A Complete Guide on How To Start Email Marketing the Right Way

• Cost-effective: Highly efficient marketing channel with a high return on investment (ROI) due to the low costs associated with it.
• Customization: Allows thorough campaign customization and detailed customer data collection. Perfect for targeted messaging like promotional emails based on customer interests and abandoned cart reminders.
• Flexible design: Endless design options to embellish emails, including text, images, videos, and attachments based on user behavior.
• Scalable: Email offers unmatched scalability, letting businesses of all sizes reach vast numbers of users.
• Measurable: Lets you monitor metrics like open, click-through, and conversion rates and continuously adjust a campaign’s strategy accordingly.

In addition, anyone can use an email service provider (ESP) with tools like email list management and analytics to enhance email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing is a way of reaching your audience and sharing information with them directly to drive sales, connect with clients, or promote products. While it’s mostly businesses using this method, individuals like influencers can also take advantage of its potential. This marketing tactic lets you communicate with your customer base to boost brand exposure and drive attention to selected products, services, promotions, and events.

For example, an email marketing strategy might include welcoming emails, newsletters, surveys, and promotions. Via this engagement, valuable consumer data is obtained and can form the basis of targeted marketing. Although data privacy laws are a subject of concern, Forbes found that 83% of customers are willing to share their data if that means getting a personalized experience.

This, coupled with the fact that there are over four billion email users worldwide, makes email marketing one of the best digital tools available.

There’s no doubt that email marketing has many advantages, the main one being the ability to reach a high percentage of your customers with a simple click. However, like any other marketing tool, there are also disadvantages to consider before preparing a campaign. We recommend comparing the pros with the cons to determine if this is the best way to achieve your goals.

On the bright side, email marketing allows you to send personalized messages almost instantly with minimal expenses. Additionally, the ability to conduct A/B tests and use advanced analytics further enhances its effectiveness, enabling continued optimization. This marketing method is also scalable, so you can grow campaigns as the business expands.

On the other hand, it requires an existing contact list, which makes it harder for new businesses to reap its benefits. There’s also a considerable risk of having emails flagged as spam, which can completely undermine a campaign’s success. The same applies to design challenges or delivery issues that may arise.

Even though email marketing platforms are generally easy to use, some people might need help understanding how to start using them. The best approach is to break it down into small steps:

First, you should clearly define your objectives. They are the bedrock of any marketing campaign and should outline the basis of your strategy. Some goals include content promotion, lead generation, and expanding brand awareness.

All email marketing campaigns rely on an email list. If you don’t have one, it’s a good idea to get started with opt-in forms, giveaways, landing pages, and social media.

To have a clear outlook on your customer base and to help create targeted campaigns, segment the collected emails according to metrics, such as purchase history, demographics, customer behavior, and engagement level. This lets you tailor the communication based on the customer’s profile, which boosts conversion rates and customer experience.

After defining the objective and segmenting the email list, you should have a clearer understanding of the type of campaign to use. There are various types, including welcome emails, newsletters, promotions, transactions, and abandoned cart reminders.

While the previous steps are necessary, this is arguably the most important since it can literally make or break a campaign. The content needs to be clearly structured and visually appealing to guide the user to the call to action (CTA).

Personalize the email content with the recipient’s name and tailor the email’s message to their needs. Also, you can use A/B testing to experiment with different approaches, determine which works best, and take advantage of the AI features most ESPs offer.

Imagine having a list with over 1,000 emails and having to personalize and send them individually. Fortunately, email marketing platforms save time and increase efficiency by sending emails automatically. You can create automation workflows triggered by certain events and scheduled for specific hours. For example, you can set it up so that an online customer receives an email whenever they leave items in their shopping cart.

The final step is to gather information on how well the campaign performed. Metrics like click-through rates, open rates, conversions, and return on investment (ROI) are fundamental to understanding how effective the campaign was. Studying these analytics provides clear insights into where a campaign was successful and what needs to be improved, helping fine-tune future marketing actions.

It’s a fact that inboxes are bombarded with marketing emails daily, putting people off even opening them and therefore reducing their effectiveness.

That said, email marketing has numerous advantages, but you might have to overcome a few barriers to fully harness its potential.

It takes a lot to persuade new people to sign up for your email list. Even once they’re on the list, a plain text-based email simply won’t keep people interested in the way it may have done 10 or 20 years ago.

Solution:

• Optimize subscription forms: streamline the sign-up process with simple, user-friendly forms and clear, engaging CTAs.
• Craft compelling content: deliver high-quality and well-crafted content that addresses the subscriber’s interest. Remember to use images, videos, and infographics to break up text and enrich the overall message.
• Segment audience: create targeted content according to specific audience segments.
• Offer incentives: provide inciting lead magnets like exclusive content, special discounts, and freebies.

The whole point of using email marketing is for subscribers to learn about your services, product, or whatever you’re offering. However, that won’t happen if the email lands in the spam folder, regardless of audience size.

This is another problem tied to email marketing, usually linked to factors like poor design and email lists, spammy content, and low sender credibility.

Solution:

• Use email marketing software: get a reliable email service provider. These platforms are designed to manage email marketing campaigns and include features like email authentication and reputation monitoring.
• Offer personalized content: tailor the email content based on your audience’s preferences and specific behaviors to reduce the chances of being flagged as spam.
• No trigger words: avoid using specific terms or phrases often associated with spam. Email services scan the content of an email, and when detected, they move it to the spam folder.
• Clean the email list: keep track of your email list and remove invalid and inactive email addresses.

Even when emails are successfully delivered, there’s still a high chance they won’t be opened, rendering any campaign ineffective. There are several reasons for this, such as unengaging subject lines, timing, and lack of personalization. All of this must be taken into account to increase email engagement.

Solution:

• Write compelling subject lines: choose clear and captivating subject lines and avoid generic phrases like “Newsletter Update #4”. Instead, create a sense of urgency by including deadlines, last calls, and exclusive access to content.
• Optimize sending time: analyze past email campaigns to identify open rate, CTA, and engagement patterns and adjust email scheduling accordingly. Consider different time zones to ensure all users receive emails when they’re more likely to check their inbox.
• Leverage trigger events: use triggers to send emails based on specific actions to ensure the content is relevant to the recipient’s current situation. For example, receiving a follow-up email with behind-the-scenes footage after subscribing to a product launch might increase engagement and interest.

Even though it’s becoming more difficult to use email marketing effectively, there’s still room to succeed when following the proper steps. It requires a well-organized and thoroughly thought-out strategy considering different angles and approaches.

You can build a campaign manually, but we recommend using an email service provider, such as GetResponse. This will significantly reduce the time and resources required to achieve success. Plus, most software already includes AI tools, which are invaluable for optimizing campaigns.

The future of email marketing is increasingly oriented around data-driven personalization, and as technology evolves, AI is set to play a larger role in how brands engage with their audience.

Marketing teams should always include email marketing in their strategy as these campaigns can outperform most other methods when executed correctly.