An Ultimate 6 Steps Guide to Become Successful in Email Marketing

Last Updated on September 18, 2022 by Arif Chowdhury

Do you know when the company launched its first email marketing campaign? It was 1978, and they sold $13 million in total. Since then, it has become one of history’s most popular marketing methods.

Though nowadays, social media instant messaging option between customer & brand is far better than old email marketing. However, it still holds a large portion of customers around the world & still one of the most potent & effective ways of online marketing.

Yet, because of some spammer, email marketing has become questionable. As for me, I am still getting hundreds of spam emails every single day in my primary email. Because of this, customers do not want to give their personal information anymore unless it is highly authentic & trustworthy.

But, building a targeted email list will be your gold mine only if you can properly use the email marketing method in your campaign.

What are the most important factors of a successful email marketing campaign?

One thing you should remember is that email is one of the most powerful tools to build a relationship with your customers & if it is misused, it will do the complete opposite.

Think of it as email marketing, not just about your product selling but about building a relationship by providing something valuable to your readers. After that, your customer will become loyal to you, and making a profit will be easier.

So, the most important factor is to build a good relationship with your audience, help them solve their immediate problem, and offer them a long-term solution instead of a quick one. Only then you will become successful in email marketing.

This step-by-step guide will show you how to do email marketing correctly.

Step 1: Definition of email marketing & how it works.

Simply put, it is a process of communicating with your audience more personally by collecting their email. Then, send your subscribers a helpful newsletter that is valuable to them. Through this, build a good relationship and become trustworthy. Finally, send them emails about your product to make sales.

Why should you implement an email marketing campaign?

There are endless possibilities for email marketing; however, let me discuss the significant benefits.

• Build a relationship: One of the most important reasons for your business growth. Every big brand struggles to build a good relationship with its customers; when they succeed, they climb to the top. Remember, your efforts will fail without a good relationship with your customers.
• Mass awareness: Grow your business with mass awareness. Do you know that people worldwide sent approximately 302 billion emails every day in 2020? It was 293 billion in the last year, 2019. And also, according to a recent statistic, almost 70-80% of the audience usually abandon your website and never return. To make them stay & engaged, you need to send them a newsletter so they will return to read more.
• Boost visibility: It’s a good practice to send your newly published content as a newsletter to your subscribers. It will boost your content visibility. As I said, 70-80% of your audience will never return. Therefore, sending them an email with your latest helpful blog post will encourage them to return.
• Generate leads: Email marketing is probably the best way to generate potential leads for your business. When an audience subscribes to your newsletter, it means they are interested in your website content & want to learn more about it. It makes them a potential lead. Your next task is to make them happy by sending them valuable content that they are looking for through email.

• Nurture leads: Continuing to send them valuable content through emails will make them happy & they will start to trust you. It is called nurturing leads. Do not promote your products right away in the first email. Wait until you send them at least 4-5 emails. And if they respond to those with a positive vibe, then it is time to promote your products to them.
• Sales products: Finally, after 1-2 months (depending on your performance), a potential lead may become loyal to you by receiving valuable content from your emails. Afterward, they may visit your website to purchase your products or service. Or, you offer them your service or products. And this is how you make a sale through an email marketing campaign.

Quick Note: You should be cautious when emailing your subscribers. Subject lines are the most critical factor in the email marketing campaign. Your click-through rates and open rates are all depending on it. So, the best practices are when you create an email, always try to craft an eye catchy subject line to draw your audience’s attention.

What benefits will you get by utilizing an email marketing campaign?

There are some simple & shocking facts about the email I will present here.

• Do you know there are approximately 3.8 billion email users around the globe, including Gmail and Yahoo mail? So if you do not plan for an email campaign, think again about how many potential customers you left behind.
• Email marketing has a very high ROI (Return on Investment) ratio. It has a 3,800% ROI, which is tremendously beneficial for a business. For example, if you spend $100 on an email campaign, you will make $3,800 in sales. 
• Email subscribers have several levels. First, around 66% of your subscribers will purchase your products when they become loyal to your brand.
• Only 15-20% of subscribers may respond positively to your sales newsletter if you offer them your products on day one without giving them valuable content to build trust.
• Email is still the best when it comes to customer acquisition. It’s even better than Facebook & Twitter combined. Besides, email platforms are formal business communication, while social media is for customer service.
• Perhaps, freedom is another reason email marketing can be a top choice. Of course, you are bound to follow social media platform rules when you use social media or other communication channels. But, at the same time, email marketing is solely your channel. Thus no limitation on how you are going to nurture your leads.

