There are many different forms of digital marketing content that companies and influencers are taking advantage of today. One form of digital marketing content that is taking the digital landscape by storm is email marketing.

Due to its continued growth, The Digital Intellect (TDI) has decided to start learning more about email marketing this year, and we think that you should as well. That’s why The Digital Intellect has created this beginner’s guide on creating an email marketing campaign.

So that both TDI as well as other businesses and marketing professionals can target email marketing in 2021, this article includes everything a beginner needs to know about email marketing. Various email marketing solutions are also included in this article.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the use of email to promote a business’s products, services, or brand. The more exciting and engaging a marketing email, the better. In fact, there are many different looks that an email marketing campaign can take on. For example, a simple welcome email marketing campaign may look more like a traditional email than a holiday email newsletter.

Regardless of the type and style of your email marketing campaign, it can produce great marketing results. As long as it’s done correctly.

Reasons Why Email Marketing Is an Effective Form of Promotion and Branding

Email marketing is an effective form of promotion and branding for numerous reasons. Some of these reasons are described below.

It’s a Highly Used Form of Communication

For one, email is still one of the top forms of communication. In fact, according to Statista, there are approximately 3.9 billion daily email users. That number is expected to grow to 4.3 billion by 2023. Plus, according to Not Another State of Marketing, 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement throughout 2020.

The world is becoming more and more digital every day. Therefore, the use of online forms of communication such as email is only going to continue to grow. This is especially the case for businesses and digital marketers that want to expand their reach and increase their clientele. In fact, 73% of millennials currently state that they prefer businesses to communicate with them through email.

It Establishes Customer Actions

Emails are also effective because they force their users to take action to address the content in some way. This is due to the fact that emails will remain in people’s inboxes until they actively read or delete them.

In the best case scenario, the email users will reply to emails. The fact that emails force customer actions are great for email marketing agencies. This is because it makes it more likely that these agencies’ content will receive traffic.

It’s Cost-Effective

Emails themselves are also very cost-effective. In fact, according to a 2015 U.K. study done by Direct Marketing Association (DMA), for every $1 that’s spent on email, the average return on investment (ROI) is $38.

It Can Build Deeper Client Relationships

Another reason why email marketing is an effective form of promotion is that it helps email marketing agencies to build closer relationships with their audiences. It does this by sending digital marketing content directly into the personal email boxes of each audience member. Oftentimes, the same personal email boxes include emails from family members and friends.

Email marketing agencies can even increase the chances of building a relationship with clients by personalizing and automating emails. Individuals can personalize emails by inserting the name of each recipient into the beginning of each email blast. That way, it appears to the reader the email was created just for him or her.

Email automation occurs when emails are sent out at a set time to subscribers. Companies can use email automation to further build relationships with their email subscribers by segmenting contacts by their interests, identities, and buyer personas.

For example, you can send a special automated email blast offering special deals on products and services to long-term subscribers in the consideration buyer persona stage. Sending such an automated email blast would not only show your appreciation and further your bond with your customers/subscribers, but it would also help increase your company’s sales.

Steps to Creating an Email Marketing Campaign

For an email marketing campaign to be effective, it must be done properly. This means taking the right actions in the right order. Below is a basic outline of steps email marketing agencies take to create an effective email marketing campaign.

1. Choose an Email Marketing Provider

Before sending out an email blast, you must choose an email marketing provider. Email marketing providers are digital platforms that people create email marketing campaigns. You can also look to email marketing providers for current information on all things email marketing. In a way, an email marketing provider is an email marketing expert. Examples of popular email marketing providers include HubSpot and MailChimp.

It’s important to choose an email marketing provider based on your individual needs. For example, if you’re a startup company, you may want to choose an email marketing expert and provider that offers free services. You may also want to choose an email marketing provider that increases company growth and engagement. Companies that sell products, on the other hand, should focus on choosing an email marketing provider that’s best for e-commerce.

While some email marketing providers will allow you to send out effective email marketing campaigns for free, if you’re looking to make the most out of email marketing, you’ll eventually need to pay for the services that these email marketing providers give you. As a beginner to email marketing though, you may want to start out paying as little as possible for your email marketing provider.

