Email Marketing: A Beginner’s Guide (By An Expert)

Email marketing can be a highly effective part of a well-rounded digital marketing program, whether you build lead nurturing campaigns, dispatch regular email newsletters, send event invites, or all of these and more.

In this guide, email marketing expert Emily Ammon shares her top tips and insights to use email for improving customer loyalty and connection — whether you’re a small business owner getting started or looking to optimize your current email marketing practices.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that uses email to nurture relationships with prospective and existing customers. The goal is to promote products or services while building customer relationships.

Marketing emails are generally sent to a group of recipients from an email list, but they can also be sent one-to-one, such as from a marketing rep to a potential client.

When done right, marketing emails build trust with your target audience, turn new leads into customers, increase sales, and boost brand loyalty.

Subject lines that don’t align with the body of your email are a top reason for people unsubscribing from email lists. (Image: Unsplash)

Types of email marketing

The type (or types) your company sends out will depend on a variety of factors like your bandwidth, industry, and goals.

The 12 main types of marketing emails are:

1. Welcome – Welcome emails introduce your brand to people who subscribe (by signing up for a newsletter, creating an account, becoming a member, or opting into a lead magnet). These emails let the user know what they can expect from you and prove that you have something valuable to offer.
2. Newsletters – Usually these are sent out regularly to subscribers and can include a mix of company updates, new content, and special offers. These emails are helpful for maintaining communication with your audience and keeping them engaged.
3. Product or service updates – These emails let prospects and customers know about new and improved offerings from your business.
4. Company announcements – Announcement emails let people know if your company makes a big change (such as getting acquired, adding a new service, or changing its name).
5. Special offers or promotional emails – Sweeten the deal for subscribers by offering early access to a sale, a special discount, or another incentive.
6. Exclusive invites – Give recipients first dibs to RSVP to in-person or virtual events such as conferences, webinars, or consultation opportunities.
7. Lead generation/nurture – These emails are usually deployed as part of an email series and are triggered by an action someone takes on your site (like downloading an ebook or filling out a form).
8. Transactional emails – Confirmation emails, account updates, and shipping information sent to customers to provide essential information that reinforces trust.
9. Re-engagement – For subscribers who haven’t engaged with you recently, re-engagement emails act as a nudge to take action through discounts, valuable content, or a feedback request.
10. Abandoned cart – These ecommerce emails are sent to potential customers who added items to their cart without purchasing. These emails remind people to finish what they started — often with product visuals and even limited-time offers to incentivize the sale.
11. Seasonal – From Cyber Monday to back to school, seasonal emails highlight promotions, launches, seasonal or new products and services. These emails typically push a sense of urgency to get people to convert.
12. Feedback – Feedback emails are sent to audiences to gain important insight into how a brand’s products or services could be improved.

How to build an email marketing strategy

1. Define your goals (and bandwidth)
2. Identify and segment your target audience
3. Choose an email marketing platform
4. Create a campaign strategy and calendar
5. Build your list

1. Define your goals (and bandwidth)

What do you want to gain from email marketing? Some common goals include:

• Lead generation
• Nurturing and retention
• Driving sales

Your goals will determine what kind of email marketing campaigns you create and the frequency you send them.

2. Identify and segment your target audience

If you haven’t already, build your target audience (the intended audience base for your business).

This guide walks you through the process, but here’s a quick summary:

• Review your Google Analytics for insights on your existing website visitors.  Open your GA4 dashboard, then click Reports > User > User Attributes > Overview. Click through the different reports in the “User” section.
• Analyze your social media followers if you have a social profile and following. These platforms offer analytics as well so you can gain insights on people who already believe in your brand.
• Conduct market research through one-on-one interviews, surveys, and focus groups.
• Read up on your competitors to draw inspiration from their messaging. But remember that while your audiences may be similar, it’s important to forge a path unique to your brand.
• Build customer personas (aka buyer personas), a fictional profile that represents your target customer.

3. Choose an email marketing platform

Before diving into your content strategy, pick an email marketing tool that will help facilitate your goals.

Some businesses may already use customer relationship management (CRM) platforms that offer email marketing services (like HubSpot).

