How to build a successful email marketing strategy, craft compelling emails, and build a loyal subscriber list.

Is email marketing dead? While some users view it as spam or intrusive advertising, data protection laws and cybersecurity concerns have made it even harder for marketeers to leverage this channel. However, email marketing can still be highly effective – it has the highest conversion rates of all organic digital marketing channels, with an average of 2.8% among B2C audiences. When done properly, it can create strong relationships between a company and (potential) customers, and also strength brand recognition. But what exactly makes a great email marketing strategy? And how can it be done consistently? Here’s our practical guide to email marketing based on over a decade of experience.

What is email marketing

Email marketing is a powerful and versatile tool that facilitates direct communication with customers, allowing businesses to engage their audience in a highly personalized manner. This form of marketing supports a wide range of business objectives, from driving sales and promoting new products to nurturing customer relationships and enhancing retention rates. By delivering targeted messages straight to the inbox, email marketing enables companies to build strong, lasting connections with their customers.

“Email marketing has the highest conversion rate of any organic or inorganic marketing channel”

Effective email marketing campaigns leverage data-driven insights and sophisticated segmentation strategies to ensure that the right message reaches the right person at the right time. This precision not only maximizes engagement and conversion rates but also fosters a sense of loyalty and trust among recipients. Additionally, advanced analytics and tracking capabilities provide invaluable feedback, enabling continuous optimization and refinement of campaigns.

Whether you're launching a new product, running a seasonal promotion, or simply maintaining regular contact with your customer base, email marketing offers the flexibility and effectiveness necessary to meet diverse business goals.

Why it (still) matters

Here is why your brand should still rely on email marketing.

Email marketing converts

The first and perhaps most significant benefit of email marketing is that… it works. Email marketing has the highest conversion rate of any organic or inorganic marketing channel, making it invaluable for brands.

High reach at a low cost

The return on emails sent indeed varies depending on the industry and email type but, a decent email marketing ROI rate can vary between 3600% and 4200%. This means that, for every $1 invested, you could receive an average return of $36 to $42.

Multiple segmentation and personalization options

With email marketing, you can tailor messages to suit the needs and interests of each recipient. For instance, you can segment your emails and target users by demographic group to send only the messages they most want to see. This is a great way to connect with the audience on an individual level.

Email marketing is measurable

The results of email marketing campaigns can be easily measured and monitored. Email marketing can help you develop a relationship with your audience while also driving traffic to your blog, social networks, or any other platform you'd like people to visit. Every interaction, from clicks to scrolls, can be measured to improve for the next round of emails.

Challenges of email marketing

Although email marketing has numerous advantages, companies usually face some challenges with it.

List management: increasing the subscriber base with quality leads while maintaining a clean and updated email list to avoid bounces and unsubscribes requires continuous effort.·
Creating interesting content: consistently producing engaging, relevant, and valuable content that captures and retains the audience's attention takes time and effort.
Maintaining pace: Finding the right balance in email frequency to stay top-of-mind without overwhelming or annoying subscribers can be hard.
Ensuring deliverability: Overcoming spam filters and ensuring emails reach the recipients' inboxes rather than their junk folders is another key challenge.
Improving emails: these days, any email marketing tool can provide detailed data on opening and delivery rates, which links were clicked, how far down the email users got and so on. Having the time to sort through all this and actually improving emails is another story – although vital for your email marketing efforts.
Ensuring coherence: for most brands, email marketing is not the only marketing channel - it must coexist with social media, blog, google ads, and many others. Ensuring a coherent message and tone among all these is a huge challenge, even for the biggest brands.

Types of email marketing

There are several types of email marketing, each with a different purpose. These are the main ones.

Welcome emails

Welcome emails set the stage for a positive impression by exhibiting industry knowledge and expertise and lay the foundation for future communications. In this first contact with potential customers, it’s important to recognize that they are not yet ready to decide to buy or take a certain action. Only 25% of contacts are ready to buy, with 50% still in the consideration phase.

How to do it right: introduce yours brand rather than go on sales pitches mode to achieve higher open and click-through rates (CTRs).

Confirmation emails

These emails are sent to those who have recently signed up to receive emails or newsletters or have purchased an item online for the first time. This is a way of confirming that the purchase or the subscription has been successfully and may include further action to be taken.

