The Complete Guide to Email Marketing for Beginners

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that involves sending promotional emails to a group of people who have signed up to hear from your business. It’s a valuable tactic, and many businesses see an average ROI of $36-40 for each dollar spent.

With nearly 5 billion email users across the world, this strategy is a great way to reach your target audience and share product and service information directly with your customers.

This guide is going to dig into everything email marketing—what it is, pros and cons, the different types of marketing emails your brand might send, and how to get started with your own email marketing strategy.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that uses email content to promote your business and its products or services. However, email marketing is more than just a strategy—it’s an entire marketing channel, or a way to speak directly to your audience.

But as Kim Scoppetta, Senior Director of Content at NP Accel, explains, “Email marketing isn’t just another digital channel—it’s a direct, measurable, and personalized way to engage your audience. 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.”

What she means is that your email recipients have to opt in to hear from you, making this an incredibly powerful tool for promoting your business. Because those receiving your emails are already interested in what you have to offer, half the work is done for you.

As we dig deeper into this guide, you’ll learn more about what this can look like and the different types of email marketing that are available to your business.

Pros & Cons of Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great strategy to incorporate into your overarching digital plan. It comes with a wide range of benefits for your business. But you should also be aware of certain downsides so you can plan around them.

Let’s dive into some of the pros and cons of email marketing for your business.

Pros

• You own your email list. Unlike your social media followers, you own your email list. Social media sites that you’ve built a large following on could shut down (or get banned) at any point in time, but you can still communicate with your audience via email.
• Email marketing gives you more control. In the same vein as the last point, social media (as well as search engine) algorithms are always changing, causing your reach and traffic to ebb and flow. Email marketing doesn’t have that same danger.
• Drive clicks and conversions. Email communication is a great way to get people interested in your products or services, clicking over to your website to learn more and eventually signing up or making a purchase.
• Build relationships with your audience. Communicating via email can help you build stronger relationships with your audience, boost customer loyalty, and increase your overall marketing results.

Cons

• People can mark your emails as spam. Even if you’re not spamming your audience, some people may decide they don’t want your emails anymore and simply mark it as spam instead of unsubscribing. This can cause your marketing emails to end up in spam folders instead of their main or promotions folder.
• You have a lot of other emails to compete with. We’re obviously here singing email marketing’s praises. It’s a great strategy—but a lot of brands know that, so a lot of brands use it. That means you have to fight to be seen through the other promotional emails that end up in your audience’s inboxes.
• Email marketing isn’t free. You’ll need email marketing software, and while plans can start at an affordable rate (some are even free), costs go up as your audience grows and you’re sending emails to more and more people.

Types of Marketing Emails

A full-scale email marketing strategy involves creating and sending a variety of emails used for different purposes. To help you get an idea of what this might look like, let’s walk through the different types of marketing emails that it might make sense for your brand to send.

Welcome Emails

Welcome emails are marketing emails that are automatically sent as soon as someone new opts into your email list. They help set the stage for your relationships with your new subscribers while also letting them know what to expect from your email content.

Take a look at this example of a welcome email from KonMari. Subscribers are introduced to Marie Kondo’s principles while also getting a walkthrough of various resources they can take advantage of, like video content or the brand’s Instagram feed.

Source: Really Good Emails

You should always set up a welcome email for new subscribers so you can share information like:

• What types of email content you will typically send
• Resources they can access, like your blog, YouTube channel, etc.
• How they can get more from your business by purchasing your products or signing up for your services
• Anything else you want to tell them about your company

Promotional Emails

Promotional emails are probably the most commonly used type of marketing email in any strategy. These are generic emails that promote your products or services, and are likely sent once a week or so.

Here’s an example from online plant store The Sill, highlighting one plant that’s back in stock while also including links to a couple of other popular options.

Source: Really Good Emails

Your promotional emails should have a singular focus, whether it’s an upcoming sale, a product launch, a new service, or simply showcasing a product line in your business. Don’t try to throw too much into a single email. Instead, focus on one aspect of your business in each individual email.