But if you’re on the hunt, some of the most popular tools include:

• Mailchimp
• HubSpot
• Constant Contact
• Klaviyo
• Sendinblue
• ActiveCampaign
• Campaign Monitor
• GetResponse
• AWeber
• ConvertKit

When looking for the right email marketing software, consider features like:

• A/B testing
• email templates
• SMS
• marketing automation and email automation
• pricing and cost-effectiveness
• user-friendliness
• integrations
• functionality
• contact list size

4. Build a content strategy and calendar

Like all forms of content marketing, email marketing requires strategic and proactive planning.

Welcome emails, nurture campaigns, abandoned cart, and transactional missives go out automatically when someone takes an action on your site.

Other email types are sent out based on things like sales, seasonality, or regularly scheduled newsletters.

If you plan to create ongoing email campaigns, make a plan for what the purpose of the emails will be and when they will be sent.

Create a content calendar that outlines your main messaging and the sending schedule, leaving room for writing, designing, and reviewing your emails beforehand.

5. Create an email list

Building a list of engaged email subscribers is the ticket to a higher return on investment (ROI). Just like pay-per-click advertising (PPC), the goal isn’t more clicks (subscribers) — it’s high-quality leads who are interested in what you have to offer.

To build a list of engaged people, keep it simple:

• Add a subscription form on your website
• Promote your email list through social media channels
• Spread the word with people you speak with who are interested in your business

How to craft effective emails

With all the design capabilities and personalization available, it’s easy to overlook how important regular old email copy is.

But when it comes to email marketing, compelling body text and eye-catching subject lines can make or break your open rates and engagement.

Here are our top tips for crafting effective emails.

One thing that’ll help safeguard you against email marketing mistakes is to create a checklist. (Image via Rawpixel)

Use enticing, actionable subject lines

According to HubSpot, the most effective subject lines engage curiosity, include a promotional offer, and are personalized to the recipient’s interest. Keep it short and relevant to the content inside your email.

Why does relevance matter? According to Gartner, subject lines that don’t align with the body of your email are a top reason for people unsubscribing from email lists.

We suggest:

• Actionable language (what they can do with this email)
• Short, skimmable, sometimes-catchy copy
• Personalization (like including their name)
• Emojis (if it matches the tone)
• Numbers

Preview text with additional context

Preview text gives you the opportunity to elaborate on your email subject line, further pique the interest of your recipient, and provide more context.

While some email platforms allow you to fill in the preview text with custom copy, typically the preview text is automatically filled with the first line in your email — further incentive to keep that introduction in your email punchy and interesting.

Concise body copy

You made some sort of promise with your subject line and preview text, and your body copy should fulfill that by offering that critical content right away.

Keep your copy concise and add clear calls to action (CTAs). It’s also important that your tone mirrors your website and the content is in descending order of importance.

Pro tip: When soliciting feedback, consider offering separate submission options for positive and negative feedback. For positive experiences, ask your audience to write a review and provide the link. For negative feedback, ask for a direct reply to your email so you can try to make it right. This keeps negative reviews from hitting the public before you can remedy the situation.

Effective design elements

Don’t let your email’s message get lost in a sea of bad design. The way you format and lay out your email’s design is arguably as important as the copy it contains.

Here, Ammon shares her top three design tips:

1. White space

“For all emails, whitespace is essential,” says Ammon. “I like to see content that can breathe.”

2. Use images sparingly

“I’m personally not big on an excess of imagery,” Ammon explains. “But a few relevant ones here and there can be nice to break up text-heavy emails or help the subscriber see/understand a product.”

3. A clear, bold headline

“A nice, bold headline will capture the readers’ attention and clearly inform them about what they can expect from the rest of the email,” she says. “If you’ve gotten them to open, don’t blow the rest of the readers’ experience on a lack of clarity.”

Ammon reminds us that “most emails have very little time to capture and engage the reader, so be clear, concise, and to the point.”

Other effective marketing email design elements include:

• Designed for mobile devices
• A design style that matches your website
• Accessibility considerations (such as alt text for images and contrasting colors)
• High-quality images
• Dark mode compatibility

Your marketing emails should feel like an extension of your website, or even a toned-down, more minimal version. Above all, you want them to be scannable, professional, and easy to read.

