Best Beginners Email Marketing Guide

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital communication. With the invention of new ways of digital communication like social media, live chat and more, email marketing has evolved to be the most effective marketing channel. Additionally, as per the survey, email marketing has an ROI of $38 for every dollar spent.

One of the main goals of any business is to build its brand value and create a subconscious image in the mind of the customer. This brand building and positive customer experience leads to goodwill and prompts the customer to keep coming back. Email marketing, if utilized appropriately has the potential to cater to all the attributes of the marketing strategies. It is the most effective and powerful form to reach your target audience to get the desired result in terms of sales and leads. Email marketing is a two-way communication channel as this is the place where people want to receive information.

Apart from this, since customers opted-in to get information, in email marketing campaigns, we can send emails to provide the information of their interest, for example, about new products, features, services, events, benefits, and more. This self-promotion will not seem disruptive because customers have opted-in to hear from you. We get a place to promote ourselves especially when customers opted-in. We can inspire customers to buy after they relinquish the cart and at the same time, we can deliver some special offers to our loyal customers.

With email marketing campaigns, it feels difficult to self-promote in places where customers have not opted-in to receive messages and updates from our business. Though, self-promotion is one of the finest ways to reach customers. If we cannot promote and sell the company, no one will know about the company and hence they will not buy from us.

In this blog, we intend to discuss e-mail marketing and focus on its importance, benefits, and future of the same. Also, we will explore the email marketing campaign and its essential sections.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a powerful marketing strategy that uses email as a tool to deliver promotions and messages in mass quantity to generate sales and leads. This channel can be used in a form of direct marketing as well as digital marketing. Being an excellent marketing tool, it improves sales as well. Most people are on the e-mail, and the number is increasing every year.

It is a form of marketing that can make the customers of their email list aware of new products, discounts, and other services. It also plays a pivotal role in a marketing strategy with lead generation, brand awareness, building relationships or keeping customers engaged between purchases. It can also be a means to educate the audience about their brand or keep them involved between purchases through different types of marketing e-mails. 

History of Email Marketing

The very first email was sent in 1971 by a computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson. The message he sent was just a string of numbers and letters, but it was just the beginning of a new era of communication. Tomlinson was also the person who introduced the usage of the “@” symbol in email addresses.

In 1978, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp named Gary Thuerk used this new method of direct communication to send out the first commercial email to let people know about a new product. By the ’90s, the internet had become commercially available to the masses. The way of communication among people began to change dramatically, and then marketers discovered that email could be an effective way to advertise.

Why is Email Marketing important?

Benefits of Email Marketing?

Email marketing help businesses to reach a wider customer, drive sales, and an opportunity to develop a relationship with the customer. For small businesses the benefits of email marketing are numerous. Email marketing can be used to promote business and increase sales. Unlike other marketing channels, email marketing allows us to exchange letters with our customers. In addition, the ability to send bulk emails, you can also personalize them for different customers, so the emails are always engaging. Perhaps the best reason to use email marketing is that the company can own the channel and apart from compliance regulations, no other external entity can impact them to reach out to their subscribers. So, the benefits of email marketing are:

How to Start an Email Marketing Campaign?

Email marketing campaign is one of the top-performing strategies because it is evolving and often automated. With email marketing, we can adapt our campaigns and generate targeted content.

Statista report indicates that there are nearly four billion email users in the world. Campaign Monitor research reported that 72% of people would rather receive marketing materials from brands through their email while only 17% reported they would prefer that same content through social media. 39% reported they prefer email content that is rich in information and value rather than promotional.

The first thing we should remember is that we are a guest in our subscriber’s inboxes. Our emails must be always just a click away from losing the subscribers interest forever. So, we need to be polite, respectful and must deliver value.

As we get started, we need to ask permission. It’s the right thing to do. It’s also a legal requirement to get permission in the era of new data protection regulatory authorities like the GDPR, CCPA.

An email marketing campaign can easily include messages to encourage a purchase to an audience that’s more likely to buy from us because they have opted-in for messages and updates. Additionally, we can use email marketing to automate part of our sales process, which can help increase sales as well.

