The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Beginners – All You Need to Know to Succeed at Email Marketing

Are you completely new to email marketing? This Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Beginners will walk you through all you need to know to succeed at email marketing. You will soon find out how to use newsletters to turn your website visitors into clients, communicate with your customers and employees, and announce news and product updates!

From using email marketing tools, through creating your first newsletter, to collecting your email contacts (subscribers) – we will explain everything without the technical lingo. Ready? Let’s start from the basics!

Also:

👉 Table of Contents

P.S. You can click on the chapter titles to jump to the relevant section.

#1 What is Email Marketing? How does Email Marketing Work?

#2 What is a Newsletter?

#3 Email Marketing Terms Glossary

#4 What is Email Marketing Tools?

#5 Why does my business need Email Marketing?

#6 What is Email Marketing Strategy? Why do You Need One?

#7 What to Write in your Newsletters?

#8 What are Newsletter Templates?

#9 Good Newsletter Examples

#10 What are Subject Lines?

#11  How to Collect Email Addresses (Subscribers)?

#12 What is an Email List?

#13 How to Segment Your Contacts (Subscribers)?

#14 How Often Should You Send Newsletters?

#15 How to Measure the Results of Your Newsletters?

#16 What are Newsletter Open Rates?

#17 What are Click-Through Rates?

#18 What are CTAs? How to Get More People to Click on Your Newsletters?

#19 What are Sign-up Forms? How to Use Sign-up Forms?

#20 What are Pop-ups? How To Use Pop-ups to Collect Subscribers?

#21  What Email Marketing Regulations Should You Observe?

#22 What is GDPR?

#23 What are Unsubscribe Rates? How to Prevent People from Unsubscribing?

#24 Email marketing cost and ROI

#25 What is Better – Email Marketing or Social Media Marketing?

#26 What are Email Marketing Campaigns? How to Create an Email Marketing Campaign?

#27 What is Email Automation? How to Use Autoresponders?

#28 Latest email marketing trends

#29 What are Viral Email Campaigns?

#30 What are Good Newsletter Names to Collect Subscribers?

#31 How to Get in Gmail’s Primary Tab?

#32 What is an Email Marketing Funnel? How to Create One?

#33 Newsletter Statistics You Should Know

#34 How to Do B2B Email Marketing?

#35 How to Do B2C Email Marketing?

#36 Email Marketing for E-Commerce

#37 Email Marketing for Restaurants

#38 Is Email Marketing a Good for Your Business?

 

---

#1 What is Email Marketing? How does Email Marketing Work?

Before we dive into the details, let’s first agree on what email marketing is 😉

• 👉Email marketing is any use of email to promote your business, spread information, and communicate with people en masse
• To send emails at scale, email marketers use special tools to send newsletters
• You can also use email marketing tools to communicate with your followers on your blog and social media
• A lot of companies use internal newsletters to communicate with their employee’s
• Email marketing tools send one email to a large database of contacts (email lists) almost at the same time
• Thanks to email marketing tools, it is possible to personalize elements such as your recipient’s name, last name, city, etc. in your newsletters at scale

#2 What is a Newsletter?

• A newsletter, also known as electronic mail, is a mass email sent to people who have subscribed to it.
• Newsletters are a bit like electronic newspapers delivered via email.
• Newsletters contain information relevant to your audience – and your business.
• You can use newsletters to communicate with your customers, employees, or other subscribers (e.g. visitors to your website or blog).

Read more about what a newsletter is here.

#3 Email Marketing Terms Glossary

There are a lot of different terms related to Email Marketing. Some are a bit hard to understand when you are a complete beginner 👩 What is worse, different email marketing tools often use different names for the same things. Let’s have a look at some of the most important email marketing terms before we move on to more complex topics!

• Automation, Autoresponders, Email Drips – All these names mean basically automated email or email sequences sent to the email recipients when they perform a certain action. This can be for example: signing up for your newsletter through an online form, signing up for an email course, joining your mailing list through a CRM System (Customer Relationship Management), or clicking on a button in an app. Email automation saves you tons of time – you don’t need to write and send emails each time your customers go through the same scenario! For example – if you have an e-commerce store – you will be probably sending emails to the customers who visit your online store, put a product in their basket, but don’t buy. Autoresponders are perfect for these ‘abandoned cart’ emails 🙂
• Subscribers or Contacts – The people who signed up for your newsletters – gave you explicit permission to send them emails.
• Subscribers’ Lists, Contact List, Email List, Segments or Groups –  Basically, any list of emails of your subscribers that share a certain common feature together – e.g. the time they signed up for your newsletter, what freebie they downloaded, what page on your website they visited, what product they bought from you, or demographic criteria such as gender, occupation or age – you choose what criteria are important for your business and segment your subscribers on the basis of that.
• Newsletters, Broadcasts, Mail Blasts, Mailings –  emails you send to your subscribers 😉
• Open-rates – How many of your subscribers open your emails, if you have 100 subscribers on your email list, and 10 open it – it’s an open rate of 10%. You can read more about average open rates for different industries here to see how you compare! 😃
• Click-through rates – how many of the subscribers who opened your email clicked on the link(s) you included in it. 👉Again, we have prepared a report of the average click-through rates for different industries here.
• CTAs – Also known as Calls-To-Action – are basically instructions you give your subscribers as to what you want them to do after reading the email. For example: ‘Shop for Summer Dresses Now!’ or ‘Check out my latest blog post!’ are examples of CTAs. 👉See how to write good CTAs here.
• Subject Lines – The titles of your emails. You may think that ‘this is just one line’ but in fact, the subject lines are actually really important for your open rates – after all, what you put in your subject line determines whether you get someone’s interest or not. To find out how to write really good subject lines – check out our earlier post. And check out this one about our Christmas subject lines too!
• Personalization – personalization means inserting personal information such as your recipient’s first name, country, or other data you have about them into your emails. Why would you do it? Personalized emails perform much better than generic ones!
• Opt-in forms, Sign-up forms – these are forms that allow you to collect subscribers on your websites or blog posts. Learn how to use signup forms
• Popup forms – a special kind of sign-up form that appears on top of the page you’re reading. They are usually triggered by events like the closing of the page (and then they are called ‘exit intent popups‘), scrolling down by a certain percentage, or simply staying on the page for a specific period of time. Usually, you don’t trigger pop-ups immediately – you don’t want to annoy your audience 😜 To get more subscribers, you should wait until people you’re targeting have actually read your content and feel some trust in it. It’s also a good strategy to offer an incentive to sign up in your popup – the so-called ‘lead magnet’.
• Lead magnets, freebies, downloadables – any free materials used as incentives to sign up for your newsletters. These can come in the form of PDFs, email courses, etc.