How to measure and optimize performance

When measuring performance, there are key metrics to track that determine whether you have a successful email marketing campaign or require further optimizations.

Common metrics to measure email performance include:

Open rate: The percentage of people who open an email.

Click-through rate: The percentage of people who clicked on a link inside your email, calculated with the formula (number of clicks ÷ number of emails delivered) X 100.

Conversion rate: The percentage of people who click on a link in your email and complete the desired action, calculated with the formula (number of people who the action ÷ number of emails delivered) X 100.

Bounce rate: The percentage of emails sent that were not delivered, calculated with the formula (number of undelivered emails ÷ number of total emails sent) X 100.

Email sharing: The percentage of recipients who click a “share” or “forward” button, which posts email content to a social network, calculated with the formula (number of clicks on a share/ forward button ÷ number of emails delivered) X 100.

Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from your email list after opening an email.

Revenue per email: How much money each email sent generates, calculated with the formula (total revenue generated from email campaign ÷ number of emails delivered).

Use the data you collect to identify weak points in the funnel and create strategies for improvement.

How an expert tracks performance

We asked Ammon what she considers the key metrics to track performance. Here’s what she shared:

For email deliverability and making sure my emails are being received: 

Delivered/Sent (delivery rate)

To understand the general engagement of an audience:

“I look at click rates (clicks/delivered) and loosely, open rates, (but with a grain of salt).”

To understand the content relevance or efficacy of the email content: “Click-through rate (clicked/opened — although again we run into issues with the identification of who actually opened),” Ammon says, “conversion rate (conversions/delivered or even conversions/clicked), and revenue per email (RPE).”

A note on conversion rate:

“Choosing how to define ‘conversion rate’ and what qualifies as conversion will be up to the individual — and may change based on the situation.”

For example, maybe a conversion is filling out a form or completing a quiz, or maybe it’s making a purchase.

“In my current position, I often share responsibility for the conversion rate with our ecommerce manager, since our emails don’t have an option for users to convert (purchase) within the email.”

“So, he designs and optimizes our landing pages, product pages, and anywhere else a link in my email might take the reader.”

“My main job is to ensure that my email content entices the reader to click out to that landing page, and to adequately prepare the user for what they will find there and hopefully, preemptively prepare them to make that purchase.”

Other key performance indicators Ammon uses:

List retention rate (how long someone sticks around as a subscriber), unsubscribe rate, and spam rate.

A/B and multivariate testing for optimization

A/B testing compares two different elements of the same email, like the subject line or CTA button to find the most effective option.

Each version is sent to two different groups of recipients to see which one drives the best results. The winner is sent to the remaining contacts in your email list.

The data also provides insights on what makes your audience act, so you can optimize your emails going forward.

Further reading: Learn more about A/B testing here.

How to grow your list

Once you kick off your email marketing efforts, you can put more attention toward growing your email list with new subscribers.

We argue that the top strategy to grow a good email list is to provide valuable, high-quality content that makes your audience want more — from blogs to email content.

Beyond that, some commonly effective ways to grow an email list include:

• Pop-up signup forms and CTAs on your website
• Compelling lead magnets, like free checklists or guides, that require an email opt-in to download
• Exclusive offers for people who subscribe
• Word-of-mouth and in-person signups
• An email signup link under your email signature
• Social media promotions
• Events such as webinars that require an email for registration
• Giveaway events

How can I improve email marketing open rates?

What good is a well-written and beautifully designed email if no one opens it?

When crafting your campaigns, keeping open rates in mind can help inform everything from the time of day you send your dispatches to how you phrase subject lines and pre-headers.

