email marketing business plan

Email Marketing: The Ultimate Guide (Expert Tips + Data to Know)

Learn email marketing best practices from creating a strategy to building a list to tracking results.

EMAIL MARKETING PLANNING TEMPLATE

Use this template to strategically organize your email marketing. Available for Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.

Updated: 01/26/24

Published: 01/24/24

I‘m pretty sure I’ve said this in a few blog posts already, so if you‘ve heard this from me before, I apologize, but it’s true: In addition to being a blogger, I‘m in charge of curating and sending out HubSpot’s Marketing Blog newsletter.

So, I know a thing or two about email marketing.

Done correctly, email marketing can be as powerful as any other marketing tactic today. But notice the key phrase: done correctly.

Fortunately, you‘ve get this handy dandy guide you’re reading that will set you up for success in your email marketing strategy.

Without further ado, let’s review the best ways to leverage email marketing. I'll also cover benefits and statistics that show the importance of email, just in case you need extra convincing. Let’s dig in.

What is email marketing?

Getting started with email marketing, how to send marketing emails, email regulations you should know, email marketing tips.

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves sending promotional messages or newsletters to a list of subscribers via email.

The goal is building customer relationships, promoting products or services, increasing brand awareness, and ultimately driving sales.

In my experience, email marketing allows me to reach my target audience directly with personalized and relevant content. It's also cost-effective, easy to track, and provides valuable data for analyzing campaign success.

Marketers have been using email as a channel for almost as long as they've been using the internet. The first marketing email was sent in 1978, resulting in $13 million in sales.

A Beginner's Guide to Email Marketing

How to execute and measure successful email marketing campaigns

• Growing an email list.
• Remaining CAN-SPAM compliant.
• Using email automation.
• Segmenting your audience.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Email has been one of the most highly used marketing channels ever since.

This is because email is a flexible yet cost-effective way to reach many people relatively quickly. I can also personalize my message to target specific audiences and generate leads.

Email marketing can take many different forms. These campaigns can include a single email announcing new content, an ongoing newsletter delivered regularly, or contacting customers about product updates.

Email isn’t as shiny as newer channels, like messaging and social. However, email is an effective way to build an audience that gets results.

“One of my favorite parts about email marketing is its intimacy,” says Rob Litterst , head of strategy and operations for HubSpot’s Newsletter Network.

“Access to someone‘s inbox is sacred, and for a person to welcome you in, there’s already a certain level of trust that you just can't achieve with other platforms,” he says.

I know it's easy to get overwhelmed with the vast possibilities of email marketing, so let’s break down a few key steps to get you started building a solid email campaign that will delight your customers.

You can think of these steps as creating a successful email marketing strategy .

1. Create an Email Marketing Strategy

You can learn how to build an effective email strategy and send emails that people actually want to read. It just takes a plan (one that can be broken down into a few key steps).

Think of the following five steps as an outline for your email strategy. We’ll dive deeper into some of these in a moment.

Email Marketing Planning Template

Organize your email marketing strategy and metrics with this free template.

• Gather data
• Summarize results
• Manage A/B tests

2. Define your audience.

Effective emails, whether a campaign or a one-off, start with understanding your audience.

Like everything else in marketing, start with your buyer persona , understand what pain points they’re dealing with, and tailor your email campaign to your audience’s needs.

3. Establish your goals.

Usually, before I think up campaign goals, I gather some context.

I always want to know the average email stats for my industry and use them as benchmarks for my goals. This should be your process as well.

6. Make a schedule.

Decide how often you plan to contact your list and inform your audience upfront.

This way, they'll know exactly what to expect ahead of time. Forgetting this can lead to high unsubscribe lists and even get you in their spam.

In addition, once you set a schedule, be consistent. It will build trust and ensure you stay top of mind for your audience.

7. Measure your results.

This should come as no surprise. As marketers, we measure everything. Being meticulous about every key metric will help you make small changes to your emails, yielding large results.

We’re going to touch on the exact KPIs to monitor in a bit (or you can jump ahead).

Now that you understand the steps to creating an email marketing strategy, we‘ll look at what’s involved in building your email list.

8. Choose an email marketing platform.

An email marketing provider (ESP) is an excellent resource if you're looking for any support while fine-tuning your email marketing efforts.

For example, HubSpot's Email Marketing tool allows me to efficiently create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails that feel and look professional without designers or IT.

There are a variety of features to help me create the best email marketing campaigns and support all of my email marketing goals.

Additionally, I can analyze the success of my email marketing so I can share the data that matters most to my business with my team. The best part? HubSpot's Email Marketing service is available for free .

Start using HubSpot's Email Marketing Service for free.  

Here are examples of features services like HubSpot offer to consider when choosing an email service provider :

• CRM platform with segmentation capabilities
• Good standing with Internet Service Providers
• A positive reputation as an email service provider (ESP)
• Easy-to-build forms, landing pages, and CTAs
• Simple ways to comply with email regulations
• Ability to split test your emails
• Built-in analytics
• Downloadable reports

9. Build Your Email List

Now to my favorite part: filling the email list with eager prospects excited to hear from you.

There are many creative ways to build your email list (and, no, purchasing emails ain’t one).

Tactically speaking, list building comes down to two key elements that work cohesively to grow your subscriber numbers: lead magnets and opt-in forms .

Featured Resources

• The Email Newsletter Lookbook
• How to Create Email Newsletters That Don't Suck

Here's how I build and grow my email list.

10. Use lead magnets.

Your lead magnet is exactly as it sounds: It attracts prospects to your email list, usually as a free offer.

The offer can take many formats, should be valuable to your prospects, and is given away for free in exchange for an email address.

There’s just one problem: People have become hyper-protective of their personal information. You can’t expect to receive an email address without exchanging it for something valuable.

Think about a lead magnet that is relevant, useful, and makes your prospects’ lives easier.

Here are a few types of lead magnets you could create:

• Whitepapers.
• Infographics.
• Reports or studies.
• Checklists.
• Webinars or courses.

If you’re short on resources, you can even repurpose existing content to create lead magnets .

11. Create an enticing opt-in form.

Your opt-in form is how you get a prospect’s information to add them to your list. It’s the gate between your future leads and the incredible asset you created with them in mind.

Here are some tips for creating an enticing opt-in form:

Create an attractive design and attention-grabbing header.

Your form should be branded, stand out from the page, and entice people to sign up. You want to excite readers with the offer.

Make the copy relevant to the offer.

While your goal is to get people to enter their information, it isn’t to deceive them. Any information on your form should be a truthful representation of the offer.

Keep the form simple.

This could be one of your first interactions with your prospect. Don’t scare them away with a long long-form several fields.

Ask for only the most essential information: first name and email is a good place to start.

Set your opt-in form for double confirmation.

It may seem counterproductive to ask your subscribers to opt into your emails twice, but some research on open rates suggests that customers may prefer a confirmed opt-in (COI) email more than a welcome email.

Ensure that the flow works.

Take yourself through the user experience before you go live. Double-check that the form works as intended, the thank you page is live, and your offer is delivered as promised.

This is one of your first impressions of your new lead — make it a professional and positive one.

Next, let's take a moment to cover some universally accepted email marketing best practices regarding how to send marketing emails.

• Implement email segmentation.
• A/B test your marketing emails.
• Analyze your email marketing performance.
• Set email marketing KPIs.
• Adjust email components to improve results.
• Use an email marketing report template.

If all goes well, you’ll have built a robust list of subscribers and leads waiting to hear from you. But you can’t start emailing just yet unless you want to end up in a spam folder, or worse, a blocked list.

Here are a few important things to remember before you start emailing your list.

1. Implement email segmentation.

Once you’ve added people to your list, you must break them down into different segments.

That way, instead of having a monolithic email list of everybody, you’ll have easier-to-manage subcategories that pertain to your subscribers’ unique characteristics, interests, and preferences.

Our subscribers are humans, after all, and we should do our best to treat them as such. That means not sending generic email blasts.

Why should you segment your email list?

Each person who signs up to receive your emails is at a different level of readiness to convert into a customer (which is the ultimate goal of all this).

If you send a discount coupon for your product to subscribers that don’t even know how to diagnose their problem, you’ll probably lose them. That’s because you’re skipping the part where you build trust and develop the relationship.

Every email you send should treat your subscribers like humans you want to connect with, as opposed to a herd of leads you’re trying to corral into a one-size-fits-all box.

The more you segment your list, the more trust you build with your leads, and the easier it’ll be to convert them later.

How to Segment Email Lists

The first step in segmentation is creating separate lead magnets and opt-in forms for each part of the buyer’s journey. That way, your contacts are automatically divided into separate lists.

Beyond that, email marketing platforms allow you to segment your email list by contact data and behavior to help you send the right emails to the right people.

Here are some ways you could break up your list:

• Geographical location.
• Lifecycle stage.
• Awareness, consideration, and decision stage.
• Previous engagement with your brand.

In reality, you can segment your list any way that you want. Just make sure to be as exclusive as possible when sending emails to each subgroup.

2. A/B test your marketing emails.

Not all email lists are created equal. Some audiences prefer personalization, and others will think it’s spammy. Some audiences will like bright, eye-catching CTA buttons. Others will prefer a more subtle call-to-action.

You’ll never know what type of people make up your email list until you test the variables. That’s where A/B testing comes in handy.

“If you‘re considering making any structural or content alterations to your email marketing, A/B testing is an excellent way to determine if the changes will be successful or worthwhile before they’re implemented on a larger scale,” says Madison Zoey Vettorino, marketing manager and SEO content writer for HubSpot’s Website Blog.

Surprisingly, not many brands leverage it. A 2021 Litmus study found that 44% of marketers rarely A/B or multivariate test their emails. Only 19% do it often or always.

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Use this template to strategically organize your email marketing.

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5 Steps to Creating an Email Marketing Plan in 2024 + Examples

• March 18, 2024

Unlock the power of email like never before. 

This isn’t just another guide; it’s the key to transforming your email marketing plan into a powerhouse of engagement and conversion . 

Miss out on this, and you’re leaving untapped potential on the table. 

We’re diving deep into crafting a plan that doesn’t just reach inboxes but wins hearts and minds. 

Whether you’re looking to elevate your strategy or start strong, this article is your secret weapon.

Ready to supercharge your email marketing efforts? Don’t miss out.

What is an Email Marketing Plan?

An email marketing plan is your roadmap for engaging with your audience through carefully crafted email campaigns. It involves planning, creating, and executing strategies that encompass everything from developing an email marketing strategy to scheduling your emails for optimal impact .

This plan isn’t just about hitting send; it’s about ensuring each email campaign is thoughtfully designed to resonate with your audience and achieve your marketing goals. 

Whether you’re working with an email marketing plan template or drafting an email marketing campaign plan from scratch, the essence lies in understanding how to blend email marketing into your overall digital marketing strategy. 

By doing so, you create not just communication, but a meaningful experience that encourages your audience to connect with your brand.

Key Elements of an Effective Email Marketing Plan

Creating an effective email marketing plan isn’t just about ticking boxes; it’s about crafting a strategy that resonates with your audience and drives your business forward. To hit the mark, there are several key elements you need to weave into your plan. 

Let’s dive into what makes an email marketing strategy stand out:

Clear Objectives

Every successful email marketing plan starts with setting clear, measurable objectives . Identify what you want to accomplish with your email campaigns. Is it to increase website traffic, drive sales, or perhaps improve customer retention? 

Clear goals not only direct your efforts but also provide a benchmark for measuring success.

Understanding Your Audience

Deep dive into who your recipients are. This involves more than just knowing demographics; it’s about understanding their behaviors , preferences , and pain points . 

Use segmentation to tailor your messages according to subscribers’ interests or behaviors, making your emails more relevant and engaging.

Compelling Content

Content is what keeps your audience coming back for more. It should be informative , entertaining , or offer value in a way that speaks directly to the recipient’s needs or interests. 

From the subject line to the call to action, every piece of content should be crafted with the goal of engaging the reader and encouraging a response.

Optimized Sending Schedule

The timing of your emails can significantly affect their open and click-through rates. Analyze your audience’s online habits to determine the best time to send your emails . An optimized sending schedule ensures your emails have the best chance of being seen and acted upon.

Measurement and Analysis

Lastly, an effective email marketing plan relies on continuous measurement and analysis. Use analytics to track open rates, response rates , conversions, and more to gauge the performance of your campaigns. 

This ongoing analysis allows you to make informed decisions, tweak your strategy, and improve your email marketing effectiveness over time.

Here’s how you can craft an email marketing strategy plan that resonates and delivers:

Step 1: Set Your Goals

Begin with a clear vision of what you hope to achieve through your email marketing campaigns. Are you looking to drive more traffic to your website, increase sales during a particular season, or perhaps improve customer retention rates? 

Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals will not only guide your campaign direction but also offer a way to measure success. This clarity helps in tailoring your email marketing strategy plan to meet these objectives effectively.

Step 2: Know Your Audience

A deep understanding of your audience is crucial for effective email marketing. Gather data on your subscribers through lead magnets , sign-up forms, customer feedback , and engagement patterns. 

This data allows you to segment your audience into groups with similar interests, behaviors, and needs, making your email marketing planning more targeted and personalized . 

By addressing your audience’s specific concerns and preferences, you significantly increase the relevance and impact of your campaigns.

Step 3: Design Engaging Content

The content of your emails plays a pivotal role in engaging your audience and driving your desired outcomes. Focus on creating content that is not only interesting and informative but also resonates with your audience’s needs and desires.  

This could include helpful tips, exclusive offers, or insightful stories related to your products or services. The goal is to make every email so valuable that your subscribers look forward to receiving them. 

Pay attention to your subject lines and call-to-action (CTA) buttons, as these are critical in ensuring high open and click-through rates.

Step 4: Optimize Sending Times

The timing of your email sends can significantly influence the success of your campaigns. Analyzing your audience’s behavior to identify when they are most likely to open and engage with emails is key. 

This might involve testing different days of the week and times of day to discover what works best for your specific audience segments. An optimized email campaign schedule increases the likelihood of your emails being seen and acted upon.

Step 5: Measure and Adjust

No email marketing plan is complete without a mechanism for tracking performance and making adjustments based on insights gathered. Utilize analytics tools to measure email marketing KPIs such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates. 

This data not only helps you understand what’s working and what’s not but also guides your decisions for future campaigns. Regularly reviewing and adjusting your strategy based on these insights is essential for continuous improvement and achieving long-term email marketing success.

Why are Email Marketing Plans Important?

Understanding the importance of an email marketing plan can transform the way you connect with your audience and drive your business goals. It’s not just about sending emails; it’s about executing a well-thought-out strategy that brings tangible results.

Here are the key reasons why crafting a detailed email marketing plan is a game-changer:

• Strategic Alignment : Ensures every email aligns with your overall marketing goals, enhancing coherence and impact.
• Audience Segmentation : Enables personalized communication by understanding and addressing the specific needs of different audience segments.
• Efficient Execution : Provides a roadmap for timely and effective campaign execution, helping avoid last-minute rushes and inconsistencies.
• Data-driven Optimization : Facilitates ongoing analysis and tweaks based on campaign performance data, leading to continuous improvement.
• Adaptability to Trends : Keeps your email marketing efforts up-to-date with the latest digital marketing trends and consumer preferences, maintaining relevance and engagement.

This approach not only sharpens your marketing efforts but also ensures that every email sent out serves a purpose, enriching your relationship with your audience.

Email Marketing Plan Examples

When it comes to email marketing, seeing real-world examples can be incredibly illuminating. They not only provide inspiration but also showcase best practices in action. 

Let’s walk through a couple of email marketing plan examples that highlight different strategies and outcomes.

Welcome Series Campaign

Imagine signing up for a newsletter and immediately receiving a warm, engaging welcome email. This is the first step in a welcome series campaign, designed to introduce new subscribers to your brand , offer valuable content, and set the tone for future communications. 

The subsequent emails might include a mix of educational content, product highlights, and exclusive offers, each meticulously scheduled to nurture the relationship and gently guide the subscriber towards their first purchase.

Here’s an email marketing plan example:

Seasonal Promotion Campaign

Now picture a seasonal promotion campaign that kicks off with a teaser email, building anticipation for an upcoming sale or event. Following emails dive deeper, revealing exclusive offers, showcasing featured products, and sharing customer testimonials to boost credibility. 

The campaign culminates in a last-chance email, creating a sense of urgency to drive action. Each email is carefully planned to capture interest and maximize engagement throughout the promotional period.

Re-engagement Campaign

Consider a re-engagement campaign targeting subscribers who’ve been inactive . The kick-off email might say, “We miss you,” coupled with an exclusive offer or news on the latest updates. Subsequent emails could showcase bestsellers or share compelling stories, all aiming to reignite interest. 

This campaign uses personalized content and strategic timing to reconnect with lapsed subscribers, showing how a focused email marketing plan can effectively re-engage your audience.

Frequently Asked Questions About Email Marketing Plan

When diving into the world of email marketing, it’s natural to have a ton of questions. After all, crafting a killer email marketing plan is both an art and a science. Let’s tackle some frequently asked questions that we haven’t covered yet, giving you a clearer path forward.

How often should I update my email marketing plan?

Updating your email marketing plan isn’t a one-time task; it’s an ongoing process . The digital landscape evolves rapidly, and so do your subscribers’ preferences. A good rule of thumb is to review and adjust your plan quarterly . 

This doesn’t mean overhauling everything every three months but rather refining your strategy based on what’s working and what’s not. Keep an eye on industry trends, subscriber feedback, and performance metrics. 

Are open rates declining? Maybe it’s time to freshen up your subject lines or segment your list more effectively. Have new competitors emerged? Consider how you can differentiate your content to stay ahead.

How do I balance promotional content with educational or entertaining content?

Finding the right balance between promotional and non-promotional content is key to keeping your subscribers engaged and avoiding the dreaded unsubscribe button. 

A popular guideline is the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should inform, educate, or entertain your audience, while only 20% should directly promote your products or services. 

This balance ensures that your subscribers find value in your emails, making them more receptive to your promotional messages when they do appear. Remember, the goal of your email marketing plan is to build a relationship with your audience, not just sell to them.

What's the best way to measure the success of my email marketing plan?

Measuring the success of your email marketing plan goes beyond tracking response and click-through rates . While these metrics provide a snapshot of engagement, you should also consider conversion rates , email sharing and forwarding rates , and the growth rate of your email list. 

Conversion rates help you understand how effectively your emails are driving subscribers to take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a webinar. Email sharing and forwarding rates indicate the quality and relevancy of your content. 

A growing email list suggests your lead generation efforts are effective, but pay attention to the rate of unsubscribes as well. Together, these metrics offer a comprehensive view of your email marketing plan’s performance, helping you identify areas for improvement and opportunities to capitalize on.

Key Takeaways on Email Marketing Plan

Embarking on your email marketing journey can seem complex, but with a clear plan, it transforms into an engaging adventure . Throughout our discussion, we’ve highlighted the essentials of crafting a successful email marketing plan.

We emphasized focusing on understanding your audience, delivering the right mix of content, and the significance of ongoing measurement and adaptation.

Here’s the essence: Knowing your audience is crucial—it informs every aspect of your strategy, ensuring that your messages hit home. Striking a balance between educational and promotional content keeps your emails fresh and your audience engaged. 

And measuring your success goes beyond opens and clicks; it’s about understanding the impact of your efforts and adjusting accordingly.

Remember, flexibility is key . As you refine your strategy, staying attuned to your audience’s changing needs and preferences will keep your email marketing efforts resonant and effective. 

Keep it focused, keep it relevant, and most importantly, keep it valuable. This way, your email marketing doesn’t just communicate; it connects.

Edgar Abong

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Last Updated on March 18, 2024 by Edgar Abong

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Sep 12, 2022

The Ultimate Email Marketing Guide for Beginners (And Free Calendar)

• Email Marketing

Written by Clodagh O’Brien

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing and there’s a reason for that  - it works! Using the power of email , businesses can connect with customers, build brand awareness, encourage brand loyalty, and nurture prospects to become paying customers. 

Since the coronavirus pandemic, email has become even more important to consumers as a way to keep up with brands. DMA’s Consumer Email Tracker 2021 report found that for the first time, the relevance of received messages (55 percent) became the main reason consumers like brand emails, surpassing discounts and offers (53 percent).

But while email marketing may seem like a simple channel to use, there’s an art and science to using it successfully . In this blog, we’ll look at the nuts and bolts of email marketing and give you great examples to gain inspiration for kickstarting your campaigns. 

What is email marketing?

The definition of email marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses email to promote products or services to potential or existing customers. 

Email marketing is an essential channel leveraged by B2C and B2B companies to build brand awareness, grow customer loyalty and drive conversions.  

Why is email marketing important?

Email marketing is one of the most profitable direct marketing channels, with Statista projecting global revenue from email to reach $17.9 billion by 2027. That’s a lot of companies using email successfully! 

Let’s look at three of the most important aspects of email marketing for your business. 

1) Data collection

One of the key reasons companies leverage email is for data collection. As third-party cookies are phased out , getting email subscribers is a great way to collect personal data from people who are interested in your business with consent.

With consumers wanting to protect their information, businesses need to adhere to data privacy regulations such as GDPR or CCPA. Email uses first-party data to collect information in a way that builds brand loyalty and awareness.   

2) Inbound marketing

Email can also help you to attract prospects and leads by using relevant content. So, how can email marketing fuel your overall inbound marketing strategy ?   

Email is a great way to engage with prospects who have already shown an interest in your company, product, or service. They do this by opting in or signing up as a subscriber to a newsletter.  

The nature of using email for inbound marketing means that your leads are warmer as they have greater intent and interest in your business. It also means the Return on Investment is higher and costs can be lower as inbound email lists tend to have lower subscribers. 

3) Personalization

As you know who you are making contact with, content and messaging can be segmented and personalized using email. This means you can group lists in a variety of ways by people who:

• Show an interest in a particular product or service
• Have specific preferences e.g. they like cats!
• Are based in the same location
• Are a specific age and gender

The more you know about your customers or prospects the easier it will be to write a prospecting email that gets replies ! It’s not about bombarding your lists however, be clever about the frequency and make sure you A/B test subject lines and content to see what resonates. 

How to get email marketing lists?

With so many benefits to email, it’s no wonder that companies are looking to start or build their lists. There are several ways to do this.

• Use CTAs - Use clear and directed calls to action (CTAs) on your website or landing pages to urge people to sign up for email updates 
• Use social media - If you use any social media channels, let your users know that you have an email list for special offers or exclusives  
• Offer free downloads - People love freebies, so think about offering a free downloadable ebook or whitepaper  
• Use pop-ups or forms - Pop-ups or forms are common across websites and urge people to give their email addresses to find out more   
• Run a competition - Competitions are a great way to get people to provide personal information, just make sure the offer is enticing enough!
• Advertise a special offer - A discount or a two-for-one offer can urge people to join your email list 
• Offer a blog subscription - If you have a blog, consider setting up a subscriber list to get the latest content. Find out how to start a blog if that sounds like a fit for your business. 
• Get customers involved - You can give existing customers a referral incentive e.g get 20 percent off your next purchase if a friend signs up 
• Ask for feedback - As part of a feedback or testimonial form, ask people to opt-in to email   
• Host a webinar or podcast - These offer high value and people will provide information when signing up 
• Create a newsletter - This can be a good way to keep people up-to-date on new development, discounts or competitions    
• Just ask! - Sometimes it is simply about spreading the word and asking for an email address, you may be surprised how many people like your brand 😊  

How to do email marketing: Step-by-step guide

Now that you know the value of email and how to start and bolster your email lists, how do you create and implement an email marketing campaign?  

Collate a list

When you create an email campaign, the key metrics for success are the growth and quality of the subscriber list. You should look at creating lists that are segmented by type. That can be by audience, preference, or category but avoid putting every contact into one pot and hoping it will work! 

Look at what prospects or customers you want to engage and why. Then collate an email list using Excel or your email marketing tool. Label each list clearly so you can find them again easily and also track performance. 

Choose an email marketing tool

There are a lot of email marketing tools out there. So you need to do your research and choose the best one for your business. 

Some tools are free to start using and then charge by the number of contacts in your database. This is why keeping on top of your lists is important as you’ll be paying for each one: so be prepared to audit your lists regularly. A few tools to look into are:

• Marketo 
• GetResponse

Check out ‘A Practical Guide to the Top Email Marketing Automation Tools’ to find out how to choose the right one for you. 

