Are you looking to start with email marketing? It can seem intimidating and a hard nut to crack, but it's worth all the effort. Do not hold yourself back from stepping into email marketing if somebody says it is dead because it isn't. It's alive and kicking.
According to Statista, the number of global email users in 2022 was 4.26 billion, which is set to grow to 4.73 billion in 2026. You see the potential, right?
To help you understand, I will share the nitty-gritty and strategies in this email marketing guide based on my first-hand experience creating an email marketing tool at Mailmodo. Read on!
Table of contents
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a direct marketing channel that uses marketing emails to promote your business. It informs customers about new and upcoming products, offers, or other updates.
Too complicated, too soon? Let me start at the beginning.
Once you get that email address from your potential customer, it's time to leverage it for good. Email marketing is one powerful channel for grabbing their attention and boosting engagement and sales. This also includes keeping in touch with them, sending them relevant and valuable content, and giving them a reason to stay in touch with you.
Now, let’s discuss why you must put this effort and how it can help you.👇
Why is email marketing critical
Is it worth it? Putting a lot of time and effort into email marketing? Well, there are several reasons I can list out that can convince you to start email marketing and why you should consider it:
1. Increase your brand awareness
When you send out your first marketing email, your most important intention is to gain attention and visibility. Email marketing is an amazing way to build traction and get your audience to know you better as you interact directly with them in their inbox.
2. Double your engagement
Email marketing is an outstanding marketing channel that can help you gain engagement. If used correctly, email marketing is one of the best ways to bring your audience to your website or increase conversions/sales.
3. Score sales
If you are using an email marketing strategy for your business, your marketing emails can generate many sales and conversions. You can leverage your collected emails to create a relationship that helps your audience and increases your sales.
4. Converse directly with customers.
When you receive an email address, consider it an opportunity to build a connection. You will interact directly with that person and share your story, product updates, and more.
Things to consider before starting email marketing
Email marketing needs investment, time, and effort. You must understand why you should or shouldn't invest in it. Here's a list of pros and cons to help you decide.
Pros 👍
Budget-friendly
Direct communication with your target audience
Easy to collect feedback
Targeted communication (Segment and send according to psychography, preferences, and demographics)
Trigger emails (email automation)
Easy to track
Cons 👎
Email lists can decay
A competitive field
Possibility of technical issues
Takes time and effort to create and design templates
How to get started with email marketing
You can’t become email marketing expert in a day but you can definitely start here. Beginning with email marketing may sound like a lot to do initially, but the results will amaze you once you start. If email marketing sounds like the right option for you and you need help figuring out where to start, here's a step-by-step guide to help you send your first email marketing campaign.
1. Define goals for email marketing
Get a piece of paper and note your priorities and the end goal you want to achieve with email marketing. Setting a strong goal for your first email campaign will help you stay focused and realistic. Stop and think about what you want to achieve with this particular campaign. Based on this goal, you can set KPIs that will help you measure the results you want to achieve.
For example, I want my audience to sign up for a webinar I'm hosting or a piece of content to capture potential customers. In that case, my goal is lead generation, and the KPIs I want to measure are sign-ups or registrations.
2. Things you need to get started
Before sending your first commercial email, you need people to send it to and a medium that will help you make this process easier and seamless. So, you have two prerequisites:
- First, an email list:
A contact or email list is the first step towards sending your first email. That's obvious, right? There are two possible scenarios: you already have an email list ready, or you want to build one from scratch.
If you already have an email list, consider asking yourself: did I collect these email addresses randomly? Or did I think it through?
If the first one is true, think again because it's a bad practice. Your emails would normally return undelivered or reach people who don't even want to hear from you. So, sending unsolicited emails is surely easy but not the best option. But hear me out; there are ways you can build an email list from scratch quite easily if you follow the right strategies.
🤓 Learn from the expert: Dan Oshinsky, Founder at Inbox Collective, shares tips and tricks to build an email list:
- Second, a reliable email marketing software
Once you have sorted out a clean email list of people who want to hear from you, it is time to choose an email marketing platform to help you send emails efficiently. Some popular email marketing software are Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and our very own Mailmodo.
Choosing an email marketing tool can take much work. Here are some things you should consider before investing in an email marketing platform:
Ease of use
Unique features
Analytics and Reporting
Customer support and service
Security
Pricing
If you are looking for an easy-to-use tool that offers everything you need to get started with email marketing, Mailmodo is the right pick. You might be thinking, why should you even listen to me? What makes me so confident about Mailmodo is its easy-to-use AMP email builder, which makes it easy for you to create emails in minutes. Moreover, features like email automation and a single dashboard to measure your email performance can help you save a lot of time and effort.
Not convinced enough? Have a look at these brand stories:
Razorpay increases survey responses by 257% with email marketing.
Whop’s automated email journey resulted in a 9% conversion rate.
Traya gets 15% abandoned cart recovery rate with email marketing.
Imagine your brand achieving similar success with email marketing. You can read more such case studies here.