How to do it right: Keep the message clear and concise, and always include a personal touch to make the customer feel valued.

Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to keep businesses top of mind, educate customers, and showcase company highlights. They can enhance brand awareness, repurpose content, and offer diverse information.

How to do it right: keep it relevant, by actually having something new to share, and personal, by adopting a close, friendly tone.

Nurturing emails

Lead nurturing involves a series of connected emails with useful content, promoting materials like blog posts, webinars, and eBooks, or informing customers about company updates. These emails can also remind customers about items left in their cart, encouraging them to complete their purchase.

How to do it right: create tailored promotional nurturing emails for different stages of the marketing funnel to guide prospects through the sales cycle to conversion.

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are triggered by specific actions taken by your contacts, facilitating the completion of those actions. For example, signing up for a webinar prompts a thank-you email with login details. These emails are common in e-commerce sites, either to confirm orders or ask users to confirm shipment details.

How to do it right: make the most of this email opportunity by letting users in on news and things they did not know they could do with your brand.

Engagement emails

If metrics reveal inactive subscribers in your client list, consider sending a re-engagement email to reconnect and foster goodwill. Requesting feedback can reignite interest, benefiting both parties with renewed awareness and valuable insights for refining strategies. Even if recipients choose to unsubscribe, overall email engagement rates improve, enhancing your email reputation.

How to do it right: be direct. Inactive users usually have a reason to be that way, so your typical approach won’t cut it. Provide a clear, irresistible offer.

Promotional email

Designed to promote specific offerings such as special discounts or new product launches, promotional emails were the foundation of email marketing. They showcase products or services to subscribers, keeping them informed and engaged. These emails are typically sent to a broad audience and aim to maintain awareness, though they can lack personalization compared to other types of email campaigns. However, these tend to have the lowest of clicks and conversions and are over reliant on price to get results.

How to do it right: invest in high quality graphics to get users’ attention.

Seasonal emails

Seasonal marketing emails are effective for engaging users during holidays like Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and Father's Day, especially when featuring relevant offers and promotions. They inform recipients about upcoming sales and promotions, making them ideal for driving seasonal engagement and sales.

How to do it right: be unique. It is easy to misuse this type of email by simply repeating what everyone else is saying. A fresh approach is vital for seasonal emails when inboxes are overcrowded with similarly styled communications.

What a great email marketing looks like

A truly effective email campaign requires a careful balance of several key elements that collectively enhance engagement, conversion rates, and brand loyalty.

Subject line: it should be aligned with your email copy, clear, and actionable. Emojis, numbers and statistics are also a good way to drive attention. Aim for personalization and sense of urgency.
Preheader: this is the brief text that appears after the subject line, providing more context and encouraging the recipient to open the email.
Logo and brand Identity: include the company logo at the top of the email to ensure the recipient immediately recognizes who sent the message.
High-quality images: use visually appealing images to complement the content. A ratio of 60% text to 40% images is recommended to keep the email structured and easy to read. Also, ensure they are optimized for quick loading and have proper file formatting.
Relevant and personalized content: offer relevant content to the recipient, based on their previous behavior or preferences.
Clear Call to Action (CTA): include visible and direct CTAs that clearly indicate the action you want the recipient to take (e.g., "Shop Now," "Learn More").
Links: include relevant links according to the purpose of the email.
Contact information and social media links: include contact information and links to your social media accounts to facilitate communication and increase engagement.
Footer with legal information: including the company’s address and any other legal information necessary for email marketing compliance is important for conformity with regulations. Include a clear link for recipients to unsubscribe easily too.

Email marketing regulations

Understanding email marketing regulations is key for the success and legality of your campaigns. Various laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States, GDPR in Europe, and CASL in Canada, govern how businesses can use email to communicate with customers. Compliance with these regulations involves several key practices:

Get consent: before sending marketing emails, ensure that you have explicit permission from recipients. This is particularly important under GDPR, which requires a clear opt-in from users.
Provide clear opt-out options: every email should include a simple and clear way for recipients to unsubscribe. This is a requirement under most regulations, including CAN-SPAM and GDPR.
Accurate sender information: your emails must accurately reflect your identity, including a valid postal address and clear "From" and "Reply-To" fields.
Respect privacy and data protection: handle subscribers' data with care. Implement security measures to protect this data and use it only for the purposes agreed upon by the users.
Monitor and manage complaints: Track any complaints about your emails and promptly address them. This can help maintain your sender’s reputation and avoid penalties.

