Email marketing is one of the best and most profitable marketing channels out there. Email marketing revenue totaled $8.3 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $18.9 billion by 2028.
It allows you to segment and personalize campaigns. It works with every stage of the customer journey. And it’s a trusted channel for building connections and developing relationships.
Want a piece of the action?
In this article, you’ll learn email marketing fundamentals like what it is, how it works, and how to get started.
Ready? Let’s get to it.
Key Takeaways
- Email marketing is a strategy that helps you generate leads, nurture clients, and build relationships.
- Email marketing is a cost-effective strategy that delivers a 36x return on investment.
- Email marketing requires a personal touch. Add engaging, clickbait-free titles, and keep your messages brief (between 50 and 125 words).
- Build your email marketing list by collecting email addresses in exchange for free incentives like checklists, templates, or ebooks.
Table of Contents
- Key Takeaways
- What Is Email Marketing?
- Why Is Email Marketing Important?
- How Does Email Marketing Work?
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing
- The Fundamentals of Email Marketing
- Getting Started With Email Marketing
- FAQs
- Conclusion
What Is Email Marketing?
“Email marketing isn’t just another digital channel—it’s a direct, measurable, and personalized way to engage your audience,” says Kim Scoppetta, Senior Director of Content at NP Accel. “Unlike SEO or paid ads, you’re speaking to people who want to hear from you, making it one of the highest-ROI tactics in digital marketing.”
It’s one of the four pillars of marketing, along with SEO, paid media, and CRO.
Sure, there are trendier ways to speak to your audience, like social media and live chat. But with a user base of over 4.4 billion people and an average return on investment (ROI) of 36:1, email is still the king of marketing channels.
With all the hype over new channels, why is this decades-old technology still one of the most effective marketing strategies? Let’s take a closer look.
Why Is Email Marketing Important?
Email marketing is important because it’s the one channel that almost everyone uses.
There were 4.37 billion global email users in 2023, for example. It’s predicted there will be almost 4.9 billion users by 2027.
Facebook, the most popular social network, only has 3 billion users.
It’s not just popular, though. It’s an incredibly effective way to build strong, personalized, long-lasting customer relationships.
With email, you can:
- Speak to your customers directly: Email is a direct communication method that bypasses noise from social media and other channels.
- See incredible ROI: As I mentioned, email has an average ROI of 36:1. The average ROI for an NP Accel email client between March and June 2024 was 4566 percent.
- Get personal: Use segmentation to target customers effectively. Personalize the name and content to increase open rates by 26 percent.
- Measure your results: Email marketing platforms track open, clickthrough, and conversion rates, so you can optimize your efforts.
With email marketing, you own the channel. You don’t have to worry about an algorithm update killing your organic traffic or increased competition sending your cost per click (CPC) soaring. Once you have a list, it’s yours to nurture forever.
Email marketing isn’t a silver bullet, though, says Scoppetta. “It thrives when paired with SEO, paid media, and CRO. SEO and paid ads bring traffic in, email captures that traffic and nurtures it into long-term relationships.”
How Does Email Marketing Work?
Email marketing is one of the top-performing marketing strategies, in no small part because it’s fairly intuitive and often automated.
It can also support several of your other marketing initiatives, including lead generation, sales, and content marketing.
Here’s how it fits into a typical customer journey:
- Discovery. A user searches for “best prenatal vitamins.” The first result is a blog on “How to choose your prenatal vitamin” from a supplement company.
- Lead capture. After scrolling halfway down the blog, a form pops up offering 20 percent off their first order of prenatal vitamins in exchange for an email address.
- Nurture. Filling out the form triggers a welcome email, including the promised 20 percent off. The user purchases immediately.
- Engagement. Two weeks later, they get an email campaign about iron supplements as a complement to prenatal vitamins. They visit the site and add them to their cart. They get distracted and don’t check out.