Plan an email workflow

A workflow is a series of automated emails that are put in a certain order to nurture a prospect or guide a customer to take a certain action. There are a few steps required to set one up:

• Set a goal for your workflow - For example, it could be to convert prospects to enter a free trial
• Create enrollment criteria - This decides who enters the workflow by the settings you choose. For example, it could be anyone who downloaded a specific ebook
• Decide on your email assets - This could be a CTA to drive someone to a blog or a custom landing page for a free trial sign-up
• Create your emails - Once you know your goal and have the assets in place, think about each step in the journey and the touchpoints 
• Include a time delay -  i.e. space the first and second email with a day in-between
• Run a test - Always run a test using a test email before activating any workflow to make sure everything is correct

Make your workflow live and keep an eye on it! - Check-in daily to see that your flows are working and the right people are being added to it. Make any changes or tweaks as soon as possible.  

Plan a calendar

An email calendar is like an editorial or social media calendar . It’s about planning the frequency and audience regularly to target prospects and customers. 

Decide on how often you want to communicate with certain segments or groups and set goals for each campaign. Tracking your email marketing activities by date will help you to see who you are targeting and when. 

You also need to keep times and days in mind when sending. Some will work better than others depending on your audience e.g on a commute or first thing in the morning. Test these out to see what works for your lists. 

Plan your Email Campaigns

Download our handy calendar template below to get started right away with planning your email campaigns into 2023! It includes a list of key holidays you can plan for and a color coded key to help you organize your campaigns to the max.

Write email copy

Now to the most important bit - the content of the email. As a marketer, you should know your buyer personas or ideal customer/s and understand their pain points. If so, then you’ll be able to target messaging in a way that prompts a click on an email. 

With an email, the subject line is super important as it’s the first thing a person sees in their inbox. Think about A/B testing subject lines with certain groups to compare performance and see if it can guide your copy. 

It’s also key to keep your messaging clear and succinct and use CTAs to direct people to take an action. Use a content and copywriting checklist to keep your messaging clear and focused when writing every single marketing email.

Tip: Check out ‘The Anatomy of an Effective Marketing Email’ to find out all the elements to include to implement a successful email campaign. 

Press the send button

Now you’ve done all the hard work, it’s time to see how your email does in the real world. 

Test before you send (check copy, subject lines, images and ensure your links work), and then let it free! 

Beginner-friendly email marketing campaign examples

When you’re starting it can seem overwhelming to figure out how to set up an email campaign and what content to include. There is a range of different types of email to keep in mind (depending on your goals) when crafting your campaigns:

• Awareness building - new product, welcome, announcement
• Lead generation - downloadable asset, blog article, custom landing page
• Nurture - new offer, additional product, reminder
• Traffic generation - relevant blog article, trial or offer on the website
• Revenue generating - conversion 

Here are a few examples of good email campaigns from some interesting brands, to inspire you. 

Plochman’s - Welcome email

American mustard company Plochman’s crafted an eye-catching and on-brand color email to welcome new sign-ups. The simple header text ‘Hey, you made it!’ grabs attention and leads onto ‘Thanks for the sign-up, glad you’re here. Now onto the good stuff’.

This intro keeps a recipient interested and tells them there’s more information if you scroll down. The first CTA is ‘Buy it’ in relation to their product followed by recipes on how to use the product. It’s a great example of how to craft a succinct and action-orientated email. 

NerdWallet - Nurture email

Personal finance company, NerdWallet uses email to nurture prospects so they can entice people back who have shown an interest in their service. This example above leads with an enticing headline ‘New ways to get more from your money’ along with including the text ‘New and tailored to you’ to drive personalization. 

The email then uses clear and clever copy to entice people to click on clear actions - ‘Set your goals’ and ‘Start saving’ an attractive opportunity for most people. Clean and colorful imagery also helps to draw the eye with the predominant green, keeping it on brand. 

Apple - Specific audience offer email

Apple is no stranger to email marketing and this example targets a specific segment - those starting or returning to college. 

The email offers free AirPods with every purchase of a Mac or iPad along with a 20 percent saving on Apple Care.  It not only serves to persuade someone to purchase their laptop from Apple but also accessories and additional warranty and technical support. 

The targeted and specific nature of this email will help drive click-through and traffic generation.  

AutoTrader - re-engagement email

Automotive sales expert AutoTrader uses the email below to reach out to sign-ups or subscribers that are lapsed or disengaged. 

It offers people the opportunity to update their preferences (to enable tailored messaging) but also to be in line with new UK privacy laws that not everyone would yet be familiar with. The simple CTA ‘Stay subscribed’ makes it easy for recipients to re-engage with the brand. 

Willo - Event invitation email

As a start-up, oral health company Willo uses email to engage its database. This example is used to invite their email list to an event featuring speakers. 

The headline ‘Virtual Happy Hour vol. 1’ infers nothing to do with the brand or product but takes a lighthearted approach in its communications. 

The light background makes the blue text stand out and highlights the speakers under the CTA which is simply ‘RSVP now’. It also offers a free product to drive engagement and sign-ups in the main text.  

Airbnb - New product email

When Airbnb launched a new app, it used the opportunity to contact its email database to drive traffic and raise awareness. 

The email features high-spec images of accommodations in the header image followed by introductory text that uses keywords like ‘new experience' and ‘dive right in’ - perfect for interested travelers. 

It then goes on to list Airbnb categories with links to each, from treehouses to beachfront or surfing homes. The CTA is simple and perfect for the audience - ‘Start exploring’. 

Email marketing FAQs

Let's look at some on the most commonly asked questions as email marketing. 

When is the best time to send marketing emails?

Establishing the best times to send emails could be a question of testing different days and times with your various audiences. 

According to OptinMonster , Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send business emails. In terms of times there are some that tend to work best:

• 8 am to engage people first thing in the morning
• 1 pm during/after a lunch break
• 4 pm is when people may have some downtime or be surfing online
• 6 pm as it is during/or after an evening commute

However, there is no set time that’s best. The most effective way to find out is through trial and error with your databases. 

What is a good open rate for email marketing?

The open rate of an email is the percentage of subscribers who open a specific email out of your total number of subscribers.

According to Campaign Monitor’s 2022 Email Marketing Benchmarks Report , the average email open rate was 21.5 percent across all industries, up 3.5 percent from? 2020. Here’s a breakdown of industries by open rate with the highest being advertising and marketing, agriculture, and consumer goods.

What is A/B testing in email?

A/B testing , also known as split testing, is a way of comparing two versions of an email against each other to determine which one performs better. Variables in an email can be the subject line, CTAs or content. 

The key is to perform one test at a time to gauge results. If you try two or more elements you won’t know why one test worked better than another. Also, set up your goals in advance so your test drives the right metric e.g higher open rates.  

If you need some guidance, download our A/B Testing toolkit to find out how to carry out A/B testing and get blank templates to help plan your own campaigns. 

How much does email marketing cost?

Aside from platform cost, you may want to hire an email specialist if you need more expertise in-house or rely on email for sales and revenue. 

If you don't have a budget for a specialist, it’s best to complete a course that can give you the fundamentals and guide you with your email campaigns. Otherwise, you may end up spending more time undoing mistakes or starting over.  

How can I get started on email marketing?

Start using email straight away to engage and convert prospects into paying customers. DMI’s Email Marketing course is a certified online course made up of four modules that cover data strategy, crafting content and managing time, creativity and designing content and testing, optimization and automation. Sign up today to get started! 

• The Art & Science of Email Marketing
• Grow Your Email Marketing Database in a Day (The Loveable, Inbound Way)
• A Practical Guide to Email Marketing Metrics
• Webinar: Email Marketing Strategy - The Ultimate Blueprint

Related Free Video Lessons

• Email Marketing Data Capture
• Marketing Automation Marketing Automation Fundamentals
• Email Marketing Strategy Email Open Rates
• Web and Email Email Marketing and the Customer Journey

Related Content

Toolkits: email campaign calendar 2024, toolkits: email planner & tracker, toolkits: email marketing interview preparation toolkit, articles: how to write a marketing email, articles: 10 cost-effective email marketing examples, articles: how to use marketing automation tools effectively, clodagh o’brien.

Clodagh O'Brien is a content creator and strategist. Over the last 12 years, she has created and managed content for many SMEs and global brands. She's passionate about digital marketing and the impact of technology on culture and society. You can find her on  Twitter  or  LinkedIn .  

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Marketing | Ultimate Guide

Email Marketing for Small Business: Overview, Costs & Benefits

Published November 6, 2023

Published Nov 6, 2023

REVIEWED BY: Elizabeth Kraus

WRITTEN BY: Hazel Emnace

• 1 What Email Marketing Is
• 2 How Email Campaigns Are Deployed
• 3 How to Use Email in Overall Marketing Plan
• 4 Email Marketing Costs
• 5 Benefits of Email Marketing

Email marketing isn’t just a buzzword or a passing trend. It’s a tried-and-true strategy known to help brands reach more people effectively, even for small businesses with limited resources. Below you’ll find an overview of email marketing for a small business, including some of the nuances of how campaigns work, where they fit in your marketing plan, and what you’ll need to budget for.

Overview (What Is Email Marketing?)

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that covers all activities related to using email as a communication tool for promoting your small business. It has the overarching goal of reaching and engaging with a target audience, but also supports customer service, sales, retention, and more.

It’s a long-term strategy that involves managing an email list, planning email marketing campaigns, creating email copy, deployment, and analyzing results. While often thought of as limited to mass email blasts or newsletters, it actually involves so much more. As such, success often hinges on choosing reliable email marketing software to send out targeted, personalized, and relevant email marketing campaigns made easy with automation.

What Is an Email Marketing Campaign?

An email marketing campaign is a focused effort in email marketing. It involves sending one or a series of emails to accomplish a specific business goal. Examples of business goals for email marketing campaigns include promoting a product, building brand presence , nurturing prospect and customer relationships, increasing loyalty and retention, and collecting valuable customer data.

Here are the common characteristics of a good email marketing campaign:

• Focused: Focus on a specific goal, such as promoting a product launch, gathering customer feedback, or re-engaging inactive subscribers. Ensure that all elements of the campaign align with this central goal.
• Strategic and targeted: Consider how to segment your audience, time your email frequency, and position your messaging for the entire campaign.
• Timed right: Campaigns often have a defined time frame or schedule, with a clear start and end date. It can revolve around a promotion (e.g., start an email promotion for a holiday sale a month before the holiday and end a day after the holiday), customer journey (e.g., start a welcome email upon sign-up and end after three unsuccessful attempts to get them to make a purchase), or event.

How Email Marketing Campaigns Are Deployed (3 Ways)

There are three main ways to execute an email marketing strategy: email marketing software, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and professional email marketing services. The type that is best for you will depend on your unique needs, budget, and goals.

Here are the three primary types of email marketing tools:

1. Email Marketing & Automation Software

Mailchimp’s email design interface for opt-in email marketing campaigns (Source: Mailchimp )

Email marketing software gives businesses an easy way to build, execute, and manage email campaigns. These platforms generally include features for contact list management, email design, automation, A/B testing, and user analytics. There are many different platforms available, and many offer free and low-cost plans.

Here’s an overview of four popular email marketing software platforms and who they are best for:

If you’re just starting to consider adding email marketing to your operation, you don’t have to go out and spend a lot of money. You can test the waters using one of these f ree email marketing software platforms before stepping up to a paid plan. But if email is working for you, you’ll definitely want to upgrade.

2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

HubSpot CRM’s native email marketing tools (Source: HubSpot )

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are platforms that give businesses a way to manage contacts and foster connections, including through email marketing tools. CRMs provide an all-in-one lead nurturing solution—so those looking to nurture contacts using email marketing will find it a good solution. The top platforms include HubSpot, Freshsales, and Zoho, with costs from $0 to $50 or more per month.

Transactional emails are the main use case for CRM-based email deployment. These are automated emails that provide users with information related to their transactions with a company. Common transactional emails include order confirmations, shipping notifications, and purchase receipts.

Here are three of the top CRM software providers for opt-in email marketing:

3. Full-Service Email Marketing Management

Agencies cover strategy, implementation, and optimization for email marketing. (Source: Lyfe Marketing )

Professional email marketing services are available to those who want to outsource email marketing to experts. Agencies will strategize, design, manage, and optimize campaigns, yielding a higher return on investment with higher conversion rates. This service is typically available from marketing agencies, and pricing varies by provider and services rendered.

Here are three of the top email marketing management services for those wanting an outsourced solution:

When choosing which email marketing tool or service to use, consider your budget, time available, and marketing expertise. While it can be appealing to opt for the cheapest option, many find that email marketing is time-consuming and requires a certain degree of marketing knowledge, making outsourced managed services a worthwhile investment.

How to Use Email in Your Overall Marketing Plan

For the most impact, integrate email into other parts of your marketing plan. Not only will this maximize your return on investment (ROI) for email marketing, but it also creates a more seamless customer experience. You can use email to strengthen your efforts for website marketing, SMS (text) marketing, direct mail marketing, and even search engine optimization (SEO) content marketing.

Website Marketing

Nowadays, a business website is seen as one of the primary hubs for engaging with your target audience and showcasing brand identity. This is the reason why website marketing is one of the initial strategies for building brand presence and visibility online, right off the bat.

To incorporate email in your website marketing strategies, use email blasts and newsletters with links to valuable blog content, product pages, or exclusive on-site offers to direct traffic to your website. Another way to use website and email marketing together is to collect email addresses with pop-up forms right from your website to grow your email contact list.

SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is a fast and easy way to get the word out on your brand announcements. Combining SMS and email marketing not only strengthens both campaigns, it is also an opportunity to reinforce your brand identity to your target audience with consistent branding or messaging. Plus, many email marketing platforms now have SMS text marketing add-ons, making it easy for you to manage both strategies from one app.

Use emails for more in-depth content while using SMS for shorter messages, like timely alerts or reminders. Like in the example below, SMS is often used by businesses as a reminder before a sale starts. An email usually should be sent beforehand to announce the sale, along with a link to the sale page. The follow-up SMS reminder creates anticipation and urgency around the original email content.

Sample SMS message to remind customers of an upcoming sale. (Source: Message Media )

Direct Mail Marketing

Direct mail marketing and email can work hand in hand to create a personalized marketing experience. Although some may think that having both traditional and digital marketing strategies can be overboard, having multiple touch points helps reinforce your brand message—and, it’s an additional opportunity to add a personal touch to your campaigns.

A good synergy of email and direct mail marketing is to collect mailing addresses and preferences, then send targeted direct mail pieces to your target audience to complement a digital marketing effort. For example, send out welcome emails and then double down with a welcome discount voucher sent through direct mail.

Another option is to send a personalized thank-you email to customers who make a purchase, and include an option to receive a handwritten “thank-you” note via direct mail. This adds a personal touch and strengthens the customer relationship. Get more direct mail marketing ideas to partner with your email marketing strategy.

SEO Content Marketing

Email and search engine optimized (SEO) content marketing are a dynamic duo. A content marketing campaign refers to a set of pieces designed for a specific purpose, such as when a new product or service is rolled out. You can then raise the visibility of this content through email by sending out email newsletters or infographics to your contact list.

For instance, if you publish a comprehensive guide on a topic related to your industry, use email marketing to announce its release. Make it even more compelling by providing a teaser of the content. You can even incorporate some sort of social media marketing by including social sharing buttons directly inside the email to encourage readers to share your content on different platforms.

Ready to get started? Read our guide explaining how to create an email marketing plan in five steps, including free templates you can use to build and run your strategy.

How Much Does Email Marketing Cost

From the deployment options above, it’s easy to understand that the cost of email marketing varies widely, from free email software to thousands of dollars per month with managed services. However, the availability of free and low-cost tools makes it accessible for every business size and budget.

There are three primary costs for email marketing: email marketing platforms ($0 to $50 per month), expenses associated with designing email graphics ($5 to $1,000-plus per project), and professional email marketing services (from $300 to $500-plus a month or as low as $5 per project with freelancers). In addition, your costs will vary widely depending on whether you do email marketing in-house or choose to outsource.

Average Cost of Email Marketing for Small Business

Here are more details on the primary costs associated with email marketing:

• Email marketing software: Platforms like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and HubSpot make it easy for anyone to create, deploy, and manage permission-based email marketing . While costs vary by provider, many offer free plans and premium plans starting around $12 to $20 per month.
• Design: Expenses related to graphic design vary depending on whether you are creating your own graphics or outsourcing to a professional. Those with graphic design experience can use free tools like Canva or software like Photoshop for around $20 per month. Those who want to leave it to a pro may hire a freelancer for as little as $5 to $15 with Fiverr or spend up to $1,000 for designs created by an agency.
• Managed services: If you lack the time or expertise, you can outsource email marketing to top digital marketing agencies like WebFX and LYFE Marketing for $300 to $500 per month to start, minus any upfront costs for email design. Alternatively, you can leverage email marketing expertise from freelance professionals from sites like Fiverr on a project-by-project basis for anywhere from $10 to $100 per email campaign.

The average small business will find email marketing to be an affordable marketing channel, with an average expense per month anywhere from $0 to $100 to create their own email campaigns using online tools and platforms. While many small businesses prefer the most affordable option, in some cases, it’s worth considering a managed service for those struggling to reach their marketing goals and get a higher return on investment.

Benefits of Email Marketing for Small Businesses

Email is a tried-and-true marketing strategy, and it’s one of the most effective strategies for nearly all business types year in and year out. Not only is it fairly easy to execute, but it’s also a highly affordable strategy for reaching various goals, from generating and fostering leads, sharing news and content to stay top of mind, and directly marketing products or services.

Here are seven benefits of email marketing for small businesses:

• Affordable: Email marketing is very affordable. Mailchimp, HubSpot, and several other top email marketing platforms offer free starter plans and low-cost plans averaging from about $10 to $50 per month.
• Highly effective: Despite being cheap and easy to do, email marketing is also effective. Nearly 60% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers say email marketing is their most effective marketing channel for generating revenue. Year in and year out, email produces one of the highest returns on investment and the lowest cost-per-lead or sale of any marketing channel.
• Easy: Email marketing software makes it very easy to design emails without any special design expertise, schedule campaigns to send automatically at a specific date and time, conduct A/B test campaigns to improve results, and monitor email interactions and user data.
• Ideal for fostering relationships: Businesses can use email marketing to foster relationships with prospects to drive sales, with existing customers to stay top of mind, with lapsed customers to get re-engagement, and more.
• Great for nurturing leads: Email campaigns are a proven way to drive leads through the sales funnel and stay top of mind. For example, ecommerce stores often use abandoned cart emails to encourage contacts to return and finalize a purchase.
• Perfect for sharing news and content: A good way to share news and published content like blog posts and different types of press releases are through email marketing. It keeps people in the know with what’s going on, from new products and services to corporate news, so it reaches a wider audience and gets more views.
• Ability to market products or services: Email marketing gives businesses a direct way to market products and services to their contact list. Unlike ads that may or may not reach a target audience, email campaigns land in your contacts’ inbox. It’s a good way to share exclusive discounts and promotions as well as info about products and services.

But don’t just take our word for it. Statistics show that email marketing for small businesses continues to be one of the most effective digital marketing strategies:

• Email marketing produces an impressive $36 in return on investment for every dollar spent, more than any other marketing channel.
• Email marketing remains highly relevant today, as 77% of marketers saw an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months.
• Additionally, a report by Statista in 2021 predicts $11 billion in email marketing revenue by the end of 2023.
• OptinMonster (2020) found that 99% of email users check their inbox every day , with some checking 20 times a day.

If you’re still not sure whether email marketing will work for you, read our full list of email marketing statistics for small businesses . Not only will these convince you of the benefits of email marketing for small businesses, but you’ll also find insights to improve the performance of your overall email marketing strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is email marketing good for a small business.

Email marketing is highly effective for a small business since it’s cost-efficient and can be personalized to further improve campaign performance. With a successful email marketing campaign, small businesses can reach a high-quality audience, engage with their readers, build customer relationships, and, ultimately, drive conversions. Lastly, email marketing software allows you to track results, making it a valuable tool for small business growth.

How can I use email to promote my business?

To promote your business through email, the most important aspects are branding and a clear call to action (CTA). Start by building a quality email list. Then, create engaging, relevant content (both in the subject line and actual email content) to keep readers interested. Make sure to create these with consistent branding elements such as your brand colors, logo, and messaging. Finally, add in a clear CTA such as a link to your website or social media buttons.

What types of emails do small businesses use?

Small businesses use various types of email marketing, depending on the goal. This ranges from promotional emails offering discounts, to loyalty emails, cross-selling, product launches, corporate announcements, and more. Newsletter emails, welcome emails, and transactional emails are also common types of emails that small businesses use to promote their brand.

Bottom Line

Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies for small businesses. Not only is it cost-effective, but it also allows personalization, automation for streamlining email activities, and even synergy with other marketing strategies such as website or direct mail marketing. Most importantly, email marketing produces positive and measurable results that small businesses can use to fuel their growth.

If you’re ready to get started, we recommend you consider Constant Contact. It’s known for ease of use, great templates, valuable analytics and insights, and easy integration with customer relationship management (CRM) and ecommerce software, alongside email and SMS in your marketing mix. Try it out for free today.

Visit Constant Contact

About the Author

Find Hazel On LinkedIn

Hazel Emnace

Hazel Emnace is determined to provide all businesses an equal opportunity to thrive in the digital world. Her background of experience includes digital marketing in the USA, Australia, South East Asia, and New Zealand. Driven by a thirst for growth, she enjoys writing helpful articles on marketing strategies and tools. She strengthens her expertise by consistently researching and assessing social media algorithms, AI marketing software, and marketing trends.

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How to build your email marketing strategy (steps & examples), share this article.

A full guide to email marketing strategy so you can start nurturing and converting your customers to take your business to the next level.

In a world where everyone is scrambling to hop on the newest social media trend, it’s easy to forget how powerful (and essential!) an email marketing strategy is for business.

With a $42 return on every $1 you spend , email is still the most effective channel for generating revenue. 

In 2022, most emails will be opened on smartphones, allowing you to reach your ideal customers directly. Also, people are more selective about who they let into their inboxes, which makes them less cluttered than channels like social media. With the right email marketing strategy, sequences and funnels, you can drive customer engagement for your business, create additional revenue streams, and continuously drive sales.

So, you can breathe a sigh of relief that your business doesn’t need to constantly hop on every TikTok dance trend to acquire new customers.  By focusing on key email marketing activities like building your email list, nurturing subscribers, and building conversion funnels, your business has the opportunity to continuously generate leads and drive sales—even if you don’t have a large team or budget.

In this post, we’re sharing the most effective email marketing strategies for businesses looking to generate leads and revenue so you can start nurturing and converting customers. 

Here’s what you’ll learn:

How To Select the Right Email Marketing Platform

Capturing email subscriber info with email form fields.

• Designing Your Emails for Campaign Success 
• Email Copy: Tips for Writing Conversion-focused Emails and Funnels 
• Creating A Gated Asset (Lead Magnet) To Entice New Subscribers
• How To Build an Engaged Email List of Potential Customers
• Quick and Dirty Tips for Keeping Your Emails Compliant

Step 1: Segment your email list

Step 2: create (and test) automated email sequences and funnels, step 3: set up email triggers, step 4: set up contact tags, step 5: practice good email hygiene with list scrubbing.

• A/B testing

Reporting: Email KPIs To Pay Attention To

The bottom line on maximizing the performance of your email marketing campaigns, strategies for maximizing email marketing campaign performance.

Every email marketing strategy starts with a marketing automation platform. You can not only execute all critical email tasks from one window, but the right platform will also ensure you stay compliant with email regulations.

If you’re overwhelmed by the sheer amount of email marketing platforms available, it’s understandable. Marketing technology is an exploding industry, expanding 24 percent over the past two years with a whopping 9,932 solutions ranging from analytics to video platforms. 

If your business is looking for a new email marketing automation platform, here’s how to make the selection process easier so you can get back to focusing on growing your revenue and acquiring new customers:  

Consider your unique business model and goals first.

Ask yourself and your team what you want to get out of your email marketing automation platform and how you will likely use it now and in the future as your business or organization continues to scale. 

Common marketing goals for automation include:

• Acquiring more high-quality leads
• Creating upsell and cross-sell opportunities
• Preventing leaks from your sales funnel
• Boosting the lifetime value of existing customers
• Building more advocates and loyal customers

Narrow down the Marketing Automation options with the features you need

Use this handy checklist as you do your own research or meet with different vendors. 

