Ultimate Email Marketing Guide For Newbies and Experts

How to learn email marketing
Disclaimer: Fully supported by its users, TangoLearn earns a commission every time you make a purchase via our site. This does not influence the price you pay nor it affects our ratings, course selection methodology or partners.
Reading Time: 12 minutes

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital communication. One who knows how to start email marketing, can go places in this digital era.

 

Now, the question is how to learn email marketing, is there an email marketing guide for what it is, how it’s done, and are there any prerequisites?

 

Today, the use of email marketing is more than ever before. It comes despite the surge in popularity of social media and affiliate marketing. Studies suggest that more people are on email, and this number only grows further every year.

 

But why is it so popular? With a vast user base of four billion people, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective and profitable direct marketing channels. Studies suggest that email marketing holds the potential to yield an ROI of $42 for every dollar spent on it.

 

Gary Thuerk, Digital Equipment Corp marketing manager, used email marketing for direct communication in 1978. At that time, he sent his first-ever commercial mail to inform people about their recently launched product.

 

Jump To

 

During that time, he had a brief (according to today’s standards) mailing list of four hundred people. More on mailing list in this email marketing guide, later.

 

The point to consider here is that this email materialized him sales worth $13 million. Well, that is the power of email marketing – always has been and so will be so for many decades to follow.

 

So, seeing the widespread advantages of email marketing, let us begin with how to learn email marketing?

 

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing, a robust form of digital and direct marketing, is a hugely popular and indomitable marketing channel that employs emails to promote your company’s products and services.

 

So, as part of this marketing tactic, you send promotional messages to people in large numbers to generate leads or sales involving advertising. The high ROI makes it vital for every business’s inbound strategy.

 

But, with several new forms of digital communication mediums coming in, why is email marketing still so popular? It is because  email marketing guides a marketer to deal with their own connections. Hence, there is no worrying about Google’s algorithm changes intervening with your reach.

 

So, how to start email marketing? Let us get started and read through the intensive email marketing beginners guide.

 

Roadmap To Email Marketing – Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1 – Enroll in an online course to understand the concepts

 

Knowledge is power. So, without a doubt, the first step in this email marketing guide involves learning the drill from scratch. So, how to learn email marketing? You can enroll in an online email marketing course.

 

The internet is full of helpful classes. You can explore different available classes and pick one that helps you learn how to do email marketing step by step. You can find both paid and free sessions. Whether you wish to learn to make a career in email marketing or to do it for your business:

 

  • Pick a course offered by a reputed educator.
  • Read through the ratings and reviews to make an informed decision
  • Check their return or refund policy to keep your interests guarded
  • Opt for one that provides you with a certification.

 

Step 2 – Learn with email marketing books

Are you uncertain how to start email marketing from scratch? Well, fret not. There are so many more like you. It is why several prolific educators craft books that offer an ultimate guide to email marketing from scratch.

 

You can find some incredible books to read on the subject online as well. These books are well-crafted and teach you how to do email marketing step by step.

 

Step 3 – Free tutorials and blogs to rescue

If you are a student who does not have substantial resources to invest in different books and paid courses, we have a no-cost alternative to get well-versed with the email marketing guide.

 

So, how to learn email marketing for free? You can find detailed YouTube tutorials and blogs by pro marketers who successfully aced their marketing strategies. Naturally, learning from their experiences can significantly benefit you.

 

Step 4 – Know about the available email marketing tools

After having an overview of email marketing, it is important to know how to actually build your campaign, what steps are involved in it and more.

 

You probably need a good email marketing tool at first. The software can dramatically minimize the time spent creating and sending emails and help you produce beautiful emails. Without these tools, your productivity suffers, and you lose out on the probable ROI.

 

Many companies tend to settle with this situation solely because they are not ready to invest in the tool to streamline the process. But fortunately, these tools are not expensive.

 

In this ultimate guide to email marketing, we have a secret to reveal. You can get several free email marketing tools that can help you save money and time.