Newsletters

Newsletters are common for B2B companies and are much more informational in nature than promotional emails. Newsletters typically operate on a consistent basis, like a weekly or monthly cadence.

Here’s an example of a newsletter from SoFi called “On the Money,” that covers a new financial literacy topic in each issue.

Source: Really Good Emails

Newsletters can be a great way to provide value to your subscribers, while also nurturing them and staying top of mind. Don’t be afraid to still include some level of promotion within your newsletter, like a call to action on how your business can help with the information you shared.

Lead Nurturing Emails

Lead nurturing is all about gently and consistently reminding subscribers of how useful your business and its products or services can be in an attempt to get them to convert into paying customers. 

These emails often look like feature announcements, use cases or tutorials for a product, addressing a pain point, recommending products or services, or offering a discount.

Here’s an example of a lead nurturing email from video software Loom, highlighting a new feature while also sharing a few other resources that subscribers could find helpful.

Source: Really Good Emails

Lead nurturing emails are similar to promotional emails, but they’re quieter about their purpose. These are gentle nudges towards the “Buy now” button, rather than using that as the main call to action. Both are important parts of a complete email marketing strategy.

Survey Emails

Survey emails are typically reserved just for customers, as they can be a useful way to gather customer feedback and get an idea of how your business is doing. However, they can also be used to get feedback on your email strategy or even your blog content.

Here’s an example of a survey email from collaboration software Miro, hoping to gain insights into what functionality in their product is most important to their customers.

Source: Really Good Emails

If you’re using email marketing to generate survey responses, make sure to include an incentive (just like Miro did) while also ensuring your survey is extremely short and easy to take. It should be just a handful of multiple choice questions, with a maximum of one optional text-based response to maximize responses.

Cart Abandonment Emails

Cart abandonment emails are reminder emails you send when someone has exited your website after adding products to their online cart, but not completing the purchase. This is a great way to boost sales and remind people to come back and finish buying the products they were interested in.

Here’s an example of a cart abandonment email from coffee brand Javy, including a list of products added to the cart and a quick button the recipient can click to go back and check out.

Source: Really Good Emails

If you have an online store, cart abandonment emails need to be a part of your strategy. They’re a fantastic way to increase sales and revenue from shoppers who may have been distracted before completing their purchase.

Announcement Emails

Announcement emails do just that—announce something to your audience. You might share a big company announcement, a new product or service, a collaboration, or anything else that seems big and exciting.

This type of email is meant to generate interest and buzz in your audience. Get them talking about your business, sharing your news with friends and family, and clicking to your website to learn more or make a purchase.

Here’s an example of an email from neurofeedback platform Myndlift, sharing a new feature in its app that both current and prospective customers might find exciting.

Source: Really Good Emails

Anytime your company has any news, put together an announcement email to help generate more buzz around it.

Invite Emails

Invite emails often share information about upcoming events, launches, webinars, and more, with the goal of inviting your subscriber list to attend the event, click over to a webpage to learn more about something, or sign up for a virtual event.

This invite email from customer success platform EverAfter is inviting their subscribers to join an upcoming webinar. The email includes details about the upcoming event while also sharing additional resources like a blog post so that people who may not have interest in the webinar still have something that appeals to them in this email.

Source: Really Good Emails

Invite emails can be a great way to boost your attendee list for in-person and virtual events, as well as boost awareness about any type of event your business is hosting.

Re-engagement Emails

Finally, we have re-engagement emails. This is an essential type of marketing email that is meant to help bring old subscribers who may have stopped opening your emails back into the fold. They can also be a great way to cull your email list of people who simply aren’t going to interact with your business anymore, so that you can mostly focus on actual leads and customers.

Here’s an example of a re-engagement email from culinary brand Cuisinart. They put together an email giving subscribers who haven’t opened an email in awhile the option to stay subscribed or opt out of future emails.

Source: Really Good Emails

Anyone who stays subscribed is now much more likely to start reading Cuisinart’s emails again—which is the whole point. Sending re-engagement emails to people who haven’t opened any of your content in a few months is a great way to keep your email list up to date with people who have genuine interest in your business.