- Targeting. The user enters an abandoned cart workflow. Eight hours after leaving the cart, they get a text message saying the items are selling out. They return to the site and purchase.
- Brand growth. After making a second purchase, the user enters a post-purchase email workflow that offers 20 percent off for them and a referred friend.
- List growth. Their friend signs up for your emails upon referral and immediately purchases using the 20 percent off discount code.
- Maintenance. Both customers continue to receive relevant messaging. Some are promotional, some are informational, and some help them remember when it’s time to restock.
Email marketing uses four core tools to deliver this kind of customer experience:
- Forms, which convert traffic from your site into leads.
- Workflows, which track user behavior and send relevant messages.
- Campaigns, which you create for specific purposes to keep you top of mind.
- SMS, which lets you engage with users on their smartphones.
You’ll also need the following:
An Email List
To build successful email campaigns, you need a list of active, engaged email users.
There are many ways to build an email list. One of the easiest is to create a lead magnet (also called an offer) that your target audience is interested in. A common example is offering a coupon in exchange for email addresses.
An Email Service Provider
An email service provider (ESP), also known as an email marketing platform, is software that helps you manage your email list and design and execute automated email campaigns.
You can use an ESP to create automatic triggers when your audience completes specific actions, such as sending a cart reminder if a user adds an item to their cart and doesn’t check out. These triggers enable you to personalize interactions to improve engagement and open rates.
There are dozens of ESPs to choose from, including:
- Mailchimp: An intuitive, user-friendly ESP that’s ideal for beginners and small businesses. It’s free to use up to 500 contacts.
- MailerLite: A great choice for advanced email marketers who want detailed analytics. Pricing starts from $10 per month. A limited version is free up to 1,000 contacts.
- Omnisend: An email and SMS marketing platform for e-commerce stores. Free for up to 250 contacts, then $16 per month.
Take into account your needs, goals, and email list size when choosing between providers. Pricing often changes depending on the number of features and how many emails you want to send per month. Finding a platform with unlimited emails is a good bet if you have a huge list.
Your Email Marketing Tech Stack
“Your email service provider (ESP) isn’t just a tool — it’s the backbone of your strategy,” says Scoppetta. “But for email marketing to truly work, it must seamlessly integrate with your CMS, e-commerce platform, or CRM to track customer behavior and trigger automated workflows.”
Aside from your ESP, you can use several other tools to upgrade your email marketing efforts. These include:
- CRM: Use a customer relationship management tool like Hubspot or Pipedrive to manage your list.
- E-commerce platform: Direct people to Shopify or Woocommerce to turn contacts into customers.
- Form builder: Create high-converting forms that integrate with your site using form builders like Typeform and Tally.
- Landing page builder: Use tools like Leadpages and Unbounce to create and optimize landing pages to grow your list.
Clearly Defined Goals
An effective email marketing strategy helps you achieve a variety of business goals, including:
- Driving sales
- Boosting brand awareness
- Generating and nurturing leads
- Keeping customers engaged
- Increasing customer loyalty and lifetime value
To execute an effective email marketing campaign, your email list, ESP, and goals must align. Then, you can get to work:
- First, segment your email list according to subscriber demographics or actions.
- Next, create an email or series of emails designed to get consumers to do something (your goal).
- Finally, use your ESP to send emails and monitor the campaign automatically.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Email marketing has pros and cons, like any channel. Let’s dive into some of the most important:
Advantages of Email Marketing
There are plenty of advantages to email marketing. These are just a few of the top benefits to keep in mind.
- It’s permission-based: When a customer trusts you with their email address, they give you permission to promote your product or service. Gaining permission to enter rather than showing up uninvited increases the chances of engagement and conversion.
- It provides direct access to your audience: You can communicate directly with subscribers on their schedules. Plus, subscribers are more likely to view your message because most people check email multiple times daily.
