The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Beginners

Email marketing for beginners can be challenging but the truth is: if you ignore email marketing, your business will hardly survive.

That being said, if you want to learn email marketing as a beginner, you are in the right place.

Email Marketing is the most profitable form of marketing, and it’s the only form of marketing that brings the best results forever.

According to recent studies,

For every single $1 spent on email marketing, you get an average return of $44.25.

That’s more than 4400% ROI (Return on Investment).

Can you believe it? 😱

Even if you can’t believe it, you can’t ignore the importance of email marketing for your business.

So let me ask you a question:

Do you really want to learn about email marketing?

If your answer is “Yes,” then welcome to our ultimate guide to email marketing for beginners.

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After reading this article, you would know the basics of email marketing and essential steps to get started even if you are new to it. 

The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Beginners

Despite the rise of various marketing channels like social media platforms, affiliate marketing, etc… email marketing is still the most powerful marketing channel, and it has been there around forever.

So, in this guide, you’re going to learn – 

• What is email marketing?
• Why should you focus on email marketing? (Benefits of email marketing)
• How to get started with email marketing step by step? (even if you have zero knowledge about it)

Now, let’s dive right in.

What is Email Marketing?

This is the very first thing you need to understand. 

In simple words, email marketing is an online marketing strategy and form of direct marketing where you leverage emails to build relationships with potential clients and promote your services and products as well. And then turn them from one time customers to recurring customers and raving fans. 

And the best part about email marketing is that you can automate almost everything. Because, you’re not going to send emails manually to everyone, right? And it’s also not practically possible.

Because when you have thousands or even hundreds of new people joining your email list and becoming your email subscribers, you can’t just sit whole day and night to manually email everyone.

That’s why businesses like me and you, automate the process using some automation tools or software for sending emails such as ConvertKit (more on that below, so keep reading).

But first let me tell you how beginners get started in email marketing the wrong way:

Often times, I have seen people who get started in email marketing, usually buy an email list of people, or use bots or scrapper tools to scrape random email from internet – which is a completely wrong strategy to start.

Such randomly collected emails of users might not be interested in the products and services you offer, and when you send emails without their permission, this is called spamming.

So I highly recommend you to avoid such spammy tactics when getting started with email marketing.

Let me say it again:

Disclaimer – You can’t just buy an email list or add random people to your email campaign. This is called spamming and it doesn’t work this way. 

Here, permission-based marketing comes into the role. You must need people’s permission first before you add them to your email list, and also, you must allow them and provide with an option to unsubscribe anytime.  

Just like you can’t enter someone’s home without his/her permission, similarly, you need their’s permission before you enter into someone’s inbox as a guest. 

It’s as simple as that … More on this later in this article!  

First, let’s uncover some benefits of email marketing:

Why should you focus on Email Marketing?

I hope that you’ve understood what is email marketing but one question might be popping into your mind: 

Whether I should focus on email marketing or not? Is email marketing really worth it? 

Well, let me repeat that email is still the most powerful marketing channel as compared to any other platform or channel. If done the right way, it beats out every social platform in terms of ROI (Return On Investment).

Many people think that email marketing is dead and not so effective nowadays as it used to be earlier.

But that’s not true. It’s more important than ever before.

There’s are many reasons why this traditional method is still preferable over modern techniques. But one of the most prominent reason is: many people still check their emails as the first activity before their day starts.

Even you might also be probably checking your email inbox as the first activity in the morning, right? 

And most people do the same.

Therefore, due to this fact, you as a marketer get an advantage if you learn email marketing for business.

Because email marketing when done right, can do wonders for your business as email marketing has many advantages over other forms of marketing.

Major Benefits of Email Marketing for Business

Though email marketing has several benefits, here I’m mentioning some of the major benefits of email marketing for your business:

1. Email Marketing has the Best ROI

According to campaign monitor, email marketing produces $44 for every $1 spent. So, it crushes social media and other digital marketing channels in terms of return on the investment.

Also, SalesCycle found that 73% of marketers rated the ROI of email to be good or excellent. Sounds amazing, right? Yes, it is.

2. Email Marketing gets you a Wider Reach

There’s no surprise if I say that nowadays, almost everyone using the internet has an email account. Isn’t it? You can say it just like the essential digital identity of a person. Haha!