6 types of emails you should be sending
You can send different types of emails to your audience, but do you know which is best for you and your audience?
For example, as a content creator, you can send weekly or monthly email newsletters; if you are an ecommerce business, you must send emails to welcome and nurture them. You must decide which type of email you would like to send your audience.
Here are 6 types of emails that can be fundamental for your business:
1. Welcome email
Ideal for: Ecommerce stores, D2C, B2C brands
When to use: To welcome a new subscriber and provide them information or instructions to interact with your brand or service.
Helps in: Creating brand awareness, boosting customer loyalty, expressing gratitude, and creating the first impression
Interactive email twist: Add a "how did you hear about us" interactive element in your welcome email to get more responses.
For example:
2. Promotional email
Ideal for: All types of businesses
When to use: To highlight new products, services, or special offers to your customers.
Helps in: Increasing conversions and sales
Interactive email twist: Add a spin-to-win widget inside the email with offers and discounts that customers can spin and win.
For example:
3. Lead nurturing emails
Ideal for: B2B, B2C brands
When to use: To guide customers through the sales funnel with valuable email content and address concerns.
Helps in: Creating long-term relationships with customers
Interactive email twist: Include an interactive feedback form to solicit opinions on your product or service.
For example:
4. Feedback or survey emails
Ideal for: All types of businesses
When to use: To gather customer feedback and concerns from your customers.
Helps in: Getting customers' viewpoint to improve your products or services further.
Interactive email twist: Add an NPS survey widget to your email and get a rating on your product or service.
For example:
5. Transactional emails
Ideal for: B2B, B2C, ecommerce stores
When to use: To send essential information about a particular transaction made by the customer.
Helps in: Sending confirmation or information to the customer about their purchase. Serves as a reassurance as well.
Interactive email twist: Ask customers about their purchase experience by adding a feedback widget inside the purchase confirmation email.
For example:
6. Newsletter emails
Ideal for: Content creators, B2B, B2C stores
When to use: To send updates about products and services, stories relevant to your business or service.
Helps in: Maintaining regular communication with your customers or subscribers
Interactive email twist: Use gamified widgets like whack-a-mole, spin-the-wheel or interactive quiz to make the newsletter engaging.
For example:
While creating these emails, you should adhere to a guideline. While working, you can use this guide as your ultimate checklist: email marketing best practices.
How to create your first email marketing campaign
After you have understood the types of emails to send and figured out the requirements to start email marketing, its time to create your first email marketing campaign. Here’s a step by step guide for you to follow:
Step 1: Create the email template
Coming over with the most important and my favorite task, creating those beautiful emails for your audience or customers. If you want to send a successful email marketing campaign, make sure you are following these best practices:
📝 Craft compelling email copy
Your emails will mostly include text, and most people prefer to read less. Crafting an email copy that captures the reader's attention requires creativity and strategy. Sending relevant content with a touch of creativity is always a good idea. Your email copy must be engaging and relevant to your readers and fulfill your own email marketing goals.
⭐ Design your email template
I love visually appealing elements in web content and emails, and most others do. That is why the next important step is designing the email in a way that is accessible and enticing to read. The visual appeal of your email is as crucial as its written content. A well-designed email can significantly impact engagement and boost your email marketing efforts and conversion rates. Here's what you should focus on while designing your email:
Typography
Imagery
CTA buttons
Color
I learned the importance of visuals in emails when I started observing them closely daily. When designing emails, it is extremely important to have at least a basic understanding of these elements. So, start observing more; it is the best way to build your knowledge.
♥️ Read my absolute favorite guide on email design, which I always come back to and refresh my knowledge.
✅ Use existing email templates
If you feel learning to design emails from scratch is too much work, you can start with email templates. I tried templates from Mailmodo's collection of 300+ email templates, and I'm still using them now and then.
PS: You can try them out for free.
Email templates are easily customizable so you can customize the templates according to your brand style, like colors, text, logo, font, etc.
Step 2: Set up an email campaign
The next step in creating your email marketing campaign journey is to finally set up your email campaign before sending it out. Here’s what you should make sure:
- Select the right segment or contacts to send these to
This includes specifying the audience you want to reach with your campaign. You don’t want to be sending it to just anyone. In this case, consider email segmentation. This involves categorizing your contact list based on demographics, behavior, or preferences. Tailoring your content to different segments ensures more relevant and personalized messages.
- Add campaign details: Subject line and preheader text
Once you have created your email and selected the audience to which you want to send it, it's time to add the details. Stay with me because this one's super important. Your campaign details include the email subject line, preheader/preview text, and contact list.
Your subject line and preheader text should be crafted strategically. Why? Because that's the first thing your audience will see, and the first impression is mostly considered the last. The subject line and preheader text should be interesting enough to grab your audience's attention and make them want to open the email.
Use the curiosity gap in your email marketing. Curiosity gap = identification of new and valuable knowledge. The gap in the reader's existing knowledge compels them to click and read more. For example, in your subject line, don't say "today's crypto market" but say "Must read crypto analysis...from someone who lived 100 years ago.”