In its basic form, an effective email marketing campaign requires three essential elements:

1. Database or an email list

To achieve successful email campaigns, we need a database that must be double opt-in. This is a database of active email contacts who have expressed their interest in receiving marketing communications from that brand. There are so many ways to build an email database. One of the easiest is to create a lead magnet, a target audience is interested in, like a coupon, in exchange for their email addresses.

• Segmentation: Instead of sending the same materials to your entire mailing list, it’s vital to first segment your recipients.

• Responsive Marketing: More people are using a mobile device to browse the internet than ever. They are also checking their email on mobile devices more frequently than ever. Mobile optimization is the second most relevant trend in email marketing today. Our emails must display clearly on all the devices, so we need to take time to consider how the materials appear on desktop and mobile screens and adjust accordingly.

• List Cleansing: List cleansing, as the name suggests, involves removing email recipients who do not engage with your brand or who do not open the promotional emails. This should only be an occasional process. For example, a customer who hasn’t opened our last several emails may still find value in our next message. 

• Personalized Message: Customers are more likely to find value in messages personalized to their individual preferences and past interactions with the brand rather than generic messages designed for impersonal mass appeal. There are countless tools one can use\ to add personalized touches to an email message, and this can create more valuable interactions for the recipients on the mailing lists.

2. Email Service Provider

An email service provider (ESP), also known as an email marketing platform (EMP), is software that assists in managing the email list. It also assists in designing and executing automated email marketing campaigns. An ESP allows you to automate actions triggered by the target audience’s behaviours. These enable you to personalize each interaction with them, meaning engagement and conversion rates generally improve.

3. Defined Goals

Email marketing campaign is used to achieve many business goal lines. A few of them are:

• Drive sales
• Boost brand awareness
• Generate and nurture leads
• Keep customer engaged
• Increase customer loyalty

To execute an effective email marketing campaign, our database, ESP, and goals must align. Then, only we can get to work.

The first step is the segmentation of the database according to subscriber profession, demographic location, age, or actions. Instead of sending the same materials to the entire mailing list, it’s vital to segment the recipients.

After that, we need to create an email or series of emails designed to give subscribers and customers valuable information to help achieve their goals which help us to boost conversions and revenue.

Finally, use the ESP to send emails to the target customer based on their interest and monitor the campaign result. With the help of ESP, these results will get generated automatically.

As a student of digital marketing at Digital Market Academy Bangalore, during your course or training, you learn basics and advanced functionalities, as well as practically run these e-mail campaigns.

Email Marketing Analysis

Email marketing analytics enable better decisions that are sure to create a positive impact on your business, resonate with subscribers, readers, and customers, and justify the effort to the rest of your company.

Here are the best ways to analyze the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

1. Mass Test Email Campaign

Mass testing applies to almost all sub-disciplines of marketing. In this campaign, we send the improved email to our entire list or larger proposed segment.

2. A/B & Mult-Variant Testing Email Campaign

A/B testing, or split testing, is a way to see what type of email performs best with your audience by analyzing the results of email A against email B.

Here’s the step-by-step process for A/B testing your emails:

• Select one variable to test at a time, e.g., subject line, CTA, images.
• Create two versions of the email: one with and one without the variable.
• Allow your emails to be sent out simultaneously for a period.
• Analyze your results and keep only the version that performed better.
• Test a new variable and repeat the process.

Most email service providers will have A/B testing built into their software, which will make it easy for you to compare email results without much manual work.

3. Trigger Email Campaign

A triggered testing campaign allows us to provide a subscriber with the most relevant content possible. Some marketers who take advantage of automated or triggered emails report conversion rates of up to 50%. This is likely because those who sent automated emails are 133% more likely to send content that’s relevant to the buyer interest. Triggered mail may also include:   

• Welcome mail
• Thank you e-mail after donating.
• Personalized content based on the amount a customer has spent
• Content preference surveys for new subscribers
• Reengagement attempt based on inactivity
• Birthday message

4. Drip/Sequence Email Campaign

Drip campaigns are automated sets of emails that work based on specific timelines or user actions. They enable you to stay in touch with groups of people based on events like when a user signs up for an account or how often that user visits your site. Each time a drip email is sent out, it comes from a queue of already-written emails—there’s no need to manually write and send each one. They can even be personalized with your contact’s name, company info, and more. Put simply, drip marketing is all about giving people the right information at the right time.