- Email provides more control: With most other marketing platforms, you don’t own the platform. If the platform ceases to exist, all your hard work sinks with it. You’re also at the mercy of algorithm changes, which can tank your reach. With email, however, you own the relationships you forge with your subscribers.
- It offers more personalization capabilities: You can use demographic or psychographic data to create personalized and hyper-targeted campaigns. Research shows that personalized emails have 26 percent higher open rates.
- It’s easy to measure success: Measuring the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is crucial, and automated email marketing makes measuring your campaign a breeze.
- It’s scalable: Email marketing campaigns can easily scale as your audience grows without straining your resources or compromising quality.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Email isn’t a perfect marketing channel. It has a couple of disadvantages, like the following:
- The competition is tough: Standing out in a cluttered inbox can be challenging. You’ll need to get creative to ensure your subscribers open your emails.
- You need an email list: For email marketing campaigns to be effective, you need customers or prospects to email. Building an email list can be tricky and takes time.
- There are many rules and regulations to navigate: Several laws govern the use of email for commercial purposes. Common examples include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), CAN-SPAM, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Unfortunately, some subscribers might report your emails as spam even if they subscribe. As a result, your sender reputation takes a hit.
- Delivery and deliverability issues: Deliverability is not guaranteed. Many email providers (think Gmail or Outlook) use spam filters. You must contend with deliverability issues to run effective email marketing campaigns.
There are downsides to every marketing channel. Luckily, a great strategy can negate them.
The Fundamentals of Email Marketing
Before diving into the strategies you’ll use to build and leverage email marketing for e-commerce, let’s cover the fundamentals. These tips will help you maximize your email marketing campaign, which we’ll discuss next.
Who Is A Fit For Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a great fit for anyone wanting to influence their customers to take action.
Don’t believe me? Check out these statistics:
- 75 percent of B2B marketers say email marketing is their most effective way of contacting prospects.
- 77 percent of B2B buyers say email is their preferred form of contact.
- Consumers are three times more likely to purchase from email marketing than social media.
- Email drives 30x more revenue per B2C recipient when you leverage automated flows.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re B2B or B2C, SME or enterprise, e-commerce store or SaaS, email marketing works.
Use Engaging Titles, But Don’t Bait and Switch
Interesting subject titles increase email open rates. But make them relevant, not spammy. If users feel duped, they’re likely to unsubscribe or mark your message as spam, which impacts deliverability.
To prevent this, concentrate on creating subject lines that reflect the content of your emails and use action-oriented language. It’s okay to create a sense of urgency or excitement, but avoid exaggeration.
Use subject lines like:
- Don’t miss out on this limited-time offer!
- Join the community today and get exclusive perks
- Last chance to save
- You’re invited
Just make sure your headlines are accurate so you don’t disappoint subscribers when they click.
Include CTAs at The Top and Bottom
With 81 percent of people preferring to open emails on smartphones, you must think carefully about where to place your CTA.
We recommend covering your bases by placing a CTA at the top and bottom of your emails — just like you would on a landing page.
Adding an engaging CTA after the first paragraph grabs your reader’s attention and encourages them to convert. Including a follow-up CTA at the end of your email reminds subscribers to act if they read the entire message.
This example from Loftie does a great job of placing CTA’s around the email’s core message:
Avoid overusing CTAs, though, or you’ll overwhelm your reader. Keep it to two or three, max.
Ask Permission and Deliver On Your Promises
While there’s no law prohibiting the sale of email lists in the U.S., purchasing one is never a good idea. People receiving emails from brands they’ve never engaged with are likely to unsubscribe and report spam.
A better approach is creating your email list organically by providing valuable content, tailored offers, or incentives.
That doesn’t mean you can immediately bombard subscribers with sales emails. You’ll need to spend time nurturing the relationship with engaging and educational content before you start selling.
If you want to guarantee permission, add a double-opt-in mechanism that requires users to confirm their subscription. Make it easy for them to unsubscribe from your email, too, with a clear link at the bottom of every email.