How to Get Started With Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful strategy that every business should get down with. Walk through our quick step-by-step process to help your business get started.

Step 1: Choose the Right Email Marketing Software

Unfortunately, email marketing isn’t something you can do without when building an email list and putting together an email strategy. You need the right software to help you:

• Compile your list and house contact information
• Segment your list for various email types
• Create high-quality email content
• Send mass marketing emails to your audience
• Analyze email marketing results

Some of the top email marketing software choices include:

• Mailchimp
• ActiveCampaign
• Brevo
• Klaviyo
• GetResponse

Check out our guide to the top 10 email marketing software to help you narrow down your choices and find the best option for your business.

Step 2: Build Your Email List

Once you’ve selected your email marketing software and created an account, it’s time to build up your email list. Use these tips to start generating email contacts that you can send marketing content to.

• Embed forms from your email marketing software onto different web pages and blog posts
• Provide incentives, like valuable ebooks, white papers, or reports in exchange for an email signup
• Promote your email list across your website and social media platforms
• Encourage subscribers to forward your email content to someone they think would benefit from it
• Use website pop-ups to grab attention and include a signup form
• Ask people to sign up for your email list during your checkout process
• Offer a discount code in exchange for email signups

Put some of these tactics in place and watch as you start growing your email subscribers and boosting the number of people you’re able to directly market to via email.

Step 3: Set Your Goals

After you’ve started building your list, you need to have a clear vision of what your goals are for your email marketing strategy. What do you want to accomplish? This will help you outline the different types of emails you’ll send as well as how you’ll segment your email list (if you will at all).

Some common email marketing goals include:

• Boosting brand awareness by growing your list and staying top-of-mind in their inboxes
• Increasing customer engagement by creating and sending email content that makes people want to click
• Nurturing potential customers by mentioning product or service benefits and sharing sales or discounts
• Generating more revenue by using your email content to upsell different products or remind people of their abandoned carts

The goal(s) you choose will help guide your email strategy. 

For example, if your goal is to increase awareness and engagement, you might settle on a more fun, relatable marketing strategy set simply on getting your audience to read and interact with your content. But if your goal is to generate sales, you’ll probably want to create more product-focused content.

Step 4: Create Your Campaign

Now it’s time to create your first email campaign. Before you really dive in, let’s cover a few basics:

• You’ll want to keep a consistent email cadence, so be realistic about how many emails your team can consistently send
• It’s a good idea to create a few templates that you can easily reuse that make your content recognizable but also faster and easier to create
• Get creative with your email subject lines to help boost your open rate and get people interested in your content
• Consider the different types of marketing emails you can send, and decide which one makes sense for the message you want to put out

Once you’ve got the basics down, open your email marketing software and create your first campaign. You’ll need to have content for all of the key elements, like:

• Subject line
• Preview text
• Header
• Body
• Footer

Most email platforms come with ready-made templates that you can customize, giving you a starting point for your email design. You can replace elements in the template with your own, or you can create the full email design using graphics you upload.

Once you’ve finished putting together your email design, select the audience you want to send it to. Some emails are meant to be sent to your entire list, while others are for specific segments of your audience. Choose your audience, then get ready to send.

Step 5: Monitor Your Results

After sending your email, keep an eye on your results. If any emails bounce, remove those contacts from your list to keep it clean and up to date.

Then, watch how many people open your email or click on any of your links. You can also see how many people unsubscribed from your email as well as how many forwarded it onto a friend for them to read.

As you send more campaigns, you’ll  be able to see a pattern of the different types of content that your audience prefers so you can adjust your strategy to send more of those emails.

Consistently monitoring your email marketing results will help mold your strategy into one that resonates with your subscribers and keeps them opening your emails.

Get Started With Email Marketing Today

Email marketing is a must-use strategy for any business. Start building up your email marketing list and strategy today with this guide. And to help you craft the perfect email campaign, check out our tips for writing effective emails that your audience will list.