too much. Pop-ups that stop people from using your website are a big turnoff. (Think of where you put your signup form like where you put your call-to-action.)
Add a link to your bio or a post to share a form on social media.
Run an online or e-commerce store? Add a sign-up option to the process of checking out.
Use content upgrades and lead magnets to give your list a boost.
Premium content is the only thing that makes a list grow faster.
Guarded content like ebooks, reports, checklists, and infographics are great ways to grow your contact list. When people sign up for your newsletter list, they get useful content in return. Everyone wins!
You can also get people on your list by giving them special deals and discounts. For instance, if you sign up for Mango’s newsletter, you can get 10 percent off your first order.
3. Set up an email to welcome new subscribers
When someone joins your email list, you know you’ve caught their attention. Now, send them a welcome email to get them even more interested.
A welcome email is a message that is sent automatically to new customers or subscribers. The idea is to introduce your brand and any content that will help you build a relationship with the subscriber, like a welcome discount, links to your latest articles, useful information, etc.
Email deliverability tip: Ask your subscribers to add you to their contact list so they never miss an email from you.
4. Decide what you want your email marketing campaign to accomplish
Now that you’ve started building your email list, it’s time to think about what you want to get out of this first campaign.
There should be a clear goal for every email marketing campaign.
Some examples of shared goals are:
- Trying to sell a new product
- Giving a discount to customers who have been loyal
- Getting more people to download your new ebook
- Keeping people up to date on some important news about the company
Your goals can be specific or general, as long as they make sense for your business and your audience. In either case, it will be easier to write your email content if you have a clear idea of what you want it to do.
5. Build responsive emails
Responsive emails automatically change their layout to fit the device they’re being read on, whether it’s a phone or a computer.
You might be thinking, Do I need to hire an email designer for this?
If you’re just starting out and don’t have much money, then no. There is no need for one. Most email marketing services have some kind of drag-and-drop email editor to make things easier. These are great for making designs that are clean, simple, and easy to use.
Not that that makes having a dedicated email designer less important, especially for ecommerce. With custom templates, an email designer can help you stand out from the crowd. You should definitely think about it in the future, or even now if you can.
Still, making an email doesn’t have to be hard or too technical for you. You can make beautiful and professional marketing campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor.
There’s no point in getting stuck on making fancy emails. More importantly, you should make an email that represents your brand, no matter how it looks. This usually means to keep things simple. You can always add to this as your skills get better.
6. Write your email copy
You know what you want. You know who you’re writing for. Now it’s time to start building on that base.
Your email copy needs to give your audience something of value and talk about things that interest them. You also need to work on the sound and tone of your voice.
Keep these tips in mind if you want to write emails that get people to read them:
Ask yourself, “What do people want from me?” “What can I do?”
- Think about writing to just one person.
- Show what your brand is like.
- Share a tale.
- Write to get people interested, starting with the subject line of the email. We’ll talk more about that below.
- Use a conversational tone, which means you should write like you talk.
- Short paragraphs and bullet points can help break up the text.
- The name of a real person should be in the email signature. This is more personal than a brand’s logo, which has no face.
Don’t have much experience writing copy? Don’t be afraid. Writing emails is a skill that you can work on and get better at over time.
6. Improve how many people open, click, and buy from your emails
There are many ways to get more people to open and click on your emails, starting with the name you use as the sender.
Use a sender name and address that are easy to recognize
What’s the first thing you look at when you get an email? Most likely who it is from.
The name of the sender answers the first subconscious question the recipient has: Is this real or is it spam?
Putting your brand name in the sender name is the best way to show that you can be trusted and help people remember your brand. There are a number of ways to do this:
- Your business, brand, or newsletter name by itself
- A brand name and your first name together
- A unique sender name to tell different types of email content apart
- Use the same sender name and address for all of your campaigns so that you are easy to find in the inbox.
Avoid no-reply email addresses because they make people less likely to trust your brand and stop people from asking questions. You want your audience to be involved, so why cut off a possible way to talk to them.
Write an interesting subject line for your email
The email subject line is one of the most important parts of your email marketing campaign.
These few words could make or break whether or not your email gets read. And because there is so much email competition now, they need to stand out.
Try to make people want to open the book with just a few words.
- Don’t go over 50 characters in the subject line.
- Bring attention to your best offer.
- Use your subscribers’ feelings and goals to get their attention.
Optimize the text in your email's preheader and preview
The email preheader, also called preview text, is the short bit of text that shows up after the subject line of an email, especially on mobile devices.
The preheader gives your subject line important context and can make a big difference in how many people click on it. Together, the subject line and preheader should start to tell the story to the reader.
Again, it should make the reader interested enough to want to open the email and find out more.
If you don’t set a preview text, the email client will only see the first line of text.
“View this email in your browser” isn’t the most interesting, is it?