#4 What is Email Marketing Tools?

Email marketing tools are web apps that allow you to create newsletters based on ready-made templates, send bulk emails, track who opens your emails, and collect subscribers through sign-up forms and popups. As you can see, they are extremely useful if you want to start using email to promote your business.

There are hundreds of email marketing tools out there – but they require different levels of technical skills, and have different functionality and pricing. If you’re looking for a really easy tool for beginners – Get a Newsletter offers a free account and free support that will help you get started.

#5 Why does my business need Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one of the most profitable ways to promote your business –  40% of B2B marketers say email marketing is critical for their success. No wonder – it has the highest ROI of all marketing methods and gives you almost full control over who sees your marketing message (great targeting).

If you’re still not convinced your business needs email marketing, here are a few good reasons:

• It’s relatively cheap – most email marketing tools cost under < $ 50 per month for email lists under 5,000 contacts. You can’t buy a TV or newspaper ad with that reach for that price.
• It’s also one of the best-converting marketing channels.
• Unlike with social media, you have full control over your recipients – Facebook or Instagram algorithms don’t decide about your emails’ reach. Email marketing tools have a deliverability of over 90% on average. That means that who opens your emails depends only on your copywriting skills 🙂
• You can segment your audience as you please, and make sure people get the right messages exactly at the right time
• You can include images, GIFs, videos, and surveys and format your newsletters exactly the way you want to
• You can attach files to your newsletter, or even sell your products directly from it.
• You can get replies with useful feedback  🙂  not possible with regular ads!

In other words – there are plenty of reasons why you should give email marketing a try!

#6 What is Email Marketing Strategy? Why do You Need One?

‘If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail’ – how many times have tried to pick up a new good habit, but then you stopped because you didn’t have a system for it?

Eating healthy, exercising regularly, reading 4 books per month?

It’s easy to lapse when you don’t have a system that would make you stick to it.

The same goes for newsletters. And if you don’t send them regularly, you may just as well not send them at all.

This is why you need a strategy for your newsletters – a system for:

• what is your goal of sending the newsletter (educate? inform? promote? sell?)
• what audience you will target with it (your clients? blog followers? employees?)
• when you will send your newsletters (day of the week, time) 
• how many newsletters you will send per month (1? 2? 4? 30?!) 
• what you’re going to include in each 
• how many different sections you will have 
• how long will your newsletters be

You need to have that all planned in advance, and then plan the content for 4-6 weeks ahead.

You need to think in terms of your goal – if you want to sell e.g. a particular course, service, or product – how do you build the relationship with your target audience and show the value of the product over the course of these 4-6 weeks in your newsletters to make the sale?

And preferably – to make sure that life doesn’t come mess with your plans – write them in advance and automate sending – basically schedule them to go out e.g. every Thursday at 11 a.m. GMT.

If you want to read more about creating your first email marketing strategy – have a look at our earlier blog post here

#7 What to Write in your Newsletters?

Before you send your first newsletter, take the following steps:

1) determine who your audience is – and what they like to read about

2) determine who you are for your newsletter subscribers:

• A shop/service provider they bought something from earlier
• An employer
• Author of a blog
• Education website/membership site

3) Determine what kind of content would be relevant to your audience based on the kind of relationship you have with them:

• Discounts, new product releases, product updates;
• Company news, new policies, team stats, and events
• New blog posts, website updates, and new materials to download
• New courses etc.

Then, before you write your first newsletter, decide:  

• how often you will be sending it (once per month, week, day)
• how many newsletters you will send? You should already think about it upfront
• how many sections your newsletter will have and what will be the purpose of each of them? For example, Get a Newsletter sends a monthly newsletter with the following sections: 1) Educational (Email Marketing Academy), 2) News (GAN News) 3) User Spotlight (featuring our users, their businesses, and their best practices):

If you want to learn more about writing good newsletters – check out our earlier posts here.

#8 What are Newsletter Templates?

One of the biggest upsides of using email marketing tools is that you can use plenty of beautiful, customizable newsletter templates to create professional-looking newsletters without any coding or graphic design skills.

👉See our inspiration gallery for the best newsletter templates from Get a Newsletter’s users!

#9 Good Newsletter Examples

In order to write good newsletters, you need both a good template, layout and content. Let’s see how to nail all of the elements!

