How to Get Started With Email Marketing In 6 Quick Steps

Introduction

If you’re a beginner, it’s hard to get started with email marketing — there’s just so much to learn and manage.

But as a digital marketer who’s been around since the early days of the internet, I’ve put together these 6 steps to help beginners set up their email marketing foundations.

Note: if you don’t know anything at all about email marketing, what it is or what it can do, you should check out this post first before continuing!

Getting Started With Email Marketing

1. Choose an Email Marketing Platform

Most email marketing platforms share basic features…

• sign-up form builders
• template editors for campaigns
• create email automations
• list management and segmentation

… but some platforms have different:

• layouts (they look and feel different)
• app integrations
• email triggers
• cost

If you’re just getting started with email marketing, the platform you choose is not as important as your marketing strategy.

You can always migrate to another platform later on; for now it’s more important to focus on growing your email list and managing your strategy.

If you have absolutely no idea what platform to pick, then for now I recommend you choose something easy to use with an affordable plan — my personal favorite is MailerLite.

But it really doesn’t matter what you choose at the beginning; don’t get stuck on this step!

2. Create an Opt-In Strategy

How will you will grow your audience? An effective opt-in strategy will help grow a quality email list — the backbone of your email strategy.

To build effective opt-in strategy, think about:

• where your sign-up forms are displayed
• what information your forms should collect
• how to provide value up front (e.g. gated content, free entry coupons, free consultations or trial periods, etc.)
• how your newsletter will always provide value to your audience

Most clients I’ve worked with often neglect this stage when they’re first getting started with emails.

Learn more about building an opt-in strategy.

3. Automate Your Customer Journey

Think about the parts of your customer journey that can be automated, then build these automations in your email marketing platform.

Email automations can automatically:

• introduce new subscribers to your newsletter
• remind shoppers of items in their cart
• remind customers of an upcoming appointment
• follow up with new customers about their first purchase

These automations will look different depending on your business model, but over time they can generate a lot of value for you with little to no effort.

Learn more about email automations.

4. Plan Out Your Campaigns

Send email campaigns to keep your subscribers up to date with:

• your latest brand updates
• promotions (discount sales, buy one get one, gated content)
• new content (videos, blog posts, podcasts)
• events (seasonal holidays, giveaways and sweepstakes)

You should plan out your emails on a monthly basis, build them with your email marketing platform, then send them to relevant lists or segments to keep your audience engaged.

Learn more about email campaigns.

5. Follow the Rules

For a lot of people, this is probably the biggest challenge when they first get started with email marketing.

There are a whole bunch of email regulations to comply to (CAN-SPAM, GDPR and so on), but marketers have adapted a set of best practices to help navigate them:

• collect explicit opt-in consent
• always include opt-out language in your emails
• include your business address in your emails
• write clear, promotional copy and don’t be misleading

Read more about email regulations.

6. Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Yes, this is a shameless self-promotion, but it’s a good one!

Email marketing isn’t easy, that’s why we made this blog; to help guide business owners and email marketers through the latest email technology, best practices, case studies and professional tips.

What’s Next?

If you’ve completed all 6 of these steps, then you’re off to a good start with email marketing — congrats!

From here on, you should:

• continue growing your email list
• optimize your current email strategy
• plan new campaigns and automations
• start a segmentation strategy

As your email strategy grows, you might eventually consider hiring a freelancer or agency.

As a white-label email marketing agency, we help marketing agencies grow by taking care of all the technical marketing, so that they can focus on delivering results to their clients.

Learn more →