Keep your email open rates climbing with tactics like:

• Keeping your email list updated – Sending emails to addresses that have been deleted or to people who no longer work at their company is a recipe for low open rates and high bounce backs.
• Personalizing your sender – Whether it’s someone from your marketing team or your company’s CEO, sending an email from an actual human instead of a nebulous “company” can help your messages feel more credible and personal.
• Segmenting your audience – The more specific your audience, the more directly you can speak to them. You can segment by attributes like demographics, purchasing behavior, business type, and more.
• Sending on Tuesdays – Data shows that emails sent on this day often see higher open rates when compared to other business days.
• Avoiding spam traps – Don’t use elements in your emails that could get them caught in spam folders. This includes embedding forms in the body of your email, having too many graphics, employing trigger words like “earn,” “cheap,” or “free,” and using excessive exclamation points in your subject line.
• Provide great content – No surprise here. Offer valuable content and your audience will be eager to open your emails.

What are the top email marketing best practices?

“When designing an email, think about how the email is seen/read,” says Ammon. “It’s usually scrolled through, and there’s a limited amount of space ‘above the fold.’”

Ammon adds that “generally, no user sees an email from top to bottom all at once (like a poster or piece of art). So remember that when creating your email design.”

With that in mind, you also want to make sure that you’re not skirting or breaking any guidelines when it comes to your emails.

Per the CAN-SPAM Act, this means your emails should have a clear way to unsubscribe, be free from deceptive or clickbait-y subject lines and copy, and include a valid physical postal address. (The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a similar law set in place in Europe)

At the end of the day, the most effective emails show a clear value to each recipient.

While you may not be able to incentivize every individual to open your email, you can illustrate to your readers that you appreciate their time by providing value wherever possible.

What are email marketing mistakes to avoid?

As an expert, Ammon sees her fair share of email marketing mistakes. Here, she shares the most common (and problematic) issues to avoid.

Neglecting dark mode and mobile view

“One of the most common mistakes I see is email designs that don’t account for mobile view, dark mode, and/or images not being displayed (and not having proper alt text in place),” says Ammon.

“I’m a fairly generic email user in that I use Gmail on an iPhone set to dark mode,” she explains.

“I’m always surprised when I see a more established brand send an email that has wonky button sizing or text I can’t read because of a mobile or dark mode rendering issue.”

Ammon reminds us that “Mobile isn’t ‘little desktop.’ Thumbs aren’t as small and precise as cursors, and that’s especially true for people with certain disabilities.”

In other words? Buttons should be large enough to account for the lack of precision.

“Mobile font sizes may take on different proportions than your desktop designs…and that’s a good thing! It will help users read and consume your message,” she says.

“Photos and images will be smaller because the screen is smaller. So consider this if you have finer product details you want your customer to see.”

Inaccessibility

“While I understand that it’s difficult to make your emails 100% accessible (especially if you’re not a coder or don’t have access to one),” Ammon says, “there are a few small things you can do to improve accessibility.”

How to make your emails accessible to everyone

1. Don’t center paragraphs of text

“Left-aligned text, especially for body copy that covers more than three lines, is easier for folks with dyslexia to read” says Ammon.

“And honestly, I think that also goes for people who don’t have dyslexia (at least it’s true for me).”

2. Give your images proper alt text

“I know of a massive brand that uses alt text in their email images that says ‘Display images to see real-time content,’” Ammon explains. “Which I’d think would be a slap in the face to people who can’t see well, or can’t see at all.”

3. Don’t hide your headlines within an image; use live text instead

“This might help performance AND accessibility,” says Ammon. “Because if someone has their images turned off, they won’t even see your cleverly written headline.”

4. Follow email marketing experts for accessibility tips

“Follow Anne Tomlin and Sarah Gallardo on Linkedin for helpful information on accessible email design,” Ammon suggests.

The takeaway

“Email is a means of communication, first and foremost,” says Ammon. “If your email message can’t get across to the user, it likely won’t perform.”

If you’re a beginner and need some inspiration and guidance to fuel your email marketing efforts, Ammon recommends Travis Hazelwood, Chase Dimond, and Jimmy Kim for nuggets of email marketing wisdom.

Further, “You will never find a more helpful, intelligent, and supportive group of people than those in the Email Geeks Slack channel,” she adds. “Any person who’s fresh into an email marketing career will benefit greatly from this community.”

And if you want more digital marketing help with your marketing channels, HawkSEM is here — from PPC to SEO to social media marketing. Reach out anytime.

This article has been updated and was originally published in February 2021.