How can email marketing methods be beneficial based on the different industries?

Whether B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumer), email marketing has a successful history. Let me show you some data which may encourage you to move on.

Email marketing based on b2b industry.

• With the latest technology email marketing software, you can perform a 3X better marketing campaign if your business is B2B category. Email marketing software has a powerful AI system to utilize machine learning technology to understand when & how to send which email based on individual client behavior to maximize the performance.
• 86% of professional communication within the B2B industry is conducted by email. Therefore, it is an excellent opportunity for an email marketer.
• B2B email marketing campaigns have a 47% higher CTR than the B2C industry. Again, it is because it’s so evident that every business, by default, uses email for its primary communication, increasing the CTR ratio significantly.

Email marketing based on B2C industry.

• It may shock you, but around 78% of consumers unsubscribe from email newsletters because businesses send them too many emails. Here the problem is not spam emails but too many emails. As you can see, you must help them by sending valuable content rather than sending products right away.
• The consumer email checking rate is slightly better than the business. However, companies may receive hundreds to thousands of emails daily, which hamper them from going through & read every email. Thus, email marketing CTR is better for the B2C industry than B2B.
• The B2C industry has a unique benefit you may get from other industries: passive marketing (word of mouth from social media). When they become loyal to you, they will start to discuss your products on their social media platforms with their friends & family. It will eventually help you to reach new consumers without spending anything. Also, it helps your brand to build mass awareness among the public.

Step 2: How should you start an email marketing campaign?

Though email marketing has endless possibilities, it is also overwhelming when you start. In this section, I will guide you on how you can build a perfect email campaign to drive massive targeted traffic to your website & make sales.

How to build a perfect email marketing strategy that works?

Before we start, remember one thing. You are not the only one sending emails to your audience. They probably already receive hundreds of emails every day.

In that case, if you do not develop an effective email marketing strategy that will be different from others. Then chances are your email-opening rate will be shallow as your subscriber will lose it in the crowd.

1. Identify your audience.

It is the beginning of your email marketing campaign. First, you have to identify your customer base. If you do wrong here, all your effort will go in vain. Thus, invest time & effort to determine your target audience. Identify their needs and build a marketing campaign based on that.

2. Determine your objective in written format.

Just thinking about an objective or goal is not enough. You must have to prepare a plan & write it down. Think about your all-available options. How are you going to approach this? What do you want to achieve through this marketing campaign?

Do you have the right targeted audience for your business goals? What about your marketing budget? How much ROI are you targeting for this campaign? If this goal cannot achieve, what other objectives do you have in mind?

Finding these answers will surely help you determine a long-term marketing campaign goal. Then, discuss it with your entire team & finalize it before you start to do anything.

Quick Note: Email marketing automation makes the daunting task simple and easy. Here are a few email marketing tips: your email design is also essential to make it effective. Sometimes a simple email will do, but a well-designed email is a must based on your audience. All your marketing efforts will reduce to zero if you do not care about your target audience’s liking. Also, make sure your email templates are responsive for mobile devices.

3. Build a simple yet intelligent landing page for subscribers.

You have to be very smart in this part. Most of the time, web admins fail to catch subscribers only because they become too greedy. Remember, you have to be patient. Build a simple landing page that will show up in front of your audience after 2-3 minutes. Or when they are about to leave your site.

Do not simply create a pop-up that will appear right before their nose when they just landed on your website. Instead, give your readers time & when they are about to leave, show them a landing page that tells them something interesting.

For example, “do not leave empty-handed; I think this eBook will help you a lot. Just write your name & email address, and we will send it to your inbox”.

