Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing

Email marketing is the most effective way for a business to stay in touch with their audience. While many senders don't utilize the full potential of their subscribers' inboxes, once you learn the fundamentals of email marketing, you'll understand increased conversions and brand loyalty increases are only a few clicks away.

Email marketing is an extremely powerful tool to grow your business, but it can be overwhelming when you don't know how to get started. In this Email Marketing for Beginners Guide, we’ll share some basic email marketing tips so you can start getting results in no time at all.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your customers because it's one of the most effective channels for delivering timely promotional messages that convert. According to Constant Contact, email marketing has an average ROI of $36 for every dollar spent on it.

It can also be a stand-alone or incorporated into a wider program. For example, an email campaign may be run to promote a new product or service, in which case the email messages used would be tailored to provide information about the new product or service. Email campaigns may also be used to drive sales of existing products by providing discount coupons or links to special offers.

Is Email Marketing outdated?

While it may seem like email marketing is a thing of the past, it’s actually just as relevant today as it was when it first started in the 90s. In fact, email remains the most effective way to reach customers and grow your business.

Email marketing is not a dinosaur. It is an important channel for communicating with customers, building relationships and driving revenue. It’s important to keep up with the latest trends in email marketing so you can get the most out of your campaigns.

Almost everyone uses email - and the number keeps growing...

The Benefits of Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience, whether you're trying to sell products or services, build an email list or simply drive traffic to your website.

Email marketing is a tried-and-true method for reaching customers directly, especially when you take advantage of some of the new features that have been added over the years. Here are five things to know about email marketing.

1. Email marketing has a high ROI (Return on Investment). According to Campaign Monitor, email marketing has a 97 percent open rate and 28 percent click rate. That's almost three times higher than social media posts!

2. Email marketing offers great personalization options for your readers. You can segment your audience based on their interests and demographics — age, gender, location and more — so that you can send them content that's relevant for them at any given time.

3. Email campaigns can be automated so you don't have to manually send out each one individually. Instead of having to spend hours every week sending out emails by hand, automation allows you to schedule certain messages at set intervals while still giving each recipient personal attention when they open their inboxes during those designated times each week or month

The Email Marketing Fundamentals

How to pick an email marketing service provider

When you’re ready to start email marketing, you have a few key decisions to make. These include what software to use and how much time and money you want to invest in the process.

If you’re just getting started with email marketing, there are free options available that will let you learn the ropes before moving on to more advanced techniques.

Some good email service providers include:

Klaviyo - In addition to its ease of use, Klaviyo is also extremely intuitive. This application has a modern interface and format that makes it easy to get everything done.

Sendinblue - A key strength of Sendinblue's marketing automation platform is its versatility and flexibility. By using Sendinblue Tracker script, you can automatically create complex automation workflows based on Web Behavior and Email Engagement data from your contacts, saving you time and helping you scale your business.

Omnisend - The best thing about Omnisend is its pre-built eCommerce marketing automation workflows that help you increase revenue. A variety of emails are available, including welcome emails, cart abandonment emails, and cross-sell emails.

Building your email list

You can build your email list in a number of ways, but one of the most effective is to provide your visitors with an incentive to sign up.

The most effective incentives are valuable, relevant and timely. For example, if you're selling a product in the health and wellness niche, offering a free eBook on the topic will gain you more subscribers than a discount coupon for your store.

Email marketing works best when it's personal and targeted. So don't just ask for people's names and email addresses. Ask about their interests and hobbies so you can send them content that's relevant to them.

There are two main ways:

1. Ask people to sign up on your website. You can use pop-up forms or link buttons in emails that take customers directly to your opt-in page. This works well if you have a large website with lots of visitors each month.

2. Get people's email addresses when they buy something from you. This is called "list growth," and it works best if you sell items one at a time, like books or ebooks.

Determining your goal

What do you want people to do once they open their email? Some businesses focus on the number of subscribers they have. Others focus on measuring how many people buy something after receiving an email. Either way, it's important to know what you want so you can determine what actionable steps need to be taken.

Crafting your emails

Before you begin creating emails, write down your goals for the campaign so that you know what kind of content to create and how often you'll send out messages. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What are my goals for this campaign? Will I use it for lead generation, selling products or collecting subscribers' contact information?

How many people will receive these messages? Make sure the number is realistic based on how much time and effort you're willing to put into creating them.

If you're just getting started with email marketing, here are some best practices to keep in mind.

