What is Email Marketing? Complete Guide 2024

As a business, if you want to level up your game via email marketing, then you have landed on the right page. Here, we will be teaching you all the nitty-gritty of email marketing in 2024 so that you stand out from others in the industry.

You will be surprised to know that it is one of the most cost-effective yet result-driven ways to market your business. On one hand, it comes with a low investment cost, and on the other, it offers a high Return on Investment (ROI).

The average expected return on investment is $42, for every $1 spent on email marketing. You might be interested know how much does digital marketing cost.

This blog post will be your go-to guide for email marketing, where we’ll be explicitly discussing every aspect of it. We’ll start from the basics and slowly take you to the advanced concepts, tools, and strategies so that you can make the most of it to stay ahead of the curve.

Let’s dig in.

Some Fascinating Facts & Insights on Email Marketing

Before deep diving into the ocean of email marketing, let’s take a minute and acknowledge and appreciate the tremendous potential of this marketing technique with some interesting facts and stats:

• According to a report by Hubspot, there are over 4 billion daily email users. This number in itself is enough to make you realize how many potential customers you can reach at a time.
• In 2018, SmartInsight published a report that stated that Email marketing is probably the most fruitful marketing channel compared to other modes of marketing such as SEM, SMO, and Affiliate Marketing, etc.
• As per Statista, the daily volume of emails sent and received in the US is roughly 306.4 billion. This number is predicted to reach more than 376.4 billion by 2025.
• The reason why Email marketing is so popular is that it is still going strong with a whopping 4400% ROI, with the average email subscriber worth $48.87.
• Globally, it is estimated that by the end of 2026, the number of active email subscribers worldwide will surpass 4.7 billion.
• When we talk about customer acquisition, Email is 40 times more effective than Twitter and Facebook combined.
• According to SaleCycle, marketing emails influence the buying decisions of over 50.7% of users.
• According to a report by Marketingsherpa, over 90% of customers would like to receive promotional emails.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one of the ways of digital marketing where a business sends newsletters or promotional messages to a list of subscribers via email.

The objective behind email marketing like any other form of marketing is to build better customer relationships, promote products/services, increase brand awareness, and ultimately generate leads.

With email marketing, it is very easy for you to directly reach your target audience with relevant and personalized content. On top of that it is cost effective, easy to monitor, and offers resourceful data for better analysis.

In a nutshell, email marketing is a combination of planning, timing, and automation and can be used for:

• Raising Brand Awareness
• Pitching the relevant and personalized content
• Building Authority
• Promoting products and services
• Generating leads and making profits
• Retaining those leads and making more of such profit in future

How to Do Email Marketing for Your Business in 2024?

Moving on, let’s understand in-depth how email marketing is done. We are sharing a step-by-step guide with you to make you understand how you can successfully do email marketing for your business.

Step 1 – Defining Business Goals

Be it any marketing campaign, tracing a path is next to impossible without knowing where the end line is. So to begin with, one must always define some concrete and realistic goals. It is always a good idea to conduct a SWOT analysis before finally formulating your goals as it will help you in defining practical and achievable goals in a set time frame.

Ask yourself some questions like, what do you want in the next 1 year? What do I want to sell via email? How can I earn money with email marketing? Be damn clear about what you want and the things will fall into its place.

Say for example if you are a blogger, then your selling point is your content. You can charge readers your content in the form of membership fees or sell advertising and affiliate links. Email marketing can act as a wonderful tool in driving traffic back to your blog.

Another example is if you are a service provider or run an online store, you want your products and services to be sold directly to your email marketing list. You can also introduce some early bird offers exclusively for your subscribers.

Also, you need to step into the shoes of your audience by asking questions like:

• What will persuade them to be your subscribers? This might lead you to dig in some fascinating lead magnet ideas.
• How can you retain your audience? This might help in deciding what type of content can be sent to your email list.
• What will force them to buy your product? Under this comes various offers and promotions that you include in your marketing emails.

Now depending on these goals, you can decide which tools can be used for your email marketing strategy.

Step 2 – Create Compelling Content

Beyond the subject line, the content and visuals that your email carries must be interesting and engaging so that your readers can’t resist taking action. Your content should be interesting, informative, and emotionally appealing to create an impression. Visuals such as videos, photos, and GIFs also play a great part in drawing readers’ attention.

I can give you hundreds of examples but the bottom line of the story is that no matter how much time or money you have invested in designing your content, it is of no value if it is not helping you to achieve your desired goals. If you can convince your user that this product can solve any of his existing problems, then he might purchase it in the first go.

