The Definitive Guide To Email Marketing for Beginners

What is email marketing?

Email marketing consists of marketing efforts that use emails to promote and sell products or services, build brand awareness and engage customers. 

An email or a set of emails made for a specific purpose is called an email campaign. For example, there can be a welcome campaign, a New Year campaign, an anniversary campaign, etc.

Email marketing is one of the types of direct marketing along with digital, content, SMS, social media, and other variations. As opposed to mass marketing, these methods are aimed at a targeted group of customers.

What are the benefits of email marketing? Why use it?

Email marketing helps companies promote services and products all over the world, in many different industries. Why should you follow the example of Google, Apple, and others? We have several reasons.

Email audience is enormous

Having an email address is one of the modern necessities. We use email to conveniently communicate with companies and brands every day. In 2023, the email user base counted over 4.3 billion people worldwide. By the year 2026, it’s projected to reach over 4.7 billion. 

Having access to a massive email audience helps any business reach its existing clients, nurture relationships, and expand even further. No wonder that marketers worldwide continue to actively use email to promote and sell products and services. 

Email marketing is cost-effective and brings revenue

In general, digital marketing is cheaper than traditional one. No manufacturing costs for a print ad or a pop-up store, no need to rent a billboard or hire promoters — reaching thousands of people with a compelling message isn’t costly thanks to email marketing.

What is more, email marketing provides amazing value for your dollars. One of the key marketing metrics is the return on investment (ROI). It shows how effective in terms of money a campaign is — and email marketing has a huge ROI. Litmus reports that for every U.S. dollar spent on email marketing, businesses gain $36.

But that’s not all: we’ll discuss email marketing benefits in use next.

Email marketing can be effortless

Modern email service providers (ESPs) like Selzy do the hard work for you. With drag-and-drop email builders and dozens of templates, you don’t need professional coding or design skills to create exciting content. Thanks to the clear and intuitive interface such platforms offer, you can easily schedule, launch, and track campaigns. Moreover, you can do that in minutes. 

Email campaigns are easy to track and measure

There are several metrics that show the effectiveness of a campaign:

• Delivery rate — a number or a percentage of all emails that were successfully delivered.
• Open rate — a percentage of subscribers that opened the email.
• Click-through rate — a number of times the CTA button in the email was clicked.
• Unsubscribe rate — a percentage of people that opted out of your list.

After sending an email, you can analyze all of these parameters to understand how successful the campaign was. 

Email marketing is flexible

What’s even more fascinating  about email marketing is the flexibility that analytics gives you. For example, ESPs like Selzy offer A/B tests. One part of your audience gets one variant of an email, and the other — a different one. You can change the subject line or images, add or omit personalized bits, etc. Comparing the results, you’ll better understand what your audience likes and dislikes and what you should do next time.

On a broader level, email marketing strategies are very adaptive. Formats, sending frequency, design, and everything else can be adjusted to exactly fit your business’s needs. Segmentation and personalization also contribute to email marketing flexibility. You can divide your  audience into different groups (that’s segmentation) to send them different content and add dynamic content, or make use of your subscribers’ browsing data and purchase history (that’s personalization). 

Automation on all levels

Last but not least: email marketing works when you rest. Triggered emails will guide your customers through all of the stages of the sales funnel:

1. On the awareness stage, offer quality content in exchange for the subscription. 
2. For subscribers in the consideration stage, automate an enticing welcome email.
3. To guide customers through the conversion stage, prepare limited-time offers like birthday promo codes, browse and cart abandonment emails, etc. 
4. To maintain customers in the loyalty and advocacy stage, offer gifts and bonuses for a review or recommendation, or launch an exclusive bonus program for the most loyal customers.

Email marketing transforms subscribers into customers effortlessly thanks to automation. And thought-out order email sequences especially do wonders for customer experience.

Types of email marketing

An email marketing strategy depends on the company and its needs. However, there are certain types of emails any strategy must include. Here are the 5 essential campaigns you should keep in mind.

