Email Marketing Strategies: How to Succeed with Email in 2024

So what makes email marketing so profitable? We’ll dive into all the ins and outs you need to not only understand what email marketing is all about, but to become an email expert and start generating more revenue for your business.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a direct marketing strategy that uses email to promote a company’s products and services. Email marketing allows you to send information directly to your target customers without an advertising intermediary.

In a world where organic social media marketing is becoming increasingly difficult and digital advertising costs are rising, there’s nothing more valuable than owning your own distribution channel to speak directly to your customers. In fact, the cost per click on Facebook has increased by 13% in 2022 compared to 2020, and the average organic reach of a Facebook page post is only 5.2% ! That means if you have 1,000 followers on your Facebook page, you’re likely only reaching 52 people on average.

The History of Email Marketing

In 1971, engineer Ray Tomlinson sent the first test email. A year later, Larry Roberts invented the first email management system, which allowed users to select, forward, or reply to emails. The first recorded mass email send was in 1978 by Gary Thuerk, which reportedly generated $13 million in sales . In 1989, AOL launched with the iconic “you’ve got mail” sound.

Email became ubiquitous in the 1990s and is largely email as we know it today. In 1998, Microsoft developed Internet Mail, which later became Outlook. Hotmail was also launched in the same year, becoming the most popular and accessible form of digital communication.

One of the biggest milestones for email marketing was the introduction of HTML in 1998 to improve the visuals and experience of emails. It allowed marketers to add fonts, colors, graphics, and images as internet access and speeds began to improve. In 2009, responsive emails emerged that optimized emails for desktop, mobile, and tablets. We’ll dive into why this is important later in this article.

Does Email Marketing Still Work?

Contrary to the occasional sensational headlines like “email is dead,” email is becoming more important for businesses today. It is one of the most cost-effective tools that also generates incredible ROI. It is an excellent channel to build direct relationships with your audience, drive traffic to your blog, promote your latest promotions, provide valuable information that drives a sale, and much more.

Take Substack as an example. The paid email newsletter platform that allows freelance writers to build audiences at scale via email has revolutionized the media industry that was once so dependent on social media. Substack grew from 11,000 paying subscribers to over 500,000 over the course of three years. The growth speaks for itself.

The second example is Morning Brew , a daily morning business newsletter that was purchased by Insider Inc. in an all-cash deal for around $75 million. They built an audience of over 2.5 million in just 5 years.

While there are millions of ways to design, segment, and compose emails, let’s now dive into how you can effectively manage an email marketing program.

The 4 Types of Email Marketing

Emails aren’t just sent out one-off to promote something. Marketers often create automated email flows that are triggered by actions, time, and behavior. These flows use a mix of different email formats, which can be broken down into these four categories.

1. Email Newsletters

These provide news, updates, and educational content on a regular basis to maintain consistent engagement with your email audience. This is a scalable way to grow your email list and stay top of mind with your subscribers without pushing a sales message.

2. Acquisition Emails

Acquisition emails are sales-focused emails that provide informative content about the value you offer in order to convince a prospect to buy from you. The ultimate goal is to push leads down your conversion funnel faster in a highly personalized and targeted way.

3. Retention Emails These can come in a number of forms, including:

1. Reactivation emails that re-engage users who have unsubscribed.
2. Upsell, renewal and cross-sell emails to upsell your existing customers and increase purchase frequency.
3. Product retention emails that help increase product usage and satisfaction.

4. Promotional Emails

Promotional emails help deliver an attractive offer or new product offerings to encourage prospects to purchase or subscribe to your product or service. It is a strategy that can help both upsell and cross-sell products to your customers.

How to Create an Effective Email Marketing Campaign Strategy

While sending emails is simple, effectively executing an email marketing campaign is far from it. You need to find ways to collect relevant emails, compose the right content, and deliver it to the right audiences at the right time . Here’s how.

