How to Do Email Marketing – Beginners Guide

In 2020, individuals and companies in the United States sent 306.4 billion emails each day, and Statista expects that number to grow in the coming years. By 2025, Statista expects the number of global email users to reach 4.6 billion. That’s 60% of the world’s population at your fingertips. 

Email remains a central way to communicate messages, despite the uptick in social media use. With these statistics, email marketing continues to be an effective way to communicate with customers and build an engaged audience. 

It’s never too late to start building an email marketing strategy for your small business or eCommerce site. But where to start? 

This comprehensive guide will walk you through what email marketing is, how to use it, and the best ways to measure campaign success. After reading this guide, you’ll have all the tools and knowledge you need to start reaching customers right in their inboxes. 

What Is Email Marketing? 

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy with which you can achieve your marketing goals by sending emails to a list of subscribers consisting of potential and returning customers—and anyone simply interested in your business. 

With email marketing, you can send announcements, general information, offers, or other business-related messages right to your subscribers’ inboxes. This marketing method has proven successful, as email regularly sees higher click-through rates than social media. 

Whether you sell handmade jewelry or are promoting SaaS products, email marketing can give you higher conversions. And, depending on the service provider you choose, it’s completely free. 

How Does it Work? 

You can target specific demographics or customer groups using unique email campaigns. After creating a strategy and outlining your goals, you can send emails in a scheduled sequence or send personalized recommendations based on a buyer’s past purchases. 

Each email contains a call to action or clickable link to encourage readers to click through to your website or wherever you send them. 

The best way to manage your email marketing campaigns is by using an email service provider (ESP), a company that offers email marketing and bulk email services. ESPs not only help you craft emails and manage your lists but will give you clear stats on every email to better understand where your campaigns are succeeding and what may need improvement.  

Benefits of Email Marketing

There are numerous benefits to email marketing. When you start investing in this digital marketing strategy, you’ll find the following advantages over other methods of advertising and marketing: 

• It costs next to nothing. The only cost you’ll incur with email marketing is using an ESP. The average price for a basic plan with about 1,000 email subscribers runs at about $15/month. Some even offer free trials. 
• You control what you put out in the world. You have complete control over your email marketing efforts. You get to decide your emails’ design, the type of campaigns to run, who you’re sending emails to, and even what scheduling process works best for your business. 
• You’re marketing to people who are interested in your business. If you build your list organically (not paying for email lists), you’re getting subscribers who signed up to receive your emails because they’re interested in what you have to say. This interest lets you collect information and gives you a higher ROI. 
• It’s simple and effective. Email marketing is one of the most straightforward digital strategies. Anyone can create an email, and ESPs make it easier with drag-and-drop editors and templates. 
• Customers prefer email marketing over other digital methods. Most customers prefer interacting with brands and businesses via email over social media or online ads. They can open the email whenever they have free time and head to your site with the click of a button in the email. 
• It’s mobile-friendly. Customers can open an email on their desktop, laptop, smartphone, or even tablet, giving them more avenues to read your messaging. 
• You can personalize your messages. For example, you can build your email list and collect information about subscribers to tailor your messaging and segment lists into individuals with shared interests (more on that below). 
• It’s easy to measure results. Measuring email campaign results is as easy as looking at your open rates and click-through rates. Many ESPs show you which links people clicked on in the email and what part of each campaign gave you the best ROI. 
• It has the highest ROI of any online marketing strategy. The average email marketing strategy return on investment is 42:1, meaning that for every dollar you spend on your marketing, you’ll receive $42. 

When to Use Email Marketing

Email marketing has many more uses beyond sending a coupon to someone’s inbox. There are numerous instances where email marketing will be successful for your business, including: 

• Building relationships through customizable engagements. 
• Boosting brand awareness
• Promoting your blog or website content
• Generating leads by retrieving personal information 
• Marketing your products and services
• Using your leads to give customers personalized content

Types Of Marketing Emails

You now have a general understanding of how email marketing works and the best cases for using it, but did you know how many types of emails you can send? 