2. Set Measurable Goals

Once you’ve decided what email marketing provider you’re going to use, you must set measurable goals. All email marketing agencies set measurable goals. This is because measurable goals will drive every action that you take with your email marketing campaigns. Essentially, your measurable goals are your “why” for creating email marketing campaigns, to begin with.

Another reason why it’s important to set measurable goals for your email marketing campaigns is that they will make it easier to track your progress. This is because all measurable goals must contain specific analytical information within them that you can track.

An example of a measurable email marketing goal is to increase your email click-through rates by 25% within the next six months. This is an email marketing goal because it’s analytically measurable and specific while still remaining simple.

3. Get Permission to Contact People

The most unprofessional thing that email marketing agencies can do is send an email blast to individuals that didn’t give permission for you to contact them. In fact, it is technically illegal to send out email marketing campaigns to individuals without their permission. Therefore, it’s vital that everyone on email marketing lists gave permission for your company to contact them prior to doing so.

There are many ways to get permission to send a marketing email blast to someone. For example, you can get someone to physically agree to receive your emails online before or after reading one of your email marketing blogs or ebooks.

4. Choose an Email Marketing Template or Create Your Own Email from Scratch

The next step to creating an email marketing campaign is to choose a template from your email marketing provider. Email marketing templates are premade backgrounds for email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing templates are great for beginners in email marketing to use. Once you’re more experienced and are more familiar with the best tools that your email marketing provider offers, you can start creating everything for your campaigns from scratch.

5. Create Great Email Marketing Content

This is arguably the most important step to creating an email marketing campaign. As people always say in marketing, content is king. Thus, making sure that the content in every email blast is free of incorrect grammar and engaging is key to good email marketing. It’s also important that email marketing content is concise.

6. Create Email Contact Lists

Once you’ve created your email, you must create a contact list with the names of people that you’ve already received permission to contact. Just make sure that your email marketing lists are segmented to only include the people that you want to receive the particular email that you’re sending out. For example, if you’re sending out a welcome email, make sure that the names on the email contact list that you’re using for that email only include new subscribers.

7. Segment Your Marketing Lists

We just briefly touched upon this email marketing campaign step in step #5. Essentially, segmenting your email marketing lists means to separate your full list of contacts into smaller lists based on factors like identity, interests, buyer persona stage. For example, when we mentioned only sending a welcome email blast to contacts of new subscribers, the separate list of only new subscribers would be considered a segmented contact list.

8. Test Your Email Marketing Content

Prior to sending out an email blast, it’s important to send an email marketing test out. Email marketing tests help email marketing agencies see what their content looks like before their subscribers do. That way, if something is off with the email marketing content, you can change it before your clients see it.

9. Send Out Targeted Emails

Once creating the content, creating and segmenting the email marketing lists, and testing the email, all that’s left is to send it out. Once the email is sent, wait, and see the results.

10. Use Analytics Data and A/B Testing on Your Email Campaigns To Determine Your Next Steps

Soon after sending out an email marketing campaign, there will be data on how well the campaign did. Make sure to go back through your account on your email marketing provider’s site and find this data. This data should include measurable information on how many people opened the email, who opened the email, how many people clicked on the email, how many emails bounced to spam folders or somewhere else, how many people performed the call-to-action in your email, etc.

To grow your email marketing lists, use this data to perform A/B testing. A/B testing is the testing of different versions of a single email to see which version performs better.

When doing A/B testing on an email marketing campaign, only change one variable in the email. For example, one could just change the send time or title of an email blast. Then create different versions of that one email to different random sets of recipients with only changes made to the variable you chose.

Then track and measure how each set of recipients respond to the test email. Use this data to help with your future email marketing planning.

Continue Learning About Email Marketing Here on The Digital Intellect Blog

While the email marketing services that The Digital Intellect currently provides are minimal, many of the company’s current employees are learning more about this growing form of digital marketing. TDI hopes that as more people within the company learn more about email marketing, it could be a major service that TDI provides in the near future.

To continue to learn more about email marketing along with TDI, keep up with the content here on The Digital Intellect blog!