Email marketing remains one of the most effective and widely used channels for driving results, offering a consistently high return on investment. Despite its longevity, email marketing is always evolving — shaped by advancements in technology, shifting customer expectations, and new business strategies.
To help you maximize results, we’ve outlined nine essential steps to building an email marketing program that drives higher open rates, click-throughs, and conversions. Whether you’re launching your first campaign or refining your approach, these steps will set you on the path to success.
In this guide:
What is email marketing?
Email marketing uses email as a tool to promote a company’s products or services and foster customer loyalty. It’s a direct and digital marketing strategy designed to inform and engage people on your email list — whether that’s by promoting products, sharing discounts, or delivering news. It allows businesses to stay connected with customers, even when they’re not actively shopping.
This marketing channel is particularly effective at achieving several key objectives:
- Attracting new customers: People are more likely to share their email address than make an immediate purchase, making it a low-commitment way to introduce them to your brand.
- Building relationships: Email marketing keeps your brand top of mind, helping you nurture relationships with existing customers between purchases.
- Educating your audience: Emails offer an opportunity to highlight what makes your brand stand out and why customers should choose you.
- Increasing brand awareness: Regular, valuable emails can reinforce your brand with both potential and current customers.
The best part? Email marketing is cost effective. It allows you to engage with a large audience at a fraction of the cost of other marketing channels, making it an essential tool for any business looking to grow.
The benefits of a good email marketing strategy.
With social media, SEO, video, podcasts, and so many other marketing channels fragmenting audiences and competing for attention — and with email campaigns competing against each other for views and clicks — it’s fair to wonder if email marketing still works.
Make no mistake — email marketing continues to be enormously influential.
Email marketing can generate an incredible 3,600% return on investment. Even with the growth of social, SEO, and other channels, email remains one of the most effective marketing strategies because of the simple fact that most people have email and use it often, including on their mobile devices.
There are many benefits of good email marketing, including:
- Increased conversions and deals by offering exclusive discounts or sending abandoned cart emails
- Improved awareness by reappearing in your audience’s inbox at regular (but not incessant) intervals
- Better customer relationships, primarily through personalization and marketing automation
- Prompting readers to take another action, such as visiting your website or blog, shopping for products, or something else
- Results can be easily and objectively measured, providing a clearer picture of the impact of your efforts
The global value of email marketing was $8.3 billion in 2023, according to Statista, and the market is projected to increase to $18.9 billion by 2028. Likewise, daily email users are expected to rise by 500 million over by 2027.
Types of marketing emails.
1. Welcome emails.
Welcome emails serve as the first point of contact between a company and a new subscriber, making them crucial for establishing a positive and engaging relationship.
You can use welcome emails to greet new subscribers and thank them for joining, while also providing valuable information about your company, its offerings, and any exclusive benefits or incentives.
With a well-crafted welcome email, you can make a lasting impression, set expectations, and nurture new leads, ultimately increasing the likelihood of conversion and long-term customer loyalty.
2. Lead nurturing emails.
Lead nurturing emails play a vital role in guiding potential customers through the sales funnel and building a strong relationship with them.
The purpose of lead nurturing emails is to provide relevant and valuable content to leads at different stages of their journey, addressing their specific needs and pain points.
By delivering personalized and targeted messages, you keep leads engaged, build trust, and position your company as a trusted authority, increasing the chances of conversion and driving long-term customer loyalty.
3. Newsletter emails.
Newsletter emails serve as a valuable communication channel where you can share updates, industry insights, and valuable content with your subscribers on a regular basis. A key reason you may consider using newsletter emails is to keep subscribers informed, engaged, and connected to your company’s brand and offerings. By providing curated content, promotions, and exclusive information, newsletter emails deliver value to subscribers, establish the company’s expertise, and foster a sense of community, leading to increased customer engagement and brand recognition.
4. Dedicated emails.
Dedicated emails are specifically crafted to highlight a single product, service, or offer to a targeted audience. You may want to use dedicated emails if you want to create focused and impactful messaging that drives immediate action, like making a purchase or signing up for an event. These emails are highly effective in generating conversions and maximizing the return on investment for a particular campaign, as they capture the attention of recipients and provide a clear call to action (CTA), resulting in increased sales and engagement.