Welcome emails

A welcome email is the first email a person gets after subscribing to your list. This campaign typically has the highest open and click-through rates, so prepare it carefully. In the welcome email, you can offer a newcomer discount or another gift (a guide, checklist, wallpapers, etc.), give a quick overview of what your company is about, and explain what information you’ll send in the future emails. And don’t forget to guide your customers where you need them (to the website, for example) and tell them what to do (buy products, use promo codes, etc.) by strategically placing your calls-to-action.

Here is a good example: 

In this welcome email, Casper introduces the types of content readers will get and announces several benefits of the email subscription. Another notable feature of this email is the last section that features the first helpful tip from the brand and a bundles’ promotion.

Transactional emails

When users make orders online or interact with your website in other ways, they initiate transactional emails. These emails are automated and consist of notifications, reminders, confirmations, order status updates, etc. Transactional emails have high open rates because users trigger them with their own actions and wait for the answer from the website. Although not manually sent, transactional emails can be personalized based on the subscriber’s name, interests, location, and last purchases (more on personalization later). 

Now, look at this example:

This transactional email from Twitch is a request to verify the account. Although minimalistic, it features the brand’s signature color and also provides social media buttons to promote the company’s other accounts.

Newsletters and announcement emails

These types of campaigns are aimed at informing customers about company news, events, added service features, and product launches. Newsletters and announcement emails strengthen brand-audience relationships and boost awareness and loyalty while also showcasing the company’s expertise. Here, it’s important to leverage corporate design, attractive  visuals and headlines, and useful information.

Here’s what it looks like in an actual campaign:

In this email presentation, a software company Pitch announces the launch of their product and shares some news and updates. Knowing new features of the service helps email subscribers stay up to date and use the product’s full potential.

Promotional emails

These marketing campaigns drive sales and help customers discover the company’s products or services. When sending such emails, it’s important to keep offers relevant and not to recommend something subscribers aren’t interested in. You’ll learn how to make promos more personal later on when we’ll talk about segmentation.

Here’s an example of an ingenious promotional email:

In this email, East Fork cleverly promotes a selection of their items by showcasing the preferences of the brand’s team. Playful cut-out style of the email contributes to the overall sincere feeling of the message. 

Special offer emails

Limited-time deals and seasonal sales are good topics for a special offer email. Customers will value the email subscription more if they can learn about sales before anyone else.

For the winter holidays, Harry’s offered their customers free shipping for orders starting from $10, and provided a discount code. The email contains a clear offer, a CTA button, and a timer to reinforce the urgency of the matter.

How to start email marketing step-by-step

Let’s now get to practice. In this section, we’ll explain how you can launch your first email marketing campaign.

Step 0. Choose an ESP and register

Email service providers are marketing automation platforms that are crucial for bulk email sending. Today, there are many options on the market to suit every company’s needs. To choose the right fit, think about such aspects as company size and budget, your or your team’s proficiency in email marketing, and the company’s email marketing goals. 

For small and mid-sized businesses, consider choosing Selzy as your first ESP. With its wealth of features, simple but functional interface, and a forever-free plan, this software is an ideal choice for businesses on a budget as well as for novices in email marketing. What is more, you can register in Selzy in just a couple of clicks — and you don’t even need to enter your card credentials. To access the registration form from the main page, just click on either one of the CTA buttons on the Selzy main page.

Next, enter your email or log in with Google. 

Afterward, you just need to create a password and confirm the email address.

If you choose to go with another email marketing tool, the registration process may differ. For example, many ESPs will ask for your card credentials right away. Also, some of them don’t offer free plans at all, so be sure to study all information provided on their website carefully before registering. To make an informed choice, you can also consult the Comparisons section on our website and learn more about email service providers and how to choose them from our blog.

Step 1. Build your email list

Now that you have an account in an ESP of your choice, it’s time to begin your email marketing journey. From now on, the basic steps will be similar for all email marketing tools, but some technical details will differ. In this section, we’ll explain and illustrate the process using Selzy as a model. 

When you log on to your Selzy account for the first time, you can clarify your personal information: add your name and mobile phone number, and specify your occupation details.

Next you can either add your contact list or start by creating a campaign. We recommend that you first import your subscriber base if you have one. Alternatively, you can add the contacts manually one by one. 

Now, you can proceed to the dashboard. Here, you can either upload a file containing your subscribers’ list or copy your list from an Excel table.  