4. Decide your email marketing style.

It could be overwhelming for the first time because there are many styles. For example, some say sending out a daily newsletter is very effective. Some say a weekly newsletter will optimize your opening rate. Some even say the time of day is all that matters.

When you should send a newsletter & how frequently you should send it depends on your business needs. It’s a best practice to test out which method suits you best.

5. Schedule your email & follow it.

Scheduling is everything. Otherwise, you cannot maintain consistency. And remember, email marketing campaigns and your website won’t survive much longer without readers.

First, determine how frequently you want to send a newsletter to your audience. Do not grant this only because you think it will be a great idea. Next, size up your available resource and determine whether you can keep up with the plan. If not, choose a plan you can keep up with for the long term. Finally, write down the plan & make a schedule for at least the next month.

Create all the content you will send through an email newsletter & then keep following it. Do not change the frequency; otherwise, you won’t be able to build trust among your audience.

6. Calculate your performance & tweak your strategy.

Finally, you must measure your email marketing campaign to judge how well it performed. It is a crucial task, don’t ever ignore it. Your job here is to determine how many emails you have sent. How many emails are opened by your audience? How many of them click? And how many of them said thanks in reply?

If you can find this information, it will be easy to judge the marketing campaign’s performance.

The good news is that if you use email marketing software, it will be complete automation. You do not have to measure the performance. Instead, the software will show you a full campaign report with all the necessary details.

Measure the performance & based on the result, tweak your existing campaign strategy. It’s a trial & error process; it could take a while but trust me, your marketing campaign will improve.

Step 3: How should you build a targeted email list?

Now we arrive at the battlefield. It is the hardest part of all. You may use your beautiful landing page and get thousands of email lists within one week. However, if you do not narrow your funnel, you may receive many unnecessary emails irrelevant to your email marketing campaign goal.

In that case, it will be a total failure before you even begin. Remember, you have to focus on quality, not quantity.

And also, one quick note, do not ever bother to purchase an opt-in email list from a third-party agency. Trust me, those all are either fake or useless. You will waste your money & time on that. Instead, focus on your strategy on how to collect targeted email leads.

There are many ways you can collect an email list. But, in this section, I will show you some significant parts so you can focus on narrowing down your funnel to get the most targeted emails.

1. Offer something valuable to attract leads.

It’s obvious why people want to give away their personal information to you unless they receive something valuable in exchange.

Additionally, nowadays, spamming has increased at an alarming rate, preventing people from sharing their information with an unknown source. For example, you could steal their credit card information. Or, hack their primary email account connected to their other valuable source.

So what’s the solution here? Simply gain their trust by giving away something valuable they are looking for. For example, if your blog is about SEO services, offer them a free eBook with valuable insight about SEO. By doing so, you gain their trust & they will share their personal information (email, name, age, etc.) with you. 

Here are some sample ideas for you to attract your audience:

• eBook
• Research Insight
• A list of a valuable resource
• Free templates (website, email, etc.)
• Webinar
• Free course
• Free tools
• Whitepapers

2. Make the subscription form as straightforward as possible.

Don’t try to be over-smart. Don’t make a subscription form with an excessive marketing tone. For example, Get ranked #1 in Google within seven days. Subscribe to us & download the eBook. As you can see, people are becoming smarter daily because of the increasing number of spammers.

So, make it as simple as possible & only say what you will give them. If your service & content is to help to get rank in Google, then say in the subscription form. Like this: “Read our SEO Guide & Get rank in Google faster.” You see, there is nothing excessive here. You said what you could do for them.

Also, don’t ask for too much information in the subscription form. Just ask your readers to drop their names & email address. That’s it. If you ask for too much information like age, country, phone number, etc., they will be annoyed & probably will leave your free offer.

Recommended Reading: How to Write an SEO Optimized Blog Post that Rank (Practical Guide)

Step 4: How are you supposed to send emails to subscribers?

I assume you have built a list of emails ready to be used by the marketing campaign. No matter how big or small this list, it doesn’t matter. We have to focus on quality over quantity.

Now the question is, how are you going to send an email to your, let’s say, 500+ subscribers? Do not think you can use Gmail, Yahoo, or your default cPanel email account because those are not designed for mass email campaigns.