Good Newsletter Layout: 

1. Layout: clean and readable at a glance

2. Sender: make clear it’s from *you*.

3. Give value first: don’t ask for a sale until you have given e.g. free information (e.g. stats), samples, or education

4 & 5:  CTAs (Calls-to-action) – include clear instructions what you want your readers to do next

6. Add your contact information – so people can reply (never send newsletters from a ‘no-reply’ address! This really affects trust badly)

7. Your social media channels – so people can follow you on Facebook/ Instagram

Good Newsletter Content: 

1. Start from a story – talk about the problem/issue from your personal experience

2. Share an interesting tip/ lifehack 

3. Write about timely events, hot topics and news 💥

4. Write about holidays, special events in your company or important occasions in your community

5. Address FAQs (frequently asked questions)

Wanna know more? See our full post on good newsletter examples below! 👇

Good newsletter example

#10 What are Subject Lines?

Subject lines are the single lines of text your recipient sees in their mailbox before they even open your email.

Hence – they really need to ‘sell’ the content of your email (newsletter) – if you want your subscriber to actually open them.

Here are some tips for writing good subject lines: 

• Keep them short
• Start from WH- words (Why, How, What)
• Use numbers (E.g. Did you know that 73% of business owners…)
• Use questions (Why do some startups succeed and others don’t?)
• Use the sense of urgency (Hurry! Our -70% sale ends in 12 hours!)
• Appeal to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Wanna see good subject line examples from real newsletters? See our earlier post below! 👇

How to write good subject lines for newsletters in 3 steps + EXAMPLES

#11  How to Collect Email Addresses (Subscribers)?

In order to be able to send newsletters, first, you need to have email subscribers (contacts). If you are lucky, you have them already in your business (your clients’ emails from your invoicing system, client management system or another such database).

But – if you’re only starting out with your blog or business, you will need to collect your subscribers first.

Here are some ideas how to collect your subscribers:

• put sign-up forms on all your website pages and blog posts
• create an exit-intent popup for your website
• ask the clients of your physical store, restaurant or school to leave their email address (and agree to receive newsletters)
• ask for permission to send newsletters in your online store, next to your checkout
• promote your newsletter on social media 
• incentivize your subscribers for forwarding your newsletters and getting more subscribers

Here are more ideas how to grow your email list fast:

How to grow your subscribers’ list fast

However, just asking your readers to sign up won’t work unless you do it in a smart way.

Here are more articles on how to create:

A) Smart opt-in forms for your blog and website

B) How to encourage people to sign up to your newsletter on social media:

Here are tips on how to create opt-ins that will bring you plenty of subscribers:

• Nail your copy – make your sign-up form call-to-action funny, witty or extravagant (in line with your brand identity of course!) – anything that would make it stand out!
• Show the value of your newsletter – tell your potential subscribers why they should sign up.
•  Include a CTA  – best as a button.
• Use a freebie or lead magnet to encourage people to sign up – this can be a PDF, ebook, a podcast episode – or anything related and of extra value to your subscribers.
• Design a quiz – to attract your audience to sign up without them even knowing
• Use a photo of yourself  – this will create a feeling of connection and trust with your audience, and attract their attention;
• Keep the colours and fonts of your sign-up forms consistent with your brand 
• Make sure your sign-up form is GDPR compliant by asking for marketing permissions

Best Email Opt-in Forms to Collect Subscribers – how to create an effective opt-in form?

How to encourage people to sign up to your newsletter on social media?

1. Use Lead Generation ads
2. Use a “Pinned post” on Twitter and Facebook page
3. Offer a downloadable ‘lead magnet’ to your followers
4. After the webinar, give the participants an opportunity to download notes from the webinar / or the webinar video – from your landing page (see Adam Enfroy’s post on for tools to build one) – also provided that they subscribe to your newsletter;
5. Offer  a free email course to your followers
6. Collect signups through a webinar/ Go Live
7.  Ask for an e-mail as a condition for joining your group in the questions.

#Facebookdown – what now?! How to use social media to collect email subscribers

#12 What is an Email List?

Simply put, and an email list is a group of subscribers that share some common denominator:

You can upload your contacts as lists through your email marketing tool and segment them based on criteria that are useful to your business.

#13 How to Segment Your Contacts (Subscribers)?

Ok, so how should you segment your subscribers’ lists?

Again, that depends on your business…

But there are some rules of thumb you should follow:

Segment your subscribers by:

• Their interests! – first and foremost. You can find out by asking them, or guess from: what products they have previously bought from you, what freebies they downloaded, what pages they visited etc.
• Demographic features – e.g. gender or age – if you’re selling products or services that may be relevant to only one gender (e.g. male boxer shorts vs. bras) – this kind of segmentation may totally make sense.
• How they interact with your website or app – the so-called ‘use cases’ – if you have a digital product or blog.

#14 How Often Should You Send Newsletters?

The answer to this question again depends on you and your audience 🙂

Most businesses send newsletters once per week (4 times per month). Some send them once per month only. Some send them every day!

How to decide? Here are some guidelines:

• Monthly newsletter – this is usually a round-up of your blog posts per month + what is going on in your business. Choose this model if you don’t publish a lot of content and you have a small business that doesn’t go through a lot of changes during a month.
• Weekly newsletter – if you publish a lot of content (2-3 blog posts per week, podcast episodes, videos etc.) – and you have a growth business, app, startup or your product goes through a lot of changes over a short period of time – go for this option.
• Daily newsletter – some people argue that daily newsletters shouldn’t be sent at all, others – that they work perfectly for them. You may consider sending 3-5 newsletters per week if you’re offering an online course, daily business or health tips, recipes, educational materials, language lessons etc. – basically, if your business is based on a daily habit of your audience, and you’re supporting them in this habit – it makes sense to communicate with them a few times per week or even every day.