Make sure your email campaign works before sending it
Send a test email before you hit the send button. Small mistakes are easy to miss and can hurt the way people see your brand.
Be on the lookout for:
- Typos
- Links that have been lost or broken
- Formatting mistakes in text
- Have a few people on your team proofread and check the test email on both a desktop computer and a mobile device.
You can test different screen sizes and email clients with Sendinblue’s email preview feature.
When everything is ready, make sure you have chosen the right email list (s).
7. Set up the right time for your campaign
Don’t just pick a day and time at random to send your emails; plan ahead. Based on what you know about your audience, choose a time that makes sense for them.
Most people only check their email a few times a day, at most. Find a time that will put you at the top of people’s inboxes when they check their emails. This is sure to get more people to open your emails.
Email marketing campaigns tend to do better when they are sent on Tuesdays or Thursdays around 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. in the morning or afternoon.
It makes sense. A lot of people check their emails when they get to work in the morning and when they get back from lunch.
But what works for most people might not be the best thing for you. It’s important to try out different times to see what your audience likes best.
8. Keep an eye on how the campaign goes
By looking at the most important email marketing metrics, you can learn how to improve your strategy for future campaigns. As a newbie at email marketing, there are always things you can do better.
Most ESPs have at least the following real-time metrics on their analytics dashboards:
- Open rate: The number of people who opened your email as a percentage of all the people who got it.
- The number of people who clicked on a link in your email divided by the total number of people who got the email.
- The number of people who stopped receiving the email, divided by the total number of people who got the email. If this number is high, you need to look at how often you send emails and how you divide them up. We’ll talk more about this soon.
- Bounce rate is the number of emails that didn’t get delivered divided by the total number of emails sent.
- Soft bounces happen when the recipient’s inbox is full, for example. Hard bounces, on the other hand, are caused by problems that won’t go away, like an email address that is no longer in use.
10 Ways to Make Email Marketing Work
In the next section, we’ll talk about email marketing strategies and best practices.
1. Don't buy email lists
When you’re just starting out, it can take a long time to build an email list. Buying a list may seem like a good way to save time, but trust us, it’s not.
If you buy a list, it will put your business in danger because:
- Sending unsolicited emails and keeping people’s information in your CRM without their permission is against the law in many places around the world (think GDPR and CAN-SPAM act).
- People are more likely to mark unsolicited emails as spam, which hurts your reputation as an email sender and could get you put on a list of people who can’t get your emails.
- Most email marketing services won’t work with you because buying lists can make it hard for other users on the same IP address to get their emails.
- That’s not all, either. A lot of the email addresses on lists that can be bought are actually spam traps. A spam trap is an email address that isn’t being used but is left out in the open on purpose to catch spammers.
Since no one owns the email address, it is impossible that it joined any email lists. So, if a spammer calls this number, the ISP will know that it is a spammer.
To put it briefly, don’t buy email lists. Build your list naturally, even if it takes a long time. In the long run, you’ll be glad you did.
2. Use double opt-in
As was already said, “opt-in” is a term for the signup process. For email marketing, there are two types of opt-in:
Single opt-in means that once the signup form is submitted, the subscriber is added to the email list.
Double opt-in is when you send each new subscriber a confirmation email with a link. For the subscription to go through, the subscriber must click the link. Without this confirmation, you won’t be able to send them emails.
Yes, double opt-in adds a step between the person who wants to join your list and your list. But this process isn’t a problem; it’s important, especially for making sure emails get to the right place.
Double opt-in gets rid of any email addresses that were misspelled (which would otherwise generate a hard bounce). It also stops spam traps and shows that the subscriber gave permission, which is a GDPR requirement.
Double opt-in is the best way to market through email.
3. Segment your list
As your email list grows, it’s likely to include people with different buying habits.
List segmentation is the process of dividing your list of subscribers into smaller sub-lists with similar characteristics. The idea behind this method is to get subscribers interested by sending them emails that are more relevant and targeted.
Usually, contact lists are divided into groups based on demographic information like age and location as well as customer information like lead score and purchase history. (This is why it’s helpful to have a sales CRM that works with your email marketing tool.)
To get a head start on segmentation, you can put new subscribers on different lists when they sign up by asking them what kind of emails they want to receive and how often.
4. Personalization
Who doesn’t like to feel like they stand out?
Most people like it when brands add personal touches and pay attention to the little things. A little effort goes a long way when it comes to making us feel like we’re valued and understood as customers.
This is also true for marketing via email.
Personalizing emails is a must if you want to build trust with prospects and customers.
Here are some easy ways to personalize your emails that will increase the number of people who open, click through, and buy from you.
- Use the first name of the person who signed up in the subject line and the body of the email (“Hey Jen!”)