At the next steps, you’ll need to check if all data is correct and choose a list for your contacts to be imported to. After the list is imported, you’ll see a confirmation message like this one:

But what if you don’t have a subscriber base yet? Then you can set up free signup forms with Selzy and add them to your  website to collect contacts, or try other ways to build an email list. Once you have the list, import it to your Selzy account following the instructions above.

Step 2. Define your communication strategy

At the base of every email you send should lie a marketing communication strategy. Think of it as a roadmap to  your success. For every business, the communication strategy will be different. Find answers to the following questions to craft your own plan:

• What goals do you want to achieve? It can be growing the subscribers’ list, increasing the website traffic, lead generation, and the number of completed targeted actions. For each goal, define success metrics and set clear indicators.
• What can you learn from competitors? Analyze what types of emails and how often they send, examine their templates, design, and copy, and note everything you find helpful. That’s where your first email campaign ideas will come from.
• What does your target audience look like? Create your subscriber persona: describe their age, gender, location, hobbies, and other valuable parameters. This step will help you understand what content and delivery will be relevant to them.
• What types of emails will you send? Choose the convenient email types from the previous part of this article.
• When and how often will you send emails? Create a content plan and set the dates and times of email sends, types of emails, topics, and the date when you’ll analyze campaign results. 

Then, gather your insights into one cohesive strategy and head on to the next step.

Step 3. Set the starting point

Having a clear vision of the future is as important as knowing where you’re starting from. So before heading into action, track the metrics that you have now. Indicate the number of subscribers and the effectiveness of previous campaigns if there are any. This way you’ll have a reference point for future results. 

If you are completely new to email marketing and don’t have any previous campaigns yet, look for average metrics for your industry in the open sources on the internet. Research data and case studies will help you get a general idea of what you should aim for. However, remember to take this information with a pinch of salt because every business is unique — at least to a certain extent. For example, there are companies of different sizes in every industry, and you can hardly compare average metrics for big enterprises with your small business results.

Step 4. Build a template

Now to the practical steps you’ll need to follow each time you create an email campaign.

Let’s imagine you want to send a promotional email with a discount offer. First of all, choose the appropriate template. In Selzy, click on “Create campaign”.

On the next screen, you’ll see templates of different categories. There are both empty and pre-filled templates.

For our purposes, we’ll choose a template from the “System templates” category. Pointing the cursor at any template, you’ll have the option to use it right away or preview it. To preview the template, click on the eye symbol.

After choosing the template, you’ll find yourself in Selzy’s intuitive drag-and-drop email builder. Since getting a major design update and receiving several new functions, this tool has become even more powerful and easy to navigate, so you’ll learn how to use it quite quickly. On the right, you’ll see available elements and settings with which you can customize, and on the left, there are the switch buttons between mobile and desktop screen views of the email plus the “Code mode” button. You can change each element of the template by clicking on it, switch between styles, use AI image generation, and edit the subject line and the preheader — all in one window. On the top right corner, there is an  option to make a test sending.

Step 5. Create content for the campaign

Determine what you need to finalize the campaign. Prepare the copy, images, and links. Then add your content to the template, preview, and test send it.

For our purposes, we changed some of the template’s text and colors. We also edited the subject line and added the preview text.. Here’s the final look:

Step 6. Launch your campaign

When you ensure the email looks and works as intended, it’s time to send the campaign. Click the “Continue” button in the editor and enter the “From” text and make sure you are satisfied with the subject line.

Next, choose a list of subscribers to send your campaign to. You can also add contacts here if needed.

After clicking “Continue”, you’ll see the full information about the campaign. Here you can send a test email, schedule the campaign for later, or send it right away.

Before sending the campaign Selzy will also display a confirmation message. This way you won’t launch anything by accident. 

After sending you’ll get a congratulations message and will be prompted to return to the dashboard’s main page. 

Now that your campaign is sent, there’s one more step left. And it’s very important to the whole email marketing strategy.

Step 7. Analyze the results

To see how effective your campaign was and what you can change next time, examine the analytics. From the main dashboard in Selzy, go to the “Campaigns” section. There you’ll see the results of all your previous campaigns.