5. Reengagement emails.
Reengagement emails are designed to reconnect with inactive subscribers and rekindle their interest in a company’s offerings. You can fold reengagement emails into your email marketing strategy to revive engagement, reduce email list attrition, and potentially convert inactive subscribers into active customers. By offering incentives, personalized content, or exclusive promotions, reengagement emails can remind people why they interacted with your company in the first place, prompt action, and help your company maintain a healthy and interested subscriber base.
How to effectively use email marketing.
1. Define your audience.
If you want to reach customers through email, the first step is understanding who they are. Getting to know your customers is important because it allows you to create relevant content for your emails.
What are your ideal customers’ demographics? Consider things like age, location, gender, occupation, and interests. The better you understand your customers and who is most likely to be interested in your product or service, the more successful your email campaign will be.
For example, if your company sells organic baby food, you may be able to narrow your target demographic to young working mothers interested in environmentally friendly products and nutrition. Teenage boys, on the other hand, are extremely unlikely to be interested in your product.
Narrow your focus to make sure you’re not targeting those who don’t want to hear from you. If they are the most likely to buy your product, they are the best audience for your email marketing.
2. Set goals.
Setting goals means finding purpose behind each email, which can help you stay focused and avoid becoming spammy. Your goals should be measurable and help you decide how you’ll assess your overall results, which we’ll cover in a later step. Determine your goals by thinking about the needs of your business.
For example, if you have an influx of new members from a successful social media campaign, you may want to create an email marketing campaign with a goal of welcoming them and helping them get accustomed to your website, product, or subscription service.
A good email marketing platform will help you accomplish the goals you’ve set for your campaigns. It enables you to streamline the process of sending out emails and assessing the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. It makes the process very straightforward and allows you to have everything in one place.
In choosing a platform, you’ll want to be sure that it’s powerful enough for the scale you want and that you’ll have the level of support you need. You’ll also want to determine which features are important for your business. You can read reviews of popular email marketing platforms to find one that works for a business like yours.
Check out the Adobe Campaign demo video to get a feel for whether Campaign would be a good platform to meet your email marketing needs.
4. Determine campaign type.
Your email marketing campaign should have one specific call to action for your customers. It also should include a coordinated set of targeted emails written to engage customers over a certain time period.
Determining your campaign type is important because you can focus on what will best reach the audience you’ve defined. Look at your goals as well as your audience as you decide on the type of email marketing campaign you want to launch. Make sure the CTA for your customers will help you accomplish your goals.
Some campaign types include:
- Newsletter
- Promotional or announcement
- Reengagement
- Content or blog updates
- Autoresponders like welcome emails, transactional emails, and more
For example, if you think your audience wants to feel a sense of community from your business, a newsletter can be a great way to keep them engaged and updated.
5. Build an email list.
As you build an email list, you are assembling your target audience. While it may seem like the easier route to take, it’s important not to buy an email list. A purchased email list is likely to waste your time with prospects that are not a part of your audience. The best way to build your email list is to take an organic approach.
These are a few things you can use to organically build an email list:
- Existing email lists from your company
- Customer relationship management software
- Requests for new emails via social media or your website
- Gated content and promotional offers
Make sure to reach out to customers to request their emails often so that it’s easy for interested customers to give you their contact info. You want to make it as easy as possible for customers on your website or social media to opt in to email, such as having a pop-up that offers a discount if the customer enters their email address. Another way could be to have your chatbots on social media offer to take emails for promotions.
It’s important to make sure that the emails on your list are from customers who have opted in to your communications. If they have not opted in, do not put them on your list.
6. Segment your list.
Segment your email list by separating your customers into different groups. Creating these segments will allow you to customize the emails that you send, making it more likely that your customers will open and engage with your messages.
When you’re segmenting your email list, think about potential differences between your customers and how you can customize responses to them. Here are some potential ways of segmenting your email list with examples of how they could be useful:
- Geography: If you’re creating a newsletter about outreach efforts, you may want to distribute different newsletters depending on the locale of the people you’re emailing.
- Demographics: You can customize the content and subject lines of your emails to appeal to different age groups.
- Past purchases: If you have customers who have purchased certain products on your website, you can send them promotions specifically for similar products.
- Buyer behavior: You can send more promotions to customers who respond well to them.
- Expressed interests: If you ask your customers about their interests (in an intake quiz, for example), you can send them custom product recommendations.
- Email engagement: If you have certain customers who engage very frequently with your emails, you can send them more regular emails without risking them unsubscribing.
These segments should all fall within the goal of your email campaign to make it more efficient. Differentiating your customers can make all the difference for your campaign.