#15 How to Measure the Results of Your Newsletters?

Usually, the results of your newsletters are measured by a few common metrics:

• Open rates – how many people / 100 opened your newsletters and had a chance to read them
• Click-through rates – how many people / 100 clicked on the links in your newsletters and e.g. entered your website, blog or online store
• Email Traffic – how many people who visited your website came from the links in your emails
• Assisted Conversions – probably most importantly – how many people bought your products or services after reading your emails. These could be direct conversions (someone read your email, clicked on a link to your online store, and bought a product directly) or assisted conversions (someone read your newsletter at some point in their buyer’s journey, and then returned to buy your product)

Wanna know all about the factors affecting your newsletter success rates? Check out our earlier post here:

Factors affecting your email marketing success – deliverability, open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates…

#16 What are Newsletter Open Rates?

Open rates are basically the percentage of people who open your emails from all the subscribers you have sent them to.

Check our earlier post on open rates here for statistics from 18 industries:

Newsletter open rate statistics for 18 industries – what is a good open rate for your industry and how to improve it?

#17 What are Click-Through Rates?

Click-through rates are rates of how many people (out of 100) clicked on the links in your newsletters and e.g. entered your website, blog or online store.

Check our earlier post on click-through rates here:

Newsletter click-through rates statistics – what is a good click-through rate and how to improve it?

#18 What are CTAs? How to Get More People to Click on Your Newsletters?

How to Write CTAs in Your Newsletters

Are you wondering how to get the readers of your emails to a) click on your links and b) buy from you? 

Well, the answer lies in 3 short characters… your C T A 😉 

A CTA is basically an instruction asking your reader to do something after reading your email. It prompts somebody reading your newsletter to engage or interact with you.

If there’s no call to action, then your email is a dead end. Your subscriber receives it, reads it … and then what? 

You should write each newsletter with a goal in mind. So you start with the CTA and build the rest of the email around it!

Do you want to learn how to write good CTAs in your emails? Have a look at our recent post and learn all about it! 

#19 What are Sign-up Forms? How to Use Sign-up Forms?

Signup forms are basically the same thing as opt-in forms. They are used to collect subscribers on your website and blog.

Here are some tips on creating good opt-in forms:

• Nail your copy – make your sign-up form call-to-action funny, witty or extravagant (in line with your brand identity of course!) – anything that would make it stand out!
• Show the value of your newsletter – tell your potential subscribers why they should sign up.
•  CTA  – best as a button.
• Use a freebie or lead magnet to encourage people to sign up – this can be a PDF, ebook, a podcast episode – or anything related and of extra value to your subscribers.
• Design a quiz – to attract your audience to sign up without them even knowing
• Use a photo of yourself  – this will create a feeling of connection and trust with your audience, and attract their attention;
• Keep the colours and fonts of your sign-up forms consistent with your brand 
• Make sure your sign-up form is GDPR compliant by asking for marketing permissions

Best Email Opt-in Forms to Collect Subscribers – how to create an effective opt-in form?

#20 What are Pop-ups? How To Use Pop-ups to Collect Subscribers?

Pop-ups are a special kind of sign up forms that appear on top the page you’re reading. They are usually triggered by events like the intention to close the page (by hovering your mouse over the “X” sign – and then they are called ‘exit intent popups’), scrolling down by a certain percentage, or simply staying on the page for a specific period of time.

Here are some best practices for effective exit-intent pop-ups: 

• Don’t trigger pop-ups immediately – you don’t want to annoy your audience 😜
• To get more subscribers, you should wait until people you’re targeting have actually read your content and feel some trust in it.
• It’s also a good strategy to offer an incentive to sign up in your popup – the so-called ‘lead magnet’. This can be a PDF to download, a podcast episode, a worksheet etc. – basically any asset useful to your audience.

#21  What Email Marketing Regulations Should You Observe?

Email Marketing Regulations – Email laws you should follow

The main European law governing email marketing in Europe is the GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation. 

GDPR came into effect on 25 May 2018.

Here are the main rules you need to obey under GDPR: 

• Your sign-up forms, pop-ups etc. should not contain any pre-ticked boxes – your subscribers should give you their explicit consent for receiving your email (here’s more on GDPR compliant sign-up forms)

GDPR friendly subscription forms – what mistakes to avoid

• Your privacy policy and terms and conditions should state clearly who the data-administrator and data-protector responsible for personal data in your company is. You can find free templates for GDPR privacy policies here or here and the privacy notice here.
• You should state clearly what kind of information (or marketing materials) you’re planning to be sending in your newsletters – you cannot just send newsletters to people who downloaded a free lead magnet, but didn’t give you explicit permission to send them newsletters.

To find out more about how to make your email marketing compliant with GDPR, check out our extensive explanation of it in one of our earlier post on it here:

GDPR and email marketing: what you need to know

The other big European law you need to know about is the e-Privacy Directive. Unlike GDPR, which applies in all EU countries directly, Directives are implemented by each country locally.

That means the name of the relevant law differs from country to country, and so do the precise rules.