• Functionality: Is there one email marketing function you need to be done really well? Or do you need support across multiple different marketing tasks? Does the platform deliver on your must-haves?
• Customizability: How much control do you want over the design and layout of your emails? Will you be relying on pre-built templates? Or do you need advanced customization?
• Management: Do you need a platform that a single person or lean team can operate? Or do you have a bigger marketing team with a dedicated resource who can manage the system and your contact data?
• Simplicity: Do you have the time and resources to learn a more robust system, or do you need an out-of-the-box solution you can start using in minutes? Do you need a drag-and-drop editor? Or would you rather dive into the HTML code?
• Ease of use: Is the interface intuitive, clean, and easy to navigate? Can you easily find the tools and options you need to do your job?
• Reports: Do you need reporting in real-time? Does it capture the metrics that are most important to your business? Are reports run automatically or do they require manual work?
• Niche: Does an all-purpose system include the metrics and features you’re looking for? Are there options built specifically for your industry that better understand and support the unique tasks and reporting needs that you have?
• Price: What tiers of pricing are available? How is pricing structured – by the number of contacts, message volume or flat-rate subscription? What added features cost more? How will pricing change as you grow in size?
• Scalability: Do you have room to grow into the platform if you need to add new features in the future? How will it accommodate your audience as it grows?
• Support: Are customer support staff responsive and knowledgeable? How can you contact them – by phone, email or chat? Do they offer self-support options like tutorials and guides?
• Integrations: How will your marketing automation software fit into your existing tech stack? How can you connect it to existing platforms like your CRM or your website?

The most fundamental step in any email marketing strategy is collecting email addresses and subscriber information to build your email list. Your marketing automation platform will automatically compile these subscribers so that you can begin building relationships with them! 

What is an email form?

You’ll collect email addresses via an email form (also known as an opt-in form) that collects information from subscribers. Email forms are a very secure way of collecting information from your prospects and customers, and they’re one of the main building blocks of your marketing.

What are form fields?

You can use several forms within your email marketing strategy, but the most simple forms include two fields: one for their name and another for their email address. Depending on your strategy, you can create email forms that require as much information about the subscriber as possible.

Which form fields should you include?

The more fields you include on your email form, the more information you’ll get on your customer, which allows you to market to them more effectively. 

For example, suppose your course is about helping busy professionals with productivity. In that case, you can include form fields that ask about their lifestyle, like the size of their family and what industry they work in. The information you gather from these fields will allow you to tailor your emails and promotions to topics that pertain to them based on their answers.

Be careful not to make your forms too long and detailed. Often, people are too busy to fill out lengthy forms. Some people may be uncomfortable sharing personal information. To get more people into your marketing funnel, you should prioritize a frictionless process while considering user experience.

Designing Your Emails for Campaign Success

The way your audience experiences your emails is critical to the success of your marketing efforts. How your emails look, how easy they are to read, and how they’re structured all impact deliverability, click-through, and open rates.

Here are email design best practices that will ensure your marketing emails are nurturing your audience and converting: 

• Choose one topic and CTA per email One of the most common mistakes marketers (especially course marketers) is covering too many topics and sharing too much information in an email. To avoid confusing or overwhelming your readers, each of your emails should have one clear message and one clear request. If a topic you’re covering is complex, consider breaking the emails into an anticipation-building series.
• Keep your email length between 50-125 words.  While not every email has to stay beneath this word limit, you should make your emails as succinct as possible. The shorter your email is, the more likely it will be read in its entirety.
• Keep the most important parts of the email at the beginning People spend an average of ten seconds reading marketing emails. In other words, readers are not patient enough to read all the way until the end to get what they need from your email. You have to hook them by front-loading the most important info so they can get value from your emails, even when they’re short on time.
• Make your email readable with line breaks and visuals  Write for readability. Break text into paragraphs that are no longer than three sentences. Use headings and bulleted lists to make your content easily skimmable. Add visuals like pictures, infographics, gifs, and memes to grab attention and keep your audience reading.
• Stick to simple colors Choose just one or two colors for your emails.  Typically you’ll use your brand colors. The fewer colors you use, the cleaner your design will look, preventing the reader from being distracted from the content.

Email Copy: Tips for Writing Conversion-focused Emails and Funnels  

So, what do you write in your marketing emails to inform, inspire, and convert your audience into paying customers? The key is not to jump right into writing. First, you need to understand the core philosophy and marketing goals behind the emails you write. 

An email marketing strategy usually has two main goals:

• Inbound Marketing
• Outbound Sales

In other words, your email marketing strategy will either nurture subscribers who are already in your funnel or grab new people’s attention and turn them into warm leads or customers.

What is the key to writing emails that get opened, read, and clicked? Writing great marketing emails doesn’t require creativity or journalistic talents to nurture and convert your subscribers. The point of email copywriting isn’t creativity, and you don’t have to be a wordsmith to get great results. Here are the three main ingredients of a compelling email:

• Speaking directly to your target audience
• Including curiosity-inducing subject lines
• Concise body content with one specific goal

Here’s how you can incorporate these three winning ingredients into your email copy: Step 1: Understand your ideal customer persona/profile (ICP)

Before you begin writing any marketing material, you must first understand who you’re writing for. 

• How well do you know your target audience? 
• What do they care about? 
• What single action do you want them to take after reading your email?

Step 2: Create subject lines and headings that hook readers 

Writing attention-grabbing headlines isn’t as mysterious as it sounds. A hook-worthy headline is simply one that can catch the reader’s eye amongst a sea of other marketing emails. 

Here are ways to ensure you’re writing subject lines that give your emails the best chance of being opened:

• Write three to five subject line options so you can A/B test and pick the winners. (Disclaimer:  you’ll probably want to A/B test click-through rate over open rates due to the iOS 15 update that skews open rate data —more on that below).
• Keep the length to fewer than 50 characters.
• Include personalization when possible: “The sweetest word in the English language is one’s own name.” Your email form will automatically capture their name, and your marketing software will most likely auto-fill it when you add a command like “[First_Name]” 
• Keep the tone conversational: Avoid language that sounds like a canned marketing email. Use contractions like “you’re” instead of “you are.” Use emojis to lighten things up. 
• Pay attention to subject lines that caught your attention: Copywriters and marketers keep a “swipe file” handy, where they can quickly screenshot or save good copy or ads for inspiration.

Step 3: Be conscious of words that trigger spam filters

While these words are not a guarantee that your email will go to SPAM, it’s good to be aware of them. As you troubleshoot click-through rates and deliverability in the future, it’s helpful to understand how these words could impact your results. 

According to ActiveCampaign , SPAM filters tend to flag words that are associated with:

Examples of common SPAM words and phrases are:

• Additional income
• Be your own boss
• Financial freedom
• Free Consultation

Revenue-generating List-Building Email Marketing Strategies

Growing your email list should be a top priority because email can be your most profitable sales channel. Your warmest, most engaged potential customers/students will come from your email list. With email marketing revenue estimated to reach almost 11 billion by the end of 2023 (Statista) , your ability to reach as many potential customers through their inboxes is critical.

So how do you grow your email list? It all starts with offering your audience something of value in exchange for their email address. We’re bombarded more than ever with promotions, ads, and spam, and people are paying more attention to ways to cut down on digital overwhelm. Therefore, people won’t hand email addresses over easily—we have to create enticing offers. 

And that’s where lead magnets and gated assets enter the chat.

Creating a Gated Asset (Lead Magnet) To Entice New Subscribers

A lead magnet is a freebie or giveaway that contains information your target audience wants. Also known as a gated asset, common examples in B2B are ebooks, quizzes, guides, cheat sheets, checklists, templates, and swipe files. 

To attract email subscribers, you need to promote your lead magnet constantly. Keep it front and center on your website’s home page, and offer it on a separate landing page you can send traffic to via LinkedIn thought-leadership posts or during podcast interviews.

💡 Create and publish a lead magnet funnel in minutes with Thinkific Funnels Leveraging our AI powered funnel , build and publish a landing page to offer a free digital download to your prospects in return for their email addresses.

How To Choose The Right Lead Magnet For Your Business 

How will you know which lead magnet is right for your business? Think about the problems your audience wants to solve, and the content format they’re most likely to consume. 

For example, a busy sales professional struggling to book meetings doesn’t have the time to read a 30-page ebook, so they’re most likely to download cold emailing scripts and templates. A chief marketing officer might be accustomed to reading industry publications, so creating something for the way they consume information will be most effective.

Examples of free gated assets that will entice subscribers:

• Cheat sheets
• Audio / Video training
• A free online course: Offering free online courses to your prospective customers is a great way to gain trust and demonstrate value and drive conversions. 

How To Build an Engaged Email List of Potential Customers 

Now that you’ve created your opt-in-worthy lead magnet, it’s time to create a strategy to drive traffic to it . Here are some steps you can take to build an engaged email list of potential customers:

• Pop-up bar / pop-up box
• Mid-way and end of a blog post
• All of your social media channels
• Webinars / Masterclasses / Free training
• Facebook / Instagram ads
• Google PPC ads
• YouTube ads
• Podcast sponsorships ads
• Interviews and press Pitch yourself or a representative for your business as a podcast guest for shows within your industry. Interview opportunities put you in front of a fresh audience within your niche and help you establish thought leadership, which is key to growing your subscriber base. At the end of the interview, you’ll have the opportunity to promote your brand, which is a perfect time to mention your free lead magnet.
• Sponsored blog posts If you’re in the finance space, you could find a personal-finance writer with a large readership to publish a blog post about your business, product or brand. This will usually involve paying a one-time fee. Links to your gated asset will be included throughout the post. Influencer marketing, sponsorships, and affiliates.
• Influencer Marketing Influencer marketing is popular in B2C and lifestyle brands but also valuable for B2B brands. Influencer marketing means using the social endorsement of well-connected influencers to promote a product or service more authentically to gain trust.
• Joint webinars, round-tables, or fireside chats Co-host a webinar with other businesses and industry-adjacent thought leaders with a large audience. These are best if they’re not your direct competition. All of the emails collected will be added to your subscriber list.

Quick Tips for Keeping Your Emails Compliant

Email marketing regulations exist to prevent spammers from gaining people’s email addresses without their permission and sending unsolicited emails. If you’re using a reputable email marketing automation platform , you’re most likely already complying with these rules, but you still want some general awareness so you can avoid fines.

Here are some simple ways to remain compliant when emailing your list:

• Ensure you’ve gained permission to email the people on your list with a double opt-in.
• Don’t use misleading header information.
• Use disclaimers that notify the reader that this is a marketing email or ad.
• Include your address.
• Always include an opt-out link that allows subscribers to no longer receive future emails from you.
• Honor opt-out requests promptly (your marketing platform should do this for you automatically).

A Step-by-Step Email Marketing Strategy For Lead Generation 

Even if your marketing team is lean, you can use the following steps to create compelling emails that build a loyal subscriber base for your business. 

Segmenting your emails means dividing your email subscribers into groups based on certain criteria. You could separate your email based on demographics, forms they filled out to join your email list, and activities like clicks and opens. 

Segmenting is critical to maintaining a healthy and engaged subscriber base because it allows you to personalize your emails based on what your audience members want to know versus sending the same message to everyone.

Try this strategy:

With more data than ever at our fingertips, marketing automation allows you to send your subscribers timely emails relevant to their interests. Allow subscribers to self-segment with a questionnaire.

For example: If your business or company offers online courses to generate revenue , depending on your industry and course topic you may not want to send “101” content to subscribers looking for more advanced techniques. Consider making one of your welcome emails a survey that asks the subscriber what type of information they’d like to consume based on their journey.

Every successful lead generation and conversion strategy relies on automated funnels and sequences to lead prospects to become paying customers—on autopilot.

An automated funnel is the steps you guide your leads through to convert them into customers at the end. Your automated funnel will include email marketing, social media, and landing pages.

How to set up automated sequences

Welcoming each person individually when they opt-in to your email list would be impossible, which is where your marketing automation platform’s ‘autoresponder’ feature comes in. 

When someone opts into your email list, your marketing automation platform automatically sends them a sequence of emails over a predetermined period based on the rules you define. Automated sequences are the best way to nurture your audience on autopilot!

See It in Action: Ecommerce Course Funnel Snapshot

Let’s say you’re an Ecommerce company running a webinar promoting your course on eCommerce success tips. To promote your webinar, you’d schedule some promotional tweets or LinkedIn posts leading up to the webinar date. These social posts will drive traffic to your registration page, where they’ll fill out their information to register for the free webinar.

After registering for the webinar, your marketing automation platform will internally tag them as “interested in eCommerce’ and ‘registered for webinar.’ Instead of just waiting for them to attend the webinar, you can create an autoresponder sequence that goes out to those tagged leads. This sequence will include valuable content relevant to eCommerce, further nurturing them and increasing your webinar’s conversion rate.

Even if some leads don’t convert from your webinar, providing valuable content will keep them on your email list, where you’ll continue to nurture them with other automated sequences. This creates an engagement loop that makes them sales-ready for your next promotion.

Triggers command your marketing platform to send a specific message to a specific person on your email list. Your platform will operate under “if/then” rules that look like this: If a potential buyer downloads our how-to guide, then they will automatically begin receiving our weekly educational emails on the same topic.

Triggers make for a more personalized customer journey—the opposite of those mass 50% off emails you get from your favorite clothing brand. According to Smart Insights , triggered emails reach 71% higher open rates and 102% higher click-through rates than general email newsletters.

 As discussed above, segmenting is the best way to send relevant, tailored emails that get opened and clicked. Tags are one of the easiest ways to segment your list.

For example, you could segment your audience based on the form they filled out to become an email subscriber. In other words, your tag will answer the question, ‘how did they get on my email list?’ and tailor the content to it.

Marketing automation can help segment your lists automatically by tagging subscribers according to the links they clicked on.

After putting so much work into building and maintaining your email list, the thought of intentionally removing subscribers might sound like blasphemy—but… According to OptinMonster, one-third of your subscribers will never open, let alone click through your emails.

Therefore, you must periodically “scrub” your email list. Email scrubbing means removing unengaged subscribers from your email list so that you can market to people who want to receive your emails. Be sure to scrub your list a few times yearly to keep your email reporting accurate and maintain your sender reputation score.

You don’t want the time, effort, and resources you invest in email marketing wasted on subscribers who don’t want to hear from you. Also, most email marketing platforms charge you based on how many subscribers you have, so technically, scrubbing your email list ensures you’re not paying for people who never read or click your emails.

Using Email Marketing Data and Reporting To Test Your Lead Generation Campaigns

When it comes to successful marketing for your business, there are no “right answers,” just strategies that have been tested and refined. Tracking and reporting are a must when executing any email marketing strategy.

By gathering data, you can form logical conclusions about what you’ll change, where to invest more money, and what tactics you’ll try next. 

You should perform the following tests throughout your marketing activities:

A/B testing 

Email A/B testing, also known as split testing, is when you compare two different versions of an email (version A and version B) and see which one performs better. Version A and B are sent to two segments of your email list. Then, the version with the highest open rates or more click-through rates (aka the “winning version”) gets sent to the rest of your email subscribers.

Which parts of your email will you be A/B testing? 

• Email subject lines
• From name (sender name)
• Email content

Your email marketing platform may provide a bunch of marketing metrics. To prevent  overwhelm and help make marketing decisions quickly, focus on these critical metrics:

• Click-through Rate: Is the percentage of subscribers who click links in your emails. Click-through rates are one of the best indicators of your email list engagement. A “good” click-through rate varies based on industry, so it’s essential to know your benchmarks.
• Conversion Rate: Tells you how many people took you up on your email’s offer. If you send an email promoting an upcoming webinar, your conversion rate would be the number of subscribers who registered for the webinar. The conversion rate is another key metric because it indicates how successfully your emails generate leads.
• Bounce Rate: Is the total number of emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox. Too high of a bounce rate or a rising bounce rate could indicate issues with your sender reputation.
• List Growth Rate: List-growth rate measures how fast your email list grows. Subscribers will naturally unsubscribe from your emails over time (which is good if they’re not the right fit), so it’s important to add new subscribers continually. Calculate list growth rate by taking the number of new subscribers minus the number of unsubscribes, dividing that by the total number of email addresses on your list, and multiplying it by 100.
• Automatically loads all images from emails
• Hides IP addresses and the location of email recipients

This update means that all of your email subscribers that have iOS 15 devices (iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches) will appear as opened whether they did or not. Since Apple iPhones are roughly 48% of the U.S. smartphone market, and most people read emails on their phones, open rates are inflated and not as accurate.

While you can still use open rates to gauge marketing success, click-through rates and the other metrics mentioned above should take precedence. 

Marketing campaigns don’t have to be complex or costly to create an engaged audience that is ready to engage with the content you send. In fact, by creating and promoting a value-packed gated asset such as an online course, you can steadily grow and nurture a subscriber base full of potential customers you can market to. That’s how Hootsuite generated over 450,000 leads:  By educating students and customers on how to use social media through their Hootsuite Academy.

Fill your marketing funnel by providing education at scale for your target audience with Thinkific Plus. 

Thinkific Plus makes it easy to generate leads and transform them into customers by offering high-value education at every stage of the customer journey. It’s so simple to use, that you can focus on generating demand—not worrying about technology. You also get a team of people seriously dedicated to helping you leverage learning to land and nurture more leads.

Let Thinkific Plus help you generate more leads—not more work.

Learn more about Thinkific Plus , and book a call with our solutions team to try it today. 

Daniela Ochoa is the go-to Content Marketing Specialist here at Thinkific Plus! With years of experience in marketing and communications, she is passionate about helping businesses grow through strategic storytelling, innovative digital campaigns, and online learning at scale.On this blog, she shares her expertise in content marketing, lead generation, and more.

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Guide to Email Marketing

Table of Contents

In terms of reaching customers, email marketing falls somewhere between the vast, impersonal reach of a billboard and the highly personal feel of a handwritten note. Since the first marketing email was sent in 1978, email marketing has grown into a flourishing industry that sends millions of messages daily. We’ll explore specific guidelines, email etiquette and email marketing best practices to help small businesses add an email marketing strategy to their overall business marketing plan. 

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is part of a business’s digital marketing strategy ; businesses send marketing messages to specific lists of customers and subscribers. Effective email marketing can convert prospects into customers and turn one-time buyers into loyal brand advocates. 

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics. According to Litmus data , email marketing offers the highest digital marketing ROI of all channels, returning $36 for every $1 spent.  

What is an email marketing campaign?

An email marketing campaign is a coordinated set of emails sent over a set period with one specific purpose, called a call to action (CTA). Examples of typical email marketing CTAs include downloading a white paper, signing up for a webinar and making a purchase.

An email marketing campaign should have a well-written and attention-grabbing subject line, focused content, and a specific CTA that helps you achieve your campaign’s goal.

Many businesses use email marketing services to create and distribute campaigns. Email marketing services streamline the email campaign process and help businesses analyze their results. 

Email personalization gives your messages an edge. Include personalization in the subject line by mentioning the subscriber’s name, location or other relevant information.

How much does email marketing cost?

Email marketing prices vary depending on the provider, features and your business’s unique needs. Other cost influencers include: 

• Subscriber base size
• Templates needed
• Number of messages you want to send monthly
• Automation needs
• Analytics features 

For example, if you had 500 contacts and wanted to send unlimited emails each month with features like a template suite, marketing automation and analytics, you could expect to pay around $30 monthly.

What are the pros of email marketing?

Specific email marketing benefits include the following: 

• Email marketing builds customer relationships. Email marketing’s customizability makes it easy to build personal relationships with customers. Using data on customer behavior, likes and dislikes, and demographics, you can target each campaign to appeal directly to specific groups and engage email subscribers efficiently .
• Email marketing boosts brand awareness. Email marketing increases brand awareness by keeping your business at the top of customers’ minds. You can also gain new business by sending follow-up campaigns after a new customer visits your website or makes a purchase.
• Email marketing promotes your content. Email is an excellent avenue for sharing news, updates and fresh content about your company. Include relevant business news, exclusive coupons or deals, or links to videos or blog posts in your emails.
• Email marketing generates leads. When customers agree to receive regular email updates in exchange for something they find valuable, like a discount code or voucher, you gain additional subscribers. Email campaigns offering value can help you generate more sales leads and successful lead conversions.
• Email can market your products. Include products in emails to keep customers updated on new items, sales and bundles. Sending regular emails with product information is an excellent way to remind customers of what you have to offer.
• Email marketing can save your business money. Unlike other digital marketing channels, such as social media marketing, email is relatively affordable, especially when you find a plan that works for your business’s budget.
• Email marketing reaches a large audience. Nearly everyone with an online presence has an email address, meaning you have billions of chances to get your business in front of people. 

What are the cons of email marketing?

Before starting a campaign or searching for a provider, understand these potential email marketing drawbacks:

• Marketing emails may get marked as spam. Because email marketing is so popular, many customers experience “email fatigue,” leading them to mark many marketing emails as spam. This can relegate your emails to the spam folder, where they are never seen or opened.
• Marketing emails may not reach the right audience. Your emails will likely end up deleted or in the spam folder when they reach uninterested recipients. It’s crucial to target your campaigns so they reach people likely to open your messages and read what you have to say.
• Email marketing has limited creativity options. While email is highly customizable, there are many conventions, compliance rules and template limits you should adhere to for the best chance of having a successful campaign.

Some of the biggest email marketing challenges include earning new subscribers, improving deliverability rates and keeping subscribers from unsubscribing.

How important is email marketing compliance?

It’s crucial to comply with data privacy laws for email marketing and other regulations that guide and govern its usage. U.S. businesses should primarily be concerned about the CAN-SPAM Act, which dictates several conditions email marketers must follow to avoid a hefty fine. 

To ensure your business complies with email marketing laws, consider the following six best practices:

• Ensure recipients want your email marketing messages. Ensure you have consent to email people on your list. The CAN-SPAM Act’s primary goal is preventing spammers from contacting people without their permission, so this is the most important thing you can do to ensure your compliance. The two permission types are express and implicit. Implicit permission is when you have an existing business relationship with someone, such as an existing customer, donor or active website member. If you don’t have implicit permission, you’ll need express permission. Opt-in email marketing is when someone actively grants permission for you to send them emails by entering their email address into a form.
• Be upfront with marketing emails’ header information. Your header information is anything extra sent with your email campaign, including the “from” name, subject line and reply-to address. Email marketing laws state that you must not include inaccurate or misleading information in these fields to trick people into opening your emails.
• Be transparent about your email’s purpose. The CAN-SPAM Act states you must disclose your marketing emails as advertisements to avoid misleading customers, though there is some leeway here. You don’t have to explicitly state, “This email is an advertisement,” every time; just make it clear that the email is a promotional message from a business, not a personal email from a friend.
• Include a valid mailing address in your email marketing. Include a valid postal address for your company in all of your emails. This can be a current street address, a P.O. box or an address with a registered commercial mail-receiving company. 
• Make it easy to opt-out of your email marketing messages. All marketing emails should include a clear and conspicuous option to opt out of receiving future emails from you.
• Honor email marketing opt-out requests promptly. The CAN-SPAM Act stipulates that you must honor all opt-out requests within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee for opting out, require the recipient to provide any identifying information beyond their email address, or require multiple steps beyond a reply email or visiting a webpage to opt out.

What are some tips for creating an email marketing strategy?

Before you create your email marketing campaign, you must have a detailed strategy to guide the creation process and give you a clear goal. Follow these tips to improve your email marketing campaign and ensure a successful email marketing strategy: 

• Define your email marketing campaign’s audience. Effective emails must be relevant to the recipient. For example, a 20-year-old fashion student probably isn’t interested in an email about construction equipment. Start by building customer personas to pinpoint your target audience and understand what they want from you. You can also collect survey data from current customers and prospects to learn about their needs, desires and pain points.
• Establish your email marketing campaign’s goals. Every campaign should have a goal. Don’t send campaigns for the sake of sending them; this can come off as annoying and unnecessary to customers. For example, do you want to use email marketing to grow your business , gain new customers, explain a new product or service, or increase brand awareness? Your specific campaign goal will inform your marketing content.
• Make it easy for people to sign up for your marketing emails. One of the hardest parts of email marketing is building an email list with genuine, interested customers. It’s crucial to make signing up for your emails as easy as possible. Include a pop-up box when people enter your website, have links to sign up in your social media posts, and make sign-up forms easy to find. If this isn’t your area of expertise, consider hiring a digital marketing manager or email marketing manager to handle it. 
• Decide on an email marketing campaign type early. There are many campaign types with various purposes. You may want to send an email newsletter , announcement or blog post update. Some email marketing campaigns are expressly about reducing shopping cart abandonment , while an email re-engagement strategy aims to prompt inactive subscribers to get back on board. Consider your goal and audience research when crafting your email marketing campaign type.
• Schedule your marketing emails. One of the best ways to build a loyal following is to have a steady email schedule so customers know what to expect and when. Most email marketing services offer built-in scheduling services to help make this step easy.

Consistently reevaluate your email marketing campaigns. A/B test different messages, offers and CTAs to see what’s resonating with your customers. Update your digital marketing strategy as your customers’ preferences change.

How do you create an email marketing campaign?