 

Some of the top options you have are:
 

  • HubSpot Email Marketing
  • SendPulse
  • Sender
  • Benchmark Email
  • Sendinblue
  • Mailchimp
  • Omnisend
  • MailerLite

 

Some of these paid tools even come with a free trial. So, before you spend any money, you can test these tools to see if they work for your business and then make a choice.

 

Step 5 – Get email marketing guide on various legal compliances

If you wish to know how to learn email marketing, you must be aware of the laws and rules governing it. Multiple rules determine how you use email marketing.

 

If you are in America, the one law you need to be thorough with is the CAN-SPAM Act. The act details all the conditions that marketers must adhere to prevent penalties.

 

These laws prevent misuse of email marketing by spammers and avoid illegal use of third-party email addresses. Naturally, there is a belief that all legitimate companies already adhere to these rules and bindings. So, what are the basis of these rules?
 

  • Ensure that you have consent from each person on your marketing list.
  • The rule of thumb in every email marketing guide is not include misleading or inaccurate information in the mail header to bait people into opening emails.
  • Be clear about the email’s objective
  • Include your company’s valid email address in all the emails.
  • Make it easier for the recipients to opt-out of your future emails.
  • Honor the recipient’s opt-out requests immediately.

 

Step 6 – Know your target audience

Your email is only as effective as it is essential and relevant. Hence, you need to know that people who receive your emails are interested in it. Thus, knowing your audience is vital to successful email marketing.

 

You need to know your targeted audience for a high conversion rate. For this, you need to study the market and recognize the people who will be the right choice for your offerings.

 

Step 7 – Know your goal and set up your strategy

We are now at the seventh step in this how to do email marketing step by step guide. Now that you know the rules, how to start email marketing in actuality?

 

It may be tempting to sign up for a marketing tool and send your first campaign with the right email marketing guide, but before taking the plunge, hold back. Take a moment, and think about what you aspire to achieve with this strategy? Your goals will determine:

  • the kind of campaign you send
  • your recipients
  • the subject matter of the emails
  • measuring success with the emails

 
Let us give you a pearl of wisdom in this ultimate guide to email marketing. For formulating the right email marketing goals, you need to align them with your company’s:

  • Key Performance Indicators
  • Wider marketing goals

 

Your goal may be anything after you learn how to start email marketing:

  • Getting a higher number of leads for your sales team.
  • Having more signups for your new service or product
  • Increasing footfall for the event.
  • Hiking donations received for a cause you believe in.

 

Regardless of your objective, email marketing is one fool-proof marketing strategy to reach your audience, and you can seamlessly use it to achieve any of your marketing goals.

 

Hence it makes sense to spend time and be well-versed with this guide on how to learn email marketing before you start the groundwork.

 

Step 8. Learn about email service providers & choose one

Knowledge of the available email service providers is an inevitable step in this email marketing guide. But, what is an ESP? Also known as the email marketing platform, an ESP is an incredible tool to help you manage your email list.

 

It is an unignorable step in the email marketing beginners guide because the software can help you automate the actions triggered by the target audience’s behaviors. You can also use the platforms to customize your interactions with the audience.

 

Hence, with the use of the right software, your conversation and engagement rates will dramatically spike. Now, be careful with the selection of the ESP because your choice will determine the outcome.

 

So, consider the features you need in your required tool, and then match them with the provider’s features to make an informed choice.

 

Here are some top providers that you can select from:
 

  • Gmail
  • Zoho
  • Outlook
  • AOL
  • iCloud Mail
  • Yahoo Mail

 

Do thorough research before choosing any one platform.

 

Step 9 – Prep your email list

Now, we implement your learnings from this email marketing guide. So, now, you have to prepare an email list. Start by segmenting the list into a specific or a targeted group. It is one of the top-priority steps in this email marketing beginners guide. If you wish to know how to start email marketing, you need to be well-equipped with the techniques behind contact grouping. You can group the recipients according to the following disciplines:

  • Their buying behavior
  • Their age
  • The kind of content that a specific target audience demands
  • Apt updates for a particular audience – product updates, promos, sales offers, etc.