- When planning campaigns, think about different time zones to make sure your email gets read as often as possible. Where do the majority of your readers live?
- Sort your contacts into groups so that your messages can be targeted and useful.
- Use emails that are triggered by how customers use your product or service.
5. Optimize for mobile
61.9 percent of emails are opened and read on mobile devices. Make sure your emails look good on all devices for the best results.
Depending on how your ESP handles email design, mobile-responsiveness may already be a built-in feature.
6. Optimize email deliverability
Even more than subject lines, calls to action, and copy, email deliverability is the most important part of email marketing.
Email deliverability is the ability to send an email to the inbox. This is very important for email marketers.
When everything goes as planned, the email gets past the spam filters and gets to where it needs to go. When deliverability is broken, the email ends up in the spam folder or, even worse, your ISP blocks your sender IP.
Even though deliverability is often based on technical factors, there are a lot of non-technical things you can do to make sure your email newsletters get to the inbox.
Here are some easy-to-follow tips for delivering:
- Make sure the subject line of the email doesn’t sound like spam or too much of a sales pitch. If a contact thinks your email is spam before even opening it, it’s likely that your deliverability rate will go down.
- Keep your list of subscribers up-to-date by removing old addresses and contacts that aren’t being used.
- Only send to people who have signed up. If you send an email to someone who doesn’t know you, they might report it as spam. This will hurt how well you can deliver in the future.
- Always add a link to unsubscribe. Under GDPR, which is Europe’s data protection law, a person has the right to say how their data is used. This includes the right to stop receiving emails, so this option should always be available.
7. Choose an engaging email newsletter design
Design is just as important as content when it comes to email marketing. The way your email looks and feels will say something about your company and what it stands for. Take some time to get it right.
You should try to get people’s attention with an email design that fits your brand and shows off your main message and CTA in the best way possible.
A well-designed email helps the email’s content by making it clear, readable, and organized. Your click-through rate will go up if your page is set up in a way that makes it easy for people to find your call to action.
If you want to add images to your email content, keep these best practices for newsletter images in mind:
- Don’t put too many pictures in the email (this could harm your deliverability).
- Don’t use pictures that are too big or too small.
- Add ALT text to each image in case it doesn’t show up and so that people who use screen readers can find it easier.
- Use only high-quality images that have a reason for being there. Stay away from boring stock photos that don’t add anything.
8. Clean your email list up every so often
Keep your database up-to-date to make sure your emails get delivered and to get more people to click on them.
Have subscribers who have stopped paying attention? If someone hasn’t opened one of your emails in at least six months, send a reactivation campaign or even ask for a second opt-in. Try to get them interested in it again.
If the subscribers still don’t do anything, remove them from your list.
Even though it will be sad to see them go, it will be better for your business in the long run.
Another important thing to remember is to make it easy to unsubscribe by putting a clear unsubscribe button on your email. People are more likely to mark you as spam if they can’t find a way out.
A good rate of people leaving a list is 0.5 or less.
9. A/B test your email subject line and content
Having trouble deciding between two topics? Not sure what kind of content will work best for your audience? One way to find out is to use A/B testing, which is also a great way to improve your campaigns.
Try out different subject line formulas, content formats, and calls-to-action in your emails. Find out which ones get the most attention and stick with that method.
Test different things until you find out what your subscribers like best.
10. Scale up with email automation and autoresponders
Once you know what you’re doing, you can automate your email marketing plan to help your business grow even faster.
Autoresponders are the easiest way to automate emails.
At different points in the buyer’s journey, autoresponders send out a personalized email (or series of emails) on their own. You can follow up with people who have signed up without having to be there to hit “send.” 💅
The most common type of autoresponder is the “welcome” email, and most email marketing services have an autoresponder feature.
With the right email automation software, you can take it a step further and use if/then/else logic to set up complex email automation sequences. This type of email series works very well for nurturing leads and scoring leads.
To conclude...
Your understanding of the field of email marketing should have improved, hopefully as a result of reading this article.
Anyone may profit from an email marketing strategy and campaign that has been carefully planned out, from the smallest of businesses to the largest of corporations.
6 Responses
Itís difficult to find experienced people for this topic, however, you sound like you know what youíre talking about! Thanks
Im very happy to find this web site. I wanted to thank you for your time just for this fantastic read!! I definitely liked every bit of it and i also have you book-marked to see new things in your website.
I want to to thank you for this wonderful read!! I absolutely loved every little bit of it. I have you saved as a favorite to look at new stuff you postÖ
Itís hard to come by educated people for this subject, but you seem like you know what youíre talking about! Thanks
Thanks for your blog, nice to read. Do not stop.
This is the perfect blog for everyone who would like to find out about this topic. You know a whole lot its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would want toÖHaHa). You definitely put a fresh spin on a subject which has been discussed for ages. Wonderful stuff, just excellent!