Creating an email marketing campaign is straightforward, especially when you have a goal and have chosen an email marketing service. Follow these steps to create your email marketing campaign:

1. Set a goal for your email marketing campaign.

The first thing you should do when starting an email campaign is to decide what you want the campaign to accomplish for your business. A clear goal will guide you through the process and help you make crucial decisions. Some typical campaign goals include the following:

• Driving website traffic
• Increasing sales online or in-person 
• Promoting products or services
• Welcoming new members
• Sending news
• Requesting donations
• Requesting user-generated content to highlight online
• Requesting positive customer reviews from satisfied customers

2. Choose an email marketing service.

To choose a service, consider your business needs and goals, and find the service that best fits those requirements. We’ll share more about email marketing service options below.

3. Build an email marketing list.

Building an email marketing list is time-consuming but critical. Your email list is the most vital part of your email marketing campaign because it represents your target audience. While buying an email list may be tempting, you’re much better off growing your list organically. An organic list ensures you’re reaching people who want to receive your messages and who will engage with your content. 

Some places to source email addresses for your list include:

• Existing email lists
• Contacts within existing email accounts
• Customer relationship management (CRM) software
• Contact management systems
• E-commerce systems
• Requests for new emails via social media or your website

4. Segment your email marketing list.

Once you have your email list, it’s essential to segment it. Market segmentation allows you to send targeted emails to your audience based on their interests or demographic information. The more relevant an email is to someone, the more likely they are to open and engage with it. 

Here are some examples of ways to segment your audience:

• Demographics
• Past purchases
• Buyer behavior
• Expressed interests
• Email engagement

5. Create an email marketing campaign and build your email message.

Creating an email campaign is straightforward if you use an email marketing platform, though the exact steps will vary based on the provider. Most services offer email marketing templates and guide you on where to place elements like headers and CTAs.

6. Use autoresponders in your email marketing campaign.

Most email marketing software includes autoresponders to create automated email sequences . With autoresponders, you can send emails automatically after a specific action, such as a customer submitting their email address; you can also send timed automated messages. Autoresponders generate leads, build trust, provide purchase or shipping confirmation emails, send transactional emails, and convey useful information to customers.

Autoresponders can save you much time and effort by automatically sending triggered emails, like an email newsletter, a welcome email or automated customer service messages . 

7. Enable tracking and analytics for your email marketing campaigns.

The best way to understand your email campaigns is to track email analytics . Analytics can tell you where you need to improve, how many customers are engaging with your emails and more. There are hundreds of ways to customize your analytics to give you exactly the numbers you need. 

Key email metrics to track include:

• Unique email open rate: Your unique email open rate is the number of distinct recipients who have opened your emails.
• Click-through rate: The click-through rate (CTR) tracks how many recipients click one or more links within your email.
• Bounce rate: The bounce rate is how often email servers reject your emails. Reducing your email bounce rate is desirable because a high bounce rate indicates your email list has many unproductive addresses.
• Unsubscribe rate: This is how many people have requested to opt out of receiving your emails. An unsubscribe rate of over 1% means you should reevaluate your content and make it more relevant to your audience.

Google Analytics can help you track email open rates and how subscribers interacted with your emails, including if they went on to make a purchase.

How do you choose an email marketing service?

With so many options available, knowing which email marketing service is right for your business can be challenging. Here are some tips to help you choose an email marketing platform:

• Consider your business’s needs. Start by examining your business. What do you need an email service provider to do for you? Do you need a start-to-finish, full-featured service? Or do you just want help segmenting your contact list? Knowing your needs can help you narrow your options.
• Have a goal in mind. Set a goal for each campaign or an overall email marketing goal. Then, consider this goal along with your business’s needs to determine which platforms can meet those needs and help you accomplish your goals.
• Know what features you want. Make a list of features you want in an email marketing platform in order of priority: the features that are absolutely necessary, the features you would like and the features you don’t need.
• Have an idea of your sending numbers and list volume. Because most email marketing services offer monthly or annual plans based on how many emails you send and how many subscribers you have, you should have at least a solid estimate of these numbers to determine your costs.
• Find out if you’ll need the option to scale. If you know your business will grow soon, choose a provider that can grow with you. Many platforms offer multiple pricing plans that can evolve as your business does.

What are the best email marketing services?

The best email marketing services can help you send personalized, custom campaigns to leads and customers and analyze your data to fine-tune your efforts. Some of our favorite services include the following:

• Monday.com: Monday allows email marketing teams to collaborate on campaigns via an intuitive dashboard with content calendars, campaign ideas and workflow automation tools. It integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Gmail to send emails but is a bit pricey. Read our Monday.com review to learn more.
• Campaigner: Campaigner is a good choice for growing businesses scaling up their email capabilities. It has autoresponders, automation workflow and a robust personalization capability with triggered emails. When your email list grows, Campaigner helps you maintain a personal touch with your subscribers. Read our Campaigner review for more on the service’s features and pricing.
• Constant Contact: Constant Contact offers plans to fit any budget, all the essential features for a successful campaign and a user-friendly interface. The service provides an easy-to-use email builder tool and plenty of automation options that make creating campaigns a breeze. Read our in-depth Constant Contact review to learn more.
• Freshmarketer: Freshmarketer allows you to send promotional emails based on how your audience responds to individual products. It’s an excellent solution for e-commerce email marketing. Freshmarketer integrates with Gmail, Shopify, SMS and Zapier, so you can connect it to multiple software solutions for a fully integrated and seamless experience. 

Jennifer Dublino contributed to the reporting and writing in this article. 

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What is email marketing? Your 101 guide to email campaigns

Written by by Chloe West

Published on  November 29, 2022

Reading time  13 minutes

Email marketing is one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. It can help you nurture leads, raise brand awareness and sell your products.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the basics of email marketing and give you tips, email templates , and strategies for optimizing your email campaigns for better conversions.

Table of contents

What is email marketing?

Top 6 benefits of email marketing.

• Types of email marketing campaigns & examples

How to build an email marketing list

Tips to create a successful email marketing campaign.

Email marketing is a marketing strategy surrounding sending emails to current and potential customers with the goal of increasing brand awareness, driving engagement, nurturing leads, or making a sale.

As a business, you simply can’t ignore or neglect email. If you look at the data, there are over 4 billion email users worldwide —that’s more than half of the world’s population! In 2022, the average ROI of email marketing was $36 for every $1 spent.

There are so many different types of emails you can send as well. While we’ll expand more on this shortly, email can help businesses, small and large, connect and educate their target audience.

Email marketing can be an extremely powerful marketing tool to have at your business’s disposal. While there are endless benefits, we’re sharing the top six that can directly impact your bottom line.

1. Increase brand awareness

Email can help you spread the word about your brand, products and services by sharing valuable resources, educational content, news, updates and more with subscribers.

You should also align your email content and design with your  brand identity  to create brand awareness.

2. Generate website traffic

Email is an excellent way to drive more traffic to your website. You can share snippets of recent articles and take interested subscribers to read the full versions on your blog. Or, add calls-to-action to your promotional emails that take subscribers to your  landing pages  and sales pages to learn more about your products.

3. Drive sales and revenue

Email can help you put your products and services in front of customers and experiment with different promotional techniques to generate more revenue. For example, you can offer discounts and free shipping to trigger purchases. Another idea is to share roundups and collections that draw attention to specific products. You can also use upselling and cross-selling techniques to increase the average order value.

4. Boost other marketing channels

Email lets you integrate your marketing channels and drive traffic to other customer touch points, such as social media, landing pages, blogs, and in-person events. For example, you can ask new customers to share a review on your Facebook page, or start an Instagram challenge and invite subscribers to participate.

5. Keep customers engaged

With email, you have room to experiment with your messages. There are so many different types of email campaigns you can send, and there’s plenty of room for creativity. Switching up your email campaigns keeps customers interested and excited about your brand. Plus, it helps you stay on top of their minds.

6. Gain valuable business data

Email allows you to collect customer data and learn more about their behavior. You can do this by tracking analytics, or sending email surveys and feedback forms. Leverage this information to improve your emails, business, products, and services.

You can also use email marketing tools to set up automated workflows to trigger emails based on specific customer actions. For example, automatically send a welcome email as soon as a contact signs up for your newsletter.

Automation not only saves you time and effort but also helps you send the right email to the right person at the right moment, minimizing human error and delays.

Types of email marketing campaigns (+ examples)

Email marketing requires a comprehensive strategy. This is because there’s not just one type of email you’ll want to send out to your audience. Email can be used in a variety of different ways in order to help you make the most of your strategy.

Welcome emails

A welcome email series—or even a single welcome email—is the first email a subscriber receives when they sign up to your email list or make a purchase.

With an  average open rate of 50% , welcome emails are a great way to introduce new contacts to your brand, products and/or services.

The best welcome emails are short and actionable. Their main focus is to take subscribers to the “next step.”

Here’s an example of a welcome email from Duolingo after a new user starts learning a new language:

This email focuses on what the customer is most interested in at the moment—continuing their language study—and lets them choose the next step such as downloading their mobile app or practicing on desktop.

If you’re selling physical products, you can use welcome emails to ask new customers to share a review on your website.

Newsletter emails

Newsletter emails  are one of the most popular types of email campaigns.

They’re usually non-promotional in nature, and brands can use them to share industry news and updates, tips, tricks, features, blog roundups and more with their subscribers.

Here’s an example of an email newsletter from Visme that focuses on highlighting their blog content related to brand visual design:

Newsletters are often sent on a regular basis, such as weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. They are great tools for building trust and long-term relationships with your customers.

Promotional email campaigns

A promotional email can take many different forms, but its main purpose is to promote a specific product, service or ongoing sale to your audience.

Here’s a great example of a promotional email from Modernica:

Image Source

They’re showcasing some of their top sales for Black Friday so that interested customers are aware and can take advantage of the sale. Modernica is likely also promoting this sale on its other marketing channels, like its website and social media. Adding email into the mix helps build a full omnichannel strategy.

Plus, with the ROI and conversion rates we’ve talked about email marketing boasting, of course you want to use it to promote your business’s offerings.

Cart abandonment emails

Cart abandonment campaigns are emails sent to shoppers who visited your store and put some items in their cart, but left without completing their purchase.

Here’s an example of a cart abandonment email from Public Rec:

These emails are a great way to persuade cart abandoners to come back and finish their purchase. In fact, studies show that abandoned cart emails can make your company  $5.81 in revenue  per recipient.

Since cart abandoners are people who have already shown interest in your store and products, you can woo them back with reminders, creating urgency and offering incentives like discounts or free shipping.

Seasonal marketing campaigns

Seasonal emails are sent around specific times, like seasons, holidays, etc. They’re perfect for promoting products or services that fit certain times of the year.

For example, here’s a great marketing email from Lush promoting their Halloween-related products:

By showing off products that are relevant to the current season, Lush is likely to increase sales on those particular items. Another example of this would be a clothing store promoting its beachwear collection during the summer, showcasing jackets and coats during the winter, or sharing gift ideas for moms around Mother’s Day.

Other email marketing campaign types

Other types of emails you might consider sending out for your brand include:

• Re-engagement emails: Emails that attempt to get non-engaged email subscribers to re-engage with your content by opening the email, clicking a link or even making a purchase. Subject lines are often, “We miss you,” or “Are you still there?”
• Announcement emails: These email campaigns announce new products, sales, events, holidays, and anniversaries to subscribers.
• Triggered email series: These emails are triggered based on specific actions of your customers. For example, a welcome series can be triggered as soon as a contact joins your list, or an abandoned cart series can be triggered three hours after a shopper abandons their cart.
• Post-purchase drip: These emails are sent after a customer buys from your store to maximize their experience and increase your revenue. For example, you can update subscribers on their shipments, ask for a review and offer a discount on their next order.
• Connect-via-social campaigns:  These emails allow subscribers to connect with your brand on social media. You can incentivize this by offering subscribers free credit or loyalty points for following you on your social media handles.
• Testimonial request emails:  These email campaigns are sent to  gather feedback and reviews  from existing customers. You can ask subscribers to leave a review on your website or social media, or give a star rating on a review platform.

The first step when putting together an email marketing strategy is building your list. After all, you can’t send out marketing emails if you have no one to send them to.

Start by choosing your preferred email marketing software, then take advantage of these three tactics to build your list.

Place opt-in forms around your website

One of the easiest strategies is to place opt-in forms in various places on your website. You can create subscribe or signup buttons or full opt-in forms with your email marketing tool of choice, then embed them on your site.

A few key places to include forms:

• Your home page
• Your website footer
• Your blog feed or blog sidebar
• A pop-up on your website
• Landing pages

Let your audience know what to expect from your newsletter, or provide some sort of incentive to get them to subscribe. Here’s a great example from The Sill of what this might look like:

Create gated content and lead magnets

Another great way to build up your email list is by creating content that requires an email to access. One example of this is Sprout’s annual Sprout Social Index, where we compile original research to help marketers create better-informed strategies.

And while this content is completely free, it’s gated. This means people have to fill out our opt-in form in order to access the content.

Original research and reports are a great type of content to gate. Other lead magnet ideas include ebooks, checklists, white papers, templates, etc.

Create a form like the one above asking for name, email and any other pertinent information your team needs to nurture these leads.

Use event sign-up forms

Whether you’re hosting an in-person event or an online webinar, event sign-up forms are another great way to build your list. You can require a form signup to register for the event, helping you bulk up your email list even more.

Here’s a great example of what this might look like from Uscreen:

So, you’re all prepped to create your first email campaign.

But before you start, here are tips and best practices to help you take your email marketing campaigns from good to knock-your-socks-off great.

1. Choose a relevant email list

To ensure your emails have maximum impact, you need to send them to the right people.

For example, a regional deal or event from a brand with international presence should be targeted only to the relevant regional audience. Other ways to segment for a highly relevant audience include demographics such as age group or gender.

Be wary of unethical ways to collect emails, such as buying email lists. This is not only bad for your engagement and conversion rates, but it can also get you blocked or marked as spam by email service providers (ESPs.)

2. Design your email

Your email can be full of valuable and insightful content, but if it doesn’t look good, it might not have much of an impact.

Here are some tips to create an engaging email design:

• Apply your branding:  Add your logo, use your brand colors and fonts, and keep the design aligned with your visual brand identity.
• Add white space:  Let your email content breathe by adding white space, or blank areas, around the text and visual objects. This helps your email design look clean and professional, and makes the information easier to read.
• Use images:  Plain text can make your email look like a boring letter, so add images and GIFs to make your emails more attractive. For example, you can grab attention with a colorful header image.
• Make your emails responsive:  Your emails should look great on both desktop and mobile devices. Avoid using large images that don’t load properly on small screens or slow internet.
• Establish visual hierarchy:  Use alignment, varying font sizes, and other  visual hierarchy principles  to organize your email design elements.

3. Personalize your email subject line and content

Your subscribers want to be treated like human beings with individual identities and needs. And that’s exactly what email personalization allows you to do.

Personalization is when you use subscriber data to tailor your email subject line, content, or design to each individual contact so your email feels more personal and relevant.

Here are a few ways you can personalize your emails:

• Mention subscriber name in the subject line to grab attention
• Use subscriber location to promote events or sales nearby
• Send tailored product recommendations based on past purchases

Here’s how Uncommon Goods sends personalized shopping suggestions to subscribers based on their past browsing or purchase activity:

By personalizing your emails, you can get more people to open and engage with your messages. Need more convincing?  Studies  show that email personalization can drive up open rates by 22.28% and click-through rates by 3.32%.

4. Be conversational

Consumers are bombarded with marketing emails every single day, and they’re tired of receiving overly salesy messages from brands and machines.

To genuinely engage your subscribers and build relationships with them, you need to talk to them as people, not businesses.

Keep your emails friendly, approachable and conversational. Talking to your subscribers like you’re talking to someone you know will automatically make your email feel more personal and relatable. This will eventually translate into more engagement and conversions for you.

5. Create follow-ups

Sometimes, a single email doesn’t do the trick. You need to follow up with a second or even a third email to nurture your subscribers and convert them successfully.

You can apply this to various email campaign types — from abandoned cart funnels to retargeting funnels to welcome email series. Here’s an example of an abandoned cart series that helps you recover sales:

• Remind subscribers they left some items in their cart.
• Send a discount coupon they can apply at check out.
• Create urgency by informing subscribers their cart will expire soon.

You can easily set up email workflows with  marketing automation . All you need to do is create your emails, set triggers and wait times, and then sit back and let the automation software do the heavy-lifting.

Remember, there’s a fine line between following up and being annoying. Space out your follow up emails and limit the number of emails you send. If you don’t, there’s a high chance you’ll get unsubscribed or marked as spam.

6. Send emails from a real person

Imagine receiving an email from “[email protected].”

The wrong type of email alias can sound like a business that just sent out a generic, automated email to their entire list.

Don’t be that business.

Use a recognizable sender name to a) actually land in your subscribers’ inboxes and b) sound less like a brand and more like a human.

A good idea is to use the name of someone from your business, such as the founder or marketing manager, e.g. Justyn from Sprout.

7. A/B test your emails

There’s no such thing as the “perfect” email. But you can get pretty close to creating one if you test your emails before sending them out.

A/B testing  lets you test two different versions of your email by sending each one to a small percentage of your audience. By analyzing the results, you can see which version performed better and send it out to the rest of your email list.

Testing your emails not only allows you to improve your campaigns, but also helps you learn more about your audience — what they like or dislike, and how they interact with your email. This eventually helps you improve your business in the long run.

8. Follow email or spam regulations

Ignoring spam regulations is a great way to get your emails banned or even land a massive fine. The CAN-SPAM Act is a guide to email compliance that businesses ignoring can get into big trouble for. The GDPR is another more recent protection act that’s essential to follow for brands operating in the EU.

Essentially:

• Don’t buy email lists
• Don’t add people to your email list who have not explicitly opted in
• Provide privacy policy information upfront
• Ensure unsubscribe buttons are easy to find in your emails—and  honor opt-outs
• Don’t use deceptive language in your emails
• Provide mailing address information in your emails

9. Track the success of your email campaigns

One of the best things about email marketing is that you can continuously track and improve the performance of your email campaigns.

Most email marketing tools offer in-depth analytics and dashboards to help you understand whether your emails are having the desired effect or not.

Below are some key metrics you should be tracking for all your email campaigns:

• Open rate:  This shows you the average number of opens your emails get. Open rates can help you analyze the effectiveness of your email subject lines, sender name, and pre-header text (the snippet viewable right after the subject line in many email clients).
• Click-through rate:  This shows you the average number of times subscribers clicked on the links or CTAs inside your emails. The click-through rate is an important metric for understanding email engagement.
• Bounce rate:  This shows you the percentage of your contacts who didn’t receive your email. A high bounce rate can indicate that your email list is full of inactive, fake or outdated contacts, or that you need to change your email service provider.
• Unsubscribes:  This shows you the number of people who unsubscribed from your email list. High unsubscribes could either indicate that your email content is not relevant to your subscribers, or that your emails aren’t being sent to the right audience.
• Spam complaints:  This shows you the number of times your emails have been marked as spam. This could be due to spammy subject lines, irrelevant email content, unsolicited emails, or issues with your email marketing software.

Other email metrics include conversion rates, most visited pages, best-performing links, mobile open rates, revenue per email, and more. In fact, there are dozens of metrics you can track depending on the email marketing software you’re using.

Align your metrics with your email marketing goals to hone in on the most important ones that illustrate what’s working and what’s not, and avoid analysis paralysis.

Get started with email marketing today

Start building your email list and mastering your email marketing strategy today. To make the process even easier, learn how you can create reusable email marketing templates that keep your strategy cohesive and your brand recognizable.

Email Marketing FAQs

Email marketing is a marketing channel and strategy that helps businesses engage with their customers, nurture leads, and ultimately drive conversions through carefully crafted emails.

Email marketing software is one of the most important tools marketers need when executing their email marketing campaigns. There are tons of different tools to choose from, but here are our top three favorite tools.

• HubSpot Email Marketing

Email marketing tools can help save you time and money, so it is important to choose one that works for you and your business. Learn more about the best email tools that are pioneering the email marketing landscape.

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Email Marketing Guide for Successful Campaigns

Learn the basics of creating email campaigns in Mailchimp and best practices to consider when developing your email marketing plan.

Introduction

Among the obstacles a small business or online seller has to face is finding a cost-efficient way to market their brand to a wider audience. That’s where email marketing comes in. Whether it’s your grand opening or your company is already well-established, an effective email marketing plan is key to promoting and growing your business, increasing revenue, and selling more stuff.

Mailchimp makes it easy to design beautiful, personalized email campaigns and automations so you can build and strengthen your relationships with potential and existing customers . And with your online store connected , you’ll collect helpful e-commerce data for your customers—like order history, how much they spent, and whether they’re first-time or repeating customers —so you can send targeted campaigns that direct traffic back to your store and generate more sales.

Whether it’s your grand opening or your company is already well-established, an effective email marketing plan is key to promoting and growing your business, increasing revenue, and selling more stuff.

How did email marketing begin?

Email marketing began in 1978, as the first email was sent 7 years earlier and marketing experts decided that trying to promote a business through email was a good idea. This is likely to be a surprise to most people because most people really didn't have access to the internet until years later.

However, it is true, that email marketing originated as early as it did, and the very first marketing campaign was carried out by a marketing professional who opted to send out marketing emails to a target group of 400 businesses. His efforts were rewarded by receiving over $13 million in sales , and email marketing took off from there.

Of course, email marketing has evolved significantly over the years, but it has always remained the same in a way. Email marketing was a success during its early days as well as it is now for the same reason: because it works.

How do email marketing campaigns work?

Email marketing campaigns are simple: They work because they target a predetermined group of people, or a company's target audience.

Before a business can begin a campaign, it must determine its email marketing strategy, which means deciding on a target audience. It is possible to have more than one target audience, which is great, because the bigger the size of the target audience, the better. Regardless of the size, once the target audience has been identified, a company can then have its marketing experts begin developing a customized marketing strategy.

The use of newsletters is an excellent email marketing strategy that can be used to captivate your audience with an abundance of interesting and useful information. As long as your newsletters are geared towards the identified interests and preferences of your target audience, then you're a lot more likely to achieve your goals.

Once an email campaign strategy is established, a company can use this build out its campaign using email marketing software to reach its prospective customers. While this might seem very straightforward, effective email marketing campaigns require a lot of thought and planning.

Create an email marketing plan

Not sure what your email marketing plan is ? Don’t sweat it—we’re here to help.

Running a business isn’t easy, and we know you’ve got a lot on your plate. To make the planning part easier, we’ve highlighted some best practices you’ll want to consider when devising a strategy for your email marketing . We promise the payoff for the time you set aside to create your email marketing plan will be worth it.

Define your audience

No matter what you sell, you need to have a clear idea of who your audience is in order to effectively communicate with them. This might sound like an easy task—after all, one of your most important jobs as a small business owner is understanding your brand’s demographic inside and out. But Mailchimp lets you dig a little deeper to identify segments of people within your audience so you can send them personalized emails that help increase engagement and generate greater ROI .

As soon as they’re added to your list, subscribers start providing a lot of useful information about their interests and buying behavior . With our signup forms , you can customize fields to collect everything from age and gender to interests and subscription preferences. Maybe you have customers who are only interested in receiving emails when there’s a sale on a specific group of products, or subscribers who would prefer biweekly updates to weekly ones.

Signup sources

Some of the most valuable data your signup form has to offer is how and where subscribers sign up for your list. Here are some tips to help you build an email list . If you’re an e-commerce business with your store connected to Mailchimp , knowing where your customers joined your list can give you a better idea of how to communicate with them and where you might want to focus your marketing efforts going forward.

For example, if you see that the majority of your signups are being generated from forms you’ve shared on Facebook and Twitter , then you might want to focus on connecting with your customers—and potential customers—through social media .

You can even create segments to target people who joined your list through a specific method, whether it’s an integration like Facebook, an app like Mailchimp Subscribe , an e-commerce integration, or a hosted form. And if there’s a specific page on your website you want to track signups from, you can add a hidden field to your embedded form and place it on multiple pages.

Segments and groups

Once you’ve identified smaller collections of people within your larger audience, you’ll be able to create groups and segments to send more relevant campaigns to your recipients—and the more relevant the campaign, the better the results .

Groups are an easy way to organize your list into categories so that you only need to maintain a single list in your account. Let’s say you have an e-commerce website and use your Mailchimp account to communicate with sales representatives, retail locations that sell some of your products, and customers. The logical step might seem to be creating separate lists to track these three audiences, but adding them to groups on one list is a similar concept that can save you money. You can then build segments for these groups and send campaigns that are relevant to them.