Also, capitalize on the email marketing tools that are available. Tools like Grammarly, Photopea, and Canva can help in creating appealing, intuitive, and eye-catching content. Also, not to mention that AI tools are speeding up the process of copyrighting and creating images for your marketing emails.

Step 3 – Setup your triggers

So your content is finally ready, perfect! Now that next step is all about predicting the behavior of your audience and framing your strategy accordingly. To all those who don’t know what triggers are, these are the conditions that drive action.

Triggers are some regular updates or reminders that you can pitch to your email subscribers to make them buy your product. For example, if a potential lead visits your online store for a t-shirt while logged in, then an email is sent to him the next day with a discount on the same apparel.

In case he didn’t visit the store for a month, then an email can be sent to him mentioning the new stock and offers. A trigger is either action-based or time-based.

That’s the reason knowing the tendencies of your buyers is so critical and something that just can’t be ignored. You must understand how users react to stimulation, how they get engaged with your content, and what motivates them to buy a certain product. All these triggers are the core of your overall content strategy.

Step 4 – Build an Email List

For sending emails, you need to have an email list in the first place. An email marketing address list usually begins with the ones you already have from login information. Most of the hard work comes with getting new and fresh email addresses which is not a walk in the park.

A user is usually skeptical when it comes to sharing his contact information so you need to give him a certain value that induces the user to trust you and share his personal information like email, address, or contact number. This can be done by offering something in exchange for contact information like eBooks, rich data, webinars, rich data, etc.

These are some valuable perks and goodies that a user loves and happily shares his information. Also, always make sure that your list is formulated organically. That means looking for people who want to be actually contacted by you and not the ones who may block you in the first place. Always remember the golden rule – never purchase an email marketing list!

Step 5 – Segment your mailing list

Email segmentation is a process where subscribers are categorized as per some criteria so that more targeted emails can be sent. As a result, higher conversions can be seen with this practice.

Segmenting your email list can offer tons of benefits like enhancing click-through rates, improving your open rates, and reducing unsubscribe rates. You can set auto-responders to nurture and convert prospects. An email list can be segmented according to the following ways:

• Fresh Subscribers – You can send a series of welcome emails to your platform’s new subscribers.
• Open Rate – You can send customized offers as emails to your more loyal subscribers.
• Preferences – Subscribers can be segmented as per their preferences.
• Inactive Users – Send targeted emails to those subscribers who have been inactive or less active for a while
• Cart abandonment – Remind subscribers about the fact that they have still not yet checked out their carts.

Hence, we can clearly see the significance of creating segments within your email list along with different paths and triggers for each one. This way you can evenly and logically distribute your content and be precise with your message.

Step 6 – Aware of the Dos and Don’ts

So till now, you have got all you need to start a great email marketing campaign. But having said that, some tips shall be kept in mind so that you can optimize your tasks. Here are some dos and don’ts that you must consider before initializing the marketing process:

Here are the dos:

• Include rewards in each email, for example, some discount coupon or a voucher
• Always be remembered by maintaining a constant presence
• Newsletters are a great way to improve your strategy and building a stronger bond
• Finish your emails with some surprises like what’s coming next
• Always under-promise and over-deliver

Here are the don’ts:

• Always maintain consistency on your channel
• Never send emails to people who haven’t opted in
• Don’t purchase any email subscription list from any third party
• Never mislead your audience with any fraudulent or suspicious messages

Step 7 – Conduct A/B Testing for Email Marketing

If you want a correct email marketing strategy then you have to do some trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t. These steps become even more important while drafting the finer details like formatting and wording. That is where A/B testing comes into place.

This involves sending out more than one version of the same email to figure out which performs better. Here are some examples of elements a marketer might want to test:

• Various CTA styles
• Different methods for incorporating links
• Various subject lines or approaches to the actual copy
• Use of emojis, moving visuals, graphics, etc.
• Send times for different kinds of blasts

For maximum benefit, while conducting A/B testing, focus on one element at a time so that you precisely know what’s driving your results.

How to Write a Marketing Email?

Now if you are wondering whether mere understanding the concept and importance of email marketing is enough then you are wrong. It is the art of creating a compelling email that attracts the users to open, read, and act on it does the actual magic.
So what are we waiting for? Let’s learn how to write an effective marketing email.

1. Write a clear and catchy subject title

If you are an experienced email marketer, then you must know the significance of drafting an email in such a manner that it grabs the attention of its recipient within a second.

