Email marketing is proving to be a very lucrative endeavor with revenues estimated to reach almost $17.9 billion by the end of 2027.
As with any other marketing strategy, email marketing comes with its own tricks and pitfalls. If you don’t know the right techniques or execute them in the wrong way, you can come off as distant, fail to capture your audience’s attention, or land in the spam or promotions folder leaving your messages unread.
For the most part, people who do choose to dabble in email marketing learn on their own due to the lack of formal education courses on the topic. While this may work for some, for others it can kind of feel like this:
While it does make for a cute picture, the dog would probably get to where it needs to go faster if it had someone leading it.
Just like in learning about email marketing — you have better chances of learning the essentials and going in the right direction quicker under the guidance of skilled and knowledgeable professionals.
With that, email marketing courses can be a great help, especially for the following categories:
Regardless of what stage you’re at, taking an online course to brush up on email marketing can still be beneficial for you and your company.
According to Mailmodo’s State of Email 2024 report, email marketing was the best-performing channel in 2023:
What does it mean for you? If you’re an entrepreneur, learning email marketing can be a great strategy for growing your business. And if you’re a marketer, taking up a course or two can give you a viable career option — emails are not going anywhere yet!
We covered that courses and training programs are the simplest answer to how to become an email marketer. Now, choosing an online email marketing course shouldn’t be done willy-nilly. You need to consider which one will help you accomplish your goals best and give you your money’s worth at the same time.
To help you pick the best course for you, consider the following factors:
While this might not apply to everyone, certification is one of the main reasons why people attend online courses. However, not all courses offer certification upon completion.
So, if you want to get certified or receive a badge for your profile or website, you should check whether the course awards the certification. These little tokens of accomplishments not only make your profiles and resumes look good but are highly sought-after by several employers and can drastically improve your chances of getting hired.
In fact, several employers might require certain certifications before considering you for the job. Take the listing below for example:
Thus, creating an impressive online portfolio of email marketing certifications can only help your case. Learn more about boosting your online credentials by checking out our article on how to write an email marketing specialist resume to get hired.
Email marketing courses can be quite time-consuming. They can span from hours to weeks or even months depending on the intensity of the course and its content. With that, you need to make sure that the course you choose fits your timeline.
Nowadays, you have the option of attending online courses that are held live which can be great for interaction and real-time feedback but these courses can take more time and schedules are dependent on the speaker or lecturer’s availability.
You can also choose from a wide variety of structured online courses that enable you to tackle the course in your own time, usually via a dedicated platform. This usually consists of pre-recorded lectures and various other media like reading selections. The benefit of this option is that you complete the course as fast or as slowly as you want.
There is a wide variety of courses available online. Each course is designed to cater to various levels of expertise. As with any media, the content of the course depends on its target audience. Given that, you need to assess yourself and see what level of knowledge you have on the topic before joining a specific class.
If you’re a beginner, you would benefit most from joining courses that cover the essentials of email marketing. Chances are, you would not benefit from the advanced concepts tackled on a course geared toward experts.
Likewise, advanced or proficient learners would not have much to gain from a course that covers only the fundamentals and would instead benefit more from learning current trends, email marketing strategy, its relationship to social media and other channels, and the like.
As you choose to dive into email marketing, it would be safe to assume that you have a specific set of goals you want to achieve using this strategy. Boosting conversion rates, learning about email-specific copywriting, or creating content to promote your e-commerce platform — these are some of the goals you can have. With that, you need to choose a course that covers the topics that’ll help you to achieve your goals specifically.
Depending on the course, it can cover topics as basic as subject lines, email marketing tips, email builders, and email metrics — to advanced and complicated topics such as list management strategies, email marketing system optimization, automation, and data analytics.
One surefire way to tell if something is worth your time and money is to read through the reviews left by people who have already tried it. Most likely, you won’t be the first one to attend this course. If that’s the case, it’s best to take a look at what people who have completed the course have to say about it.
Through reading reviews, you can get a better idea of what to expect from the course, how beneficial it was for other marketers, and possibly what results they achieved from the learnings they got.
Online courses have been designed to run as smoothly and seamlessly as possible. With that, all course requirements and information should be properly communicated to you as you progress through the course.
Of course, communication is never one-sided. You should also check whether there are avenues for you to address your concerns whether you have questions regarding a certain tricky topic or concerns about a feature on your learning module.
Communication can appear in various forms depending on the course. They can be forums, online support chats, or direct interaction with speakers.