For each campaign, you’ll see how many emails were sent and delivered, the open rate, and the transitions (clicks) from the email to your website, for example. When you point the cursor at the campaign metrics, the percentage changes to the number (in our case, 33% turns into 1, for example). Note that in Selzy analytics update in real-time.

Analyze the metrics of your campaign and decide what you can do to improve them. Maybe write a more memorable subject line? Change the sending time? These are some of the options to try out. Having the results of previous campaigns at hand, you can also understand how realistic your goals were and revise them if needed.

Don’t know what else to try? Keep reading for our favorite tips that can work for any email marketing strategy.

Email marketing tips for beginners

Email marketing is constantly changing and evolving as everything does. However, there are several tried and true industry tips you should definitely use. 

Choose a convenient email marketing tool

You can hammer in nails with a frying pan but it’s much more effective with a proper tool. In email marketing, having good instruments can significantly ease the work too. 

Here are some of the ways and ESP like Selzy can help your email marketing efforts:

• Website subscription forms so that visitors to your website become subscribers
• Email automation to guide your customers down the sales funnel
• Various CRM and CMS integrations for all-encompassing marketing
• Image storage to ease the email design and sending
• Send time optimization to make the most out of your campaigns
• 24/7 support that is ready to answer your questions

Want to research ESPs even more to find the best one for your needs? Read about the best email marketing services to make up your mind.

Segment your audience

Segmentation is dividing your subscribership into groups by location, gender and age, activity, preference, and customer journey stage. This is a powerful way to make your emails more relevant and therefore enticing to your clients.

Here’s an example. For this campaign, Nike segmented its subscribers into two groups based on gender. The message itself was mostly the same across these groups but the visuals weren’t. 

Simple change of campaign images instantly made the message more relevant to subscribers. And seeing suitable products in turn made the offer more appealing. 

Personalize emails

Personalization is another way to make email marketing campaigns more relevant. Combined with the segmentation, this approach explores the potential of direct marketing messages to their finest.

You can use subscribers’ browsing data to send browse abandonment or cart abandonment emails, insert dynamic content to show order details in a confirmation message, and more. It not only adds the personal touch that the clients enjoy, but it’s also very effective. According to Epsilon, consumers shop 3 times more with brands that personalize their offers.

Use images

To make your products and offers enticing, add visuals to your emails. Images can either showcase the product or portray a feeling or lifestyle associated with it. Interchanging these two types is the most beneficial. But some of the visuals can do both. 

This Calzedonia email has only one photo at the top yet it strikes two birds with one stone. First, it depicts a cozy family moment that connects the brand with the feeling of joy. Second, the photo clearly draws the attention to two products: children’s socks and adult slippers.

Although simple, this campaign makes a clever brand promotion. This brings us to the next, and final, tip.

Keep your emails concise

Your subscribers are probably busy and won’t spend a lot of time going through their inboxes. That’s why it is best to make your emails short and straightforward. Ideally, the CTA button should be on the first screen so the readers don’t have to scroll. Another point in favor of this approach is the trend for minimalistic design. If you feel like the need to simplify the message limits you, try looking at others’ examples.

In this email, the clever layout conveys the brand’s personality and makes the campaign unique.

In conclusion

Email marketing is a must-have for any company as it is easy to set up and measure, it is flexible and cost-effective, and there are billions of people using email every day.

If you want to start your first campaign, follow this checklist:

1. Choose an ESP. To choose the right fit, consider your company size, available budget, and marketing goals. Your first steps in email marketing will be easy and intuitive with Selzy. Plus, you can start for free and prepare for sending in 15 minutes only.
2. Build your email list. Import existing contacts or start collecting emails with website forms.
3. Create a communication strategy. Determine who to send emails to, decide on goals, desired metrics, and a schedule.
4. Set the starting point. Record the metrics in the beginning to compare them to your future results. Alternatively, research the average benchmarks in your industry.
5. Create content. Prepare copy and visuals for the campaign.
6. Send out the campaign.
7. Analyze the results. See how effective your sending was and what can be improved.

After you send out the first campaign, repeat steps 5-7 again and perfect your email marketing. The more campaigns you send, the more experienced you will get, and the better results you will achieve! With Selzy, the support will help you along the way, 24/7! Register today and start using the service for free.