Before we give you a step-by-step guide on how to set up an email marketing campaign, here are the types of emails you can send to customers using email marketing:

Welcome Emails

When a customer subscribes to your email list, a welcome email automatically sent out the moment they hit “submit” puts you both on the right path to a successful relationship. This type of triggered email (more on that below) ensures you get off the right foot. 

A successful welcome email will introduce your business, its goals, and its mission. This is not the place to advertise new or popular products but instead, give an excellent first impression and establish yourself as a trustworthy voice in your customer’s inbox. 

Welcome emails typically have higher open rates, so subscribers will be more responsive to your future email communications. However, it’s crucial to get the welcome email right the first time, as a bad welcome letter won’t sit right with the customer and may end up in more subscribers than engaged individuals.

Newsletters

Regular email newsletters are an easy way to keep your business in the mind of customers. Newsletters include company updates, new products, blog articles, relevant graphics, and anything relevant to your services that you think your customers might find interesting. 

An interesting newsletter will create subscriber anticipation. They’ll be looking out for your weekly, monthly, or even bi-monthly newsletters. 

Whether you add product announcements or feedback requests in your newsletters, it’s a great way to engage new and existing subscribers. The ongoing communication retains customers and helps you collect more information about them. 

Newsletters are also an easy way to repurpose old content. For example, if you have years-old blog posts that haven’t been shared in a long time, add them to your newsletter to get more clicks on old but timeless pieces. 

While email newsletters are a fantastic way to stay in regular contact, it’s essential to manage them well. They can become very long without you trying, so the call to action may not be as clear. Keep the content down to a minimum, add the most critical information at the top, and make each CTA button easy to find. 

Blog Updates

If you’re an avid blogger or regularly update one on your eCommerce website, email marketing is the perfect way to let your loyal customers know when you have something new. 

You can send blog updates in the form of an announcement or even give a preview of the content. Then, add a CTA link for the reader to continue reading on your website. 

Some CMS back-ends and ESPs work together to send automated emails that will trigger messages to your subscribers the moment you click publish. Of course, you can also manually send updates if you prefer. 

Announcements

Announcement campaigns involve sending emails promoting new products or services. They’re more of an ad-based campaign and less personalized to your subscribers but just as crucial in promoting your business. 

You may already get announcement emails in your inbox. Do you subscribe to updates from your favorite streaming service? If so, you likely have emails from them announcing new shows or movies in the form of an announcement campaign. 

An announcement campaign will do well with an already engaged audience that receives regular newsletters or other updates from you. 

Event Invites

If your business hosts many events, email is one of the best ways to market them. You can send standalone event invitations or include them in one of your other campaigns, whether in a newsletter or drip campaign (more on that below). 

Marketing Offers

Marketing offers are very similar to announcements in that they promote a service or product. They can showcase featured products or advertise a sale/coupon to encourage customers to click through and purchase your product. 

Marketing offers include a direct CTA button for customers to click on and head to your website to purchase a featured product. Both marketing offers and announcement campaigns are ideal for driving sales rather than engaging and educating. 

Triggered Emails

Triggered emails are automated email marketing campaigns that often see some of the highest open rates of all types of email marketing. Their effectiveness boils down to the reason they’re sent. 

You can set up triggered emails to send to a customer in response to an action on your website. Whether signing up for your newsletters or leaving an item in the cart, triggered emails are a great follow-up to let the customer know you’re there. 

The timing of triggered emails is essential in getting a high ROI. A customer will typically receive one within a few minutes of performing an action. 

That action also dictates the email’s content, making it more customized to the customer. If they just signed up for your newsletters, a triggered welcome email will help you set up a positive relationship. When a customer leaves something in their cart, a triggered email may remind them that they were shopping on your website and forgot to hit purchase. 

Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns are similar to triggered emails in that they are automatic emails, but their purpose is a little different. Instead of tailoring the triggered emails to a customer’s action, drip campaigns operate on a set schedule and sequence. 

The first email of a drip campaign sets up the entire email marketing campaign. For example, a lead-up to an event can start with anticipation and small details. The following few emails can cover more specific information, past experiences, and information on signing up. Finally, the entire campaign leads up to entice the customer to sign up, buy tickets, or go to the event. 

These sequence campaigns also have higher open rates, as you’re continually reminding your subscribers of something exciting on the horizon. It generates excitement and keeps them looking out for emails from you. 

Email Marketing: Getting Started

As you’ve read already, there are many components to email marketing. Still, once you understand them, putting together emails and building a subscriber list becomes a breeze. So, if you’re ready to start your email marketing efforts and seeing a higher ROI on your website, here’s how to get started: 

Choose an Email Service Provider – Compare Free Email Marketing Software

An ESP is essential to creating successful email campaigns. They not only help you manage your lists and give you the tools to build emails but have comprehensive analytics to help you craft emails to your particular audience. 

From HubSpot to Mailchimp, these email marketing companies give you various features to help with email marketing success. Most ESPs provide features like: 

• Automation
• Built-in analytics and downloadable reports
• Drag-and-drop editors to build emails, forms, landing pages, and more
• Subscriber segmentation capabilities
• A/B testing capabilities
• Good standing with internet and email providers

Perhaps one of the most important reasons to use an ESP is the last bullet point. These professional services have a positive relationship with the internet and email providers like AOL, Gmail, and Yahoo! This relationship ensures your emails won’t get lost in a spam folder. 

Start With a Strategy

Before you can start generating subscribers and sending emails, you need a comprehensive strategy. Consumers receive over 100 emails from various businesses each day, so how can you make yours stand out from the rest? 

Create a strategy by defining your target audience and establishing goals, and the rest will fall into place.  

Target Audience

The first step to any marketing strategy is identifying your target audience. What demographic or group are you trying to reach? For example, an organic grocery subscription service. This type of business’s target audience might be young to middle-aged adults who not only love to cook but want fresh, healthy ingredients. 

Also known as a buyer persona, finding your targets will help you craft more engaging emails. Figure out what your target audience wants and their goals when they use your service. 

Goals

You might understand your audience’s goals, but don’t forget about your company goals. What do you hope to get out of email marketing? Identifying your campaign goals will help you choose suitable types of emails. 

Come up with long- and short-term goals to help you stay on track with your campaigns. Short-term goals could include engaging your audience, building subscribers, or selling a new product. Some examples of long-term objectives include: 

• Increase your email subscribers by 25% in the next year
• Collect subscriber information for better segmentation
• Increase ROI by 10%

Build an Email List

You have your goals and target audience in mind, but you can’t send your emails without subscribers! There are various ways you can build an email list, from adding a “subscribe” button to your checkout window to sharing the subscribe link on your social media. 

These are the most common ways to build your subscriber list: 

Lead Magnets

Lead magnets work just as their name suggests: they’re an offer that entices (or magnetizes) someone and leads them to sign up for your email list or provide additional information that you can use for future marketing efforts. Lead magnets can be a free service, sample, trial subscription, or even a free consultation that someone gets by subscribing to your emails.

The most significant problem with lead magnets in today’s society is peoples’ apprehension to give out personal information, including emails and phone numbers. To combat this, you need to create a strong, relevant lead magnet to make your potential customers want to give you their information. 

Use these tips to create effective lead magnets and start building your email list in no time: 

• State a problem and promote your offer as the best solution. 
• Make your lead magnet deliverable in a digital format. The best lead magnets come in the form of a PDF, video, or webpage. 
• Ensure your lead magnet aligns with the future content someone signing up will see. A great lead magnet followed by subpar email content disappoints subscribers and turns them away. 
• Tailor your lead magnets to the buyer’s journey. Separate opt-in offers for people at different points will only expand your potential list of new subscribers. 