As we say, ‘the first impression is the last impression’, indeed it’s true in the world of digital marketing. But make sure that you maintain simplicity and straightforwardness as well because sometimes the titles are so fancy that they simply lack clarity.

This is how your approach should be – first your goal should be to convey to your users exactly what they can expect in the email and then you can decorate it a little to generate a sense of curiosity in the mind of your recipient.

2. Make sure that your content reflects your subject line

A compelling subject line not only tells its readers what to expect but also makes them a promise. It can be a promise to entertain, motivate, inform, or something else completely, but the point is it must preach what it says.

This approach is called being responsible with regard to email marketing in general. When people open a marketing email and get something different from what was being promised then it creates a sense of detachment and negativity among users for your brand/product.
This may even lead to a decline in click-through rates which is detrimental to your brand image. So always make sure that you deliver what you promised.

3. Make use of the second person while writing an email

Your readers will get connected to your email when it doesn’t sound like marketing at all. If you want your user to get personally connected with your brand then you can consider writing your email copy in the second person style. If you overuse the third person (he/she/it) in your marketing email then your user will feel disconnected.

On the other hand, if you mostly use first person (I/we) then it draws all the attention to the sender. The best is to write from the second person’s perspective (you/you guys). This approach helps in drawing attention to where it is needed the most – at the reader.

4. Establish relevance in the first 100 words

You must acknowledge the fact that your readers are busy people and you must take their time very seriously. This means you can never afford to waste their time no matter what. The sign of effective email marketing is that your readers should know why they are being contacted from the first go.

This means that if they have any confusion or doubt then it must be solved smoothly with the help of the content you have provided for them to read. Lastly, provide any additional information with a strong call to action before wrapping up the email.

5. Your email copy should reflect some value

If you can generate a sense of belief among your users that they are getting some value in return once they are done reading, then more than half of the job is done. Many brands try to achieve this by highlighting the features associated with the offer.

They tell their readers what they are getting like discounts, special offers, or an upgrade. What they fail to do is convey why they must purchase it no matter what. As it is rightly said, the consumers purchase experiences, offers, and perks more than the products.

You must tell your users how their lives can be changed for the better if they respond to your call to action. You can even hire a professional who is an expert in writing such emails to get the best results.

6. Make it short and crisp

Imagine when was the last time you actually read a full copy of a marketing email. If you are like most people you wouldn’t have read the copy word by word, rather you must have skimmed it quickly to get the gist of the main elements at a glance, wouldn’t you?

This is how an average reader would do. Therefore, make sure the content is drafted to the point in a very short and crisp manner. Avoid writing paragraph after paragraph of copy. Instead keep things brief, make points, and write simple language that even a layman can understand.

7. Choose your language carefully

Giving your emails a human touch is a great way to establish belongingness with your users. This is done by using language that can create a friendly impact on the mind of the recipient.

One thing is sure we all love an environment where we can freely chit-chat with our friends and forget about the world. If your email is enriched with that emotion then you have won the battle.

You must emphasize humanizing your brand by using language that contains slang, humor, and words that we use everyday. All that will make your customers believe that they are communicating with their friends or someone close.

Also, do not forget that your message is clearly and concisely conveyed to your audience in your closing call to action.

8. Make your email intuitive and eye-catching

Decorating your email with beautiful images and GIFs always helps in making it visually appealing. This is the power of graphics that draw attention straight away within seconds. If your emails are loaded with visually appealing content like graphics, images, etc. then your user is bound to go through it as in today’s era the attention span of an average user is very low and graphics are a great way of grabbing the attention. So here are some tips to achieve the same:

• Make use of visuals like videos, and images in place of some text
• Personalize your email as it helps in adding a sense of warmth among your audience.
• While highlighting the email content, create subject lines that grab the attention
• Add ingredients like humor, colors, fonts, and margins, to create a picture-perfect marketing email

Also, make sure that your emails are fully responsive so that they can be read on any device whatsoever. Ensure that all the elements are rendered perfectly on different browsers and for that, you can even get professional help.

5 Best Email Marketing Software (Tools)

Clearly, after all this information, we can conclude that technology plays a vital part in email marketing. Therefore, picking the right tool for your email marketing campaign is very important as it can prove a game changer for your business.

With the right software, selecting the templates becomes quite easy. So here are the top 5 email marketing software/tools for your business:

1. Mailchimp

When it comes to email marketing, Mailchimp is a famous and trusted name. For decades Mailchimp has been a go-to email service provider for small and medium scale businesses. With Mailchimp, you can easily launch effective email campaigns, automate your business operations, and analyze your results.