And also probability is that if you use those platforms, your email may end up in their spam folder. And they never will notice it.

So, how should you do it? Simple, you have to use a professional email marketing service. Let me give you a proper direction about it.

Quick Note: Do not use free email services such as Google or Yahoo mail for your email marketing campaign. First of all, you cannot send bulk emails, and second, they will ban you from trying to send mass emails. Instead, use an email address from your domain name, such as “[email protected].” You may use email clients to send bulk emails from your domain without issues.

1. Choose a professional email marketing service.

To start a business, you must act like a professional. So choose an outstanding email marketing service for your campaign.

Here are some best email marketing services you can try out:

• Constant Contact
• Sendinblue
• Hubspot
• Getresponse

I just gave you some examples of a renowned email marketing service. You should choose them based on your business appetite. They have powerful marketing features like pre-designed email templates, automatic follow-ups email, event trigger systems, automatic analytic reports, optimal email sending time, etc.

Recommended Reading: Best Bulk Mailing Software for Small Businesses (Reviewed)

2. Utilize robust metrics to increase performance.

Collecting thousands of email lists using sweet magnetic marketing words won’t let you go anywhere. But, first, you have to be smart in your marketing strategy.

Most of the time, if your 1st email is not attractive enough, your subscribers will throw it in the spam folder or unsubscribe from your list. Therefore, getting lots of emails is not enough. Try to be smart when sending emails to them. 

Here are some valuable metrics you should focus on to increase performance.

Email copy: Don’t send them 1,000 words email or only 50 words. Both are too much or too little to be attractive. Instead, try to focus on 100-250 words. Be specific & use an eye-catching headline. Tell them what you want to say within 100-250 words. Don’t make it boring.

Images: Add images whenever possible. Remember, humans, are prone to attract visual things. If you use pre-designed email templates, then it’s even better. Professional email marketers design those. Thus your chance of making a powerful email will increase.

CTA: Call-to-action button is mandatory in email marketing. Try to place this CTA at the end or the beginning of your email copy. Make it easily recognizable. Don’t overdo it; don’t use flashing or excessive color to make it attractive. Try to make it simple yet noticeable.

Timing: Optimal timing is necessary but not a game-winning component. If you can find out when your subscribers check their email, then it is an optimal time. But there is a problem if you have 500+ subscribers, then how are you supposed to send them on their time?

The good news is that email-marketing software has an auto-optimal time finder option. It will send emails at the most optimal time possible based on your subscriber’s behavior.

3. Utilize personalization in your email copy.

There is a straightforward fact about email marketing & that is you have to make it personalized for each & every person you are sending emails to. Why is that? Because people like to be acknowledged by their name rather than only “Hi.”

For example, it’s much better to say, “Hi, Mr. Smith. How’s Your Day?” rather than “Hi, We have an excellent service….”

You see, in your email, if you mention them by their name, then it will be a more personalized and effective way to start communication.

Here are some simple personalization strategies I have included below:

• First, in the beginning, mention the individual name.
• Then, add region-related information, if applicable, to make it more personalized.
• Second, be specific about the previous email conversation when following up on an email.
• Finally, send birthday wishes with special birthday discounts & other special events based on religion or region.
• End your email with a person’s name, for example, your name as a CEO & founder of Company X rather than the only company name.

4. Use a robust automation process.

I already talked about automation procedures for email marketing software earlier in this article. Let me elaborate on it now. 

It is not just a regular email auto-responder. It is an entirely new thing. An email autoresponder simply responds to an email with a received notification. Like, “We have received your email, thank you very much.”

However, what I am talking about is not a simple auto-responder. An email automation procedure is a complete AI-powered system that will act as a virtual assistant to manage your email campaigns. It has a powerful visual workflow system that can customize according to your business needs.

Take a look at the example above. It is a complete lifecycle of your subscribers from the beginning to the end. Once set up the system, you won’t have to touch it, as it will continue to send pre-designed emails to individual subscribers according to their behavior.

Step 5: Beware of email regulation policy.

Now let’s enter the terms & regulation part. You must follow this regulation below to survive as a business professional.