• In Sweden, it’s the Lag (2003:389) om elektronisk kommunikation.
• In the US, commercial electronic messaging is regulated by The CAN-SPAM Act which requires you i.a.: specify your location, not to use ‘deceptive subject lines, honour opt-out requests within 10 working days, never use false or deceptive information, inform your recipients how they can opt-out and mark advertorial content as ‘ads’.
• In the UK, the e-Privacy Directive is enacted through the Privacy and E-Commerce Regulations 2003 (PECR).
• The British Regulations say that the rules on consent to electronic communications – including email marketing – do not apply to corporate subscribers.

• That covers generic company email addresses (eg info@company.com) but also individual corporate addresses, such as firstname.lastname@company.com.
• Even though the latter is still “personal data” for GDPR purposes, it’s much easier to justify using it under “Legitimate Interests”.
• The situation in Germany is totally different though. There, local laws and court rulings state that individual corporate emails should be treated the same as personal email addresses.
• The e-Privacy Directive will be replaced by an EU-wide Regulation in the future.

#22 What is GDPR?

1. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a general digital privacy law that will unify practices of data protection across all EU member states.
2. It was adopted on 27 April 2016 and it comes into force on 25 May 2018.
3. It is an *EU regulation, not a directive* – which means it is legally binding.
4. Not complying with it can result in large fines.
5. GDPR applies to all businesses that handle personal data of EU residents (so – not only businesses registered in EU member states, international entities too!).
6. It also applies if e.g. your data storage systems (e.g. cloud storage solutions) are based in the EU.
7. The regulation introduces two principles of data protection: ‘data protection by design’ and ‘data protection by default’
8. ‘Data protection by design’ means that each business that handles personal data needs to have systems designed to protect them. This includes keeping the database of personal information secure through e.g. pseudonymisation (encoding data by replacing personal data with a random identifier) of data fields.
9. ‘Data protection by default’ means that all personal data are subject to data protection regulations.
10. Consent to store or process personal data in any way needs to be given explicitly in a ‘freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous’ way, and through clear ‘affirmative action’.
11. The data owner also has the right to access their data and have them removed at any time.

Find out more about GDPR in our earlier post here:

GDPR and email marketing: what you need to know

#23 What are Unsubscribe Rates? How to Prevent People from Unsubscribing?

Unsubscribe rate is basically the number of subscribers that opt-out of your emails after receiving them (unsubscribe) expressed in percentages.

#24 Email marketing cost and ROI

Email marketing is relatively cheap – compared to both traditional outdoor advertising, or the ‘new media’ such as Facebook Ads or Google Ads. There are a few factors that affect the cost of your email marketing campaigns per month:

• your email marketing tool subscription price
• the number of contacts (subscribers) you have on your email list
• the number of emails you send per month
• the cost of creating your newsletter copy 

Luckily, most email marketing tools won’t cost you much – especially if you have a small email list for starters.

The pricing of your email marketing tool subscription depends mostly on the number of contacts you have on your email list – aka the number of your subscribers. The cheapest plans start from only $10 per month. 

• An email marketing tool for a list of under 5,000 contacts won’t cost you more than $ 50 on average.
• An email marketing tool for a bigger list – of up to 10,000 contacts – will still be within  $100 on average.

There are some additional costs in writing the newsletters though – if you don’t have anyone to write the newsletter for you and don’t have the time, you will need to hire a (freelance) copywriter to do it. That may cost you anything between $20 and $300 per newsletter (depending on the experience of the copywriter).

What is the ROI of email marketing

OK – now we’ve discussed how much email marketing will cost you – let’s see what you can make in return.

According to Campaign Monitor  – as of 2019, email marketing could yield you up to 4300% Return on Investment. 

That means that – for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can get $44 back. 

Here’s our full breakdown of email marketing costs and ROI:

Email marketing cost and ROI

#25 What is Better – Email Marketing or Social Media Marketing?

The email marketing vs social media marketing battle has been going on for a while now – but the truth is, the two marketing channels are very different and should complement each other rather than compete.

• Links to your social media in your newsletter are great social proof. Seeing your social media activity and great customer reviews on your Facebook or Instagram page can be what finally convinces an email subscriber to buy from you.
• Social media can be used to collect subscribers to your email newsletter!
• People are not statistics. Some people will just prefer to stick to a single channel – so make sure they have the option to do that rather than forcing them to switch.

Email Marketing	Social Media Marketing
“Organic Reach”	90% + reach, 20% + average open rates	2-6% organic reach (depending on the type of post and social medium)
Engagement and Virality	Email recipients rarely share their emails with their friends; emails are not publicly visible unlike posts – hence, they can’t really ‘go viral’	Social media allow users to engage with your posts through comments, reactions; Social media posts on business pages are publicly visible – hence, particularly popular posts can be shared by thousands of users in a short time – aka ‘go viral’
Stage of the funnel	Best for nurturing and conversion in the middle & bottom of the funnel	Best for building brand awareness on top of the funnel
Ownership and security	You own your email list – you can always download it, move to another email marketing tool etc. – it’s safer, and you have complete control over it	You don’t own your business page, let alone your followers contacts on social media – if Facebook shuts down your page for any reason, you will lose all your followers
Customisation	Email newsletters allow you to fully edit and customise your newsletter templates – adding links, images, and formatting; However – most email providers do not allow you to send videos due to large data size.	Social media posts do not allow you to format the text (unless you post them in groups) On the other hand – you can use videos and even live videos to engage with your audience better (video is the most engaging communication medium as of 2019)/
Summary: Advantages	+ excellent ROI+ cheap + excellent organic reach + great for nurturing in the middle of the funnel + you are in full control over your email list, can download it, copy it, move it to another email tool; + easy to personalise and automate (e.g. with autoresponders)	+ great for building brand awareness+ great for building relationships at the top of the funnel + potential of going viral + community and engagement
Summary: Disadvantages	– bad for building awareness– you can’t include videos	– expensive– very low organic reach – you don’t own your followers’ list – your followership is vulnerable to algorithm changes, you can’t move your followers –          Difficult to personalise –          Difficult to automate –          Difficult to customize