Make sure your subject line is clear and concise

The subject line is the first thing people see when they open their inboxes, and it's what will convince them to click through to your email and open it up. Make sure that your subject line clearly conveys what the email is about so people don't miss out on what could be an important message for them.

Write a compelling body copy

While the subject line gets people's attention in their inboxes, the body copy of your email is what convinces them to take action on whatever it is you're offering. It should include information about what you're offering, why someone should take advantage of it now and how they can do so easily with just a few clicks.

Include an actionable CTA button

Once someone opens up an email from you, they'll have access to all of that great content you've included inside it. But if there's no way for them to follow through on any of those offers, then there's no point in sending them any emails at all!

Some good email examples for inspiration:

The Pro’s Closet

Subject Line: Your item won’t last long, get it now

What we like:

The subject line creates urgency, while the email offers a discount as an effective selling point
Simple design layout
Giving a discount on their first purchase is a great way to target people who haven't bought yet

Everlywell

Subject Line: Introducing, your new favorite vitamin

What we like:

A discount is offered to introduce a new product that' can be a new addition to their wellness
Clean and simple color scheme
Features their essential products that readers may have interest in

How often should you send emails?

The answer to this question is a bit more complicated than it seems. There are at least four factors that play into the frequency of your emails:

Your audience's expectations and preferences. If most of your customers are used to receiving weekly sales updates, then you should probably send them weekly sales updates. If they're used to getting monthly newsletters with tips on how to use your product, then you should probably send them monthly newsletters with tips on how to use your product.

The type of content you're sending out in each email. If you're sending out informational content about your products (like monthly newsletters), then there's no reason why you need to send it every week — once a month is plenty enough! On the other hand, if you're sending out-of-stock notifications or sales updates (which are time sensitive), then they'll appreciate being notified as soon as possible so they can take action before it's too late.

Key metrics to track

If you want to gauge the success of your email marketing efforts, you’ll need to be able to track key metrics. As you think about how to use email marketing to grow your business, there are some key metrics you should keep an eye on. Here are four important ones:

Open rate – This is the number of people who open your emails divided by the total number of emails sent out during a given period. It's one of the most important metrics to track because it tells you how many people are actually seeing your messages when they arrive in their inboxes. The higher your open rate, the more likely it is that subscribers will engage with your content and take action after reading it (like visiting your website).

Click-through rate (CTR) - This metric measures how many people click a link inside an email (usually sent in conjunction with an ad campaign or sale). A higher CTR can mean that customers are responding well to your ads or promotions and may be more likely to make a purchase after clicking through to your site. The lower the CTR, however, the more likely it is that your subscribers aren't interested in what you're selling — so consider revising your subject lines and sending fewer sales emails if necessary (or try offering something else.

Bounce rate - How many emails bounce back as undeliverable? This can be caused by typos, incorrect email addresses or spam filters rejecting messages that aren't relevant. A high bounce rate indicates that something needs to change with your list; otherwise it could become useless pretty quickly.

Conversion rate - How many people who see your message convert into customers or leads? Conversion rates vary widely based on industry and campaign type (i.e., coupon code vs. newsletter opt-in), but this is a good way to measure whether or not you're targeting the right audience

Email marketing best practices

The best email marketing practices are the ones that help you achieve your goals — whether it's getting more sales, growing your subscriber list or building a relationship with your customers. Here are 10 of the best tips that will help you get more sales from your emails and make sure that what you're sending out is effective at generating leads.

1. Don't purchase contact lists.

2. Personalize each email with their name or other personal information if possible.

3. Send emails at times when people are most likely to read them (i.e., not at 3 am).

4. Test subject lines against each other to see which one gets more opens and clicks.

5. Use HTML for formatting because it looks better to users on mobile devices and desktops alike, but make sure it's still readable by text-only email clients like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail if you plan on sending to those users too (you should).

6. Make sure you're using an email service provider that provides good deliverability rates so your emails actually get delivered to inboxes instead of spam folders or trash bins.

7. Keep the main message and call-to-action above the fold

8. Allow recipients to subscribe to your newsletter

9. Optimize the email’s preview text

10. Clean your mailing list regularly

Conclusion

There's no question that email marketing is an integral aspect of growing a business, but most people never take the time to think about how they can craft an effective strategy. If you're looking to implement effective email marketing strategies, make sure you keep in mind the points stated above and create a customized plan that works for your business. Once your plan is in place, use it to grow your business and watch as it begins to thrive.