A Guide to Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most used communication channels out there and when used successfully, is an effective way to own your audience and see results. At this point, good emails are something your customers are expecting to receive.

Email isn’t dead. It’s one of the few marketing channels we can use to build an authentic connection with the humans that keep our businesses alive. – HubSpot

If you haven’t hopped on the email marketing train yet, we’re here to help you get started. If you’re already using email in your marketing efforts, keep reading for a few recommendations. 

Getting Started with Email Marketing

Set Goals

Before you do anything, it’s important that you set goals about what you’re looking to achieve with your emails. Your goals will determine the type of email campaigns you send, the contacts you send them to, the type of content in your emails and how you measure success of the email. 

Develop Your Contact List

After you set your goals, you need to develop a list of contacts you’ll be reaching out to. If you plan to target your existing customers with offers or news, your list can be built off of existing customer emails and imported into the email platform you choose. If you’re starting a list from scratch, you’ll need to start gathering emails from your target audience. Whichever way you choose, it’s important you receive permission from your audience to contact them.

Design Your Email + Send

Based on what you said your goals were, design your email with this in mind. Develop content that your intended audience will be interested in and include a call to action. After your email is developed and sent, don’t forget to check out your performance metrics. 

Tips to Keep in Mind

• Create and share content that your audience will care about – email automation and list segmentation will help you get content to the right audience
• Your emails are more powerful when the content is carried throughout your channels (website, social media, paid search, etc)
• Your email (just like all of your marketing efforts) should be directly tied to a goal – i.e. lead acquisition, awareness, click through to your website, take advantage of a deal or offer, etc
• Periodically clean your list – having a large number of inactive email subscribers will impact your open rate 

Email marketing has become a powerful tool for connecting with your audience and driving revenue. If you haven’t given it a shot yet, we recommend you try it out and see how email can boost your business.