Step 1: Build an Email List

The first and possibly the most difficult step in building an effective email marketing campaign is building an audience. If you don’t have an existing email list, you’ll need to start collecting some emails in the following ways:

1. Create signup forms on your website or blog in exchange for newsletter updates, discounts, or a content upgrade
2. Enable an exit-intent popup that asks your website visitors to provide an email address in exchange for an offer
3. Offer gated content like an ebook, long-form article, or exclusive webinar in exchange for contact information.
4. Run a viral launch campaign that incentivizes visitors to enter their emails to enter a giveaway or get early access to your new product. A visual leaderboard could help improve performance by gamifying the process.
5. Convert your social media audience by driving them to a capture page that both provides value and captures emails.

Step 2: Segment and Target Your Audiences

Now that you have an audience to target, you need to make sure you’re sending the right message to the right people, at the right time. CRM software can be really helpful here, because your sales team can have additional insights into a prospect or customer’s demographics, behavior, and where they are in the sales funnel . Ultimately, well-segmented audiences improve open rates and ROI, because you’ll be able to address any specific challenges they may have. There are a number of ways to segment your audiences, but here are four of the easiest ways to do it:

1. Segment by industry. Where do they work? How much do they earn? What are their top business challenges?

2. Segment by company size . How is your organization structured? Who are the key decision makers?

3. Segment by location. Should the email be localized? What language should the email be in? When is the best time to send this email?

4. Segment by funnel stage. How close is this segment to making a purchase? When was the last time we contacted them? Where are they in the sales funnel?
5. Segment by user behavior. Did a user visit your pricing page? Did they sign up but not open the product in the last 24 hours? Is a user decreasing their login frequency?

Step 3: Create the Perfect Email Subject Lines

Email marketing is both an art and a science. Sometimes, your wittiest subject lines won’t be as successful as something simpler but more direct. Fortunately, email marketing is a highly iterative process that requires a lot of A/B testing.

Well-crafted subject lines directly impact your open rates, which is one of the primary KPIs of email performance. While there is no one-size-fits-all practice, here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Keep it short. We recommend 9 or fewer words and less than 60 characters.
2. Eliminate filler words and don’t be afraid to bend grammar rules
3. Avoid any spelling mistakes to avoid losing credibility (trust is everything)
4. Personalize the subject line using their name or company
5. Avoid using capital letters
6. Get curious!

If you’re stuck, consider using an email subject line tester or generator to help you through the process. I know, writing is hard!

Don’t forget the preheader that appears in your inbox right after the subject line. On the same line, it should be written as a continuation of your subject line to entice recipients to open your email.

Step 4: Include the Elements of a Good User Experience in the Email

How to turn a good email into a great one? Follow these guiding principles.

Be scannable . Can someone quickly read your email and digest the information in a few seconds?

Be mobile responsive . Are your emails easy to read on mobile devices? Do you have a subject line length of 25-30 characters, use pre-header text, concise copy, and images that load quickly?

Have a clear CTA . Do you have a clear ask? Are you trying to promote a blog post? Get readers to download an app? Whatever your goal, make sure your CTA is front and center.

Step 5: Test Emails and Optimize Your CTR

Most email marketing platforms today come with A/B or multivariate testing tools that allow you to test multiple variations of the same email. Here are the best ways to test them.

1. Test one meaningful variable at a time that yields the most results. If you test too many elements at once, you won’t know what’s driving performance.
2. Have a clear KPI to test. For example, do you want to test open rates, click rates, or bounce rates? Pick one at a time.
3. Ensure your emails are accessible on multiple devices by using an email quality control platform like Litmus.
4. Test on a random test audience that is also large enough to achieve statistical significance. Here’s a free tool from Survey Monkey to determine if your A/B test was a success.

Step 6: Email Marketing Automation

Email marketing automation is the process of sending emails in a sequence based on a specific set of rules to nudge them into taking an action.

For example, if someone signed up for a newsletter and you want to learn more about the reader, you can send a sequence of automated emails that direct them to a downloadable resource that requires them to fill out a form asking for more personal information. Sales teams can also automate follow-up emails based on whether a reader opened the email, or if they haven’t responded in a certain amount of time.

The Benefits of Email Automation

1. Increased Personalization: Automation improves your relationships with your audience because you can automatically personalize messages based on their activity on your site or how they interact with your emails.
2. Scale production: Allows marketing teams to send more emails without having to repeat redundant tasks. Creating an email sequence based on a set of repeatable and testable rules scales well.
3. Improve retention: Time your messages perfectly by automating follow-ups and sending offers to customers to get them to buy again.