 

👉 If you want to read more  about how to connect social media with email marketing in your marketing strategy, check out our longer blog post here:

Email marketing vs social media marketing – the pros, cons & how to use both in your sales funnel

#26 What are Email Marketing Campaigns? How to Create an Email Marketing Campaign?

I’m sure you will agree that… it’s a bad idea to ask someone to marry you on a first date. 💍💔 😬

It’s the same principle at work in sales. 

You can’t always go straight for the sale. Sometimes you have to build up a relationship of trust and familiarity. Sometimes you have to give to get 👌.

This is exactly what email campaigns (=series of a few emails) are for! 

Email sequences or 💧 drip campaigns 💧 aim to gradually change the nature of your relationship with your subscribers until they are ready to buy from you.

You can do it by:

• By raising awareness of your products and services (moving to INTEREST) – Email 1
• By identifying a need for them and pitching the benefits when appropriate (moving to CONSIDERATION) – Email 2
• By gradually turning “thinking about buying” into “deciding to buy”(moving through the remaining phases) – Email 3
• By PROVIDING VALUABLE CONTENT AT EVERY TOUCH POINT to keep readers engaged – Email 4

The first steps in building great email marketing campaigns are:

1. Working out what steps feature in your journey from awareness to purchase ✔
2. Identifying WHAT will move a person from one phase to the next ✔
3. Identifying WHEN somebody is receptive to being moved on ✔

If you want to learn more about email campaigns, and see some real-life examples in action: here’s our earlier post about email marketing drip campaigns:

How to Create Email Marketing Campaigns

#27 What is Email Automation? How to Use Autoresponders?

If you’re only dealing with a handful of leads at any one time then maybe you can manage your email sequences manually 🖐.

But for most businesses, that’s not the case.

And that’s where MARKETING AUTOMATION (Autoresponders) software comes in. Tools like Get a Newsletter enable you to:

• Build out and test emails in your sequence
• Automate the sending (including personalization) in line with a pre-defined workflow
• Set time-based and trigger-based sending rules
• Analyze the results and improve future performance on the basis of data

Automation means that you can set up your email campaigns in advance and leave them to run without further input. People can move through your funnel at their own pace, with the system feeding the right information to them at the right time.

Autoresponders allow you to automatically segment your email subscribers by a certain condition, and send the perfect email to the right audience, at the right time.

This can be for example: signing up for your newsletter through an online form, signing up for an email course, joining your mailing list through a CRM System (Customer Relationship Management) or clicking on a button in an app.

Email automation saves you tons of time – you don’t need to write and send emails each time your customers go through the same scenario! For example – if you have an e-commerce store – you will be probably sending emails to the customers who visit your online store, put a product in their basket, but don’t buy. Autoresponders are perfect for these ‘abandoned cart’ emails 🙂

#28 Latest email marketing trends

Email marketing trends come and go, year in year out. But in 2020, the email marketing trends we are seeing look as though they’re here to stay.

Plus, they look like they’ll change the face of email marketing permanently.

A lot of experts thought that GDPR would kill off email marketing once and for all. In fact, it came back stronger than ever.

But like every online marketing channel, it’s changing and developing as technology advances and users become more and more sophisticated.

So, here are the five biggest email marketing trends and what you can do to make the most of them 😁👍

1. AI and Data-Driven Marketing
2. Mobile-First
3. Interactivity
4. B2B Comes Up To Date
5. More Data Protection

If you want to read more about those trends, have a look at our post below:

Latest Email Marketing Trends for 2022

#29 What are Viral Email Campaigns?

The last couple of weeks you’ve been reading about viruses quite a lot on the news, I’m sure 😉  Did you know that emails can go ‘viral’ as well? 

What do we mean when we talk about email being “viral”?

The term is more commonly used in the context of social media because viral content is content that people share with their network by choice. The audience spreads the message for you👍.

So viral marketing is marketing that spreads by a kind of “word of mouth” or personal recommendation.

How to make your emails ‘go viral’? 

Jonah Berger, the author of ‘Contagious. How things catch on’ – dissected 6 common elements of ‘virality’:

• Social Currency – does sharing the email make me look cooler in the eye of my peers/ people I respect?
• Triggers – does this email remind me/ the people I want to share it with something important to me?
• Practical Value – does the email provide me with practical solutions to the problems I have?
• Humour – is this email funny? Will it make me look like I have a good sense of humour if I share it?
• Emotion – does this email evoke *arousing* emotions? (they can be good or bad, provided the trigger some actions)
• Publicity – does this email tell a story or contain information that has ‘social proof’? (Something that is popular will make me look like I belong if I share it).

If you want to read more about how to leverage virality in your email marketing campaigns, have a look at our post here:

Viral Email Marketing Campaigns

#30 What are Good Newsletter Names to Collect Subscribers?

Good newsletter names are as critical for the success of your email marketing as your newsletter content.