Key features of Mailchimp:

• Comes with analytics for conducting inbound campaigns
• Boosts lead traffic and conversions
• A reliable and feature-packed tool
• A cost-efficient tool especially for small businesses

2. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is mainly dedicated to bloggers and content creators. The platform helps in nurturing your audience. The tool comes with an intuitive interface and is loaded with powerful automation capabilities and as a result, it is an ideal choice when it comes to delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time. ConvertKit allows you to sell digital products straight from the ESP dashboard.

Key features of ConvertKit:

• Seamless understanding of autoresponder sequence
• Allows you to create segments as per the target audience
• Comes with dynamic emails, attractive forms, a simple automation feature, and Trackable data
• You get time-to-time feature updates for a better experience

3. Brevo

Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue can take your email marketing to new heights. This dynamic email marketing tool provides an all-in-one solution for small businesses. With Brevo, creating effective email campaigns, segmenting your audience, and tracking your results becomes extremely easy.

Key features of Brevo:

• Automation workflow speeds up the process to enhance the user experience
• Create a professional newsletter within a few minutes with its advanced features
• Optimizes open and click-through rates by scheduling date and time to send emails

4. Marketo

Marketo does more than just create responsive and compelling emails. Its AI is built in a way that it builds and updates real-time customer segments based on their behaviors on other channels. This in turn helps the software to dynamically send personalized communications to maximize user engagement. It comes with real-time performance metrics that help you monitor the progress and optimize mid-program for maximum conversion rate.

Key features of Marketo:

• Comes with multiple pricing options that can fit all company sizes
• It is ideal for medium size corporations
• The areas of services include lead management, email marketing, and mobile marketing
• Easy to use

5. Hubspot

Hubspot helps you discover the power of email marketing to its highest potential. It comes with a comprehensive marketing tools suite that assists small businesses in growing their audience and driving conversions. The customer relationship management tool of CRM also helps in making processes easy and seamless. The tool is a great choice for businesses having a longer sales process (especially B2B and service-based businesses).

Key features of Hubspot

• Helps in boosting email open and click-through rates
• Creates tailor-made emails with maximum accuracy
• Comes with an extremely easy learning curve

What are Benefits of Email Marketing for Business?

Email marketing comes with a number of benefits for businesses. Here are the main benefits of email marketing that all businesses should be aware of.

Complete personalized control

Unlike in the case of social media marketing where you are at the mercy of the algorithms, here in the case of email marketing, you are your own boss. This is because you own your list of your subscribers who have given you permission to contact them. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook have the power to strip your access to your followers anytime, but with email marketing, it is just not the case. Also, as you routinely export your list of subscribers as a backup, you can no longer worry about the possibility of losing contact with your subscribers.

Better customer relationships

Email marketing is a wonderful way to build and maintain relationships with existing and potential customers. With the help of email marketing, you as a business get the ultimate freedom to share resourceful information with them. That’s not all, you can also communicate with them and keep them up to date from time to time on your latest schemes and offers.

High ROI

As we mentioned above, email marketing comes with a very high return on investment. On average, email marketing generates an ROI of $42 for every dollar spent. Hence, you get high returns with such a low amount of investment, isn’t that amazing! This makes email marketing one of the most cost-friendly marketing strategies that businesses can invest in.

Higher rate of conversion

Statistics show that emails have a higher conversion rate as compared to other modes of communication. Businesses tend to experience higher sales volumes from email marketing compared to other forms of marketing like social media or paid ads. Also, one thing must be noted: unlike social media which most of us don’t use that often, email is something that is checked on a regular basis. This makes email marketing an eye candy among businesses as it is one of the most profit-driven marketing strategies.

Analytics to measure results

One of the best highlights of email marketing is that it helps you track results so that you can draw an analysis to see how successful your campaigns are. This is possible with Analytics. This helps in measuring results so that one can see what works and what doesn’t and make changes accordingly. For example, if analytics show you that affiliate product X generates a higher click-through rate than affiliate product B, then you can pitch your sales in a better way. All of this helps you in making better and optimum decisions.

Email Marketing Examples

Various types of marketing emails prevail in the system. Here are some of the main key marketing examples every marketer should know.

Newsletters

If you run an online publication, a business blog, or any other type of portal that involves regular updates in terms of the content then you must introduce a newsletter. Newsletters are always a great way to interact with and educate your audience reading your latest product or service. This way you can make sure that your readers are aware of your content and they don’t miss out on anything.