1. CAN-SPAM compliance.

It’s a law to protect the audience from receiving unwanted pornography & marketing content. It was passed in 2003 and applied to commercial business emails. Subscribers will only be supposed to receive what they have asked for. So before you dispatch your emails, ensure they comply with the regulation.

Here are some pieces of advice before you start the email campaign:

• Make sure you include the business name & address in every email you send
• Add an unsubscribe link at the end of the email copy
• Do not use masking in the email address; it will automatically count as spam
• Use a proper email subject that is relevant to the email copy

2. GDPR compliance.

GDPR means “General Data Protection Regulation.” This law is based on the EU (European Union) business. Its primary purpose is to build a long-lasting relationship with subscribers. Therefore, when you comply with this law, you only email those who want it.

No tricks or illegal approaches. And if you do not follow its guidelines, the consequence will be a significant fine to your organization.

Here is some advice so you can properly adhere to GDPR:

• Mention very clearly why & what information about subscribers you are going to store in your business database
• Clearly state this in your website privacy policy section as well
• Collect subscriber data only that is necessary for your business
• If requested by the authentic subscriber, then delete all data immediately
• Make sure your subscriber can easily unsubscribe from you with only a click of a button within your email

Step 6: Utilize an AI-powered next-generation analytics system.

In the previous steps, I talked about AI-powered automation procedures where you won’t have to email yourself manually. Instead, the system will do that for you in complete automation.

How about an AI-powered analytic report as well? You won’t have to calculate all the metrics by yourself; instead, the system will produce it automatically for you with 100% error-free.

Apart from the analytic report, you have the following benefits from it.

1. A/B test marketing email.

Not everyone will act the same way when you send emails to thousands of people. For example, some may like your design; some may want your email content; some may not like images, some like many images, etc. So there are various ways people will act on your emails. Now the problem is you cannot make everyone happy.

You have to select a majority of people who like the same style. Therefore, your email campaign performance will be at an optimal level.

If you use email marketing software for your marketing campaign, you may get access to A/B testing features depending on your service provider & account type.

Here are some steps I have written down to help you out if you are new:

• Use verities metric to test your campaign; however, try to change one metric at a time, i.e., change images, write a different title, offer other products, use another type of CTA, etc.
• Always keep a record of the performance to measure later
• Send emails simultaneously for a specific period to see the difference in the opening rate
• After sending 5-6 emails, keep that performed better than all others
• Repeat the cycle continues to improve overall campaign performance

Recommended Reading: How to Write a Perfect SEO Title to Boost Your Organic Traffic?

2. Focus on four major KPIs.

Four major KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) determine the fate of your email marketing campaign.

Deliverability: let’s say you have sent 5,000 emails in a batch. If it reaches 4,500 people, your deliverability success percentage is 90%. This indicator will show how many emails successfully landed in your subscriber’s inbox.

Opening rate: this is the second indicator. Sending thousands of emails to subscribers means nothing if they do not open them. Let’s say among the 4,500 emails, your recipient opened only 2,000 emails. In that case, this indicator will show you a 44.4% open rate. By checking this indicator, you will know how many of them saw your email newsletters.

CTR: Click-through rate is another but most effective indicator. It tells you how many people are interested in your email topic & clicked on your given link embedded in the email copy. This way, you will know how many people visited your sales page, for example. Among 2,000 people, only 500 clicked on your link, which means your CTR is 25%.

Unsubscribe: this is the last metric. It tells you how many people unsubscribe from your newsletter. It is how you will know how effective your email marketing campaign is.

Conclusion.

At the end of this guide, I will encourage you to start your email marketing campaign as soon as you can digest what I have said in this guide. Do not bother yourself to become perfect; no need for that. Just start the process & stick to the plan you have created at the beginning of your marketing campaign.

Do not ever change it unless you find a way to improve it through various analytic reports. Instead, stick to the plan and maintain consistency.

Try to improve it based on the performance report. Remember, success does not come on the first day; it’s a long way to go through hundreds of trials & errors. But if you can acknowledge your mistake and improve your existing plan, you will only be able to succeed.