There are times when you’ll want to send to your entire list, but taking advantage of Mailchimp’s segmentation tools can significantly increase the click-through rates and e-commerce orders your campaigns generate . Create custom segments from data you’ve collected for your subscribers—like e-commerce activity and email engagement—or, if you’re new to segments, use one of our pre-built segments to make targeting people on your list even easier. And with our predicted demographic tool, you can zero in on who is opening your emails—their gender and age range—and let that guide how you segment and what content you send .

Decide what to write

Now that you know who you’re writing to, it’s time to think about your content. What do you want to say to your audience? You’ll want to send emails with purpose, that really speak to your subscribers, so always keep in mind what they signed up for. It might be helpful to outline some general content types you can include in your campaigns, so you can refer to it when designing your emails.

Here’s an example of a content list:

• Upcoming events
• Recaps and photos from previous events
• Popular posts from social media, like Instagram or Facebook
• News coverage
• Details about featured or new products
• Holiday shopping guides

When it’s time for you to send a campaign, you can choose a few pieces of content you’d like to showcase based on who you’re sending to. Before you start creating content from scratch, think about what you already have that your customers might find interesting , like a popular Instagram and Facebook post or an article written about your company.

But you’ll also want to think about content you want to create specifically for your audience or certain segments on your list, and reward them for caring about what you do. The nursery art company Gingiber , for example, uses pre-built segments to reward their most engaged subscribers.

Tips for creating and gathering content

It can be tough coming up with compelling content your subscribers love on a regular basis, and the pressure to do so can be fierce. But keeping these tips for creating and gathering content in mind when you’re creating a campaign will help you find the best way to talk with your readers.

Treat your subscribers like VIPs

People who subscribe to your list are so interested in what you have to say that they’re willing to invite you into their inbox. This is a privilege. Honor it by letting them be the first to know about new products and sales. Or, go one step further like the company Oui Shave that asks its best customers to participate in product surveys and rewards them by making them beta testers for new products.

Keep it useful

It’s good to think about which emails in your inbox you open and which ones you delete immediately when you’re creating your own campaigns. What makes you want to open an email? Our guess is a piece of information you don’t already have. Make sure you’re sending subscribers new information that’s useful to them.

But it’s not just what’s inside your email that you have to think about; it’s also your subject line. Most people quickly scan an email before they decide whether they want to open it, so you’ll want your subject line to make it clear that a campaign is worth your subscribers’ time.

Our best tip is to keep your subject lines descriptive and straightforward , but testing different variations is a good way to find a winner.

Show some personality

No one wants to read an email that drones on and on. So, inject some personality! Chances are your voice, tone, and sense of humor are all reasons why your customers signed up in the first place. Try to write the way you would speak to your customers, and keep in mind the personality of the people you’re talking to.

Keep it short

Most people are bombarded with emails every day, so keep yours to the point to make it easy for your subscribers to scan them quickly if they need to

Get inspired

Apps like Pocket , Evernote , and Pinterest are great for saving and organizing content you’d like to use in your campaigns. Check out Really Good Emails , too. They feature the most beautiful, elegant, and thoughtful emails companies like you are sending.

Practice creativity when creating content. The more creative you are, the more you're likely to pique the interest of your target audience. If you create drab, impersonal emails that fail to attract the interest of your target audience, then this could cause your marketing campaign to go south pretty fast. On the other hand, if you can create captivating and fostering content for your campaigns, then you will be a lot more apt to easily convert passive interest to a successful sale.

Plan for accessibility

Not many business owners think that it matters whether you plan for subscribers who might have disabilities, but planning for accessibility in email marketing absolutely does.

Whether some of your target audience has a visual impairment or some other type of disability, your taking the time to create content that they can easily read and understand is extremely important. It could mean the difference between success and failure, because you could lose a large chunk of your target audience if they are unable to easily navigate the content that you provide.

One way to cater to your target audience members that may have disabilities is to be descriptive in your email subject line. Why? Even for subscribers without disabilities, the email subject line can be the deciding factor or whether they open your emails or not.

Another way to cater to your subscribers who might suffer from visual impairments is to use headers. Headers can break up the material and make it easier to read, rather than writing in huge, seemingly never-ending paragraphs.

Furthermore, the use of color contrast throughout your newsletters and other marketing materials is important, as well. This can help those with color blindness to have an easier time reading your content. Without color contrast, these individuals could quickly become frustrated and stop reading.

Establish your sending frequency and goals

There’s nothing set in stone about how often you should email your customers, but if you send too often, your subscribers are likely to tune out what you have to say or unsubscribe altogether. Some users that run a blog or news website might choose to send daily updates to their subscribers, while other users like Bee’s Wrap only send twice a month so subscribers stay excited about their emails.

We suggest sending an email at least once a month to keep your subscribers engaged, but don’t feel you need to commit to this immediately. And be sure to look ahead and plan accordingly if you think your sending frequency will change for special events and holidays—you don’t want to surprise customers if you typically send once a month but suddenly start sending a stream of emails leading up to a Black Friday sales event.

Make a schedule

Not everyone has a regular schedule for sending campaigns, but it can be helpful, especially if you need to collaborate with a team or wear a lot of hats as a small business owner. One way to make sure you’re staying on track is to create a content calendar to schedule your campaigns, blog posts , social media posts, and more.

Your email marketing schedule will depend on your industry, the types of content you send, and your sending frequency, but here’s an example of a schedule you might set up for yourself:

Day 1: Jot down content topics, art ideas, and other basic elements for your upcoming campaign.

Day 2: Write out what you’d like to say about each topic and pull any photos or artwork you’d like to use into a folder.

Day 3: Log in to Mailchimp and create your campaign. Be sure to proofread for any errors and grammar, and send a few test campaigns to make sure everything is just right.

Day 4: Send your campaign.

Here are some more email marketing campaign tips to get you started.

There are times when you’ll want to send to your entire list, but taking advantage of Mailchimp’s segmentation tools can significantly increase the click-through rates and e-commerce orders your campaigns generate.

Design your emails

When designing email campaigns , focus on your message and keep your design straightforward. We suggest laying out all the elements for your campaign in a hierarchy, putting your most important information or the main takeaway toward the top so people can quickly scan your email if they’re short on time.

Make your campaigns as easy to read as possible by dividing text into sections, choosing legible fonts within the 14-16px range that will be rendered across email clients, and adding an obvious call to action . Above all, you want everything in your campaigns to be clear and to the point.

Check out our Email Design Guide for more tips.

Code your own templates

Looking to have more control over your email design? You have the option to code your own HTML template and import it to Mailchimp. We even have our own template language so you can create email templates that are editable in the template editor or campaign builder, and we recommend making your layouts 600 pixels or 640 pixels wide to ensure they’re displayed properly across email clients.

Our Email Template Reference provides more in-depth information on how to code your own templates.

We suggest laying out all the elements for your campaign in a hierarchy, putting your most important information or the main takeaway toward the top so people can quickly scan your email if they’re short on time.

Test your campaigns

Once you’ve designed your campaign, your gut instinct will probably be to click ‘Send’ immediately. Resist the temptation. Take it slow. We know you want to get your message out there, but taking a little time to test your design to make sure it looks good in as many different email clients and devices as possible will make it much more effective.

Test in different email clients and ISPs

All email clients are created differently, which means that the campaign you designed in Mailchimp might look slightly different in your subscribers’ inboxes. There are some similarities in how certain email clients render HTML email , but we recommend testing any email clients that have a strong presence on your list.

With our Litmus-powered Inbox Preview tool, you get a chance to see how your campaign will look across more than 40 different email clients before you send.

Send test emails to friends and coworkers

It sometimes helps to get a second pair of eyes on a campaign before you send it. If you have any friends or coworkers who can check your email for typos and give you some feedback on the layout, you can send them a test email so they can preview the campaign directly in their inbox.

Find the best version with A/B Testing campaigns

Not sure which subject line will get the most opens and clicks? Think there might be a certain time of day your customers are most likely to make a purchase through your campaign? Running an A/B test lets you experiment with different versions of a campaign to see how the changes you make impact your results.

Choose a variable you want to test—like subject line, from name, content, or send time—then select how you want the winner to be chosen, and we’ll generate combinations that will send to different sets of subscribers.

A/B testing is also a good way to confirm or rethink a hypothesis you already have. When RetroSupply decided to run a test to see whether long-form content with images or short-form content with a buy button generated more sales, they were surprised to find that the former tripled their revenue.

Our data science team has even found that when e-commerce businesses use A/B or multivariate testing with revenue as their test metric, they typically earn 20% more revenue than they would from a standard campaign.

Email delivery and avoiding spam filters

Mailchimp delivers email pretty darn fast , but there are a number of factors that can impact how much time it takes for your campaign to be delivered to your list, like the reputation of the sending server, the campaign’s content, and the receiving servers. As an email service provider, Mailchimp follows best practices and helps users stay compliant with anti-spam laws so that we maintain a great sending reputation. But good list management and the content you send also impact how fast your campaigns get delivered, so it’s important to make sure your content is compliant with our Terms of Use and consistent with your brand, and that you maintain a healthy list. These practices can also help keep your campaigns from triggering email spam filters and firewalls when they reach receiving servers, which transfer your campaigns from Mailchimp to your recipients’ inboxes.

When e-commerce businesses use A/B or multivariate testing with revenue as their test metric, they typically earn 20% more revenue than they would from a standard campaign.

What you can do with automation

Unlike regular campaigns, an automation is a targeted email or series of emails that you can set and forget. From welcoming new subscribers to following up with a customer after a purchase to rewarding your customers with a special incentive, automation helps you streamline your communications with customers so you have more time to focus on creating content and increasing ROI. Plus, you can design, send, and track order notifications to update customers on purchases they made from your store.

For example, Fjällräven sends a simple, beautifully designed welcome series to seamlessly introduce new customers to their brand. And when customers get distracted while they’re shopping and leave items in their cart without making a purchase, Topo Designs sends an abandoned cart email to remind them what they left behind and offer a discount on their cart. If you’re not sure how to get started with marketing automation , we have a guide that will introduce you to the different ways you can use automation to connect with customers and sell more stuff.

But while automations are designed to take some of the work and effort out of engaging with your customers, your emails should show that you care . You should take time to research what your customers like to help make your emails sound human and personal. Above all, marketing automation is an opportunity to deepen your relationship with your customers.

Above all, marketing automation is an opportunity to deepen your relationship with your customers.

Measure your performance

You’ve created, tested, and sent your first campaign. High five! Now’s when we get to talk about the value of your email marketing efforts and how it can be measured. The data collected in your Mailchimp reports will help you refine your marketing strategy going forward.

Opens and clicks

These are the most obvious statistics for measuring campaign engagement, as they indicate how well your subject lines and campaign content resonates with a particular list. But it’s important to consider how your open and click rates compare to other companies in your industry—otherwise you’re looking at your statistics in a vacuum. Our data science team has calculated some average email marketing statistics —open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate, abuse rate, soft bounces , hard bounces—based on industry and company size so you can see how your company’s statistics compare.

Once you know where you stand in terms of campaign performance for your industry, you can start taking steps to improve opens and clicks with tools like A/B Testing. Low open rates, for example, could indicate that your subject lines aren’t enticing people to open your campaigns. Follow our tips for writing an effective subject line to come up with a few variations, then run an A/B test to see which one gets the most opens.

You might also need to narrow down your audience by sending a campaign to a targeted segment, or change how often you send. And to improve your click rates, consider using more descriptive link text . “Click here” tells your subscribers nothing about where a link in your campaign will take them.

E-commerce data

If you’ve connected your store to Mailchimp and turned on e-commerce link tracking for your campaigns, you can view purchase data for your subscribers in campaign reports, subscriber profiles, and on the account dashboard. Your reports will show you how much money your campaigns and automations make, as well as total orders and their average revenue.

Use your campaign reports to identify trends and create segments to find customers who purchased a specific product or spent a certain amount of money, then visit those customers’ subscriber profiles to see their full order history.

Website traffic

The campaigns you send can help you direct more traffic to your website or online store . And there are a few integrations you can sync with Mailchimp so you can track any trends in website traffic or e-commerce activity after you send a campaign.

If you use Google Analytics , you can add tracking to your campaigns to pass Google data to your campaign reports, or use conversion tracking in Google Analytics to track subscribers who click a link in your campaign all the way through to a purchase.

Our Connected Sites feature allows you to track subscriber activity from your campaigns to your website . You can create segments from this data , trigger an automation, and even set up a product retargeting email that gives you the power to send a message to a customer who has navigated to or away from a page on your website.

Check out how Mailchimp's free email marketing tools compare to the competition.

Email marketing FAQs

Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions that many businesses who are new to email marketing may have.

How can I build and grow my email marketing list?

You might hear that buying email lists is a good idea, but it actually isn't. A majority of the people on these lists have no idea who your company is, and it might annoy them to receive spam from you. A better way is to attract prospective subscribers to your website and encourage them to sign up for your newsletter or other free materials.

Why is email marketing important?

There are many benefits of email marketing . First of all, this type of marketing can be a great way to build relationships with your customers. Some other benefits of email marketing are:

• Businesses can reach customers worldwide, regardless of their proximity
• Cost-effective
• Your hours can be what you make them, as email can be sent 24/7
• You can take advantage of the many social networking platforms that currently exist

What are some of the different types of email marketing?

There are different types of email marketing, and here are 5 types that are commonly used:

• Welcome emails. These enable you to make initial contact with your subscribers, so they can get to know you and what your business is all about.
• Educational emails. The more educated your subscribers are about what you have to offer, the more likely they will be to purchase your products or services.
• Promotional emails. Everyone wants to feel as if they're getting a good deal on something, which is why promotional emails can dramatically increase sales.
• Reengagement emails. If your subscribers are in need of "nudging" because they have failed to show further interest, then these types of emails can be very effective.
• Newsletters. Many businesses underestimate the importance of providing newsletters for their subscribers, because it keeps them up-to-date with what's going on with your company, familiarizing them with your brand, and more.

Related Topics

• Email A/B Testing
• Email Marketing
• Email Design Templates
• Send & Deliver Emails
• Create an Email Campaign
• Measure Email Performance

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Email Marketing: The Definitive Guide

Written by Brian Dean

This is the ultimate guide to email marketing in 2023.

So if you want to:

• Build your email list
• Improve your open rates
• Write amazing newsletters
• Turn more subscribers into customers

Then you’ll love this new guide.

Let’s get started.

1. Email Marketing Fundamentals

2. How to Build Your Email List

3. Email Campaign Templates

4. How to Get Super High Open Rates

5. How to Improve Email Deliverability

6. Email Marketing Software

7. Marketing Automation 101

8. Advanced Email Marketing Strategies

Chapter 1: email marketing fundamentals.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the basics of email marketing.

(Including what it is, why it works and why it’s still important.)

I’ll also show you how you can use email marketing to grow your business.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the digital marketing practice of communicating with leads and customers with email. Common email-based marketing messages include email newsletters, promotional campaigns and event announcements. Email marketing typically has a significantly higher ROI than many other marketing channels (like social media).

The #1 thing that makes email marketing more effective than SEO and social media is that you have a direct line to your audience.

But with new platforms like Tik Tok and LinkedIn Live on the rise, does old-school email still work?

Let’s find out…

Does Email Marketing Still Work?

I’m not going to bore you with a million stats.

Instead, I’m going to quickly show you why email marketing still works GREAT.

The average email subscriber is worth $48.87 ( DMA ).

Email marketing’s ROI is 36:1 ( Constant Contact ).

This super high ROI is probably why 86% of marketers consider email “important” or “very important” ( DMA ).

Why Email Marketing Still Works

Why does email still work so well?

#1: With Email, You Own The Distribution

This is a big one.

When a new subscriber signs up to your list, you have a direct line to that person’s inbox.

That’s simply not the case with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… or any other social media platform.

In fact, a study found that Facebook organic engagement plummeted to less than 1% ( RivalQ ).

Contrast that number to the engagement rate you get from email.

The average newsletter open rate is 21.33%… 20x higher than Facebook post engagement ( MailChimp ).

#2: People WANT to To Get Marketing Messages via Email

People don’t go on social media to see ads.

In fact, 45% of consumers report that social media ads are annoying ( AdWeek ).

On the other hand, people don’t mind marketing messages in their inboxes. In fact, they expect them.

For example, one study found that 86% of consumers prefer to get email-based marketing messages over Facebook ads, TV commercials and display ads ( HubSpot ).

#3: Email Converts REALLY Well

Sure, email has a better reach than social. But does that translate into more sales?

In fact, when it comes to turning browsers into buyers, nothing beats email.

Email converts 40x more leads into customers than Facebook and Twitter combined ( McKinsey ).

These stats are nice and all. But you’re probably wondering:

“How do I get started with email marketing?”.

Well, that’s what our next chapter is all about…

Chapter 2: How to Build Your Email List

The first step of any email marketing campaign is to build your email list.

In this chapter, I’m going to show you exactly how to build your email list using strategies that are working right now.

These are the same exact list building techniques that I used to grow my email list to 189,044 total subscribers.

Let’s do this!

Optimize Your About Page for Conversions

If you’re like most people, your about page is one of the most-visited pages on your website.

Even better:

The people that go to your about page usually like you.

Which means they’re PRIMED to subscribe.

So I recommend putting at least one email sign-up form on your about page.

For example, my friend James Clear (who has over 500k subscribers) includes a form at the bottom of his about page .

My about page is on the long side… so I use two forms:

Create Squeeze Pages

If you’re serious about building your email list you NEED a squeeze page .

(In other words: a page designed to convert visitors into email subscribers.)

Here’s an example from my site:

As you can see, this page doesn’t give you many options. It’s completely focused on the offer (signing up for my newsletter). This is why it converts at 14%.

If you want to take this to the next level, you can create different squeeze pages for different audiences.

For example, HubSpot has 463 different squeeze pages. Each one offers a different lead magnet.

Speaking of lead magnets…

Create Compelling Lead Magnets

Lead Magnets are the lifeblood of any list building campaign.

It’s REALLY hard to get someone to sign up for a “newsletter” or “21-day email course”. Instead, you need to offer people something they can use right away.

I’m talking about:

• Swipe files
• Case studies

In other words:

The more valuable your lead magnet, the more signups you’ll get.

For example, 100 Days of Real Food offers up a full meal plan as a lead magnet:

Optimize Your Blog’s Homepage for Email Signups

Most blog homepages look something like this:

A list of their latest blog posts.

And hey, there’s nothing wrong with a blog post feed.

But if you want people to subscribe to your email list, you need to put your offer front and center.

Design your blog’s homepage to convert readers into subscribers.

For example, my old homepage was your typical blog feed.

And it converted HORRIBLY.

That’s when I realized that most of the big sites (like Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook) don’t feature content on their homepages.

Instead, their homepages are optimized for signups.

So I decided to try the same thing.

The result? This new homepage.

My old blog feed homepage converted at 4.6%. The new one? 9.01%.

95% better than my old homepage.

Exit-Intent Popups

I’ll be the first to admit it:

I HATE popups.

In fact, I hate them so much that I swore I’d stop using them.

Then one day I realized something:

Not all popups are created equal.

In other words, there’s a BIG difference between a popup that attacks you the second you land on the page…

… and one that offers something of value as you leave.

So a while ago I decided to try popups again.

This time, I’d ONLY use exit-intent popups. And I’d ONLY offer super valuable stuff.

That way, I’m not annoying people with crap nobody wants, like this:

Here’s the popup my team came up with:

Not only does it offer something cool, but this popup only appears if you’re leaving the site anyway.

That way, you’re not distracted from the content on the page.

So, how did the new popup do?

Before the popup, my site’s overall conversion rate was 3.55%. After the exit-intent popup, it shot up to 6.14% (a 72.9% increase).

Use Content Upgrades

Content Upgrades are one of my all-time favorite list building strategies.

In fact, a single Content Upgrade boosted conversions on one of my blog posts by 755.2%.

Here’s the exact process:

First, log in to Google Analytics. And find a blog post on your site that gets a ton of traffic.

Next, figure out what someone reading that specific article would want.

For example, this guide gets 8,578 visitors every month:

The problem is: it’s 4,623 words. That’s WAY too long for most people to read in one sitting.

This is probably why lots of people asked me for a PDF version.

So I decided that a PDF version of my guide would make a great Content Upgrade.

Finally, feature your Content Upgrade in your post.

You can offer it at the top of the page:

At the bottom of your page:

That’s all there is to it.

Chapter 3: Email Campaign Templates

Now it’s time to show you how to create emails that get opened and clicked.

Specifically, I’m going to share four proven email templates.

These templates are specifically designed to help you crank out super valuable email content that your subscribers will love.

So if you’re ready to start sending emails that people WANT to read, this chapter is for you.

The Content Newsletter

The Content Newsletter is a newsletter that provides 100% pure value.

The value can be in the form of a handful of tips. Or links to helpful resources. Or a personal story.

The exact type of value doesn’t really matter. As long as you don’t pitch anything, you’re good.

In fact, pure value newsletters are so rare that your subscribers will LOVE you for them.

For example, I sent out this Content Newsletter a while back:

(A handful of copywriting tips.)

And dozens of people replied to my email to thank me.

With that, here’s the template:

Intriguing Subject Line

Use a subject line that will make someone curious about what’s inside your message.

For example, I used the subject line “How I Got 45.5% More Traffic (In 7 Days)” for one of my Content Newsletters. And that email got a 32.3% open rate.

Bold Opening

Start your newsletter off with something SUPER compelling.

That way, you hook your reader right off the bat.

Personally, I like to kick things off with a mini-story.

But you can also use a straightforward intro that previews what’s coming next.

Either way works.

Valuable Content

Now it’s time to deliver the goods.

If you’re not sure what to write here, I recommend going with a list of 3-5 actionable tips that people can use that day.

Otherwise, you can teach your subscribers an important lesson in the form of a story.

Or curate links to content that will help your reader achieve a specific outcome, like this newsletter from Ramit Sethi .

Nope, you’re not pitching anything in your Content Newsletter.

But that doesn’t mean you should skip your call-to-action.

How can you use a CTA if your email is 100% value?

Well, when I send out a story to subscribers, I use a CTA that asks people to reply with their opinion or take.

Or let’s say you just sent out a list of links to Paleo breakfast recipes.

Your CTA could be to try one of the recipes this week.

The type of CTA you go with isn’t that important.

The important thing is to always include a CTA in your newsletters.

That way, when you DO pitch something, your subscribers aren’t caught off guard.

The Marketing Offer

The Marketing offer is just like it sounds:

It’s an email that pushes your subscribers to make a purchase.

(Usually in the form of a limited-time sale.)

Here’s the template to follow:

Straightforward Subject Line

No need to be super creative.

Instead, just let people know about your offer.

Here’s an example from Red Dress Boutique.

Start your email off with a line or two that describes your offer.

You don’t want to get cute here. Just outline what your offer is and why it’s worth paying attention to.

The Details

So you just outlined your offer. Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty.

Here’s where you outline a few key details about your offer, like:

• Start and end dates
• Key benefits
• Story behind the promo
• Any conditions or limitations

Here’s a real-life example:

One thing to keep in mind here is that you don’t want to overwhelm people with details.

Remember: it’s impossible to close the deal inside of your email. After all, they have to actually go to your site to buy. So let your landing page do most of the selling.

In short: the goal of this section is to get people to learn about your offer and visit your website.

Nothing fancy here. Just a strong CTA that lets people know exactly what to do next.

A PS is an underrated little tactic that can easily double your conversion rate.

Because lots of people will skim your message… but stop and read your PS word-for-word.

That’s why I recommend using a PS in almost all Marketing Offer emails. All you need to do here is summarize your offer and include another call-to-action.

The Announcement

With “The Announcement” email you’re not pitching a “10% Off Sale”. That type of thing works best with The Marketing Offer template I just showed you.

Instead, you want to save this template for BIG announcements, like:

• Brand new product or service
• New version of a popular product
• Limited-time product release
• Important features added to an existing product

Here’s the template:

Subject Line=”Introducing” or “Announcing”

You want to make it clear that your announcement is a big deal.

After all, you’ll probably only send one or two Announcement emails per year.

So don’t be afraid to use terms like “Introducing” or “For the first time” in your subject line.

For example, here’s the subject line I used when I launched a new version of my flagship course:

Compelling Lead

You have a few different options here.

You can jump right into your product announcement:

Or you can build up a little bit of anticipation, like Marie Forleo does here:

The Big Reveal

Now it’s time to outline what exactly you’re announcing and why it’s important.

For example, in this announcement email BuzzSumo quickly outlines what makes their new feature unique.

Now that your reader is pumped about your announcement, let them know the next step.

If it’s a product, your CTA should tell people to head over to your sales page and sign up.

If it’s a new service, you might ask people to fill out a form.

Either way, let your subscriber know EXACTLY what to do next.

The Blog Post Newsletter

When it comes to content promotion, email is king.

For example, I published this post in the 2019.