Opt-In Forms

Opt-in forms are the most common way to get email subscribers. Opt-in forms can live on a standalone page on your site, as a link in your social media bio, or even as a pop-up window on your site. 

Here’s how to create an effective opt-in form: 

• Align the branding with your company’s brand and tone of voice. 
• Create an attention-grabbing header (i.e., “Don’t miss out!” or “Before you go…”).
• Keep the copy relevant. 
• Don’t ask for information you don’t need. Instead, start with first name and email—you can glean more information from future email marketing campaigns or lead magnets. 
• Send an initial trigger email that asks people to double opt-in. This strategy creates better loyalty and ensures your subscribers are the most engaged. 
• Test the form yourself to ensure it’s placed where you want it on your website and provides a good flow. 

Should You Buy an Email List? 

If you can’t wait for your subscriber list to grow organically, the option to buy email lists is enticing. However, it’s not an effective strategy and often hurts more than helps. 

When you buy an email list, you’re paying for an extensive list of emails from people who may or may not be interested in your service. When you send unsolicited emails they didn’t subscribe for, email providers will likely mark your emails as spam, so these paid subscribers won’t even see your email. 

The ethical way to build subscribers is through lead magnets and opt-in forms. Asking permission to send them emails builds trust and creates a foundation for a positive relationship. 

Email List Segmentation

Did you know that you can split your email list to target smaller groups within your subscriber base further? Known as email list segmentation, you can create sub-categories of email lists that group people together by interests, age, gender, and other characteristics. 

Segmenting your email list helps you tailor your emails even more so that you’re sending less generic emails and personalizing them for a better user experience. 

Why You Should Segment Email Lists

We said it already: segmenting your email list creates more personalized campaigns. Every person on your subscriber list is at a different point in the buyer journey. You don’t want to send a coupon to someone who just checked out. Instead, you’ll build more trust with your audience by sending them relevant content. 

How to Segment Lists

Segmenting lists doesn’t take as much time as you’d think, and it’s effective in the long run. It starts with creating unique lead magnets and opt-in forms for every step of the customer’s journey. With these separate forms, your subscribers will already be grouped by one characteristic. 

You can further segment lists using data in your ESP of choice. For example, you can send targeted emails to people by geographic location, age, career, and even how they’ve interacted with your business in the past. 

Building Your Emails

You have your subscriber list and goals in mind, and it’s finally time to build your email marketing campaign! Use these tips to create engaging emails and start seeing results right away. 

Campaign Type

With goals and a target audience in mind, you can choose a campaign type. If you’re looking to sell products, announcements and drip campaigns are the way to go. On the other hand, if you want to engage your audience further, generate more lead magnets, and glean more personal information to segment your lists further, go with newsletters or blog updates. 

Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing someone will see before they even open your email. So use clear and actionable language that makes someone want to click on the email and see what’s inside.

There are several types of subject lines you can use to boost your open rate. The following are some of the most common subject line strategies, along with a few examples to get your creative juices flowing: 

• Fear of Missing Out: “One Night Only: The Moisturizer of Your Dreams” 
• Funny: “Never Let Your Dog Eat Your Homework Again” 
• Curiosity: “How Much Would You Pay to Live Here?” 
• Pain Points: “Stop Procrastinating with These 5 Quick Tips” 
• Personal: “Sarah, Are You Free Tonight?” 
• Retargeting (for triggered emails): “Hate to See You Go.”

Content

The copy inside your email will engage customers and encourage them to click through to your website. Avoid sales language as much as possible, and keep your tone of voice conversational and lighthearted. At the least, it should match your business’s brand and voice. 

Don’t create super-long emails that take more than a minute or two to get through. You might think you have a lot of necessary information to add in there, but readers don’t scroll past the first few paragraphs. 