Getting Started With Email Marketing
Any business can use email marketing to nurture customer relationships and drive sales. But you’re not guaranteed to get results.
Below I provide best practices you can use when creating an effective email marketing campaign:
Build Your List
Before you can start sending emails, you need people to send emails to. That’s where building your list comes in. Start by adding a banner or form to your website simply asking people to subscribe.
Then, follow these tips.
Offer An Incentive
Think of email addresses as a currency: You wouldn’t give money away, right? You need to offer consumers something in return for their email.
You can do this in many ways, including downloadable assets like whitepapers, templates, coupons, a valuable weekly newsletter, or product updates.
Morning Brew’s offer is clear: Subscribers can become smarter in five minutes by reading their newsletter. Who doesn’t want that?
Hootsuite gives users a free social media strategy template in return for their email:
Pipedrive requires an email to download their free sales ebooks:
Whatever method you use to encourage users to hand over their emails, you need to clearly explain the benefits.
Simply posting “enter your email for updates” isn’t going to get anyone excited. Instead, share specifics.
For example, you’ll attract more subscribers by sharing a specific CTA or benefit from providing their email addresses — just like Morning Brew in the example above.
Whatever incentive you offer, make it clear and enticing, and don’t be afraid to promote it.
Follow Email Laws and Regulations
Email marketing messages are very different from personal emails (the kind you send to friends) and transactional emails (the receipt you receive when you make an online purchase).
“Your email list should be built on trust and compliance,” advises Scoppetta. “Every contact you email must have explicitly opted in—this isn’t just best practice, it’s the law. Regulations like GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CASL protect user privacy, and violating them could result in millions of dollars in fines.”
Stay on the right side of these laws by:
- Emailing users who have explicitly given their consent.
- Ensuring all forms have compliant language, including a clear purpose, voluntary participation, unsubscribe instructions, and a link to your privacy policy.
Here’s a great example of a compliant email form from Mailchimp:
Don’t let data privacy laws scare you, though. As long as you don’t buy lists and make sure you get user consent, you should be fine.
Provide Great Content
You’ve built a list. Now, let’s learn how to wow them with incredible content.
Every email you send should abide by the four Cs:
- Clear. Make it obvious what you want users to do or learn.
- Concise. Keep your email as short as possible.
- Compelling. Be engaging. Entertain, educate or encourage users to purchase.
- Credible. Have a clear brand voice. Make it obvious who is sending the message.
The subject line and pre-header are the most important parts of your email. These may be the only parts recipients see before they decide whether to open or delete your email.
Incorporate the following strategies to create an attention-grabbing email:
- Keep subject lines short and punchy. Aim for between five and seven words.
- Use action verbs and truthful, attention-grabbing comments. Think about what would make you open your email.
- Personalize where possible. For example, you could use the recipient’s name in the subject line or discuss a topic you know the recipient likes.
The body copy is the meat of your email. But that doesn’t mean consumers will read it word for word. Solve this by:
- Speaking to their needs or goals. Think about what you would want from an email. The pain, agitation, and solution (PAS) framework can help.
- Using direct, personal language. Write in the second person. Use short sentences to encourage users to keep reading.
- Getting to the point. No one wants to read five lines. Use short sentences and plenty of white space to make your email inviting.
Your call-to-action (CTA) sends users to your site and encourages them to convert. Help them take the next step by creating a CTA that is:
- Clear. Make it obvious what you want users to do, like “shop” or “download.”
- Goal-focused. Show readers how clicking the CTA will help them achieve a goal
- Unique. Don’t use generic copy like “buy now”. Specific and unique CTAs create intrigue and increase the chances of consumers clicking.
Finally, bear in mind email design best practices. We’ve mentioned some of them already, but follow the checklist below to make sure your emails look great on any device:
- Create an attention-grabbing header
- Use eye-catching images and GIFs
- Place your CTA above the fold
- Keep text to a minimum
- Stay consistent with your brand
Here’s an example of great email design from Buoy:
It has a clear headline, a clean design, a high-quality image, and tons of white space. It’s also incredibly scannable, meaning you naturally absorb the key points even if you don’t read every word.
Send A Welcome Email
A welcome email sets the tone of the customer relationship
Here’s a basic welcome email from Airbnb to a new customer. It highlights the millions of places to stay, the hundreds of thousands of cities and countries, and the over 220 countries and regions. The email ends with a compelling CTA to inspire readers to click through.
Spotify sends out a similar email that confirms a subscription and lets the subscriber know what they can expect.
Almost all email service providers allow you to create an automated welcome sequence, so take advantage of it by creating an email that is:
- Personalized: Use the recipient’s name in the subject line or greeting.
- Compelling: Write an enticing subject line that encourages users to open.
- On-brand: Make sure your email is aligned with your brand so customers know what to expect going forward.
- Valuable: Tell the recipient why they should look out for your emails in the future.
You should send the initial follow-up email immediately to introduce yourself and explain what new subscribers should expect.
Don’t Pitch Right Away
You’re not running an email list just for fun — you want to engage customers and make sales.
Transitioning from an email list that provides tons of free value into a list that pitches a product for money can be tricky.
Consider how and when you’ll send the pitch to do it effectively. You don’t want to suddenly surprise everyone with a pitch.
When it’s time to make your move, increase the chances of landing a conversion by writing a CTA that is:
- Clear: Tell users exactly what you want them to do.
- Concise: Short CTAs capture attention and are easy to spot.
- Urgent: Create a sense of urgency or FOMO by insulating users may miss out.
- Visually appealing: Make your CTA a button and use contrasting colors so users can’t miss it.
Write A Great Email Newsletter
You don’t want to be constantly selling to your email list. “If every email you send is a discount, you’re training your audience to wait for a sale,” warns Scoppetta. “Balance your email strategy with educational content, storytelling, and value-driven messaging to keep subscribers engaged and loyal.”
A newsletter is a great way to regularly convey educational content.
I find the most compelling newsletters are those that do a great job of mixing messaging and updates.
For example, while the email might contain a list of product updates and images, it’s balanced by a personal message or friendly memo.
ClickUp does a great job sending relevant updates in its weekly newsletter:
Each email lists individual updates one by one, explaining what they are and why you should care. There are often accompanying images or videos that explain updates and add a personal touch.
Use your newsletter to further your relationship with the reader or customer rather than to pitch them. Save the pitch for unique updates, offers, and announcements.
Use Automation But Keep It Human
If you’re just starting your email list, it’s easy to imagine that you’ll have time to personally respond to every new subscriber.
But once you have more than a handful of subscribers, keeping up your email marketing becomes next to impossible.
You’ll start building more complex campaigns, and following through with everyone all the time is impossible.
Top marketers seem to pull this off, but how? Their secret is email automation.
“Automation doesn’t just save time—it enhances customer experience,” says Scoppetta. “From abandoned cart sequences to dynamic content that adapts to user behavior, AI-powered email workflows keep your brand top-of-mind without feeling robotic.”
Often, companies plan a series of emails — ranging from a few days to a few months — that automatically deliver, warming up anyone who signs up for their list.
That way, when you do need to announce a new product or sale, you know they are paying attention.
Analytics and Segmentation
Now that you understand the basics of an effective email campaign let’s discuss taking things to the next level with targeted email marketing.
Specifically, we’ll talk about using segmentation and analytics to refine your broadcasts and generate even better results.
Below are some of the fundamentals:
Embrace Email Analytics
We’ve discussed the importance of analytics in web copy, and email is no different.
Every email service provider I’ve ever worked with provides detailed analytics to help you improve your performance.