And to get the word out, I sent a newsletter out to my email list:

I also posted a Tweet.

The Tweet got 962 clicks. And the newsletter got 15,744 clicks.

That’s 16x more clicks.

With that, here’s the template I recommend:

Subject Line=Blog Post Topic

I’ve tested dozens of subject line templates over the last six years.

And when it comes to promoting blog content, I’ve found that your blog post topic itself works GREAT.

For example, when I launched this guide to mobile SEO , I went with the subject line: “Mobile SEO”.

And that dead simple subject line led to a 44.6% open rate.

The type of lead you use depends a lot on your blog post’s topic.

For example, if the topic is something personal, include an anecdote:

If it’s newsworthy, you want to write something like: “As you might have heard, a new study found…”.

Or you can just let people know that you published something new:

Bulleted List

Next, list 3-4 things that someone will learn from your post.

Don’t give away the farm here. Instead, you want to build up excitement for your new content.

Here’s an example from one of my newsletters:

Link To The Post

Finally, add a link to your post.

This can be a normal link:

Or a big ol’ button:

Chapter 4: How to Get Super High Open Rates

Now it’s time for me to show you how to get SUPER high open rates.

In fact, I consistently get 35%+ open rates on newsletters that go out to 100k+ subscribers.

(Which is double the industry average for a list that size.)

Let’s get right into the strategies.

Optimize Your Send Time

You want to send emails…

• When people are awake
• When people’s inboxes aren’t crowded

That’s why I DON’T recommend scheduling newsletters for first thing in the morning.

Otherwise, your message gets buried in someone’s crowded inbox.

Instead, send your emails out when your subscribers’ inboxes are empty. This is usually late morning or early afternoon.

That way, your newsletter will pop up at the top of their inbox.

There’s no “best time to send an email” that works for everyone.

You need to test different send times to see which times get the highest open rates for you.

For example, after testing a dozen different send times, I found that 11am Eastern works best for our subscribers.

11am Eastern is perfect because people on the east coast and in Europe are at work. And by 11am they’ve already cleared out their morning inboxes.

That said, Backlinko is B2B.

If you’re in B2C, it might not make sense to send to people’s personal inboxes while they’re at work.

Again, it’s different for every business.

That’s why I recommend testing a bunch of different times to find the best one for you.

Send People a GREAT Welcome Email

Most welcome emails look something like this:

As my Mom told me: “you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression”.

And this type of welcome email makes a TERRIBLE first impression.

What should you do instead?

First , warmly welcome people to your newsletter.

It’s not 1996. No one is excited to sign up for a newsletter.

In fact, new subscribers are on guard. They’re looking for ANY reason to unsubscribe.

Reassure them. Let them know that they made the right decision.

Next , layout the deets of your newsletter.

Specifically, cover what they can expect in the next few days or weeks.

Finally , end with a call-to-action.

This can be a CTA to check out a few resources from your site that you recommend. Or a link to your latest products.

For example, when I first started Backlinko I asked new subscribers to reply with their #1 struggle:

Not only was this a goldmine of blog content ideas, but it helped me establish a strong relationship with new subscribers.

Remember: These are brand new subscribers. So you don’t want a hard sell CTA.

But you DO want to get them in the habit of taking action.

So don’t skip this step.

Follow “The 80/20 Rule” of Email Content

The 80/20 Rule of Email Content is simple:

80% of your emails should provide value.

And 20% should pitch your products and services.

For example, I usually send about 10 pure-value messages for every sales email.

That way, I don’t burn out my list.

And my subscribers know that when I send something, it’s worth opening.

(Which, at the end of the day, is the real secret to increasing open rates.)

To be clear:

“Value” doesn’t have to be in the form of content.

For example, let’s say you run an eCommerce site that sells paleo protein bars.

Well, a 25% off sale for your new line of bars is valuable to people that are in the market for them.

Even so, it’s not a bad idea for eCommerce sites to send value-packed newsletters too.

For example:

Optimize For Gmail’s Preview Snippet

When someone’s deciding whether or not to open an email, they look at three things:

• The subject line
• The message preview

Most people sleep on the preview. And it KILLS their open rates.

In fact, your message preview is like a second subject line.

And if it looks like this, you’re in trouble:

That’s why you want to optimize the first few lines of your message so it looks SUPER enticing.

Here’s a great example:

Chapter 5: How to Improve Email Deliverability

Let’s face it:

Email deliverability isn’t the most interesting topic in the world.

Most marketers would rather spend time building their email list or coming up with catchy subject lines.

But in my opinion, email deliverability is THE most important part of email marketing.

What good is an email list if no one actually sees your emails?

And in this chapter you’re going to learn how to get your emails delivered to people’s inbox.

Ruthlessly Delete Non-Openers

A few years ago I had a MAJOR deliverability problem on my hands.

My open rates went from 40% to 30% to less than 20%… within a few months.

It got so bad that some of my newsletters were getting 15% open rates:

And lots of subscribers were telling me that my newsletters were going to spam.

No matter how many different subject lines I tested or how many tweaks I made to my content, nothing seemed to help.

But there was one thing I hadn’t tried yet. Something I’d been putting off for months:

List hygiene.

In other words: deleting unengaged subscribers.

I had to try it. I couldn’t let my open rates continue to freefall.

So I logged into Aweber and deleted any subscribers that hadn’t opened an email in the last 4 months.

This meant deleting 28,018 subscribers from my email list.

Did it hurt to delete those hard-earned subscribers?

Did it work?

A few weeks later my open rates shot up like a rocketship.

Today, I delete any subscriber that hasn’t opened or clicked on an email in 4 months.

And it’s one of the main reasons that I have an outstanding deliverability rate.

Keep Spam Complaints Low

Email services like Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook take spam complaints VERY seriously.

As they should.

If lots of people are marking your emails as spam, it sends a clear message that people don’t want to read your emails.

The question is:

How can you lower your spam complaints?

Well, there’s the obvious stuff… like sending great emails.

But you already knew that 🙂

Besides the obvious, here are two quick tips that I’ve picked up over the years.

Tips that have helped my spam complaint rate stay insanely low (approximately 10 complaints per 100k emails):

First , make it REALLY easy to unsubscribe.

In other words, don’t be “that guy”:

If you make someone hunt for an unsubscribe link, they’re going to give up and hit the spam button instead.

Instead, make your unsubscribe link super obvious:

Second , don’t send a bazillion emails.

The fact is, most people hit “Spam” out of frustration.

(Especially for newsletters that they signed up for.)

And nothing frustrates people more than a non-stop barrage of emails.

So if you send more than one email per week, consider condensing that content into a single, weekly email.

( Note: There are exceptions to this rule. For example, you may want to send 5 emails in 5 days for a big promotion or limited-time product launch. Just don’t make daily emails a habit unless that’s what people signed up for.)

Test Short Subject Lines

Here’s something I recently noticed:

Newsletter with super short subject lines gets the best open rates.

For example, the subject line “Great Content” got a 42.7% open rate:

This could be due to the simple fact that short subject lines get more opens than long subject lines.

But I have another theory:

Short subject lines help deliverability.

Here’s why:

Spam filters flag messages that contain certain words and phrases. And they put lots of emphasis on the subject line.

So the more words you use in your subject, the more likely one of them will get flagged:

But when you use short subject lines, you’re much less likely to get caught in the filter.

Again, this is just a theory. I have no concrete proof that short subject lines get through spam filters more often.

But if you’re having deliverability issues, it’s something worth trying out.

Use Double Opt-In

When it comes to the Single Opt-in vs. Double Opt-in debate, there’s no “right’ answer.

If your #1 goal is to maximize the sheer size of your list, Single Opt-in is obviously the way to go .

But if you want to maximize engagement and deliverability, I recommend Double Opt-in.

I’m a deliverability nut, so I personally use Double Opt-in. But it’s ultimately up to you.

Chapter 6: Email Marketing Software

In this chapter I’m going to quickly review five of the top Email Service Providers ( ESPs ).

Obviously, there’s no single “best email marketing provider” that’s right for everyone. The “best” option depends on your list size, marketing goals, and features that are important to you.

That’s why I’m not going to crown a winner here. Instead, I’ll highlight the pros, cons and use cases for each email platform.

So if you’re in the market for email marketing software, these reviews should help you choose the best option for you.

You can use MailChimp to send simple newsletters. Or it can be a full marketing automation platform that taps into behavior-based messages and cart abandonment emails.

It’s one of the few platforms that lets you keep it simple. But if you do want to dig into more complicated stuff, you can.

Pricing is free for up to 2k subscribers (with limited features). Their pro plans start at $10/month.

Constant Contact

With a focus on drag-and-drop design and ecommerce platform integration, Constant Contact is definitely focused on the ecommerce market. That said, quite a few bloggers, nonprofits and service businesses use it too.

So if you run an eCommerce site, you might want to give Constant Contact a spin.

Plans range from $20-$45 and up depending on how many subscribers you have.

ConvertKit came out of nowhere to become one of the most popular email marketing platforms on the planet.

One thing that makes ConvertKit unique is that 100% of its features are focused on helping “Online Creators”.

(Like bloggers, artists and musicians.)

So if you fall in that category, you can’t go wrong with ConvertKit.

Like most ESPs, pricing is based on subscriber numbers. Pricing is free for up to 1k subscribers (with limited features). A full-fledged plan at 1k subs or less starts at $29. They also offer a 14-day free trial.

GetResponse

GetResponse includes the features you’d expect from an ESP (like autoresponders and marketing automation).

Plans also come with email marketing tools that actually help you build your list (like landing page software and popups).

Plans start at $15/month with limited functionality. And there’s a full 30-day trial.

Aweber is the king of simplicity. Which is why I use it.

Sure, they have some marketing automation stuff. But it’s pretty basic compared to most other ESPs. And their reporting leaves a lot to be desired.

But if you want simple and reliable software for sending newsletters and autoresponder emails, you can’t beat Aweber.

Paid plans start at $19/month. And you can test out any plan with a 30-day free trial as long as your list has fewer than 25k subscribers.

Comparing Email Marketing Software

Here’s a comparison of the features, pricing and levels of support for popular email marketing software options.

Chapter 7: Marketing Automation 101

A lot of people consider marketing automation “the next big thing” in digital marketing.

Is it true?

No, marketing automation isn’t going to magically double your sales.

Like any tool, automation is all about how you use it.

When you use it right, you can get your messages in front of the right people at the right time.

Which is MUCH better than mass emailing your entire list with the same exact message.

How to Create Awesome Autoresponder Sequences

Autoresponder sequences are like marketing automation training wheels.

So if you’re brand new to automation, I recommend getting your feet wet with a simple autoresponder sequence.

The content of your autoresponder will be completely different for a blog vs. an ecommerce site vs. a SaaS company.

But they all have the same basic structure:

Once you get the hang of creating a basic autoresponder, you can try using different autoresponders for different people.

Let’s say you run a SaaS company that helps people make doctor’s appointments.

And you have two types of people that visit your site: doctors and patients.

Does it make sense to put a doctor and a patient in the same autoresponder?

Instead, you want to create a different autoresponder for each group:

You might be wondering:

“How do you know if a doctor or a patient is signing up for my list?”

Well, you can go by the page they sign up on. Anyone that signs up from “register for a doctor account” page is probably a doctor. So you can automatically put them on that autoresponder.

You can also ask people which group they belong to during the signup process:

Set Up Segmentation

Segmentation is another easy way to get started with marketing automation.

Instead of putting people on different autoresponders, you segment (or “tag”) subscribers based on behavior.

Then, send those segments SUPER targeted content.

When I first launched our new YouTube training program, First Page Videos , we announced it to the entire Backlinko email list.

My thought process was:

“YouTube marketing is blowing up right now. Anyone that’s interested in SEO will probably want to grow their YouTube channel too.”

But I was wrong.

As it turned out, a good chunk of my subscribers had ZERO interest in YouTube.

So the next time we launched I course, I decided to use segmentation. That way, we’d ONLY send emails to people that cared about YouTube marketing.

To do that, I sent our entire list an invitation to a new training series about YouTube SEO.

But to get access to the series, subscribers had to raise their hand and say: “I’m interested”.

And because we sent messages to people that wanted to receive them, we had an awesome conversion rate for that launch.

Test Full Marketing Automation Campaigns

Let me be clear about something:

Marketing automation has a ton of potential.

But the downside of automation is that things can get REALLY complicated REALLY quickly.

Before you know it, you need a Ph.D. to understand what’s going on.

So if you’re new to email marketing, focus on building your list and sending subscribers AWESOME content.

And once you have a handle on that, set up an autoresponder.

And once you have a handle on that , use tags to segment your list into 2-3 different groups.

Then, once you feel like you’ve completely mastered tagging, try full-on email automation.

This means hyper-targeted messages based on opens, clicks, pages visited, past purchases, demographics, time on site, and lots more.

Let’s say you run an eCommerce site that sells grain-free dog food.

And when a new subscriber signed up they chose “Dachshund” from your “What breed of dog do you own?” question.

A few days later that person put a bag of dog food into their cart… then closed the page.

Well, with marketing automation, you could go beyond the generic “You forgot something” abandoned cart message.

Instead, you can send them a “new customer discount” for 20% off their first purchase. And you can mention the fact that Dachshunds LOVE the product they had in their cart.

Pretty cool.

Bonus Chapter: Advanced Email Marketing Strategies

In this chapter I’m going to share a handful of advanced tactics that I’ve picked up over the years.

So if you’re ready to get more from your email marketing campaigns, this chapter is for you.

Let’s dive right in.

Try Text Email Layouts

Nathan Barry said it best:

“Beautiful email templates are bad for business.”

And he’s 100% right.

The fancy design does nothing but distracts people from the content of your message.

Instead, I recommend sending emails that look like they came from a friend or coworker.

Here’s a great example from Dan Martell :

This email could EASILY have a logo, header and other nonsense.

But Dan decided to send a newsletter that’s super simple.

Keep Things Personal

Most emails get ignored because they’re boring and generic.

What’s the solution?

Make your emails look like they’re written and sent from a single person.

(Yup, even if you’re a big brand with thousands of employees.)

For example, HubSpot is a publicly-traded company with hundreds of employees.

But even they send their newsletters from Aja, someone that writes for their blog.

That way, you feel like Aja just sent you an email… not a faceless brand.

One CTA Per Email

Want to improve your email click-through rate?

Use ONE CTA per email.

In fact, WordStream reports that emails with a single CTA can boost clicks by 371%.

In other words, don’t send emails with a million options.

Instead, give subscribers ONE crystal clear option.

Use 15px+ Font

According to Litmus, 67% of all email messages are opened on mobile .

And one of the easiest ways to make your newsletters mobile-optimized?

Use a big font.

(Ideally, 15px+.)

Unfortunately, most newsletters still use 12-13px font.

This is fine for desktops.

But 12px font is almost impossible to read on an iPhone without pinching and zooming.

For example, look at the difference between these two newsletters:

Same content. Same formatting. Different font size.

And a world of difference.

Now It’s Your Turn

I really hope you enjoyed my complete guide to email marketing.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Which technique from today’s guide are you going to try first?

Are you going to start using 15px font?

Or maybe you want to try marketing automation.

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

I’m always motivated to give away more value when I see how much you are willing to share with your readership. Thanks for the helpful information you offer with this guide.

You’re welcome, Irene. Glad you enjoyed today’s guide!

I’m logging into aweber and changing my font size right now, will post back and let you know the results over time!

That was insane, Dean. I’m going to use all this tips with my little community.

Thank you, and keep the work going!!

I am so impressed with the quality of content Brian shares with his followers. Beautiful, easy to use and super helpful. Truly an inspiration for my blog as well.

Thanks Sandy 👍👍👍

Thanks for this Brian, I’m in the UK. I’m implementing marcus sherdian’s book at the moment, have a startup creative agency. I spent 2 days harvesting emails through good old search them out and data entry into hubspot. I have around 300 on my list, I regularly get 35% open rates as the content has value but trying to get cold email sign ups is hard as I’m in a crowded market and my Web traffic is low. What’s best invest in Google ads for traffic? Also is it legal to email people cold as long as you have your business address and unsubscribe on the email?

Thank you Brian for this thourough article! Indeed E-mailing marketing is so important in 2019! And it converts way more than Facebook or any othersocial media platform. That’s a direct way to engage with the audience without being too pushy of course. We have noticed that using a bigger fonts increases the time on page on the website, but I never made the experience to apply a 15 pt font on my newsletter! Definitely a must try:) Have a great day!

Hi Sarah, you’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed the post. I actually used to use 12px but realized that 15px also works well for newsletters. I might even go up to 16px soon.

I will let you know it turned! but I trust you on this! Awesome content! Thank you for all your precious advices!

Another great post! I did a mobile test on the various email autoresponder software mentioned, to test on their text content appearance. Convertkit, aweber looks great on mobile. Dripe, sendgrid & mailchimp looks too big. And the rest are just too small. You are right, font size on mobile plays an important part.

Thanks Cheefoo. That’s really interesting!

Is there an advantage to deleting email addresses over, say, limiting what you send to them?

We routinely move infrequent openers into a low-engagement segment, and that segment doesn’t get most of the emails we send.

But if there is something that performs really well across the board (a slam dunk), we’ll include the low-engagement segment.

Something to think about.

The advantage is that they don’t drag down your engagement rates (which can hurt deliverability). Like you said, some of those low-engagement folks may still have value. So it can make sense to segment them or run a re-engagement campaign. Personally, I prefer to delete them.

We found that if someone hasn’t opened any of our emails in 4+ months, they’re probably gone for good anyway.

I think the ideal timeframe depends on the email frequency. Monthly – delete after 6 months of non-engagement Weekly – delete after 3-4 months on non-engagement 2-3/Week – delete after 4-6 weeks of non-engagement

The challenge is to separate engagement from inbox placement early on – once subscribers don’t engage with a few emails many mailbox providers start sending emails to Spam folder, even for known quality brands. This is why it’s important to send highly engaging content soon after signing up and keep ratio of sales/ask to valuable content 1/3 or 1/2 to keep engagement high.

Hi Brian, thanks for this awesome guide. I’ve been searching for such a guide for the past week without finding one. I’ll follow it and build my list. Thanks once again!

Hi Timan, nice!

Another amazing guide, Brian. Thanks. (i just don’t agree aWeber is the “king of simplicity”).

You’re welcome, Filipe. What email marketing tool do you use?

My path was: sending emails manually -> Mailchimp -> aWeber -> Convertkit (arguably the best one, in my opinion, and very easy/simple to use).

Nice. I tried Mailchimp back in the day and Convertkit more recently. I agree: both are solid and relatively easy to use (compared to stuff like Keap/Infusionsoft).

In-depth as Always 🙂 Loved It!!!! Really admire how you create a story around your content in the email…like in the case when you were pitching your YouTube guides saying that many of your Subscribers found you on YouTube.

Thank you 👍👍👍

Enjoyed this Brian, thanks! Will you be doing anything more advanced on automations?

You’re welcome, Arthur. I might. I like to keep things simple and avoid most complex funnels and automation stuff. But if I dip my toes into that world I’ll definitely share what I learn with everybody.

Hi Serge, you’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.

This is an excellent guide. So full of great value for the reader! I appreciate the

Hi Jeff, I think you meant to say something after “appreciate the…”

This is amazing stuff Brian!

Thanks Davis

Brian, thank you for another awesome guide. I am wondering what advice you would have for someone who makes handmade crafts (think jewelry, for example) rather than selling a service? I have a new shop on Etsy, it’s really a hobby, but many folks are leaving Etsy because of how they are strong-arming sellers. I feel like developing my own email list of customers is a better way to go than hoping Etsy “promotes” my shop, but not sure how to apply your tips to my sort of business. I don’t currently have a personal website (I am a UX designer by day), I do blog on Tumblr and use Instagram.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

Hi Chris, you’re welcome. The first step would be to get your own website. Otherwise, it’s going to be tough to build your email list from third party websites. It’s also possible to setup a quick landing page using a tool like clickfunnels. But even then, your conversion rate is going to be much better with forms on your own site.

Maybe ConvertKit could also be an interim solution until the own website subject has been settled – as they seem to offer landing pages that you can use without having your own website; and which help you do the lead magnet(s) and build your eMail lists? (I am not on CK yet just followed a few webinars and videos lately)

Thank you for this guide. Something I was actually recently looking for. Awesome work!

Oh nice! Yeah, I haven’t written much about email, even though it’s HUGE. But, considering how much email marketing has helped grow my business, I thought it was time to write more about it.

“Try Text Email Layouts”

This is very true. Just last month I tried a text-only Email Campaign and it got almost 2 times more open rate and 4 times more clicks than the Email Campaigns with Templates.

Maybe that’s why I have never seen your emails with a template! 😃

Nice! Yeah, I’ve seen the same thing happen time and time again: text layouts CRUSH fancy newsletter designs.

Thanks Brian for the useful information.

To be honest i never tried E-Mail marketing but now i will definitely add E-Mail marketing into my marketing strategy.

You’re welcome, Junaid. You won’t regret it!

I had to shut off my newsletter subscription due to getting so much spam that it caused my email account to be shut down. I was sending over 100 newsletter confirmation emails in less than an hour. I couldnt even email my customers! Very frustrating. Any tips on how to beat this?

Hmmm. I’ve never run into that before. What email marketing platform did you use?

Use reCAPTCHA from Google on your registration screen

+1 for using reCAPTCHA to avoid bot signups

Once you have bots on your list you can try to use email verification provider to filter them out

Emails is a super important channel! Great way to re-engage with previous readers / leads / clients.

Love it! Thanks.

You’re welcome, François. Email is legit!

Good sh*t (as they say)

Seriously though, epic content as per usual 🙂

I guess in your business you don’t do cold outreach (outside of link building) but I’d be curious to learn from you if you do have any experience with cold outreach for sales?

Cheers Brian, keep it up, man!

Thanks Keller. I have a lot of outreach experience, but mostly for link building. That said, we recently did an outreach study wit Pitchbox that included cold sales emails. https://backlinko.com/email-outreach-study

Might be worth checking out.

Value packed content as usual Brian. I’ve just taken note to re-design my home page hero banner area to capture leads and to create a lead magnet on my about page. And that was only the first read! Also, short email titles work great. I find them more inviting or something. Can’t put the finger on it.

Hey Simon, nice! Totally: short email titles crush. I think it may be due to the curiosity factor. Short titles give you just enough info to grab attention without giving away the farm.

Brian, this is gold. Sometimes I hate that your guides are so long because I have so much work to get done for clients that I am like dag why is this going to take the next 20 minutes! But within 30 seconds of reading, I am hooked and soaking up every awesome suggestion. I even sent this to my clients who are super engaged in their marketing to remind them of the importance of email marketing. I hope you are making bank because you deserve it for what you put out. Thanks again.

P.S. Klaviyo is a pretty great email service provider as well, especially for those on running eCommerce on Shopify since Mailchimp and Shopify are no longer friendly.

Hey Josh, thank you! Oh nice. I’ve never heard of Klaviyo. I’ll have to check it out 👍👍👍

It’s focusing on e-commerce, similar to Constant Contact, but more sophisticated and more expensive.

I don’t have or want a mailing list. I sell a product, Custom Calligraphy, (not for weddings) that is generally ordered only once. I want to get more traffic to my site- I’m competing with Etsy- what has scooped up all the first places.

Lianda, it’s obviously your call. But an email list is HUGE for selling anything online.

Check out Shinah @crookedcalligraphy on Instagram. She always posts a TON of valuable info about running a calligraphy biz!

Brian, this article is 100% value and it has motivated me to do email marketing the right way 🙂 I am going to change a few things including the mix of educational content and promotional content in my newsletter.

Nice! Keep me posted 👍👍👍

Wow! Great guide! I’ll start using 15px+ font in all of my emails. Please keep it up!

Awesome Kendra! Let me know how it goes.

great article one more time. Nothing beat email (except SEO / Youtube) in term of Real engagement, leads etc. I am sure than you will prepare next posts about how to do it, and share your own emailing campaign (that I follow)

Thank you, Olivier.

Great content as usual Brian. I expected nothing less.

After reading your post I’ll definitely take email marketing serious for my business.

I noticed that your email had just a few lines. I love it.

Thanks for the post.

You’re welcome. Like I mentioned in the guide, I’ve tested super long and super short newsletters. Short emails tend to get better deliverability and clicks.

Awesome timing! I had just pivoted to email marketing after a focus on Messenger marketing and received this great guide. Thanks!

I was wondering if you had any thoughts on content marketing with Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa?

Hi Steven, nice! I recommend checking this out: https://backlinko.com/ahrefs-vs-semrush

Talk about delivering value, Brian! I would PAY for this info but thanks for sharing freely. My question is about reviving an old list … one that I’ve struggled to email consistently. You said you delete unopens for the last 4 months. I know I need to email them more often, but how would you go about re-engaging a list? Thanks for any help.