7. Create your email.
The content of the emails you send is what will prompt recipients to follow your CTA — which you should always include. It is what will ultimately help you accomplish your goals, like increased sales or customer education. It’s best if your email content is customized to capture the attention of your audience, especially if it’s customized for different segments within your email list.
You want recipients to read the emails you create, so your subject line needs to be engaging. Having dynamic subject lines — different subject lines for different segments or subject lines personalized for an individual — will make your emails even more effective.
Many email marketing platforms will provide templates for you to make the process of creating emails easier.
8. Test your email.
Because email campaigns are relatively inexpensive, it’s a great idea to test out different versions to see what is most effective for your business. When you test, you’ll look at your results to see which content, subject lines, CTAs, and more help your business reach the goals you’ve determined. Testing will allow you to hone your email campaign so that it produces the results you’re looking for.
One of the simplest ways to test email marketing messaging is called A/B testing. In A/B testing, you create different versions of emails in which you change certain factors. You then compare the results of your different versions to see which changes are most effective. You could test, for example, which subject lines result in more email opens. You could also have different links in different subsets to see which are more likely to lead your customers to your website.
9. Measure your results.
Measuring your results is the only way you’ll know how your email campaign performed in relation to your goals. You can use analytics through an email marketing platform to track many different metrics to measure your success.
Some common areas of analysis include:
- Unique open rate, which tracks how many different customers are opening your emails. This is a good way to see how your subject lines are doing and whether your emails are relevant to the recipients.
- Click-through rate, which tracks how many people are clicking on links in your emails. This can help you measure the effectiveness of your content.
- Bounce rate, which tracks rejections from email servers. If you have a high bounce rate, you may have an unproductive email list.
- Unsubscribe rate, which tracks how many people have unsubscribed to your emails. It can let you know if your emails are spammy or irrelevant to the recipients.
There are many different metrics you can pay attention to. When you’re choosing which analyses to perform, think about which metrics most closely align with your goals.
The importance of email marketing compliance.
There are several laws regarding email marketing to be aware of. In the US, the most important regulations come from the CAN-SPAM Act. The CAN-SPAM Act is designed to prevent spamming and the use of unauthorized email addresses. If your business is legitimate and you are making sure that your recipients have opted in to your list,, you likely won’t have to worry about being fined.
To comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, make sure that you are being transparent with the purpose of your emails. Be certain that the information associated with your emails is accurate. Don’t try to make emails look like they’re from a personal friend. It should be clear that they are advertisements from a business. Ensure that everyone on your email list has consented to receive promotions from you.
It should be easy for people on the list to unsubscribe, so don’t require people to take multiple steps or give out any more information to get off the list. When people unsubscribe, you should take them off your list quickly. The CAN-SPAM Act gives you 10 business days to stop emailing them.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, complying with regulations for unsubscribing can benefit you in the long run. It prevents new subscribers from flagging your emails as spam if they don’t want to see them showing up in their inbox anymore. If they can easily find the unsubscribe button, you are less likely to have your deliverability impacted by being falsely flagged as spam.
Getting started with email marketing.
Here’s a brief review of the steps of email marketing:
- Define your audience. Identify the various demographics of an ideal customer.
- Set goals. What is the purpose of your email campaign?
- Choose an email marketing platform. It can help you streamline everything from creating your email list and sending emails to evaluating analytics.
- Determine campaign type. How will your emails be coordinated? What is the CTA for customers?
- Build an email list. Do this organically and make sure everyone has opted in.
- Segment your list. For better targeting, create unique emails for segmented groups within your email list.
- Create your email. This content will determine whether customers engage further with your business.
- Test your email. Create variations of email elements to see what is most effective.
- Measure your results. Use analytics to see if you’re reaching your goals and how you can improve.
And don’t forget to comply with the law. Be transparent and make it easy to unsubscribe.
Email marketing is popular because, if deployed properly, it’s an inexpensive, effective way to get recipients to engage with your business. But segmenting, creating email campaigns, testing, and analytics are even easier if you use an email marketing platform like Adobe Campaign.
Adobe Campaign makes it simple to visualize and connect personal customer journeys across every channel. Drawing from a base of rich customer data, you can create, coordinate, and deliver dynamic campaigns using an integrated, no-code interface. With Campaign, you can control both online and offline customer journeys, delivering tailored experiences to every single customer.
If you’re looking for a scalable and powerful email marketing platform to create an effective campaign, watch the demo video to see if Adobe Campaign is a good fit for your company.