Announcements

There is a reason why people opt into your email advertising updates. They like your work and they want to stay connected with you. They wish to receive occasional announcements as they want to stay updated regarding your brand. These announcement emails can be about new products or significant updates to existing ones.

Confirmation Emails

After completing a purchase, not receiving a confirmation email is always very frustrating. So whenever you perform any online transaction, a confirmation email gives you mental peace. Every business must consider this fact as you don’t want to leave your customers hanging in between and this comes under better customer experience. Confirmations and ‘thank you’ emails also come under the category of examples of email marketing.

Dedicated Sends

Generally, occasional emails are for your entire contact list but emails that are targeted to only a special segment of your customers are also a good initiative. This special segment of the audience might be your list of premium customers. This is a great initiative where your email marketing efforts can be personalized. Also, you can generate specifically targeted leads within your marketing funnel.

Why Choose ‘The NineHertz’ as an Email Marketing Company?

The NineHertz is one of the top digital marketing agencies. If you are all set to launch a robust email marketing campaign but don’t know where to start, then don’t worry as we at The NineHertz are there to help you in your email marketing journey. We are not just a company, we are a brand and we have done thousands of successful email marketing campaigns for multiple companies across the globe.

The NineHertz is a one-stop solution that offers not only email marketing services but complete digital marketing solutions including Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing, and a lot more. With a team of 200 plus talented IT professionals working with a zeal and passion to revolutionize the IT sector, we at The NineHertz are well-versed in crafting intuitive, seamless, and scalable digital solutions.

So what are you waiting for? Just give us a call and discuss your email marketing campaign requirements with our experts. All the best!

Conclusion

We hope that this power pack email marketing guide has taught you all that is required to run a highly effective email marketing campaign. Now you can launch your email marketing drive to hit your target audience and generate leads. Always remember that you are as good as a guest in the inboxes of your recipients.

This means that this hospitality is rented and you have to pay regular rent in the form of quality content to prolong your stay. Before you start mailing, make sure that your subscribers have opted into your list. Always fulfill promises to your subscribers and provide quality-oriented content that syncs with the expectations of your customers.

Lastly, it is always a good practice to periodically analyze the results of your email marketing campaign and make regular improvements in your strategies, if needed.

FAQs on Email Marketing

1. What is Email Outreach?

Email outreach comes under email marketing where a brand connects with other parties via email. The reason why a company gets in touch with other parties is that it wants to promote its content and request backlinks for better link juice. Further, a brand can even collaborate with other brands and influencers to create a strong buzz.

2. What is Meant by Lead Generation?

Lead generation is attracting your potential customers to make them buy your products or services. Every time a customer reaches out to you, a potential lead is generated which can possibly convert to sales in the future. There are numerous ways in which you can generate leads such as:

• Social media posts
• Blog posts
• Coupons
• Videos, etc.

3. What is the Best Time for Email Marketing?

The best time to send a marketing email depends on factors like your location, your industry, and the type of audience. Although, there are a few general guidelines that you can follow:

• In the case of marketing emails, you can pick these days – Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. These days have higher open rates as compared to other days of the week.
• The ideal time to send marketing emails is morning and later afternoon. This is because people tend to check their emails more during these times.
• You can also hit and try and test different days and see what works best for you. You can even use tools like analytics to monitor your progress.

4. What Do You Mean by A/B Testing in Email Marketing?

A/B is a testing method where you compare more than one version of an email to see which performs better. Multiple variables like headlines, subject lines, and images can be tested to determine which version gives the best results. This type of functionality is present in advanced email marketing tools.

5. Why Do Businesses Still Consider Email Marketing So Important?

Email marketing is still a very powerful tool for businesses. Small businesses with low marketing budgets can reach out to more customers with less effort. Small businesses love anything that helps them in cutting costs and email marketing does that quite easily. That’s not all, email marketing also helps in increasing brand awareness and establishing better relationships with customers.

6. How Can Marketing Emails be Sent Without Spamming?

Make sure that your emails are being sent to only those users who have explicitly subscribed to your newsletter or promotional content. The second step is to ensure that the platform of your email marketing is in sync with anti-spam laws. Thirdly, you can provide an opt-out option in your emails and make sure to only send relevant content. Lastly, you need to be careful that you are not sending too many emails, as it can annoy your audience and they might unsubscribe your emails and mark it as spam.