Adhering to these regulations not only helps you avoid heavy fines but also builds trust with your audience, fostering better engagement and customer loyalty.

Email marketing: how to do it right

Nothing can be achieved without creating relevant, high-quality emails that stand out. On average, people look at an email for around nine seconds, but a well-crafted email campaign can yield significant results.

1. Define your objectives

Before diving into creating your email campaign, clearly define your objectives. Whether it's increasing sales, driving website traffic, building brand awareness, or nurturing leads, having clear goals will shape the entire campaign strategy.

2. Specify the type of content

Define the content to be produced. What message do you want to convey and what kind of actions do you expect the consumer takes after reading your email? Make sure the tone of voice is aligned with other platforms your brand is on (website, social media, etc.).

3. Build an email database

An email list is one of a company's main assets, representing customers and potential customers. To build an email list organically, follow these steps:

Offer value: offer something relevant in exchange for the user's email, such as an eBook or webinar. This encourages people to provide their data.
Use efficient forms: use forms on your website, blog, pop-ups, landing pages or social networks to collect emails.
Ask for essential data: only ask for essential information, such as email and possibly name for personalization. Avoid too many fields to not discourage people from filling them in.
Keep the list healthy: remove invalid or inactive emails to avoid high bounce rates and protect your IP's reputation.

4. Define persona

Is your brand persona well-defined? Identify your target audience's demographics, behaviors, and needs. Then, create a detailed, fictional profile that represents a segment of your customers, including their goals, challenges, and preferences

This is crucial to ensure you are communicating to the right audience. Additionally, create different profiles, that is, segment the sending lists so that the content makes sense for each group. For example, someone who has purchased a product needs a different type of content compared to someone who has not yet made a purchase.

5. Structure an email sending schedule

Set a schedule with specific days and times. Keep in mind the brand personas, and what their habits and preferences, so that the schedule makes sense to their characteristics too.

Average open rates per day

According to Hubspot, Tuesday is the best day to send an email and Sunday is the worst.

6. Create a layout

The layout is the face of your content. Make sure it is attractive, interesting and aligned with your brand's visual identity. Adding videos makes emails more appealing for 95% of people (compared to text alone).

7. Create the copy

Keep these tips in mind when writing email copy:

Start with the subject line: since subject lines are the first thing users see, this is where you should spend the bulk of your time and energy. It should be compelling and also slightly mysterious, to make users want to read on;
Follow up with the heading: every email marketing needs a great heading – something that follows up on the subject line. This is where most users will decide to keep reading, so it should be short and captivating, while also conveying the main message clearly;
Move to the introduction and body: keep the text short, clear, and concise. Get straight to the point and eliminate any unnecessary content. Also, align your language with your persona. Use the tone of voice, expressions, and slang that resonate with your target audience, making the email feel like a personal conversation;
Introduce Calls to Action. Use triggers like scarcity, urgency, exclusivity, and novelty to encourage quick and positive actions. Add clear and direct CTAs that guide the user toward the desired action, whether buying a product, watching a video, or downloading material.

8. Test, test, test

Before sending an email marketing, run multiple tests to look for typos, broken links and areas where content needs to be improved. If possible, send alternative versions of your emails (also known as A/B tests) with slightly different colors, images or messages, to see what works.

9. Analyze metrics

After hitting the send button, the work continues. It’s time to analyze some metrics, such as:

Open rate: how many users opened the email from the total number sent? The results may reveal the public's interest in the subject of the email.
Click-Through-Rate: it is not enough to open the email, you need to understand whether the user clicked on any CTA.
Conversion rate: of the total number of users who opened and clicked on the email CTA, this metric reveals how many completed the expected action on the landing page to which they were redirected.

Articulate, boost your reach with clever email marketing

Crafting an effective email marketing strategy can feel overwhelming, but it's crucial for any business aiming to engage and convert its audience. Now it’s time to put your email marketing strategy into action. Need assistance in developing a winning email marketing plan? Contact our team of experts, and let us help you create email campaigns that deliver results.

Is email marketing dead?

What is email marketing