After all – calling your newsletter is as important as coming up with the name for a magazine. Your subscribers will often decide whether they want to sign up for your emails or not depending on your newsletter name.

No idea how to call your newsletter? We have some inspiration for you 😉

Let’s see some industry names for newsletters you can use as inspiration for calling yours!

Good Newsletter Names for Opinion Blogs

If you’re mostly using newsletters to share opinions with your readers, the following names will match the subjective style of your newsletter:

• [Your Name]’s Show
• [Your Name]’s Weekly / Monthly Examiner
• [Your Name]’s Weekly / Monthly Column
• Thoughts of the Week/ Month by [Your Name]
• [Your Name] explains
• [Your Name]’s Telegraph

Good Newsletter Names for Fashion and Lifestyle Blogs

Fashion and lifestyle blogs call for more personal touch with a playful twist. Try plays on words

• [Your Name]’s Highlights – E.g. Laura’s Highlights
• Style by Laura
• Laura’s Life Weekly
• Laura’s Lifestyle
• Laura’s Magazine
• This Month’s Beauty Trends by Laura
• This Month’s Fashion Trends by Laura
• Beauty & more by Laura

Good Newsletter Names for Travel Bloggers & Travel Services

If you’re writing a travel blog or offering travel services, make sure you refer to travel-related words (travelling, globetrotting) or the places you are writing about:

• The Globetrotter’s Magazine vol. 1
• Travelling with Laura vol. 1
• Around the World in 80 days with Laura
• Manor Parks’ News Weekly
• News from Larmorna Bay
• The Kiruna Tourguide
• Snapshots of Zaragossa
• Mellie’s Mexican Adventures

Good Newsletter Names for Food and Restaurant Business

With food newsletter names, the key is to make sure they are…mouth watering 😉 You can also come up with good newsletter names for food industry by referring to the cuisine/ diet/ ingredients you are most often writing about:

• Helen’s Kitchen
• Recipe of the week by Helen
• Helen’s scrumptious recipes
• The Vegan Bulletin
• Your Monthly Italian
• Thai Weekly
• Laura’s Pizza
• Healthy recipes by Anne
• Fit & healthy diet tips daily

If you’re looking for more newsletter names inspiration, we have a more exhaustive list for you below:

Good Newsletter Names by Industry to Collect Subscribers

#31 How to Get in Gmail’s Primary Tab?

In general: emails delivered to Gmail’s primary tab are read more often and have a higher open rate. Why? Recipients simply consider them personal communication and see them as more important than those which land in the Promotions tab, which contains mostly marketing messages.

Here are a few tips on how to land in Gmail’s promotion tab:

1. Get your subscribers to move your newsletter to the primary tab
2. Ask your subscribers to add you as a contact

Here’s our full post on it if you need more information:

How to get your newsletter in the primary tab

#32 What is an Email Marketing Funnel? How to Create One?

A lot of people who create amazing content forget about the email marketing sales funnels that would allow them to convert it.

Funnels are series of emails that help your subscribers move along their customer journey – gain trust in you and your product, and – ultimately – buy from you.

As Danielle Sabrina  put it: ‘What’s the point of having a dope creative activation that generates press or buzz and not have the proper funnels set up digitally that can follow up and nurture those potential clients until they become actual clients?‘

In this post below, you will find the exact email funnel templates you need to create your own funnel.

Email marketing sales funnel template for coaches – when words don’t come easy…

#33 Newsletter Statistics You Should Know

In order to make most out of your email marketing, you should measure your results and compare them to other businesses in your industry. In other words – you should compare your results to industry stats. 

Here are some 2020 email marketing stats you should know:

 Email Marketing User Stats

Conclusion:

#34 How to Do B2B Email Marketing?

B2B email marketing is one of the most important channels in B2B marketing process – 40% of B2B marketers say email marketing is critical for their success. And yet B2B email marketing seems more challenging than email marketing for B2C – it takes more than sending newsletters with pretty photos of your products and discounts to be successful at B2B email marketing. But if you understand your customer journey well – creating effective B2B newsletters is much easier than you think.

Click on the post below to find out how to create a successful B2B email marketing strategy step by step:

• how to use newsletters to generate B2B leads (awareness)
• convert them into customers (consideration and conversion)
• and then keep them happy and engaged (retention) so they continue buying from you for years to come 

B2B email marketing – how to create a successful B2B email marketing strategy + B2B newsletter ideas for every stage of your customer journey

#35 How to Do B2C Email Marketing?

As you can see from the infographic above, there is a world of difference between B2B and B2C email marketing.

B2C email marketing aims at convincing individuals to buy goods or services for their personal use.

This means consumer goods, clothes, make-up, food, experiences such as trips, dinners, nights out, and activities, presents, leisure and wellness. 

Here are the exact steps you need to take to create a successful B2C email marketing strategy:

STEP 1: Understand the nature of B2C email marketing vs. B2B

STEP 2: Know your audience

STEP 3: Collect your subscribers

STEP 4: Think about what you want to write – B2C email marketing campaign content plan

STEP 5: Design matters – designing your B2C newsletters + newsletter templates

STEP 6: Automate your B2C email campaign with autoresponders

To read more about each of these steps, check out our earlier piece on B2C strategy:

How to create a B2C email marketing strategy + B2C newsletter templates!

#36 Email Marketing for E-Commerce

As an e-commerce business owner, you will be sending a lot of emails – abandoned cart emails, retargeting emails, purchase order notifications, and many many more.