- Jeremy Moser Co-founder and CEO at uSERP
🤓Get more expert email marketing tips in this guide.
The preheader text is the first half of your email in the inbox. It has the potential to compel the user to want to see more. Ensure it is interesting and offers something to the user so they are interested enough to open it.
You must also give your campaign a name to track it in the future. For example, let's say I name a campaign "Email Idealetter 2024." Using this campaign name, you can easily monitor the performance of each email and measure the overall success of your email marketing campaign.
Step 3: Schedule the email campaign
Once your email is ready, all that's left is to schedule it to be sent to your audience. Don't be hasty with sending the emails. Use the send time optimization feature, which analyzes and sends the emails to the individual recipients at the optimal time. You should also ensure that your emails are scheduled well in advance to avoid unnecessary delays and reach the right people at the right time.
Ideally, schedule emails when your target audience is most active. But wait, how do you find that perfect time? Simple, by testing different timings.
Email scheduling days and times must be tested regularly to find the sweet spot of the highest open rates and CTRs. There's no correct answer, as it may change from season to season, business to business, and place to place.
Step 4: Track email marketing performance
What's the point of all the planning, creating, and scheduling when you are not measuring the results of your email campaigns?
It is important to monitor email analytics to identify and fix any issues on time. The email analytics dashboard of your email marketing software can give you valuable insights into how your email campaigns are performing using various email metrics.
You should focus on the open rate, click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, and email deliverability rate, among other email metrics.
The future of email marketing - interactive emails
Emails are considered boring these days, and it's a competitive arena where there are tons of emails in your customers' inboxes waiting to be opened. So, how do you stand out?
Which email marketing strategy can you adopt? To stand out, you can use interactive emails to give your customers a seamless experience and make the emails engaging.
Mailmodo provides AMP emails, where you can easily send interactive emails. Yes! Interactive emails! They will help you stand out and get more responses and conversions, just like Mudrex, an investment platform, which increased its webinar sign-ups by a whopping 280% with Mailmodo. You can use widgets like feedback forms, surveys, games, and more to get your customers' attention and increase conversions.
So, what next?
For novice email marketers, you might need a simplified tool to help you create, track, and schedule your email campaigns without making them complex. In this case, Mailmodo is your best bet. Our no-code, easy-to-use email builder will help you instantly create beautiful, high-converting emails.
It provides interactive emails to give you an advantage, and you can also use this tool to write, design, schedule, provide marketing automation, and track emails all in one place. Mailmodo also comes with an AI subject line generator that helps you generate email subject lines if you often need help figuring out what to write. Learn all about Mailmodo's features here.
Or, if you want to get started, don't hesitate to book a call with our email marketing experts. They are super helpful and friendly. 🙂
Advanced Email marketing resources
Learning email marketing requires constantly reading and following email marketing trends. To help you get the best insights, news, and ideas, here are some email marketing resources for you:
| What you get | Resource |
|---|---|
| Comprehensive email marketing insights. | Mailmodo guides |
| Ready-to-use email sequences for every industry. | Email flows by Mailmodo |
| Create high-performing subject lines. | Subject line ebook |
| Improve your email performance. | Email performance ebook |
| Email design for beginners. | Email design crash course |
| Email sender guidelines | Google and Yahoo |
How to keep up with email trends and updates?
If you are a budding email marketer, keeping up with email marketing trends and news is essential to stay ahead of the competition. Here are some resources to help you do that:
| What you get | Resource |
|---|---|
| State of Email 2024 by Mailmodo | Email marketing benchmarks and trends |
| Idealetter by Mailmodo | Monthly email campaign ideas |
Email marketing glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Email campaigns | A targeted series of messages is sent to subscribers to achieve specific marketing objectives. |
| Call-to-Action (CTA) | Specific instructions or prompts are included in an email that encourages recipients to take a desired action. |
| Key Performance Indicator (KPI) | Measurable values that demonstrate how effectively a company achieves its key business objectives. |
| Sales funnel | Visual representation of the customer journey, illustrating stages from awareness to purchase and guiding prospects through conversion. |
| Click-Through Rate (CTR) | Percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links within an email. |
| Conversion rate | Percentage of recipients who completed a desired action (e.g., making a purchase) after clicking on a link in an email. |
| Open rate | Percentage of email recipients who opened a specific email out of the total number of recipients who received it. |
| Bounce rate | Percentage of emails not successfully delivered to recipients' inboxes, categorized as "hard bounces" or "soft bounces." |
| Email layout | Design and structure of an email, including the arrangement of text, images, links, and other elements. |
| Email template | Pre-designed layout or format that can be used repeatedly for sending emails. |
| Send time optimization | Analyzing data to determine the most effective times to send emails to maximize customer engagement and response rates. |
| AMP emails | Interactive emails that utilize AMP technology to create dynamic and engaging email experiences. |