Hi Cathy, good question. I wouldn’t delete those folks. I only delete subscribers that haven’t opened in 4 months because we send a fair amount of emails out. In your case, a re-engagement campaign makes much more sense.

For me, email marketing is the toughest job to do as a blogger. I get nightmares when I think of it. Email marketing was not needed for my blog until now but my blog is growing and it needs email marketing set. Thankfully you posted about the same. Now I am going to follow everything you’ve taught in this post.

I am a fan of your content and design. Nobody can do better than you. Hands down!

And for that I say, Thank you, next!

You’re welcome, Rajan. Considering you’re just getting started my #1 piece of advice is to keep things SUPER simple. I wouldn’t worry about segmenting, funnels or any complicated stuff like that. Just focus on growing your list and sending your subscribers awesome stuff.

Brian Dean, do you read minds?

First, that was an INCREDIBLE guide. I have bookmarked this post, I will need to read it again.

Just last 2 weeks, I decided to focus mainly on building an email list and today you’ve published just what I wanted.

Like you knew that’s what we’ve been waiting for.

I was surprised when you said you’ve sent over 11 Million broadcasts… that’s huge!

My hunger for email marketing just leveled up after this guide, I will start immediately.

Brian, thanks for this guide. I just shared it to my facebook friends!

Secondly, I like your eyes! 😁

Hi Joy, thanks! And very cool to hear that you’re focusing on building your email list. That’s something I wish I started doing much sooner! Congrats and please keep me posted on how things go.

Hi Brian Dean ! You are my idol I like the way you write articles

I know exactly what I need to work on straight away. I will be adding a great squeeze page to my website, as my current annoying pop up less than equal.

Awesome! Let me know how it goes 👍👍👍

I have been following you for a while and you’ve always been delivering value consistently unlike other self acclaimed marketers out there.

Thank you for releasing this giant guide and have a nice day.

Thanks Jamiu. I appreciate that.

Thanks Brian to publish another awesome post.

I liked your tips about deleting those subscribers who didn’t open mail in 4 months.

You’re welcome, Abuzar. I would, of course, be careful about deleting subscribers. But in my opinion, if you do it right, list hygiene can help deliverability a ton.

Great Email Marketing Guide Brian.

Really love the section on Automation… even tho you didn’t go in-depth on it you Break down the complex ideas in the simplest form…

Also, I agree with you on the fact that there should only be one CTA per email. Because even when I am reading emails when there is more than 1 CTA I often get confused.

Keep up the awesome work.

Thanks Floyd. Glad you enjoyed it.

Hello! Can i get the pdf of this Article?

Hi Nafisa, We should have a PDF sometime soon.

Hi Brian, Great post – amazing work. I wanted to be able to refer to it again so I added it to my book marks. I also like to have a pdf. When I need a pdf of a blog article/post I copy all and put in a word doc. then a reduce the images or eliminate altogether. I prefer to print my pdfs and read the paper copy and the images only take up space/ink. I don’t know – am I alone on this or do other people print to read later as well? Just a heads up for you as you prepare to provide the pdf. Great work – I have watched many of your videos as well. Cheers!

Thanks Andy. We do have PDF versions of our other guides. I try to make them a 1:1 match to the actual guide (including images, graphics etc.), which is the tricky part.

Brian… Man!

I’ve been doing email marketing these past few months. But, the result was not as expected.

After spending an hour reading this guide, now I think I know where I did it wrong.

I will be trying to improve our email marketing using some of these strategies you mention.

I’ll keep you posted with the result!

Thanks Man!

Awesome Henry! Let me know how this approach works out for you.

Really outstanding content !! Thank you so much for such an in-depth information Brain !!

You’re welcome 👍👍👍

How can I build email list for my Web Design Agency?

The strategies here apply to pretty much any business… including agencies.

Hi Brian, thanks for sharing all of this information. I am just starting out in e-commerce and reading your blogs has really helped me understand things from a different perspective. I consider myself very lucky to have found your blogs before I go live as I’m sure you have saved me from so many headaches in the months and years to come:)

Hi Paul, awesome! I definitely wish I had something like Backlinko when I first started.

As always, Brian delivers again! He knows his email marketing because his emails are the ONLY ones I get excited to open as I think “ooh what can I learn today”. What’s your thoughts on Mailerlite? I started with Mailchimp and did not really like it. Mailerlite is okay, but it takes forever to click from section to section. On the bright side, it’s still free for me. Do not have enough revenue to pay for email provider just yet.

Thanks Dave. I appreciate that. I haven’t tried Mailerlite. Have you seen this that just came out? https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hubspot-free-email-marketing

Nice! I didn’t see this one, thanks for the mention. I made a comparison list for providers with free tiers, will add Hubspot to it.

Brian, would be cool to add a couple rows/columns with info on free tiers and pricing tiers to your section reviewing providers, to help people choose. I would be happy to make the expanded version for you (for free) if you like the format I used here: https://www.bigmailer.io/free-email-sender/

Dave I am the same way. I unsubscribe from newsletters everyday. But I do truly look forward to when Brian’s newsletters come out

Not sure when this post was published / comment posted, but MailChimp made a lot of changes in 2019. I used to recommend MailChimp to my clients needing a free option, and then after the changes I couldn’t. That left me looking around for an alternative. Mailerlite came up a few times in my research, I tried it and it was easy with lots of functionality even on the free plan. Excellent support and lots of how-to videos as well. Moving was a no-brainer and I’m so happy with Mailerlite. …before you ask, no, they don’t pay me. 🙂

Another great resource Brian! Thanks for creating these!

You’re welcome, Nissar.

Hi Brian, superb article. What do you use (or which plugin) to create your opt-in forms on your website?(WordPress)

Thanks Jason. They’re mostly custom coded.

Awesome “complete content” again! 😉 Thank you so much. I also realized the small font size when I checked my newsletter on mobile.

Do you know the best way to set up a higher font size? Wrapping the whole content in a div and setting it via css? Or better using the old-school font-tag for older email clients?

Thanks Timo! I’m glad you remember the Complete Content email series.

To answer your question: I’m not 100% sure. I just set the font as 15px in Aweber. I don’t believe they use CSS in plain text emails.

Thanks BRIAN😊 As always you giving us great & very valuable content. These will really help my email campaign. After reading these blog post i have been clean up remaining confusion in my mind about email marketing.

Ones again thanks so much BRIAN😊.

You’re welcome, Prasad!

So much great stuff in here, thanks for the considerable effort that went into this! Will you offer it as a digital download for easier printing? Lots of stuff I want to highlight and take notes on.

Hi Kari, you’re welcome. I do plan on adding a PDF version sometime soon. It takes a while for our designer to turn this into a proper PDF.

Dear Brian,

This is really charming. We’ve got the awesome resource from you…! I read your most of the “Definitive Guide”. There are huge information with practical tips and tricks and the case studies I found in your every single guide.

Thanks for your valuable contribution to the industry…!

Masud Parvage

Hi Brian Brilliant and detailed post which I read through and through. 18pt is where I’m going on emails from now on.

Question Many of your comparisons are with Facebook and Twitter. How about LinkedIn? How does this compare, performance-wise, with email marketing for B2B Professionals?

Thanks and really looking forward to your reply.

Hi Matthew, thank you! I appreciate that. Engagement is WAY higher on Linkedin than on Facebook and Twitter. But from my testing, it’s still not close to email (especially CTR).

I’m always amazed at how many email signups my clients get. I thought email marketing was dead long ago, but having seen my client’s subscriber lists grow steadily I had to start rethinking that.

And now your article further solidifies it. Thanks for in the depth info as always! I have a few tweaks I need to make but glad to know I’ve been doing at least a few things right 🙂

Hi Mike, it’s kind of crazy that with all the changes in the marketing world, email is still #1 by a mile.

This was JUST what I needed today Brian!

Quick question about exit-intent pop-ups. Do you only use those on Desktop since there is no real way of knowing exit intent on mobile?

Happy to help, Kelan. Exactly: they’re only for desktop.

Interesting facts to consider and test. The one that gave me much to think about is the “plain text” template. I’m selling advertising space on my website and I used to be the one with “a beautiful template”, just to better present what they would actually get (I used custom image on how the banner would look like for each company) and to differentiate myself from those spammy emails offering seo services, website creation etc (I know you get them too). But since the results weren’t as expected, I should probably try the plain version and visualize what they are getting in the second email, after all, no sale is made from the first message, right? Thanks, Brian!

Hi Jure, it’s definitely something worth testing. That’s actually why I phrased this as “testing” a plain text email. There is a place for design. But 9 times out of 10, plain text does better.

Wow! Another GREAT guide packed with ACTIONABLE advice. Time to clear my afternoon and get cracking! Thanks, Brian!

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The small business guide to email marketing

An effective email marketing strategy is an essential part of any business, no matter the size of your business. It’s a surefire way to help nurture and retain existing customers and generate new ones. Best of all, you don’t need a massive marketing budget to build an effective email marketing strategy.  

Here are five ways to create an effective email marketing strategy. 

1. Have confidence in the plan

Before you begin an email marketing strategy, learn how and why this will impact your business. Also, you must have confidence in its potential. Don’t just start sending out emails without buying into your own plan.  

If you have any doubts, consider a  relevant survey  found most customers like  getting promotional emails. A whopping 96% of people who earn $75,000 – $99,900 say they would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with. Also, 92% of those earning $100,000 or more agree with this sentiment.  

Email marketing is also a great way to reach customers on mobile devices. The most popular activity for mobile users (59%) is checking and sending emails.  Email marketing is cost-effective , too. The average return of around $40 for every dollar spent.

2. Build an email list 

You need an email list to reach your customers and target audience. You can collect these in a variety of ways: 

• Do it is in person during checkout or via an in-store sign-up sheet.  
• Get contact info through printed materials, or online via your website and social media channels. 

When customers say they want to receive emails from your businesses, they’re saying they want to gain value. Be ready to address their common concerns: 

• What’s in it for me? Let them know how signing up to receive your emails benefits them—whether it’s through coupons and promos, rewards, product or service updates, contests, exclusive offers, or valuable content.  
• Can I control the emails? Assure them that they can choose the frequency at which they receive emails. They should also know they can opt-out at any time. Let them choose the types they receive, like newsletters, blogs, discount offers, or electronic receipts.  
• What happens next? Tell them what to expect now that they’ve signed up (e.g., you’ll be getting a verification email; you’ll be getting 20% off your next purchase). 

If your customers are signing up in person, you can relay this information first hand. If you’re targeting online customers via your website or through social media, you can capture potential subscribers in several ways. Standard practices often use bright and clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons or a well-placed contact form.  

Don’t feel tempted to purchase email lists from third-parties. Relying on an outside list is a risky move because the people on that list haven’t necessarily done business with you. Receiving another unsolicited email will likely be annoying and ineffective. It may also violate  General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules . 

Once you’ve started to build your email list, it’s time to write targeted email content. In most cases, expect a slow start since it requires a bit of background information on your customers. But soon, you’ll be able to categorize email contacts into groups based on similar interests or attributes, like: 

• Past-purchase behavior 
• Demographics (age, gender, location, income level)  
• Customer loyalty 

Using customer management software is a suitable way to gather this type of information. Until then, a simple, straightforward email with a clear CTA button will suffice. Make sure it’s responsive so that viewing on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device is easy.  

3. Set up drip email campaigns  

Customers should be able to choose the type and frequency of emails they get from your business. That’s where a drip campaign comes in handy. The name gets its inspiration from drip irrigation methods used in farming, in which small amounts of water are used over long periods to water plants or crops.  

In other words, you’re nourishing your crops in hopes of creating a bounty. In email marketing, it means you’re nurturing your relationships by sending out a series of automated emails. The drip campaigns can be based on a specific campaign schedule or based on actions customers take.  

Drip campaigns work for someone who fits into a specific category or segmentation. That helps ensure they’re receiving the right email at precisely the right time, and eventually leading them to purchase. Most small businesses have a go-to email drip campaign for new customers and another one for existing customers.  

A new customer drip campaign might look something like this: 

• Welcome email  
• Promo email for first-time purchase 
• Relevant content of interest 
• Cart abandonment (reaching out to customers who add items to cart, but leave before checking out)  
• Thank you for your purchase 

An existing customer drip campaign may look something like this: 

• New product release/updates 
• Regular content marketing emails (sending valuable, non-advertising content to build trust and brand loyalty.  
• Social promotions  
• Seasonal promotions  

4. Test and learn 

As you gain experience with email marketing, you’ll be able to experiment with different tactics to see if small changes can impact your results. For example, you can send half your email list a message with one subject line and half another subject line and then compare results. 

These tests should be side-by-side comparisons, also known as A/B testing. For example, comparing one subject line versus another subject line. You run into problems if you’re testing things that aren’t comparable like a subject line vs. a discount offer. 

How do you know if your email program is working? As a small business owner, you may be able to notice the results first hand. You’ll also learn to start tracking key performance indicators like conversion, which means your email inspired an action. That action may be getting a customer to open an email, click a CTA button, fill out an online form, or purchase a product.  

5. Make email marketing social and mobile  

Email and social media play nicely together, especially on mobile devices. If you have some compelling, high-performing social content, try including it in emails to increase visibility.  

You can also do this by adding social logos in your emails, which encourages people to follow your other channels. If you have a website, you should also include a link to that. 

Making emails mobile-friendly matters. There’s nothing worse than opening an email and having to pinch and resize to try to see the content. A recent survey found that 40 percent of respondents say the marketing emails they receive are not optimized for their mobile device.  

Here is your chance to set yourself apart from the rest. Optimizing email for various devices will only increase your open-rates. In turn, this raises your opportunities to convert content to revenue.   

If you’re interested in learning more best practices for small business digital marketing, check out  The Complete Guide to Content Marketing  and  Four Hacks for Entrepreneur’s Social Media Marketing.

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Small Business Trends

How to create a business plan: examples & free template.

This is the ultimate guide to creating a comprehensive and effective plan to start a business . In today’s dynamic business landscape, having a well-crafted business plan is an important first step to securing funding, attracting partners, and navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship.

This guide has been designed to help you create a winning plan that stands out in the ever-evolving marketplace. U sing real-world examples and a free downloadable template, it will walk you through each step of the process.

Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or launching your very first startup, the guide will give you the insights, tools, and confidence you need to create a solid foundation for your business.

Table of Contents

How to Write a Business Plan

Embarking on the journey of creating a successful business requires a solid foundation, and a well-crafted business plan is the cornerstone. Here is the process of writing a comprehensive business plan and the main parts of a winning business plan . From setting objectives to conducting market research, this guide will have everything you need.

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary serves as the gateway to your business plan, offering a snapshot of your venture’s core aspects. This section should captivate and inform, succinctly summarizing the essence of your plan.

It’s crucial to include a clear mission statement, a brief description of your primary products or services, an overview of your target market, and key financial projections or achievements.

Think of it as an elevator pitch in written form: it should be compelling enough to engage potential investors or stakeholders and provide them with a clear understanding of what your business is about, its goals, and why it’s a promising investment.

Example: EcoTech is a technology company specializing in eco-friendly and sustainable products designed to reduce energy consumption and minimize waste. Our mission is to create innovative solutions that contribute to a cleaner, greener environment.

Our target market includes environmentally conscious consumers and businesses seeking to reduce their carbon footprint. We project a 200% increase in revenue within the first three years of operation.

Overview and Business Objectives

In the Overview and Business Objectives section, outline your business’s core goals and the strategic approaches you plan to use to achieve them. This section should set forth clear, specific objectives that are attainable and time-bound, providing a roadmap for your business’s growth and success.

It’s important to detail how these objectives align with your company’s overall mission and vision. Discuss the milestones you aim to achieve and the timeframe you’ve set for these accomplishments.

This part of the plan demonstrates to investors and stakeholders your vision for growth and the practical steps you’ll take to get there.

Example: EcoTech’s primary objective is to become a market leader in sustainable technology products within the next five years. Our key objectives include:

• Introducing three new products within the first two years of operation.
• Achieving annual revenue growth of 30%.
• Expanding our customer base to over 10,000 clients by the end of the third year.

Company Description

The Company Description section is your opportunity to delve into the details of your business. Provide a comprehensive overview that includes your company’s history, its mission statement, and its vision for the future.

Highlight your unique selling proposition (USP) – what makes your business stand out in the market. Explain the problems your company solves and how it benefits your customers.

Include information about the company’s founders, their expertise, and why they are suited to lead the business to success. This section should paint a vivid picture of your business, its values, and its place in the industry.

Example: EcoTech is committed to developing cutting-edge sustainable technology products that benefit both the environment and our customers. Our unique combination of innovative solutions and eco-friendly design sets us apart from the competition. We envision a future where technology and sustainability go hand in hand, leading to a greener planet.

Define Your Target Market

Defining Your Target Market is critical for tailoring your business strategy effectively. This section should describe your ideal customer base in detail, including demographic information (such as age, gender, income level, and location) and psychographic data (like interests, values, and lifestyle).

Elucidate on the specific needs or pain points of your target audience and how your product or service addresses these. This information will help you know your target market and develop targeted marketing strategies.

Example: Our target market comprises environmentally conscious consumers and businesses looking for innovative solutions to reduce their carbon footprint. Our ideal customers are those who prioritize sustainability and are willing to invest in eco-friendly products.

Market Analysis

The Market Analysis section requires thorough research and a keen understanding of the industry. It involves examining the current trends within your industry, understanding the needs and preferences of your customers, and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

This analysis will enable you to spot market opportunities and anticipate potential challenges. Include data and statistics to back up your claims, and use graphs or charts to illustrate market trends.

This section should demonstrate that you have a deep understanding of the market in which you operate and that your business is well-positioned to capitalize on its opportunities.

Example: The market for eco-friendly technology products has experienced significant growth in recent years, with an estimated annual growth rate of 10%. As consumers become increasingly aware of environmental issues, the demand for sustainable solutions continues to rise.

Our research indicates a gap in the market for high-quality, innovative eco-friendly technology products that cater to both individual and business clients.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis in your business plan offers a comprehensive examination of your company’s internal and external factors. By assessing Strengths, you showcase what your business does best and where your capabilities lie.

Weaknesses involve an honest introspection of areas where your business may be lacking or could improve. Opportunities can be external factors that your business could capitalize on, such as market gaps or emerging trends.

Threats include external challenges your business may face, like competition or market changes. This analysis is crucial for strategic planning, as it helps in recognizing and leveraging your strengths, addressing weaknesses, seizing opportunities, and preparing for potential threats.

Including a SWOT analysis demonstrates to stakeholders that you have a balanced and realistic understanding of your business in its operational context.

• Innovative and eco-friendly product offerings.
• Strong commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility.
• Skilled and experienced team with expertise in technology and sustainability.

Weaknesses:

• Limited brand recognition compared to established competitors.
• Reliance on third-party manufacturers for product development.

Opportunities:

• Growing consumer interest in sustainable products.
• Partnerships with environmentally-focused organizations and influencers.
• Expansion into international markets.
• Intense competition from established technology companies.
• Regulatory changes could impact the sustainable technology market.

Competitive Analysis

In this section, you’ll analyze your competitors in-depth, examining their products, services, market positioning, and pricing strategies. Understanding your competition allows you to identify gaps in the market and tailor your offerings to outperform them.

By conducting a thorough competitive analysis, you can gain insights into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, enabling you to develop strategies to differentiate your business and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Example: Key competitors include:

GreenTech: A well-known brand offering eco-friendly technology products, but with a narrower focus on energy-saving devices.

EarthSolutions: A direct competitor specializing in sustainable technology, but with a limited product range and higher prices.

By offering a diverse product portfolio, competitive pricing, and continuous innovation, we believe we can capture a significant share of the growing sustainable technology market.

Organization and Management Team

Provide an overview of your company’s organizational structure, including key roles and responsibilities. Introduce your management team, highlighting their expertise and experience to demonstrate that your team is capable of executing the business plan successfully.

Showcasing your team’s background, skills, and accomplishments instills confidence in investors and other stakeholders, proving that your business has the leadership and talent necessary to achieve its objectives and manage growth effectively.

Example: EcoTech’s organizational structure comprises the following key roles: CEO, CTO, CFO, Sales Director, Marketing Director, and R&D Manager. Our management team has extensive experience in technology, sustainability, and business development, ensuring that we are well-equipped to execute our business plan successfully.

Products and Services Offered

Describe the products or services your business offers, focusing on their unique features and benefits. Explain how your offerings solve customer pain points and why they will choose your products or services over the competition.

This section should emphasize the value you provide to customers, demonstrating that your business has a deep understanding of customer needs and is well-positioned to deliver innovative solutions that address those needs and set your company apart from competitors.

Example: EcoTech offers a range of eco-friendly technology products, including energy-efficient lighting solutions, solar chargers, and smart home devices that optimize energy usage. Our products are designed to help customers reduce energy consumption, minimize waste, and contribute to a cleaner environment.

Marketing and Sales Strategy

In this section, articulate your comprehensive strategy for reaching your target market and driving sales. Detail the specific marketing channels you plan to use, such as social media, email marketing, SEO, or traditional advertising.

Describe the nature of your advertising campaigns and promotional activities, explaining how they will capture the attention of your target audience and convey the value of your products or services. Outline your sales strategy, including your sales process, team structure, and sales targets.

Discuss how these marketing and sales efforts will work together to attract and retain customers, generate leads, and ultimately contribute to achieving your business’s revenue goals.

This section is critical to convey to investors and stakeholders that you have a well-thought-out approach to market your business effectively and drive sales growth.

Example: Our marketing strategy includes digital advertising, content marketing, social media promotion, and influencer partnerships. We will also attend trade shows and conferences to showcase our products and connect with potential clients. Our sales strategy involves both direct sales and partnerships with retail stores, as well as online sales through our website and e-commerce platforms.

Logistics and Operations Plan

The Logistics and Operations Plan is a critical component that outlines the inner workings of your business. It encompasses the management of your supply chain, detailing how you acquire raw materials and manage vendor relationships.

Inventory control is another crucial aspect, where you explain strategies for inventory management to ensure efficiency and reduce wastage. The section should also describe your production processes, emphasizing scalability and adaptability to meet changing market demands.

Quality control measures are essential to maintain product standards and customer satisfaction. This plan assures investors and stakeholders of your operational competency and readiness to meet business demands.

Highlighting your commitment to operational efficiency and customer satisfaction underlines your business’s capability to maintain smooth, effective operations even as it scales.

Example: EcoTech partners with reliable third-party manufacturers to produce our eco-friendly technology products. Our operations involve maintaining strong relationships with suppliers, ensuring quality control, and managing inventory.

We also prioritize efficient distribution through various channels, including online platforms and retail partners, to deliver products to our customers in a timely manner.

Financial Projections Plan

In the Financial Projections Plan, lay out a clear and realistic financial future for your business. This should include detailed projections for revenue, costs, and profitability over the next three to five years.

Ground these projections in solid assumptions based on your market analysis, industry benchmarks, and realistic growth scenarios. Break down revenue streams and include an analysis of the cost of goods sold, operating expenses, and potential investments.

This section should also discuss your break-even analysis, cash flow projections, and any assumptions about external funding requirements.

By presenting a thorough and data-backed financial forecast, you instill confidence in potential investors and lenders, showcasing your business’s potential for profitability and financial stability.

This forward-looking financial plan is crucial for demonstrating that you have a firm grasp of the financial nuances of your business and are prepared to manage its financial health effectively.

Example: Over the next three years, we expect to see significant growth in revenue, driven by new product launches and market expansion. Our financial projections include:

• Year 1: $1.5 million in revenue, with a net profit of $200,000.
• Year 2: $3 million in revenue, with a net profit of $500,000.
• Year 3: $4.5 million in revenue, with a net profit of $1 million.

These projections are based on realistic market analysis, growth rates, and product pricing.

Income Statement

The income statement , also known as the profit and loss statement, provides a summary of your company’s revenues and expenses over a specified period. It helps you track your business’s financial performance and identify trends, ensuring you stay on track to achieve your financial goals.

Regularly reviewing and analyzing your income statement allows you to monitor the health of your business, evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies, and make data-driven decisions to optimize profitability and growth.

Example: The income statement for EcoTech’s first year of operation is as follows:

• Revenue: $1,500,000
• Cost of Goods Sold: $800,000
• Gross Profit: $700,000
• Operating Expenses: $450,000
• Net Income: $250,000

This statement highlights our company’s profitability and overall financial health during the first year of operation.

Cash Flow Statement

A cash flow statement is a crucial part of a financial business plan that shows the inflows and outflows of cash within your business. It helps you monitor your company’s liquidity, ensuring you have enough cash on hand to cover operating expenses, pay debts, and invest in growth opportunities.