Here are the most important kinds of e-commerce campaigns you should think about:

1 . The Welcome Series

• Use competitions – offer new subscribers the chance to win a prize on their first purchase (e.g. Stand the chance to win a $1000 gift voucher with your first purchase!)
• Personalisation – address them on their first name (if you have their details)
• Behind-the-scenes video – put together a short clip that tells new subscribers all about your brand, maybe a tour of the warehouse or laboratory (e.g. if you’re selling makeup). This is a great way to build trust and show subscribers what goes into making the product that they love, it also puts faces to the brand – as an ecommerce business, you have to show your customers who you are and videos are a great way of doing exactly that.

2. Re-engagement campaign

• Win-back gift card – this offer is a popular one amongst ecommerce make-up stores, if you spend more than certain amount (e.g. $60) you get a gift card of (e.g. $15) off your next purchase. This offer works because it could possibly secure two purchases and shoppers love getting stuff for free! BONUS TIP – Try the BUY 2 get 1 Free special offer on products they have been viewing on your website.
• Update preferences: This is one of the more creative ways in the re-engagement campaign examples that I came across (example from Office above) – with this campaign ecommerce stores send out newsletters asking the subscriber to update their information or preferences. For example: update your mobile number (to receive exclusive deals via text) or select the clothes you want to receive the latest special offers and discounts for. This campaign works because it re-directs the customer to your ecommerce store website (to update preferences), where they will get to see the latest products. Don’t forget to include a special PROMO code.

3. Abandoned cart campaign

First of all – there are abandoned carts, and abandoned carts. So – as with any email list  – you need to segment your abandoned cart list: 

• first-time customers that abandoned cart;
• returning/ regular customers with abandoned carts;
• high-value abandoned carts;
• abandoned carts with high-margin items

Since – as we mentioned earlier – people prefer personalised messages – your cart abandonment emails need to address their intention – why they abandoned the cart in the first place.

For example: first-time buyers may be concerned about security of the purchase, while people who abandoned a cart with a high total value – may have been daunted by the total order price. Hence – in your abandoned cart emails, you should refer to these ‘sales objections’ specific to the different groups:

• first-time buyers –> ensure payment security
• returning customers –> establish a foothold to your previous relationship: thank them for their previous purchase and ask whether they were happy with it; offer participation in a loyalty programme or offer a discount voucher
• high-value abandoned carts –> give special discount on the entire cart value;
• abandoned carts with high-margin items  –> offer the cheapest item 50% cheaper if they buy the high-margin item;

Subject line

The subject line of your abandoned cart email is as critical as the content – after all  47% of people decide whether to open your emails based on the subject line alone.

So – make sure the subject lines of your abandoned cart emails are relevant to the recipient:

• refer to the item they want to purchase
• refer to the stage in their customer journey (are they returning or new customers?)
• make sure you make the purpose of each email clear in the subject line (reminder, urgency, incentive)
• use personalisation – refer to the subscriber by name 
• use emojis 

Of course – to get the subject lines right, you will need to segment your audience first.

Timing

As we mentioned before, you should send the first email in your abandoned cart sequence within an hour of when someone left your site.

What about emails 2 and 3?

Send them on the next day and in 3 days of the attempted purchase respectively.

👉Read more about the abandoned cart email strategy here and here.

4. Holidays & Seasonal Promotions

Best practice top tips

• Using discounts: Send your discounts and special offers in a newsletter – give people more reason to spend money, make it worth their while by giving discounts for the holiday period or even just a weekend (e.g. Easter weekend 40% off!).
• Clearance sale: After every major holiday period (e.g. Christmas) you should definitely have a Clearance sale – this sale is to off-load older product lines to make way for new stock or updated ranges. P.s – don’t forget to send out the new stock email newsletter AFTER your clearance sale is done!

Here’s our full article on e-commerce email marketing with examples of real campaigns:

Ecommerce Email Marketing Best Practices + Best Ecommerce Newsletter Examples

#37 Email Marketing for Restaurants

So somebody comes to your restaurant for the first time and is really happy with your food and service. Great! Assuming they are not tourists coming for a one-off stopover in your city, they may want to come back:

• to bring their friend
• for a special occasion
• on a date
• with a business partner…

But actually – how do you make sure they will remember your place when the time is right?

I so often forget about the places (or people!) that would be the right fit for the occasion/ job I need…

Why?

Because they don’t remind me of their existence!

So – you got it – email marketing is really important for restaurants too and could be an excellent way to promote your place.

Here are some golden tips:

1. Ask your guests to leave their emails to get discounts / free deserts through a paper signup form on the table / on a tablet when delivering their bill;
2. Provide value by telling stories about your restaurant, the dished it serves, the cuisine, ingredients, recipes etc.
3. Send regular updates about events in your restaurant
4. Send invitations to celebrate birthdays and major holidays in your restaurants (incl. photos of your scrumptious special anniversary or Christmas menu 😉 )
5. Send your newsletters twice per month.

Here are all the tips in an exhaustive guide to restaurant email marketing:

Email Marketing for Restaurants – Restaurant Newsletter Ideas and Templates – the Ultimate Guide

#38 Is Email Marketing a Good for Your Business?

In a nutshell: absolutely YES!

Email marketing is one of the most profitable ways to promote your business –  40% of B2B marketers say email marketing is critical for their success. No wonder – it has the highest ROI from all marketing methods and gives you almost full control over who sees your marketing message (great targeting).

So why not start with email marketing now and for free? 😎 Sign up for Get a Newsletter for free without any obligations! No card required!