The beauty of drip emails is that this all happens automatically based on triggers and user segments that users define.

5. Workflow Email Campaign

The purpose of Workflow is to help plan and automate marketing campaigns. It lets you easily set even complex campaigns in order. All registered contact activity can be used as events or conditions to trigger actions. Workflow campaigns can be adjusted to meet the demands of a project, allowing the creation of sophisticated marketing campaigns. By using Workflows, you will be able to:

• Build strong relationships with your customers by using welcome emails and SMS.
• Send accurately personalized messages to target groups. For example, define groups by particular tags or by activity on your website.
• Generate discount coupons to encourage repurchasing.
• Create multilevel structures to achieve maximum synergy between features.
• Simplify the process of campaign management and specify various actions and conditions to achieve goals.

How to Build Email List

There are many creative ways to build an email list for a company, but it is not advisable to purchase an email database. Strategically speaking, list building comes down to two key elements that work cohesively to grow the subscriber’s number of a company.

1. Lead Magnets

Lead Magnet consists of two words – lead and magnet. Where lead means anything which gives you a piece of information or an enquiry to sell or enrol something or someone. Whereas magnet means trying to attract the lead. In email marketing the term lead magnet means a free item or a service that is given away to collect contact details of the prospect; for example, lead magnets can be demo classes, newsletters, subscriptions, samples, white papers, and free consultations. Marketers use lead magnets to create sales lead.

But there is just one problem: People have become hyper-protective of their personal information. You can’t expect to receive an email address without exchanging it for something valuable. Think about a lead magnet that is relevant, useful, and makes your prospects’ lives easier.

Types of lead magnets we can create are:

• Ebook
• Whitepaper
• Infographic
• Webinar
• Tool

2. Opt-in Forms

An opt-in form is the only way to get prospects’ information to add them to an email list. It is a gate between the future leads and the incredible asset that we must create. Some tips to create an appealing opt-in form are:

• Create an attractive design and attention-grabbing header
• Make a relevant copy of the offer
• Keep the form simple
• The form should be set to confirm double opt-in
• Make sure the flow of the formwork

Bounce

A bounced email, or bounce, is an email message that gets rejected by a mail server. When an email bounces, it has for some reason did not reach the intended destination.

A bounced email can be either a hard bounce or a soft bounce.

1. Hard Bounce: A hard bounce means that the email address is permanently closed and not receiving electronic mail. Maybe the domain of the user doesn’t exist or wrong email id. If the hard bounce rate is more than 2%, then the tool will first warn you. If it happens repeatedly then the tool will ban the company.
2. Soft Bounce: A soft bounce is temporary and may be caused by server outages or an inbox is full. The ESP will try to resend the mail within 72 hours. If it does not happen then, ESP will reply to the mail stating that it will send the mail later.

Most email service providers will designate soft bounces as a hard bounce after three failed sends.

Email Marketing Tips

We must consider a lot in email marketing when it comes to the formatting or subject line of an email. The time we send our email to the devices on which the email could be opened, everything matters. Our goal with every email is to generate leads, which makes creating a marketing email a more involved process than other emails that we write.

Let’s touch on the 5 components of a successful marketing email to get a better result:

1. Subject Lines: Subject line should be clear, actionable, enticing language that is personalized and aligned with the body of the email. The subject line is the most commonly tested element of the email. Some interesting things to test in the subject line are:
   • Length: Test short subject lines or longer subject lines.
   • Topic: Test at least two completely different topics as a subject line and test in which content subscribers are most interested.
   • Personalization: Add personalization to identical subject line example- first name
2. Pre-header: Pre-header text is the first line of text in an email that can serve as a wingman to the email which provides more context to the subscribers of what the email is about. Some interesting things to test in the pre-header include: 

• Inclusion: Test including the pre-header and not including one, if the version with the pre-header has a higher open rate. 
• Content: include two different topics in the pre-header to check which subscriber respond best

 3. Day/Time: What is the best time and day to send an email? We may think it depends; because every business has a different list, a different level of engagement and different content.