Types of Email Marketing Automation Software

The email software space is big, growing, and extremely complex. As you can see in this graphic below, email technology can range from software that ensures your emails are delivered to your entire email list to complex email design tools.

We’ll leave the full email software roundup for another article, but let’s talk strictly about email marketing automation software. This is software that allows marketers to send a series of triggered, timed emails to subscribers on their mailing lists. They often offer customization, design tools, and tools to run complicated workflows. The scale and availability of these features depend on the size of the business and are priced accordingly. Here are the most popular email automation software by business type and size:

Small and Medium Businesses (SMEs): MailChimp, Moosend

Business to Business (B2B): AWeber, Sendinblue, Zoho Campaigns, Drip

Companies : ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Constant Contact

4 Real-Life Examples of Email Marketing to Inspire You in 2022

Now that you’ve put together your email marketing strategy, here are four top examples to inspire your campaigns in 2022 and beyond.

A Touch of Humanity from Harry’s

At the peak of COVID-19 lockdowns, Harry’s perfectly navigated a very sensitive time to send promotional emails. While many brands were struggling to find the right message, their email was not only genuine but provided something actionable that helped venezuela email list their customers show they truly cared. They masterfully interspersed their message with a company update, letting customers know that they are still fully operational and will provide reliable services throughout the pandemic.

Key Takeaway: Actions speak louder than words. Provide actionable ways to help and avoid generic words of sympathy.

Casper: A Warm Welcome

Every time a customer purchases a Casper mattress , they send out a personalized email welcoming a new and excited customer. They provided plenty of resources on how to sleep better and how to best use the product to get the most out of it. Not only does this improve the shopping experience, but it also reduces the chances of the customer having buyer’s remorse. After all, purchasing a mattress is one of the biggest investments you’ll make in your home.

Key Takeaway: Use email to improve the onboarding experience. Get your customers excited to use your product to reduce your chances of buyer’s remorse.

Customized Like Spotify

Spotify Wrapped is one of the most successful content marketing campaigns of all time. Not only is the actual experience on Spotify’s platform excellent, but their promotional emails are equally impressive as well. They provide a stunning design backlink auditing pt 1 how to perform a backlink audit with custom stats that pique the listener’s curiosity. There is a clear CTA that prompts the reader to check out their Spotify Wrapped stats. The copy is clear, concise, and to the point.

Key Takeaway: Less is more. Personalize your content, grab your reader’s attention with stunning visuals, and build curiosity to click on your CTA.

Gamify Your Emails Like Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A teased a new menu item with a word search email. In contrast to Spotify’s bold , brightly colored email , they followed their own brand voice to create a fun, light, and engaging email to announce their new summer peach drink.

Key takeaway: You don’t always need something unique to say! Have fun and make it interactive.

Honorable Mention: HBO Max’s Unexpected Mistake

The big-finger mistake that broke the internet deserves an honorable mention because sometimes you have to leave room for serendipity. The HBO Max intern accidentally sent out a test email to all HBO Max subscribers , and the internet responded bfb directory with overwhelming support. Sometimes the most unexpected thing happens, and it’s your chance to capitalize on it. HBO Max’s heartwarming tweet was met with overwhelming support for the intern, with many sympathizing with their own horror stories as interns.

Summing it all up

With over 144 billion emails sent every day, marketers are taking advantage of one of the most profitable channels today. As you’ve read, email marketing is much more complex than some fancy graphics and copywriting, but it involves a strategic mix of measurement, testing, and automation to be successful.

There are a lot of technical aspects if you look under the hood of email marketing like deliverability, inbox placements, and sender IP management. There are also strategies to avoid being flagged as spam by sending highly relevant emails to the right recipients (which we’ll cover in our next article). Consider consulting an email agency, consultant, or freelancer to help you cover all your bases when you get started.

Now that you’re familiar with how to build a successful email strategy, it’s time to go out and build one for yourself. Whether you’re producing newsletters, acquisition emails, retention emails, or promotional emails (or all of the above), keep in mind that you should always be testing!