By including a cash flow statement in your business plan, you demonstrate your ability to manage your company’s finances effectively.

Example:  The cash flow statement for EcoTech’s first year of operation is as follows:

Operating Activities:

• Depreciation: $10,000
• Changes in Working Capital: -$50,000
• Net Cash from Operating Activities: $210,000

Investing Activities:

•  Capital Expenditures: -$100,000
• Net Cash from Investing Activities: -$100,000

Financing Activities:

• Proceeds from Loans: $150,000
• Loan Repayments: -$50,000
• Net Cash from Financing Activities: $100,000
• Net Increase in Cash: $210,000

This statement demonstrates EcoTech’s ability to generate positive cash flow from operations, maintain sufficient liquidity, and invest in growth opportunities.

Tips on Writing a Business Plan

1. Be clear and concise: Keep your language simple and straightforward. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms. A clear and concise business plan is easier for investors and stakeholders to understand and demonstrates your ability to communicate effectively.

2. Conduct thorough research: Before writing your business plan, gather as much information as possible about your industry, competitors, and target market. Use reliable sources and industry reports to inform your analysis and make data-driven decisions.

3. Set realistic goals: Your business plan should outline achievable objectives that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Setting realistic goals demonstrates your understanding of the market and increases the likelihood of success.

4. Focus on your unique selling proposition (USP): Clearly articulate what sets your business apart from the competition. Emphasize your USP throughout your business plan to showcase your company’s value and potential for success.

5. Be flexible and adaptable: A business plan is a living document that should evolve as your business grows and changes. Be prepared to update and revise your plan as you gather new information and learn from your experiences.

6. Use visuals to enhance understanding: Include charts, graphs, and other visuals to help convey complex data and ideas. Visuals can make your business plan more engaging and easier to digest, especially for those who prefer visual learning.

7. Seek feedback from trusted sources: Share your business plan with mentors, industry experts, or colleagues and ask for their feedback. Their insights can help you identify areas for improvement and strengthen your plan before presenting it to potential investors or partners.

FREE Business Plan Template

To help you get started on your business plan, we have created a template that includes all the essential components discussed in the “How to Write a Business Plan” section. This easy-to-use template will guide you through each step of the process, ensuring you don’t miss any critical details.

The template is divided into the following sections:

• Mission statement
• Business Overview
• Key products or services
• Target market
• Financial highlights
• Company goals
• Strategies to achieve goals
• Measurable, time-bound objectives
• Company History
• Mission and vision
• Unique selling proposition
• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Pain points
• Industry trends
• Customer needs
• Competitor strengths and weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Competitor products and services
• Market positioning
• Pricing strategies
• Organizational structure
• Key roles and responsibilities
• Management team backgrounds
• Product or service features
• Competitive advantages
• Marketing channels
• Advertising campaigns
• Promotional activities
• Sales strategies
• Supply chain management
• Inventory control
• Production processes
• Quality control measures
• Projected revenue
• Assumptions
• Cash inflows
• Cash outflows
• Net cash flow

What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a strategic document that outlines an organization’s goals, objectives, and the steps required to achieve them. It serves as a roadmap as you start a business , guiding the company’s direction and growth while identifying potential obstacles and opportunities.

Typically, a business plan covers areas such as market analysis, financial projections, marketing strategies, and organizational structure. It not only helps in securing funding from investors and lenders but also provides clarity and focus to the management team.

A well-crafted business plan is a very important part of your business startup checklist because it fosters informed decision-making and long-term success.

Why You Should Write a Business Plan

Understanding the importance of a business plan in today’s competitive environment is crucial for entrepreneurs and business owners. Here are five compelling reasons to write a business plan:

• Attract Investors and Secure Funding : A well-written business plan demonstrates your venture’s potential and profitability, making it easier to attract investors and secure the necessary funding for growth and development. It provides a detailed overview of your business model, target market, financial projections, and growth strategies, instilling confidence in potential investors and lenders that your company is a worthy investment.
• Clarify Business Objectives and Strategies : Crafting a business plan forces you to think critically about your goals and the strategies you’ll employ to achieve them, providing a clear roadmap for success. This process helps you refine your vision and prioritize the most critical objectives, ensuring that your efforts are focused on achieving the desired results.
• Identify Potential Risks and Opportunities : Analyzing the market, competition, and industry trends within your business plan helps identify potential risks and uncover untapped opportunities for growth and expansion. This insight enables you to develop proactive strategies to mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities, positioning your business for long-term success.
• Improve Decision-Making : A business plan serves as a reference point so you can make informed decisions that align with your company’s overall objectives and long-term vision. By consistently referring to your plan and adjusting it as needed, you can ensure that your business remains on track and adapts to changes in the market, industry, or internal operations.
• Foster Team Alignment and Communication : A shared business plan helps ensure that all team members are on the same page, promoting clear communication, collaboration, and a unified approach to achieving the company’s goals. By involving your team in the planning process and regularly reviewing the plan together, you can foster a sense of ownership, commitment, and accountability that drives success.

What are the Different Types of Business Plans?

In today’s fast-paced business world, having a well-structured roadmap is more important than ever. A traditional business plan provides a comprehensive overview of your company’s goals and strategies, helping you make informed decisions and achieve long-term success. There are various types of business plans, each designed to suit different needs and purposes. Let’s explore the main types:

• Startup Business Plan: Tailored for new ventures, a startup business plan outlines the company’s mission, objectives, target market, competition, marketing strategies, and financial projections. It helps entrepreneurs clarify their vision, secure funding from investors, and create a roadmap for their business’s future. Additionally, this plan identifies potential challenges and opportunities, which are crucial for making informed decisions and adapting to changing market conditions.
• Internal Business Plan: This type of plan is intended for internal use, focusing on strategies, milestones, deadlines, and resource allocation. It serves as a management tool for guiding the company’s growth, evaluating its progress, and ensuring that all departments are aligned with the overall vision. The internal business plan also helps identify areas of improvement, fosters collaboration among team members, and provides a reference point for measuring performance.
• Strategic Business Plan: A strategic business plan outlines long-term goals and the steps to achieve them, providing a clear roadmap for the company’s direction. It typically includes a SWOT analysis, market research, and competitive analysis. This plan allows businesses to align their resources with their objectives, anticipate changes in the market, and develop contingency plans. By focusing on the big picture, a strategic business plan fosters long-term success and stability.
• Feasibility Business Plan: This plan is designed to assess the viability of a business idea, examining factors such as market demand, competition, and financial projections. It is often used to decide whether or not to pursue a particular venture. By conducting a thorough feasibility analysis, entrepreneurs can avoid investing time and resources into an unviable business concept. This plan also helps refine the business idea, identify potential obstacles, and determine the necessary resources for success.
• Growth Business Plan: Also known as an expansion plan, a growth business plan focuses on strategies for scaling up an existing business. It includes market analysis, new product or service offerings, and financial projections to support expansion plans. This type of plan is essential for businesses looking to enter new markets, increase their customer base, or launch new products or services. By outlining clear growth strategies, the plan helps ensure that expansion efforts are well-coordinated and sustainable.
• Operational Business Plan: This type of plan outlines the company’s day-to-day operations, detailing the processes, procedures, and organizational structure. It is an essential tool for managing resources, streamlining workflows, and ensuring smooth operations. The operational business plan also helps identify inefficiencies, implement best practices, and establish a strong foundation for future growth. By providing a clear understanding of daily operations, this plan enables businesses to optimize their resources and enhance productivity.
• Lean Business Plan: A lean business plan is a simplified, agile version of a traditional plan, focusing on key elements such as value proposition, customer segments, revenue streams, and cost structure. It is perfect for startups looking for a flexible, adaptable planning approach. The lean business plan allows for rapid iteration and continuous improvement, enabling businesses to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions. This streamlined approach is particularly beneficial for businesses in fast-paced or uncertain industries.
• One-Page Business Plan: As the name suggests, a one-page business plan is a concise summary of your company’s key objectives, strategies, and milestones. It serves as a quick reference guide and is ideal for pitching to potential investors or partners. This plan helps keep teams focused on essential goals and priorities, fosters clear communication, and provides a snapshot of the company’s progress. While not as comprehensive as other plans, a one-page business plan is an effective tool for maintaining clarity and direction.
• Nonprofit Business Plan: Specifically designed for nonprofit organizations, this plan outlines the mission, goals, target audience, fundraising strategies, and budget allocation. It helps secure grants and donations while ensuring the organization stays on track with its objectives. The nonprofit business plan also helps attract volunteers, board members, and community support. By demonstrating the organization’s impact and plans for the future, this plan is essential for maintaining transparency, accountability, and long-term sustainability within the nonprofit sector.
• Franchise Business Plan: For entrepreneurs seeking to open a franchise, this type of plan focuses on the franchisor’s requirements, as well as the franchisee’s goals, strategies, and financial projections. It is crucial for securing a franchise agreement and ensuring the business’s success within the franchise system. This plan outlines the franchisee’s commitment to brand standards, marketing efforts, and operational procedures, while also addressing local market conditions and opportunities. By creating a solid franchise business plan, entrepreneurs can demonstrate their ability to effectively manage and grow their franchise, increasing the likelihood of a successful partnership with the franchisor.

Using Business Plan Software

Creating a comprehensive business plan can be intimidating, but business plan software can streamline the process and help you produce a professional document. These tools offer a number of benefits, including guided step-by-step instructions, financial projections, and industry-specific templates. Here are the top 5 business plan software options available to help you craft a great business plan.

1. LivePlan

LivePlan is a popular choice for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features. It offers over 500 sample plans, financial forecasting tools, and the ability to track your progress against key performance indicators. With LivePlan, you can create visually appealing, professional business plans that will impress investors and stakeholders.

2. Upmetrics

Upmetrics provides a simple and intuitive platform for creating a well-structured business plan. It features customizable templates, financial forecasting tools, and collaboration capabilities, allowing you to work with team members and advisors. Upmetrics also offers a library of resources to guide you through the business planning process.

Bizplan is designed to simplify the business planning process with a drag-and-drop builder and modular sections. It offers financial forecasting tools, progress tracking, and a visually appealing interface. With Bizplan, you can create a business plan that is both easy to understand and visually engaging.

Enloop is a robust business plan software that automatically generates a tailored plan based on your inputs. It provides industry-specific templates, financial forecasting, and a unique performance score that updates as you make changes to your plan. Enloop also offers a free version, making it accessible for businesses on a budget.

5. Tarkenton GoSmallBiz

Developed by NFL Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton, GoSmallBiz is tailored for small businesses and startups. It features a guided business plan builder, customizable templates, and financial projection tools. GoSmallBiz also offers additional resources, such as CRM tools and legal document templates, to support your business beyond the planning stage.

Business Plan FAQs

What is a good business plan.

A good business plan is a well-researched, clear, and concise document that outlines a company’s goals, strategies, target market, competitive advantages, and financial projections. It should be adaptable to change and provide a roadmap for achieving success.

What are the 3 main purposes of a business plan?

The three main purposes of a business plan are to guide the company’s strategy, attract investment, and evaluate performance against objectives. Here’s a closer look at each of these:

• It outlines the company’s purpose and core values to ensure that all activities align with its mission and vision.
• It provides an in-depth analysis of the market, including trends, customer needs, and competition, helping the company tailor its products and services to meet market demands.
• It defines the company’s marketing and sales strategies, guiding how the company will attract and retain customers.
• It describes the company’s organizational structure and management team, outlining roles and responsibilities to ensure effective operation and leadership.
• It sets measurable, time-bound objectives, allowing the company to plan its activities effectively and make strategic decisions to achieve these goals.
• It provides a comprehensive overview of the company and its business model, demonstrating its uniqueness and potential for success.
• It presents the company’s financial projections, showing its potential for profitability and return on investment.
• It demonstrates the company’s understanding of the market, including its target customers and competition, convincing investors that the company is capable of gaining a significant market share.
• It showcases the management team’s expertise and experience, instilling confidence in investors that the team is capable of executing the business plan successfully.
• It establishes clear, measurable objectives that serve as performance benchmarks.
• It provides a basis for regular performance reviews, allowing the company to monitor its progress and identify areas for improvement.
• It enables the company to assess the effectiveness of its strategies and make adjustments as needed to achieve its objectives.
• It helps the company identify potential risks and challenges, enabling it to develop contingency plans and manage risks effectively.
• It provides a mechanism for evaluating the company’s financial performance, including revenue, expenses, profitability, and cash flow.

Can I write a business plan by myself?

Yes, you can write a business plan by yourself, but it can be helpful to consult with mentors, colleagues, or industry experts to gather feedback and insights. There are also many creative business plan templates and business plan examples available online, including those above.

We also have examples for specific industries, including a using food truck business plan , salon business plan , farm business plan , daycare business plan , and restaurant business plan .

Is it possible to create a one-page business plan?

Yes, a one-page business plan is a condensed version that highlights the most essential elements, including the company’s mission, target market, unique selling proposition, and financial goals.

How long should a business plan be?

A typical business plan ranges from 20 to 50 pages, but the length may vary depending on the complexity and needs of the business.

What is a business plan outline?

A business plan outline is a structured framework that organizes the content of a business plan into sections, such as the executive summary, company description, market analysis, and financial projections.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

The five most common business plan mistakes include inadequate research, unrealistic financial projections, lack of focus on the unique selling proposition, poor organization and structure, and failure to update the plan as circumstances change.

What questions should be asked in a business plan?

A business plan should address questions such as: What problem does the business solve? Who is the specific target market ? What is the unique selling proposition? What are the company’s objectives? How will it achieve those objectives?

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan focuses on the overall vision, goals, and tactics of a company, while a strategic plan outlines the specific strategies, action steps, and performance measures necessary to achieve the company’s objectives.

How is business planning for a nonprofit different?

Nonprofit business planning focuses on the organization’s mission, social impact, and resource management, rather than profit generation. The financial section typically includes funding sources, expenses, and projected budgets for programs and operations.

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Grow » marketing, the essential rules of email marketing for small businesses.

Elevate your strategy with promotional emails and newsletters while adhering to basic guidelines. Use these tips to plan your approach.

As a small business owner, you know that effective email marketing can be a game-changer for your company. The right strategy engages audiences, increases open rates, and drives conversions. But with so many rules and best practices to consider, it can be overwhelming to know where to start.

Don’t settle for mediocre campaigns when you can be a pro. Explore email marketing guidelines for audience segmentation, newsletters, A/B testing, and more. Here’s the inside scoop on perfecting your techniques.

Email lists: building and segmenting

Nearly 90% of people want to “hear from companies they frequent,” reported Square . They provide contact information; you can store it in your e-commerce, point-of-sale (POS), or customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. From there, you can pull email addresses to create email marketing lists .

Although text and messaging apps are popular, especially for customer service, Square found that 60% of consumers “still want to hear from businesses via email.” This communication channel is less expensive to manage because you can automate many interactions. For starters, encourage shoppers to subscribe to updates during checkout online or in-store. Direct social media followers to a landing page where they can register for your newsletter or agree to receive emails after downloading content.

The next step is to segment your audience . This email marketing tactic groups people according to shared characteristics like location or behaviors. For instance, you can put existing customers into one category and potential buyers into another. As your list expands, you can refine the segments further.

Automatically categorize contacts using CRM email marketing platforms , such as:

• GetResponse .
• Mailchimp .
• Zoho Campaigns .
• Constant Contact .

[ Read more: Email Marketing Trends for SMBs ]

Optimize email marketing campaigns

To ensure a return on investment (ROI), emails should provide value and build trust. After all, consumers receive countless emails, and too many messages are spammy with clickbait headlines. Reduce unsubscribes by stating the “who” and “why” immediately. Then, deliver concise and audience-relevant information.

Improve your campaigns with the following email marketing tips :

• A/B testing: Split-testing email designs, subject lines, and preview text can help you see which formats and headlines your audience prefers.
• Timing: Use email marketing analytics to see when people are most likely to open and read emails. Remember, patterns may change during different times of the year.
• Personalization: Customize email marketing templates with your client’s name or favorite products.
• Visual appeal: Think of how your emails look on mobile and desktop devices. Create scannable paragraphs and add images or GIFs.
• Trigger-based automation: Plan drip email campaigns that activate once leads opt-in after taking an action, like signing up for a discount.

With the right approach, email marketing can build trust in your brand. But there’s a fine line between providing value and appearing spammy in the eyes of your audience.

Produce engaging and purposeful newsletters

Email newsletters help small businesses cultivate long-term customer relationships and increase sales. You can share industry news, promote local happenings, and offer seasonal tips. Like other email marketing tactics, you must analyze your audience and set goals when starting a business newsletter .

Understanding your target market is crucial. It’s not only about demographics. What content do they want from your business? How often do they want to hear from you? Will they read whole paragraphs, or is it better to add links to website content or visuals like infographics and memes?

Ideally, your newsletter objectives align with your content strategy and overall business goals. Let’s say a company wants to improve customer retention rates. The content plan supports this objective by increasing loyalty reward signups and awareness about a referral program. Email newsletters may have a call to action (CTA) reminding customers to register for an immediate discount on their next purchase or share testimonials from newly referred clients.

Also, consider how you will send newsletters. CRM tools and email marketing solutions offer contact management, newsletter templates , and automation features. In addition, several e-commerce platforms and website builders have built-in newsletter capabilities, including WordPress.com and Shopify .

[ Read more: Small Business Newsletter Tips ]

Follow email best practices and rules

With the right approach, email marketing can build trust in your brand. But there’s a fine line between providing value and appearing spammy in the eyes of your audience. The law is more precise and outlines specific email marketing rules . Therefore, small business owners should respect consumer requests and track unsubscribes diligently.

A few email marketing best practices include:

• Make it easy to unsubscribe: Let recipients remove themselves from your email list with a one-click unsubscribe button. Many email marketing platforms provide tools for seamless customer experiences and compliance.
• Adhere to email laws: Avoid fines and reputational damage by reviewing email marketing rules like the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing) Act and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).
• Monitor email metrics: Use email marketing tools to track key performance indicators (KPIs). Many systems offer dashboards and automated reports showing delivery, open, unsubscribe, conversion, click-through, and spam complaint rates.
• Keep a clean list: Set reminders to scrub inactive contacts from your list annually or more often. This action can save money if you pay per contact. It also makes your metrics more reliable because you’re not looking at data from inactive recipients.

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Free Webinar | May 7: How to Write Your One-Page Business Plan Workshop Did you know entrepreneurs with business plans are 260% more likely to launch? Join our workshop on May 7th and learn how to create a one-page business plan that will help you get your business off the ground. Register now!

By Entrepreneur Staff • Apr 16, 2024

Do you wish you could run a business that would make the most of your skills, experience and earn you the money that you're really worth?

Or perhaps you've already started your own business but it seems like no matter how hard you work you're no closer to the dream that inspired you to start your company in the first place.

If you're not hitting your goals, it's not due to a lack of ambition, you just need a better plan to make it happen.

Specifically, a business plan.

Related: Join our workshop on May 7th and learn how to create a one-page business plan that will help you get your business off the ground. Register now!

A study from BusinessDIT revealed that:

Entrepreneurs with business plans are 260% more likely to launch

71% of fast-growing businesses have plans

With the right business plan, you'll be more likely to launch and grow faster once you do.

So, why don't you have an updated plan? There are a few common reasons.

"I'm too busy"

"It's too confusing"

"I have too much else going on"

It's time to end the excuses so you can achieve predictable revenue growth without going back to school for an MBA.

Join Our Free How to Write Your Business Plan Workshop

During this workshop, you'll learn how to create a one-page business plan that will help you perfect your strategy, marketing and business processes.

You're just one hour away from having the clarity needed to reduce confusion, improve your offer and maximize your revenue potential.

You'll also receive a customizable one-page business plan so you can immediately apply what you've learned.

Now is the time to work on your business so the time you spend working in your business will be more efficient and rewarding.

Imagine knowing that at any given time, you're taking the right actions that are directly aligned with the vision you had when you first started your business.

There's no need to imagine. Just sign up for the workshop and then commit to applying what you've learned.

All registered attendees will get a recording of the presentation and a copy of the one-page business plan template. And if you know of anyone else who should attend, share this with them so they can hold you accountable.

Sign up now and turn your business idea into action.

About the Speaker:

Terry Rice is a high-performance coach to entrepreneurs, keynote speaker and journalist at Entrepreneur magazine. He's also the host of Reclaim + Advance, a podcast that helps entrepreneurs overcome setbacks and perform at their highest level.

Prior to becoming a creator-entrepreneur, Terry's previous experience includes internal consulting roles at Adobe and Meta.

In addition to his role as Director of Growth and Partnerships at Good People Digital, Terry is an instructor at New York University, speaks at events for leading companies - including Amazon and Google - and has been featured as a subject matter expert by Good Morning America, Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal.

Based in Brooklyn, he is a husband, father of five children, and is an advocate for mental and physical fitness.

Entrepreneur Staff

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How YouTube plans to win in affiliate marketing and the biggest challenges it faces, according to a top shopping exec

• YouTube is dedicating resources to growing its in-house shopping tools for creators.
• The company recently rolled out new affiliate features to set itself apart from other programs.
• Bridget Dolan, a YouTube Shopping exec, spoke about the program's greatest advantage and its challenges.

YouTube is trying to enlist its army of creators to grow its shopping business.

The problem? Its creators are already making money promoting products through established affiliate-marketing programs , like Amazon's Influencer Program, LTK, and MagicLinks. YouTube, which launched its YouTube Shopping affiliate program in 2021, has so far struggled to gain meaningful adoption, as Business Insider previously reported.

Bridget Dolan, managing director of YouTube Shopping partnerships, told BI the platform's greatest advantage is its user experience and the resources it can offer creators.

Dolan said YouTube Shopping's user experience is more interactive than other programs. Built directly into the platform, viewers can see products and prices below a YouTube video without searching through a sea of links in the video's description, where users typically find other affiliate links.

YouTube also has dedicated partner managers who communicate with shopping creators weekly to troubleshoot, share best practices, and plan in-person and virtual events, Dolan said.

Shopping has always been at YouTube's core, with tech, beauty, and fashion creators earning millions from pushing their favorite products. Last year, people watched over 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos on YouTube, and there was a 25% increase in watch time for videos that help people shop on YouTube, the company said.

YouTube wants to build on that by making it easier for people to shop and for creators to earn commissions.

"This is the basis of what YouTube has always been," Dolan said. "Our features are just making that so much slicker and easier for the viewer instead of the viewer hunting and pecking for links below in a sea of blue links trying to be like, 'Wait, which one is this product?' And then leaving the video and being like, 'Oh, it's how much,' or, 'Oh, it's out of stock,' or all those things."

What sets YouTube apart from other programs

YouTube has released a slew of new features to set its program apart and improve the affiliate experience for creators.

Related stories

The company released in April a way for creators to group their most-used products and other links, called Shopping Collections; an Affiliate Hub in the YouTube app that lists potential shopping partners, commission rates, promo codes, and the option to request samples from brands; a tool to tag products across multiple videos at once; and the ability for creators to tag their own products and merch across their video library.

Dolan said YouTube is also working more closely with creators than other programs.

Her team of YouTube Shopping partner managers helps creators with everything from which products and brands to link to what products are selling well to trending product search terms. The team acts as the middleman between merchants and creators.

It's also helping creators connect with brands beyond affiliate marketing. Through the Affiliate Hub, brands can contact creators directly to offer unique promo codes or higher commission rates. The brand can also take the relationship a step further and partner with the creator for a paid campaign through YouTube's Brand Connect or a Shopping partner manager, adding another way for the creator to earn money.

"That's helping our creators be on the radar for a brand or a merchant," Dolan said. "They might have a small subscriber base and not look like they are wildly impressive until you see how much they're driving through affiliate."

Her team also brings creators together in person and virtually with workshops about integrating shopping into their content. YouTube has hosted events with retail execs, including the head of merchandising at Sephora, where Dolan was previously SVP of new ventures.

How the shopping team measures success

To measure its success in affiliate marketing, Dolan said her team looks at the number of dollars flowing through the program and creator interest, including the number of creators who have signed up and how active they are, as well as the selection and quality of merchants.

"They want data, they want us talking to them, and then they love talking to the brand themselves," Dolan said about creators. "Other programs can say, here's how you're doing. We're showing you tied to more of the video."

Still, the team doesn't expect to completely replace the other affiliate marketing channels creators use. YouTube doesn't require exclusivity; therefore, anyone who participates in the program can still work with other similar programs.

"YouTube Shopping is the idea that creators are talking about the products that they love and tagging them," Dolan said. "That is what viewers are looking for. They're looking for the creator's point of view about products."

Watch: With digital business growing, AB InBev's CMO wants to deliver your beer right to your seat

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