On study, it is observed that response rates of 20 million emails, Tuesday at 11 AM ET is the best day and time to send your email.

 4. Call to Action: A call-to-action should lead to a relevant offer and stand out from the rest of the email. Is the call to action getting the kind of action as expected? Some interesting things one can test in our call to action include:

• Copy: The copy in the body of your email should be consistent with your voice and stick to only one topic.

• Color: Test with a different contrasting color to see which color get the best result.

• Images: Choose images that are optimized for all devices, eye-catching, and relevant.

1. 5. Content: We have read that content is the king but what performs best in email marketing? Some interesting points to be considered in the email content include:

• Length: Short form content or long-form content? Does an audience prefer short snippets with a link of reading more, or do they want to delve deeper into the longer copy?

• Personalization: We can test dynamic content v/s generic content to see if we get a lift in click-through rate. We must write every email to the subscribers like we’re sending it to a friend. It should be personable, and we should address our readers in a familiar tone.

• Positive or negative language: When the content of the email incorporates positivity, it will powerfully engage the reader’s brain. It enables the reader to easily understand the key message and motivate them to click through and purchase the product.

• Responsiveness: 55% of emails are opening now on mobile. Therefore, an email should be optimized for this as well as all other devices.

Email Segmentation

Breaking up of large email list into sub-categories that relate to your subscribers’ unique characteristics, interests, and preferences is called Segmentations. After all, our subscribers are also humans, and we should do our best to treat them as such. That means we should not send generic email blasts.

Briefly, we discussed segmentation above. The reason for discussing this topic twice is that we run the risk of sending the wrong content to the wrong people and the possibility of losing the subscribers. Every email you send should treat your subscribers like humans that you want to connect with, as opposed to a herd of leads that you’re trying to corral into a one-size-fits-all box.

The more we do segmentation of our email list, the more trust we should build with our leads and the easier it will be to convert them later.

How to segment Email List

The first step in segmentation is creating separate lead magnets and opt-in forms for each part of the buyer’s interest. That way, your contacts are automatically divided into separate lists. Here are some ways to break up the email list:

• Geographical location
• Age
• Awareness, the decision stage
• Industry
• Job-specific
• Previous engagement

We can segment our list any way that we want. Be sure to be as special as possible when sending emails to each subgroup.

Personalized email marketing as we know whom we’re emailing and what’s significant to them, it will be much easier to send emails with personalized touches.

It is ok if we’re speaking to 100+ people at one time, but our leads don’t need to know it. Personalized emails have 26% higher open rates, and an improved click-through rate of 14% when compared to others.

Email marketing software allows for personalization tokens. One should have no excuse for sending generic emails that don’t make your leads feel special.

A few ways to personalize emails are:

• Add a first name field in the subject line.
• We can include region-specific information.
• Send content that is relevant to your lead’s age.
• Write about relevant or personal events.
• We must end our emails with a personal signature from a human.
• Use a relevant call-to-action to an offer that the reader will find useful.

Integrate Email Marketing Automation

Automation is putting the list segmentation to use. Once we have created the specific subgroups, we can send automated emails that are highly targeted. There are a couple of ways to do this. They are:

• Autoresponder

An autoresponder is a series of emails that is sent out automatically once triggered by a certain action, for instance, when someone downloads the company’s ebook. The great thing about autoresponders is that once we can set it and forget it. Every user that is part of our autoresponder will receive each email that we have added to the series.

• Workflows

Workflows are the next step of autoresponders. Workflows are like a flow tree with yes/no categorization that will execute actions based on the criteria that we set.
Workflows have two key components:

• Enrollment criteria: the action that would qualify a user for the workflow.
• Goal: the action that would take a user out of the workflow.

Workflow tools are smart enough to know if a user opened an email or downloaded an offer, and it will set off a series of actions based on that behaviour. That means, it can send an email series, or even change a prospect’s lifecycle stage based on what a user does.

Email Marketing Service Provider

Email service providers or ESP are technology companies that offer incredible value that make it easier for people to build email lists and send emails. As email marketing is a popular marketing channel, more email service providers have sprung up to provide differentiated services. At the most basic level, an ESP needs to do two things:

1. Store email addresses
2. Send emails.

Many companies have so many concerns daily that creating an effective email marketing strategy may be moved to hold. Fortunately, various email service providers can help ease the burden of segmenting the database or email lists and making more connections with the target audience.