 

Why is this a vital step in the ultimate guide to email marketing? By a proper contact list and right segmentation, you can formulate a customer-centric contact segmentation. It allows targeted communication and makes monitoring and follow-up seamless.

 

Step 10 – Understand different campaign types.

Now, as we take this email marketing guide forward, you need to know about the available options you have in email marketing campaigns.

 

It helps you decide the campaigns you wish to send your subscribers. Your email marketing goals determine the choice of campaigns. Below, we will address a few prevalent marketing campaigns that you can choose from:

 

1. Newsletter

You cannot correctly know how to learn email marketing if you are unaware about newsletters. Newsletter is a periodically sent-out email about a topic that interests the recipients.

 

For instance, a famous vacation home rental company, Airbnb, regularly calls out for freelance photographers to submit their work for compensation via their newsletters.

 

Usually, companies send these newsletters monthly or weekly, depending upon the goal and the target audience. When a customer does not engage or visit your company in a while, you can send them newsletters, to stay afresh in their memory. These newsletters notify them about your products and services.

 

2. Marketing offers

It is another form of campaign that many companies send out via emails. Hence, we aspire to educate you on the same via this email marketing guide. The marketing offers bring in a direct response from the customer and drive sales. Such emails always include a call to action for people to click on it and make a purchase.

 

A few examples of marketing offers include:

  • A campaign to provide discounts on your products or services
  • Campaigns to let the customers know about special promotions running on your website
  • Emails motivate people to buy products they left in the cart by offering a discount.
  • Information about the newest stock on the website

 

3. Announcements

These are one of the most commonly sent-out email campaigns. Hence, their inclusion is inevitable in our email marketing beginners guide.

 

As is apparent, these are informational announcements informing the subscribers about a new service, feature, or product. It is one of the best ways to keep the people in your mailer list engaged and updated about your latest offerings and features.

 

Of course, you can use them to share information, but you can alternatively use the announcement campaigns to drive a customer back to the website to materialize a purchase.

 

4. Event information

Such campaigns help amplify awareness around the event and motivate people to be a part of it.

 

So, these are the four most popular kinds of email marketing instruments we aim to educate you on with this email marketing guide.

 

But, please remember the type of campaign you select is specific to you and your email marketing goals.

 

Step 11 – Know the importance of the right content

Whatever you chose, newsletters, announcements, discount offers, always build you email content wisely. Do not deceive them with click-baits. It can rapidly backfire and reduce your subscriber numbers.

 

Step 12 – Use tempting lead magnets

People do not sign up to your email if all you do is send a poorly drafted blurb wanting people to sign up. It does not speak to your audience and would not motivate them to invest their time or money in your brand as they gain nothing from it.

 

So, we recommend an important step in this email marketing guide – luring your customers by offering them an inducement to sign up. It is called the lead magnet. Naturally, visitors feel motivated to sign up when they see some incentive.

 

Depending on the kind of company you own, you can decide on your lead magnets. Some top-value incentives include:
 

  • Access to your private community
  • A free digital course
  • Video webinar
  • Access to podcast
  • Toolkit of themes, plugins, or digital tools.
  • Special discounts for subscribers

 

Step 13 – Have a clear CTA

You know how to do email marketing step by step, have a mailing list, sent the mails, now what do you want the subscriber to do after reading the email?
 

  • Complete their cart?
  • Browse through the newest offers?
  • Buy your new course?

 

And that’s how to start email marketing – by being clear about the action the reader should take after reading the email to get a response.

 

Step 14 – Decide how often and when to contact your subscribers

There is no definite instruction on how often you can email your subscribers. But, with this email marketing guide, we need you to understand that if you send out way too many emails, there is a probability of your subscribers getting disinterested and opting out of your emails.

 

Ideally, your frequency depends on the purpose of the emails. For instance, if you have a blog page, you can send an email daily to update the customers about new posts.