For example, keep newsletter emails as short as possible. Create a catchy, simple copy, and instead of including an entire story, add a sentence-long summary and a call to action button. 

Visuals

Relevant and eye-catching images are just as important as the text. Images and videos are the most memorable part of any campaign, so use visuals as much as possible. 

Call to Action

Your call to action button should stand out from the rest of the email. It should be clear, and readers should be able to easily understand what clicking the button will mean, whether it’s to read your blog post, buy a new product, or input information for a free trial. 

Schedule

Build out your email campaign schedule to ensure you get the most eyes on the content you worked so hard to create. After sending several emails, the timing for your specific audience will become clear. Many ESP analytic dashboards include the time someone opened your email. 

A 2015 HubSpot study found that Tuesday at 11 am is the best time to send emails for optimal ROI. You may find that this time rings true when you send your marketing campaigns. Still, as you build your analytics and test different sending times, another day may make more sense.

In addition to timing, create a content schedule for yourself. Then, match it with other marketing efforts across different channels. For example, if you’re promoting a product on your social media next month, add an email campaign for the same product during that same time. 

Measuring Email Campaign Success

When your campaign is complete, you can measure your results to find out how many people opened the email, clicked through, and completed the buyer journey. Analyzing your results will help you create a better experience for your customers. 

There are several effective ways to measure the success of your email marketing efforts: 

A/B Testing

Not every person enjoys the same type of email. One subscriber will love the personalized newsletter rife with humor, while another prefers straightforward ads for their favorite products. This is where A/B testing comes in to help you figure out what campaigns work best for your audience. 

With A/B testing, you create two versions of a similar email. The message and call to action are the same, but the headline, copy, or images may be different (this is the variable). After sending them out, you can measure the results of each to determine what messaging is more effective. 

Use these tips for successful A/B testing: 

• Only choose one variable for each A/B testing campaign. 
• Schedule your emails to go out simultaneously for a set time. 
• Analyze the results and continue using the email that performed better. 

Set Key Performance Indicators

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurable aspect of a marketing campaign that helps you measure success. Set a few KPIs for your email marketing, depending on your goals. 

For example, if your goal is to grow your subscriber list, the size of your list is an essential KPI. On the other hand, if you want to measure ROI, click rates and conversions are a must to measure.  

These are the most common KPIs to measure in email marketing campaigns: 

Size of Your List

The size of your email list may not give you much insight into how well your content performs, but it can tell you how many people you’re reaching with each message. Knowing the number of emails on your list can also help you find out open rates. 

Deliverability

Deliverability is a key metric to understand whether your emails are hitting inboxes. This number, presented in a percentage, will tell you how many spam blockers or bounce backs are on your emails. 

Knowing your deliverability rate can help you fix issues before they become a more significant challenge. If you notice a low deliverability rate, you can ensure you’re doing a double opt-in form or purge your list of defunct emails. 

Unsubscribes

The unsubscribe number will tell you how many people opt out of your emails. In addition, you can see how many unsubscribe with each email, which can help you understand what campaigns work better and which you should leave alone. 

Open Rate

The open rate measures the percentage of people who open your email. While it doesn’t tell you how long they read the email or whether they clicked on a link, it will help you figure out how effective your subject lines are at engaging people. 

You can also compare the open rate to the time you send your emails to further understand the best timing for your marketing. 

Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate measures the percentage of people who click on the call to action buttons within your email. It’s one of the most effective KPIs to measure when figuring out ROI and campaign success. 

It’s also helpful in A/B testing. You can test out various CTA phrases or messaging that get more clicks. 

ESPs help you measure click-through rate further by showing you where on your email the most clicks occurred. It will tell you how engaging every piece of content in your email is and where you could perform better. 

Conversions

The conversion rate is the most telling KPI of any email campaign. Conversions measure how many people clicked through on your email and completed the action you wanted them to perform, whether filling out a form for a lead magnet or purchasing a product. Anyone who clicks through and completes the action counts as a conversion. 

To measure your conversion rate, you need to connect your email analytics to your website analytics. You can easily do so by creating a unique tracking link that only comes from an email you send. 

Report Templates

Seeing your emails go out and reading open rates is good, but it doesn’t do much if you don’t keep track of your KPIs and compare them to other campaigns. Use a spreadsheet to record your email marketing reports to compare and contrast campaigns and testing. 

Having everything in one place will help you make better inferences about how you can improve metrics. A useable email marketing report template should include the following metrics: 

• Email sent
• Emails delivered
• Deliverability (including bounce rate)
• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Unsubscribe rate

You can add additional metrics if they are essential to your email marketing goals. Don’t forget to include the subject line, email length, CTA or offer, and whether you segmented the list. 

Look at each metric and email characteristic and ask yourself how they compare to each other. Does the email’s length play a role in click-throughs? Did you have an alarming number of unsubscribes on one campaign versus others? 

Adjusting Emails to Improve KPIs

Now that you’ve studied your KPIs and analyzed potential ways to improve, don’t be afraid to start experimenting. Adjust subject lines, email body length, or even image sizes to see what will improve your metrics. 

Tips to Improve Deliverability

Oftentimes, deliverability involves purging your inbox or ensuring your following email marketing best practices so that your emails don’t wind up in the spam folder. 

Remove inactive subscribers from your list, such as anyone who hasn’t opened an email of yours in months. Look at emails that bounced and remove them from your list as well. 

Tips to Improve Open Rate

Experiment with different types of subject lines to improve your open rate. If humor isn’t working, maybe try out a more curious subject line. 

Change the time that you send out your emails. If Tuesday at 11 am isn’t working, try Thursday afternoon. Look at your email’s KPIs to see what time people are more likely to open an email.

Tips to Improve Click-Through Rate

To improve the click-through rate, make sure the offer is valuable. As mentioned above, a coupon offer won’t attract someone who just checked out as much as someone who left items hanging in the cart. 

Rewrite your copy and play with different body lengths. Change your call to action visual and text to see whether something visually different will improve the click-through rate. 

Tips to Improve Unsubscribes

If you see a lot of unsubscribes, it could be that your email marketing doesn’t align with your brand, or the opt-in form was off-target. Ensure your emails are valuable and not just taking up space in people’s inboxes. 

Email Marketing Regulations

Before you start sending out emails at random, it’s essential to familiarize yourself with email marketing regulations. The word “regulations” sounds frightening, but it’s beneficial to the marketer and the customer. These guidelines ensure customers are being treated fairly and their information isn’t going somewhere unwanted. 

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The FTC introduced the CAN-SPAM Act to establish rules for commercial emails to protect consumers’ rights. To ensure you’re compliant, every email you send should include: 

• Your business name and address 
• A visible unsubscribe link
• Real emails in the “reply to” and “from” fields
• A subject line that indicates the email’s content

Avoiding Spam Filters

If your email ends up in the spam filter, all your hard work goes unnoticed. It will hurt all your KPIs, and your subscribers will miss out on important information from you. There are several ways you can avoid the spam filter: 

• Encourage new subscribers to add your email to their contact list. 
• Don’t use spammy messaging (i.e., all caps, exclamation points, “opt-in,” “click below”). 
• Use a trustworthy email service provider. 
• Use a double opt-in method to ensure your customers want to receive messages. 

Final Words

This comprehensive guide introduced you to the world of email marketing and how it can help you build your business and create a loyal customer base. From organically building your email list to segmentation and choosing campaign types, there are numerous ways to personalize your messaging and create a more positive relationship with your subscribers. 

You now have the tools to set yourself up for success with email marketing, and you’re ready to start measuring your KPIs and getting a higher ROI with every email you send. 

But it doesn’t end there. There are many other ways to engage your audience and measure various analytics, and you’ll continue to learn as you begin your foray into email marketing.