We can browse the different services provided and take advantage of free trials to find out which package works best to fulfil our business needs and suits our budget as well. Let’s have a look at some of the email service providers are:

• MailChimp: mailchimp.com is the email marketing service provider used by businesses to manage their mailing lists and create email marketing campaigns and automation to send to customers.  It is founded in 2001, the company claims they manage more than one billion emails per day. Pricing ranges from Rs.77 per month to Rs.23000 per month or more depending on the level of service we want.

• SendInBlue: sendinblue.com is the smartest and most intuitive platform for growing businesses. It is founded in 2012 and allowed the customers to create the newsletter and transactional emails. Pricing ranges from Rs 1510 per month to 3895.5 per month. Sendinblue offers A/B testing, real-time statistics, segmentation, marketing automation and much more.

• AWeber: aweber.com is the platform that provides the best solution for small businesses. More than 100,000 small businesses rely on their services. Their focus is on constantly evolving their platform to benefit their customers, they could easily access the tool without having an engineering degree. AWeber offers A/B testing, different integrations, pre-designed message templates, message-building tools, and much more.

• GetResponse: getresponse.com is a great option for new marketers or beginners and is available in 21 different languages. More than 35,000 subscribers use the GetResponse toolkit in more than 182 countries, and pricing starts as low as $10.5 per month to $81.18 per month. The Perfect Timing feature allows you to track the best times of day to send your marketing materials, and you can customize different times for different segments.

• ActiveCampaign: activecampaign.com is the best email marketing service provider for enterprise initiatives. It provides the email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tools businesses need to create an incredible customer experience. We can use the service to conduct A/B testing, build customized sign-up forms, social media posts, and develop an effective digital marketing strategy that works for us. The pricing starts from $29 per month to $258 per month.

Rules & Regulation for Email Marketing

Email regulations are consistent with consumers desire to know how and why their information is being used. If there’s anything we care about, it’s complying with what our customers—or potential customers—want. There are a lot of rules governing the use of email for commercial purposes. Common examples include GDPR, CCPA.

GDPR Guideline

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) moves us closer to building long-lasting and trusting relationships with our customers. It regulates the way the data holder deals with the customer data to ensure the customer’s data is secure and not misused.

GDPR is about giving your customers the right to choose. They choose your emails. They choose to hear from you. They choose your products. And that is exactly what inbound marketing is about.

Something important to note about GDPR is that it only applies to businesses that operate in the European Union and businesses that market to EU citizens. Noncompliance will result in significant fees that aren’t worth the risk, so make sure to read the GDPR guidelines entirely.

Here’s an overview of how you can comply with GDPR laws:

• Use explicit and clear language when requesting consent to store personal information.
• Only collect contact data that is necessary for and relevant to your business.
• Store contact data in a secure manner and only use it for the agreed-upon purpose.
• Retain data for justifiable business purposes only.
• Delete contact data on request.
• Make it easy for contacts to unsubscribe from your list or update their preferences.
• Comply promptly to a contact’s request for access to their data.
• Keep company records to prove GDPR compliance.

These regulations have to be taken seriously, so it’s a good idea to create a GDPR strategy for any business before one should start sending out emails.

CCPA Guideline

California Consumer Policy Act (CCPA) moves us closer to building long-lasting and trusting relationships with our customers.

Something important to note about CCPA is that it is copied from GDPR and is applied to American citizens. Noncompliance will result in significant fees that aren’t worth the risk, so make sure to read the CCPA guidelines entirely.

In Conclusion

Email marketing is more valuable than ever before for any business, thanks to the sheer amount of digital business conducted today. Think about ways to enhance your email marketing campaign and take advantage of the dependable marketing channel that offers the highest return on your investment by increasing its reach to a target audience with the right information at the right time.

As a student of Digital Market Academy Bangalore, you will learn all these and much more in our Digital Marketing Courses.

The blog is co-authored by our student Mrs. Varsha Sahu, her LinkedIn Profile.

Credits: Hubspot & Neil Patel Digital