 

On the contrary, if you are a travel website, you can send newsletters once or twice a month to inform the subscribers about your latest promotions, deals, etc. You can decide your frequency, but keep a tab on the unsubscribe and click-through rates to alter your frequency as needed.

 

In addition, you also need to set a fixed time when you send these emails. No email marketing guide can tell you the right time to send mails, the best way to decide on this is by trying out different timings and deciding which works best for your recipients.

 

Step 15 – Learning to use email broadcasts and email autoresponders

Refining your email broadcasts and autoresponders can amplify results for the campaigns. Typically, almost all the email marketing software today has autoresponders. These automate email responses.

 

However, they usually require a customer’s action to activate. For instance, you can set auto-responding for when a customer signs up for your newsletters or buys your product or service. These help in multiple ways:

  • Offering shipping or purchase confirmation
  • Building trust
  • Generating more leads
  • Conveying important information
  • Providing transactional details

 

It is a vital step in the email marketing guide because this helps save a lot of time and effort.

 

Step 16 – Writing irresistible emails to businesses and consumers

How good your email is also determined their success rate. So, always aim to create emails your customers cannot help but notice. Here are some fool-proof tips for the same:
 

  • Use killer subject lines
  • Be careful about preview texts
  • Keep the layouts short and sweet
  • Make your emails appear creative and fun
  • Use GIFs
  • Add your website links

 

Step 17 – Testing your emails before sending them

Now, using the email marketing beginners guide above, you have your first email campaign ready with all the benchmarks and goals you aspire to achieve with it. But, before you send this email to your customers, you need to test it and refine it as required. Always remember that email marketing is a revolutionary but ever-evolving tool. It never reaches perfection. So, to draft an effective strategy, alter your approaches as required.

 

Before you introduce any new campaign, track various aspects of the email, such as click-through rate, deliverability, and conversion rate. Keep a tab on these benchmarks, and use different trials and runs with the subject lines, message frequency, and the overall design. With every fine-tuning, you will get better.

 

Step 18 – Learn how to measure your results

When you now know how to start email marketing, it is also important to know how to end it right, rather keep it running right. Constantly check the analytics with the email marketing guided strategies to know which campaigns yield the best results and which members are the most responsive. It will help you narrow your campaigns and increase ROI.

 

Ultimate Guide To Email Marketing Advantages and Disadvantages

Now that you know how to learn email marketing, here are some pros and cons you should know about this marketing channel.

 

Pros

  • It is cheaper than most other forms of marketing.
  • People can easily share and forward them, which builds reputation and works as effective word-of-mouth publicity.
  • You can reach a larger audience at once.
  • You can customize the emails and segment the lists so that the emails go only to interested people.
  • It can help amplify sales and conversions.
  • Emails can have a flexible design, depending on what suits your message and target audience.
  • It is permission-based. So, only customers who subscribe receive your emails.
  • It is easy to keep a tab on your marketing success with efficient web analytics software and accordingly optimize future emails.
  • These are less intrusive compared to telephone marketing.
  • They are environmentally friendly.
  • Email marketing encourages real-time responses.
  • Email automation can help you save time and effort.

 

Cons

  • A poorly designed email containing spam characters and keywords in the headlines may be undelivered.
  • Customers can unsubscribe you permanently if you do not target the right people.
  • You may experience some resources (marketing list, the right design, and copy) and skills shortages.
  • You need to develop your marketing list continuously.

 

Conclusion

Email is one of the top channels for content marketing amongst B2-B and B2C marketers. Studies suggest that seventy-seven percent of B2C marketers and eighty-seven percent of B2B marketers employ email marketing to grow and nurture their audience.

 

An email marketing channel can also help you amplify other marketing forums like social marketing channels. Marketers globally face multiple challenges in materializing their email marketing efforts.

 

One of the biggest roadblocks amidst this is not knowing where to start and how to go about it. This calls the need of email marketing beginners guide. We aimed this email marketing guide helping you to overcome these challenges and doubts.

 

Hope it helped you learn how to start email marketing and take your business to the next level.

 

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *