Email Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for 2024

Email marketing is surely the most underestimated communication channel. However, emailing allows you to have exceptional results while diversifying your traffic sources. If you own a physical business or an online business, you should definitely look into email marketing. 📧

As you can see, emailing represents a big opportunity in the digital marketing world. However, it is complicated if you are just starting out to know where to begin. There are many steps to put in place before you have an emailing strategy that works.

To help you, we have written a step-by-step guide that will show you how to increase your sales with email marketing. You will see why emailing is important, how to create an email list and most importantly, a tutorial to write your first sales emails . ✏️

What is emailing?

Emailing is simply the fact that a company or an entrepreneursends emails. Theobjective can be of different natures, but is generally commercial. Companies will communicate via email to sell their products/services, but can also use this lever to inform their customers or prospects for example.

Definition and examples

Emailing is a marketing strategy that consists in selling by email. Emails are sent to multiple users at the same time through a database, which is more commonly called an email list. 📩

Emailing can also be called email marketing. And in the email marketing, we will find several types of mail, including :

• Prospecting emails
• Newsletters
• Promotional emails(sales, time discounts, etc.)
• Reminder emails
• Invitation emails

In itself, just sending a single email for a business is email marketing. But as you can imagine, if you just send random emails every third day, you won’t get any results. You have to follow a sending schedule, but also create a strategy according to your audience. 👥

Let’s look at a concrete example of whatemail marketing is.

You may know Asos, a multi-brand online clothing store. They regularly send emails to announce promotions, sales or even simple shopping cart reminder . With Valentine’s Day approaching, they sent out a promotional email about the event:

You can’t necessarily see it in this screenshot, but theemail is personalized. The brand will indeed add the name of the recipient and propose a selection of clothes and accessories according to his last purchases. This way, the recipient has the impression that the company is speaking directly to them. They no longer feel like a number on a list of prospects.

You can notice that the company incorporates a call to action, which is characterized by a button to go to the online store. There are also several sales and marketing features, such as a discount, a call to not miss out on good deals, etc. 📲

But as we have seen above, it is not only e-tailers who can use emailing. In fact, email marketing can be suitable for different actors.

Who can use email marketing?

As soon as you have an activity on the internet, you can use emailing. But that’s not all. Because if you check your mailbox regularly, you’ve probably already received emails from physical businesses like a restaurant, a store, a movie theater or others. 🏪

And yes, email marketing is also a communication channel for physical businesses. There are actually many different profiles that will use emailing as a lever. We are going to present you the main ones.

Bloggers: If you have a blog, creating a newsletter to communicate with your readers is a great way to diversify your traffic sources. In this way, you will also build loyalty in your community. In this case, you can also sell a paid newsletter to monetize your blog. 💰(See our article on how to make money with blogging )

Influencers: Influencers, regardless of their social network of choice(YouTube, Instagram, Twitter or others), hardly collect any emails. They don’t know it, but it’s a huge loss of revenue. With an extensive email list, influencers can increase their value in the influencer marketing market. In the same way, they will get a better engagement rate and will be more profitable in their product placements. 📈

E-retailers: If you own an e-commerce and you don’t implement an emailing strategy, you are losing money, every day. Indeed, you must absolutely collect the emails of the Internet users who visit your online store. But if a prospect buys one of your products, you can also use email marketing afterwards. And yes, if a visitor buys one of your products, he will be more likely to buy another one in the next months, weeks, etc.

Generally speaking, it is much easier to sell to one of your existing customers than to convince a new prospect. With a good emailing strategy, you can retain your customers very easily. 🤝

Merchants Email marketing seems less obvious for merchants who own a physical business. However, email marketing can also be very effective in this case. You can for example send promotional emails to attract customers to your store. It is also a way to keep your customers loyal by sending personalized promotional emails, or a simple email to wish them their birthday for example. 🎂

In short, as soon as you have an audience and you want to build loyalty or sell more, email marketing is a strategy to adopt.

Why develop an emailing strategy?

We told you at the beginning of this article. Email marketing is nowadays indispensable if you want to have a presence on the web. There are actually several arguments that can convince you to use emailing. So we’re going to introduce you to the main benefits of email marketing. 📧

The first advantage of emailing is obviously toincrease sales. Email marketing can become a communication channel in its own right or a complement to your digital strategy. Either way, it’s an easy way to sell more.

When you have an online business for example, we often have only one source of traffic. Your audience can come from search engines(SEO), advertising, social networks, or others. Having a mailing list is an excellent way to diversify your traffic sources. 👥

This way, if all your traffic comes from one social network and one day the platform decides to ban your account, you still have a way to communicate with your audience.

In addition, communicating by email allows you to build loyalty in your community. Even with the current domination of social networks, emailing is still a powerful communication channel, which allows to get a good engagement rate. 🤝

Moreover, you can personalize your emails thanks to an emailing software. For example, you can add the name of your recipient to address them directly. This does not seem like much. But in reality, simply adding your recipient’s name will increase your conversion rate.

Finally, you should know that email marketing is a sales strategy that works in the long term. Once you have a completed email list, you have access to it for life. Therefore, you keep a source of qualified traffic for the long term. You won’t need to pay to reach a new audience, as is the case with advertising. 💸

Emailing : the step by step guide

Now you know more about emailing and you have seen how much this strategy can help you in your business. We will show you a step-by-step guide to create your own email marketing strategy. Specifically, you’ll see how to fill your email list; how to write your first sales emails, etc. 💪

Step 1: Comply with the GDPR

The first step in creating an email marketing strategy is simply to get a list of contacts. As you can imagine, if you don’t have anyone to send emails to, you’re not going to make any money with email marketing.

But to create a list of contacts, there are first of all rules to respect. And yes, you can’t just take the email addresses of random people and spam them afterwards. We will explain you how to collect email addresses legally. 👩‍⚖️

The collection of data such as email addresses are governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (RGPD). At the risk of being fined or sued, you must respect the RGPD when collecting email addresses or other data.

It all starts when you sign up for your newsletter. When you ask a user to subscribe to your email list, you must specify that he will receive other emails afterwards. To do this, you can display a checkbox indicating that the user agrees to receive promotional emails for example. 🤝

You should also include in your first email a double opt-in “. In other words, you will ask again for the user’s consent to send him emails. Emailing software will allow you to easily create a double opt-in.

Sure, asking people to opt-in to your newsletter twice will lower your conversion rate. But if you don’t do it, you could be in big trouble later on. 😰

In addition, you will need to include a policy from confidentiality “. On this page, you will have to describe precisely how the data you collect is processed and hosted. You must also allow users to view the data you have collected about them. The privacy policy should also contain a means of contact or a way for users to delete the data collected about them.

Finally, you must in your emails leave a way for recipients to unsubscribe from your contact list. ❌

As you can see below, the Capital website regularly sends emails about economic news. But at the bottom of each email, there is a link to unsubscribe from the newsletter. With a few clicks, you can unsubscribe and never receive Capital’s emails again.

Don’t panic, if you use an autoresponder, the software will automatically place a link to unsubscribe in the emails sent. 💪

Generally speaking, the larger your email list, the more important it is to respect the RGPD. If you are just starting out and have a small list of contacts, the tips we gave you may be enough. On the other hand, if you have a very large list of contacts, it is better to surround yourself with a lawyer to respect the RGPD.

Step 2: Create a list of contacts

Now that you know how to comply with the RGPD, let’s see how to attract people to your email list. There are several methods to motivate your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. We’re going to show you some techniques to quickly swell your contact list. 📩

First, forget about the pop-up or banner that simply asks visitors to “ subscribe to your newsletter “. Even if you indicate in your ad that the user will receive good deals, news previews or other, it is not really convincing.

To motivate people to subscribe to your contact list, it is better to offer them something. If you own an online store, you can simply offer a discount code to all visitors who sign up for your newsletter. 💸

Sarenza is an e-commerce of clothing, shoes and accessories online. As soon as you arrive on their store, a pop-up offers you to get a 20€ discount on the products of your choice by joining their newsletter.

Just by offering a discount to entice visitors to join your newsletter, you will increase your sign-up rate. 📈

But you can also offer something else, like an ebook or an infoproduct. The goal is to give free value to your users to encourage them to subscribe to your email list.

Marketing Mania is an infopreneur that offers several distance learning courses on web entrepreneurship and content creation. If you go to his website, you can get several free trainings. To receive them, you will have to subscribe to its newsletter. 📧

The important thing to remember is that most people don’t want to sign up for your newsletter. Therefore, they need to be motivated to do so. And the best way to do that is tooffer value to visitors so that they want to join your email list.

Step 3: Get trained in email marketing

Having a well-stocked email list is the first step. But you still have to know how to use it. Indeed, some entrepreneurs have email lists of hundreds of thousands of contacts, for very poor results. On the other hand, some people have a smaller email list, but get much better results. 📈

How to explain this?

It’s not enough to send random emails with a button to buy your products. Email marketing involves a multitude of skills, including copywriting and web copy. Getting good results starts with having a list of qualified prospects. Then, you need to use copywriting concepts to improve the open rate and conversion rate of emails. 📩

To learn about email marketing, you have several options. The important thing is to focus on the art of persuasion, in order to write convincing emails. Mainly to sell, but it can also be useful to attract readers if you have a news site for example.

To start, you can learn about copywriting and email marketing by reading books. There are a lot of books in Kindle or paper format that will help you learn more about this sales technique. For a few euros, you can already have a lot of information to write your first sales emails. 🖋️

There are some books in French, but the best books on emailing are in English.

We recommend the book “The Email Lifeline” by Anik Singal.

In this book, you will learn how to create an email marketing strategy quickly. This method adapts to any type of business and will allow you to drastically increase your profits. The book is accessible for a few euros, and it’s clearly given at that price! 🎁

Just like books, you can learn about email marketing through videos on YouTube. Many creators offer very comprehensive videos to teach you email marketing for free. Unlike books, you can easily find explanatory videos in French.

Training on YouTube is completely free and will allow you to better understand email marketing. If you don’t have the budget to train, this is the best solution. 👁️

Finally, you can also opt for a premium course. By choosing a comprehensive email marketing course, you will learn to define a real strategy that fits your audience, your ambitions and more. The trainers will also teach you how to write a sales email from A to Z.

Training with a complete course is the most effective and quickest way to master email marketing. But as you can imagine, you’ll have to invest in training with one of these courses. However, in our opinion, it is an easy investment to make, both in time and money. 💪

Step 4: Create your first emails with an emailing software

Once you have an email list and know how to write powerful texts, it’s time to create your first email campaign. So as you can imagine, you won’t have to send emails one by one to each recipient. There are so-called autoresponders “which allow you tosend emails to a list of recipients. 📧

There are many emailing software efficient and easy to use. Most of them are paid, but some of them include a fairly complete free version. Tools such as MailChimp, Active Campaign or Sendinblue .

To illustrate, we will use Sendinblue, a French autoresponder.

On the software, you can create several lists of contacts to distribute your leads. This will allow you to target a portion of your list based on several criteria. Once you have selected the right list of contacts, we can start creating your first email. ✍️

Let’s see how to create and edit your first email with Sendinblue.

After naming your campaign, you will need to include several pieces of information. To start, you will have to choose the email address from which you send the campaign, as well as the list of recipients. You must also include an object. Back to the notion of copywriting, the subject of the email will have an impact on the opening rate.

Then, it’s time for the design. Thanks to theadvanced editor, you will be able to create a design and responsive email very easily. You can also use theclassic editor if you only want to include text and links in your emails. 🔗

You can also use templates for sales emails, event invitations and more. If you want to easily create a very design email, the templates can help you to do so.

Once your email is ready, there are still a few things to work out. You can integrate Google Analytics tracking into your campaigns to get more accurate statistics. You can also include attachments, images and other items.

Now that your email is ready, it’s time to send it! ✈️

Step 5: Send your first campaign

This is an important step, but it is also the simplest. With a tool like an autoresponder, you will only have to press a button to send your email campaign.

Before that, you should know that you can create a “ preview “. In itself, you will send a test campaign to your own email address. This allows you to see if the email sends well, if the design is correct, responsive and the like. We advise you to do this before every campaign 😉

Then, you should know that you can schedule the sending of your campaign. All you have to do is to indicate a date and the tool will take care of sending the emails. You will be able to see the results of this campaign directly on the dashboard of the tool.

Step 6: Plan a mailing schedule

The frequency of sending emails obviously plays an important role in the results you can achieve with email marketing. On the one hand, you shouldn ‘t send too many emails at the risk of tiring your audience. On the other side, if you don’t send enough emails, it can be a significant loss of revenue . 😰

Once again, emailing tools will be very useful. In particular, you will be able to program and automate the sending of emails. You can also create automations to send emails as soon as a user subscribes to your email list for example.

Let’s take an example. 📝

Imagine you own an online store where you sell jewelry. As soon as a visitor comes to your site, you will try to collect his email address using the methods we showed you above. Once you have collected the lead, you can set up an automation.

Upon registration, you can send a welcome email. In this type of email, you can thank the person for signing up for your newsletter, introduce your brand or other. A few days later, you can send a new email (still automatically) with a selection of your current trendy products. A few more days later, you can send a promotion email, where you include a coupon. 💸

This way you can create an email sequence 100% automatically. Once set up, each subscriber to your email list will receive several emails that you have already written. As you can imagine, with the right strategy, there are ways to sell more with very little effort.

Well, you can create automations to send some emails. But it is almost impossible(or very complicated) to create mail sequences of dozens of mails. At some point, you will need to write and send more emails. 📧

To avoid rushing and sending too many or too few emails, it is best to plan a publication schedule. This way, you can send emails as you go without ever running out of emails. And to avoid running out of emails, it’s best to write them in advance.

On your autoresponder, you can create “drafts“, i.e. ready-to-use emails. These emails are already edited and ready to be sent, but remain in your tool’s database. This way, you can prepare several emails and send them whenever you want. 📤

We advise you to prepare several emails in advance in order toalways have content to offer to your users. Regarding the frequency of sending emails, it is up to you to see according to your audience, your type of business and others. The best thing to do here is to do A/B testing to see what frequency of sending corresponds best. 📅

Once you’ve figured out how many emails to send per week/month or whatever, just make a schedule so you don’t forget when to send your emails. You can also automate the sending of emails via your emailing tool, even over several years if you wish!

Step 7: Analyze your results and optimize your strategy

When you send emails by the tens of thousands, you’re bound to have a lot of statistics to analyze. But here again, you have to learn to analyze these numbers in order to optimize your email campaigns and maximize your results. Below we will present you the main statistics that you will find in email marketing.

Deliverability rate This indicator allows you to know the percentage of emails that have reached their destination. Indeed, when you send thousands of e-mails, it can happen that some of them end up in spam. Or the mails may not reach their destination because of errors in the mailboxes. Generally the deliverability rate is quite high, but decreases depending on the quality of an email list. 📧

Opening rate This indicator represents the percentage of subscribers in your email list who will open the email sent during a campaign. A good opening rate is between 15 and 25%. Several elements will come into play to obtain a good or even excellent conversion rate. Obviously, the more contacts a list has, the lower the open rate will be. Here again, using copywriting will help to get a better open rate. 📬

Unsubscription rate Unsubscribe rate: As the name suggests, the unsubscribe rate is an indicator that reveals the number of users who unsubscribe from an email list. The average unsubscribe rate is 1% and below 0.5%, it is a good percentage. The relevance of the emails sent as well as the quality of a contact list are the two points that will play into having a good unsubscribe rate. ❌

Click-through rate: If you place a link to your website for example in an email, the autoresponder you use can estimate the click-through rate. This percentage indicates the number of recipients who clicked on this link. Importantly, the click-through rate will depend on the open rate and the deliverability rate. 🖱️

There are methods and tricks to implement to increase all these statistics. We invite you to consult them from time to time toanalyze the effectiveness of your campaigns. An emailing software will be very useful here to do A/B testing in order to see the results of a campaign according to the title, content of your email and others.

In conclusion

You now have the tools to use email marketing toincrease your sales or create a business from an email list. All the tips we have given you in this guide are accessible and require very little investment. Just by following these tips, you will be able to make your first email sales quickly. 💥

But again, we prefer to be honest. If you really want to develop a real email marketing strategy, it is better to go through a premium training. If you want to progress faster, we’ve written a comparison of the 3 best emailing courses.

By taking one of these courses, you will learn how to write impactful sales emails that convert. But you will also see how to analyze your results thanks to the KPI in order tooptimize your email marketingstrategy. If you want to use email marketing as your main communication lever, we really recommend you to opt for one of these courses. 👀