Common metrics include:
- Email open rate: Your open rate indicates how many people open your emails. Open rates tell you how good your relationship is with your subscribers. If your open rate is low, it usually means you have many unengaged subscribers. You need to focus on providing value and managing expectations. Here are a few tips on raising your open rate.
- Click-through rate: Your CTR shows how many people clicked on a link in your email. If your CTR is low, you are either not targeting your message well enough or simply not getting through. In this case, focus on improving your copy.
- Unsubscribe rate: Finally, your unsubscribe rate tells you how many people have clicked the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of your email. If your unsubscribe rate is high relative to your opt-in rate, you have some serious work to do. View your email analytics for clues to what you’re doing wrong and make fixes from there. For instance, if a subscriber leaves after a marketing email, you might need to target your offers more precisely.
“Open and click rates are useful, but they don’t tell the whole story,” says Scoppetta. “Focus on the bigger picture: Are emails driving conversions? Are subscribers engaging over time? Email marketing is about constant testing, learning, and optimizing for long-term results.”
You’ll also want to monitor conversion-related metrics like average revenue per email. These will be specific to sales-focused campaigns, though, unlike the metrics above that are important across all campaigns.
Decide How To Segment Your Email Marketing List
“If you’re sending every email to everyone, you’re leaving money on the table,” says Scoppetta. “Segmentation lets you deliver personalized, relevant messages that align with your audience’s interests, increasing engagement and reducing unsubscribe rates.”
To see the best ROI from email, you need to show the right people the right message at the right time. Segmentation allows you to group your lists by a certain shared property like:
- Engagement level
- Length of time on list
- Shopping behavior
- Location
- Volunteered references
- Volunteered demographics, such as age or job title
Just like targeting in paid ads, dividing your list lets you send more targeted communications.
For example, some customers want product and sales updates, while others might only want to hear about new product updates. Sales team leads might want to hear about a new sales feature but not a new marketing tool.
Plus, you can send specific emails to buyers thanking them for their purchase, like this email from Chrome Industries thanking people for making a purchase.
With segmentation, you can send a broadcast only to those who didn’t open your last message (ask them why) or to those who showed interest (a second pitch).
You can also use segmentation to create automated workflows, such as sending different emails to people based on whether they opened your previous email or not.
FAQs
What are the benefits of email marketing?
Email marketing can help businesses reach a wider audience, drive sales, recover abandoned carts, and nurture customer relationships. It’s also one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies.
How do I build an email list?
Build your email list by offering a downloadable asset, hosting a giveaway, or offering a free email course. Consider placing a banner at the top of your site to gather emails.
What email marketing regulations are there?
CAN-SPAM and GDPR (for Europe) require you to protect users’ privacy and avoid sending emails to purchased lists.
What is email automation?
Email automation allows you to create complex email campaigns that send automatic emails based on actions, such as when a subscriber adds an item to their cart or downloads an asset.
How do I segment my email list?
Use your email tool to split subscribers based on demographics, interests, or customers versus non-customers. Then, send customized messages to each segment.
Are there different types of email marketing campaigns?
Yes. One example is a regular newsletter. Other types of email marketing include welcome or onboarding, follow-up, promotional, informational, and survey emails.
You can also send automated emails to re-engage customers or encourage them to complete a transaction (abandoned cart emails).
Conclusion
If you’ve been ignoring email marketing or putting your strategy on autopilot, it’s time to step up your game and learn to do it properly.
Email marketing delivers huge returns for marketers who put in the time to do it right. But it doesn’t have to be complicated.
- Remember you’re a guest in your subscribers’ inboxes. You’re just one click away from losing their interest forever. Be polite and respectful, and deliver value.
- Follow through on your promises. Provide people with what they’ve asked for and email regularly to meet their expectations.
- Automate where possible. There’s no formula for boosting email automation. It’s all about what works best for you and your company’s voice and style.
Once you’ve mastered the basics of email marketing, you can move on to advanced strategies like segmentation and behavioral email marketing.
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