Last, and probably most importantly, is the course within your budget?
Depending on your chosen course provider, email marketing courses can be completely free of charge or cost you hundreds of dollars. However, this cost is ultimately an investment towards you and your company’s growth.
With that, make sure that you get your money’s worth by checking the price and what services and information you’re expecting to get out of these courses.
Here are some of the most highly sought-after email marketing courses available.
Selzy recently launched a comprehensive online course covering all the ins and outs of email marketing from email list management to driving conversion. Hosted by an award-winning deliverability expert Yanna-Torry Aspraki, it will teach you how to sell with emails and always land in the inbox, not spam. It’s an ideal course for solopreneurs and small business owners as it focuses on practical aspects of email marketing.
By purchasing the course, you also get a one-month of Selzy’s Standard plan. So you can start applying your knowledge and send emails to up to 5,000 subscribers. After completing the course, you get certified and can display your certification on LinkedIn.
Specific topics tackled:
This email marketing course from Mailchimp provides you with all the knowledge you need to successfully use Mailchimp and market your brand with email campaigns. You have a money-back guarantee and you can get certified upon completion.
Specific topics tackled:
This course from LinkedIn Learning focuses on getting you to learn how to construct intriguing and engaging emails that are not just entertaining but also generate results and revenue for your brand.
This course is great for beginners and novice learners alike as you tackle the basics and improvement all in one terrific course led by marketing consultant Virginia O’Connor.
Specific topics tackled:
This course is designed for people who would like to start a career in email marketing. During the course, marketers-to-be will learn how to execute email marketing campaigns with the help of Google employees working in the field. The course will teach you copywriting for email subject lines, creating automations, and more and will equip you with the knowledge and skills to apply for entry-level jobs in the field.
Specific topics tackled:
This course provided by HubSpot aims to guide students with the necessary tools to master the fundamentals of email marketing through an online course available in English, German, French, and Spanish at no cost.
By the end of this course, students are expected to understand how to use various marketing tools and concepts to successfully develop their own marketing systems and establish great relationships with future clientele.
Specific topics tackled:
If you happen to have a fully functional campaign and instead want to focus on how to design emails that capture your audience’s eye, then this course might be better for you.
Taught by Fabio Carneiro, an email design and development expert, this 36-minute course from Skillshare aims to assist budding email marketers with coding, design practices, and email types so that they successfully work towards producing the kind of results that your brand hopes to achieve.
Specific topics tackled:
Usually, the first (and arguably the most challenging) step in building a successful email campaign is growing a reliable email list. This course from Udemy focuses on assisting email marketing newbies and experienced marketers who are struggling to build a stellar subscriber list.
This course, constructed and taught by Phil Ebner, business owner and online course creator, focuses on topics varying from the basic steps involved in list-building t0 the construction of high-quality lead magnets.
Side note: This course was constructed with WordPress website developers in mind.
Specific topics tackled:
This course from Simplilearn is geared toward more advanced learners with basic knowledge of HTML. However, it covers virtually everything that one may desire to learn about elevating their existing system to produce an increase in relevance, customer relations, and revenue.
While this may come at a pretty hefty price, this course is deemed a worthy investment for your business. Through this course, you can expect to learn the fundamentals as well as various advanced tools and strategies to achieve your marketing goals.
Specific topics tackled:
Wishpond, an online marketing service provider, also has an online course for beginners who are looking for a quick (1 hour or at your own time) and easy-to-understand course on the basics of email marketing.
This course taught by their own marketing generalist, Victoria Taylor, targets various topics such as email campaigns, the common blunders in marketing, constructing email funnels, and other tools to assist newbie marketers and businesses’ journey in starting up their own email marketing systems.
Specific topics tackled:
The ClickMinded Email Marketing Training is a five-star reviewed marketing course that comes jam-packed with terrific resources from the most successful businesses and brands in the world.
This course was designed to help businesses take their marketing systems to the next level. And whiile it may be quite pricey, this course’s content is sure to deliver great results and relay important information that can be understood even by email marketing beginners.
Specific topics tackled:
If you ever feel overwhelmed or don’t know where to start when building your email marketing system, don’t worry. There are a lot more courses to choose from aside from the ones on the list. Just make sure that you pick one based on:
You may even take multiple courses if you feel like it. But at the end of the day, getting your hands on these courses is a terrific investment for your company and brand’s growth. And to further your education, check out the best email marketing blogs.
This article was originally published in May 2023 and was updated in March 2024 to make it more relevant and comprehensive.