According to Radicati, there are around 3.9 billion email accounts across the world. That’s around half of the overall population. So hopefully, chances are: your target audience might already be checking their emails very frequently.

However, on the opposite side, not everyone is on social media or read blogs as frequently. Isn’t it?

So with email marketing, you can reach and connect with a wider range of people that won’t be able to do otherwise.

3. You Own Your Email List

Unlike social media, where you don’t have full control over your accessibility to reach your audience, email marketing is different.

For example, social media platforms like Facebook often introduce changes in their algorithms that drop the organic reach of pages significantly. But in the case of email marketing, you fully own your list!

You can drop an email to their inbox whenever you want. No algorithmic change is going to hit your reach, and your list isn’t going anywhere unlike other platforms where you’ve very limited controls.

That’s why you would often see many experts recommending you to turn your social media followers into email subscribers, because that way you won’t have to worry about losing them due to social algorithms changes.

4. Email Marketing Campaign is Easy to Track

Tracking your campaigns and results is crucial in your marketing efforts. And in email marketing campaigns, you can easily track almost everything like clicks, open rates, conversions, ROI, and other important metrics. And due to that, email marketing becomes even more fabulous.

5. Email Marketing provides the ability to Customise, Automate & Personalise

This is what makes it so amazing. There are plenty of email marketing tools out there like the one I use (ConvertKit), that allow you to fully customise, personalise, and automate your email marketing campaigns.

You can send personalised emails to all contacts on your list in just one click. Even automate response, email sequence, and other mind-blowing features. This is why email marketing isn’t possible without using the right tools.

6. Email Marketing has the Best Sales Conversion Rates

If your list is well-targeted and you have a solid strategy (a good sales funnel in action) then it just converts like crazy even more than your expectations.

And the reason is also straightforward because the list is full of laser targeted and highly relevant people who allowed you the permission to send them emails.

7. Email Marketing allows you to Turn Random Visitors into Lifetime Customers

Many people who visit your blog will simply find the information they are looking for, close the browser, and then never return. They accomplish their task, and leave but what do you get? Close to nothing on info posts!

But if you convince them enough to provide their email address by offering them some freebies, PDF, checklist, etc. as a lead magnet, you can simply turn them into your loyal audience or recurring visitors whom you can easily sell again and again in the future. 

Thus turning a random visitor into raving fan and a life long customer.

This is the reason why most of online marketers (including me) prefer emails for direct communication, marketing, and promotion of products and services.

Enough convinced? I know now you also want to give a try to email marketing.  

But, I don’t want you to give a try only, rather I want to turn in a professional email marketer with this ultimate guide to email marketing for beginners.

So keep reading further to know how to get started!

How to Get Started with Email Marketing as a Beginner?

It may be a little overwhelming for beginners to launch their first email marketing campaign. But to keep it super simple and easy to follow, it works in 4 phases: 

1. Create a strategy 
2. Build an email list 
3. Start sending emails and Follow-up
4. Track, Test, and improve 

Let’s dig in one by one – 

👉🏻 Note: To do all this stuff, you only need one tool – ConvertKit. You can grab a free account by clicking here. It’s completely free for email marketing beginners.

Step 1: Creating a Strategy

If you’re in the game of online marketing for a while, you must be knowing that having a solid strategy is crucial for awesome results, right?

Of course, you can jump in without a strategy but without a proper email marketing strategy, don’t expect to perform so well. The same applies to other fields as well.

You should keep your goal in mind. It may vary from person to person and business to business, like whether you want to sell your own product/service/course or only the products you are affiliated with or simply you want to build a loyal audience.

You are not doing it just for fun, right?

Here I’m highlighting a few important factors while crafting a killer strategy for Email Marketing. 

(A) Identify your Audience

The more information you know about your audience, the easier it would be for you to engage with them and convert them into buyers.

Try to collect more and more data about them e.g. – their interests, their purchasing capability, demographics like age, gender, location, etc. 

You should know a clear avatar of your potential buyers. It will help you a lot in the long run and result into better performance.

(B) Know your Goals and Monetisation Strategy

What do you want from your email marketing efforts and what’s your monetisation strategy?

Having an identified goal is a must when it comes to creating a successful email marketing strategy. This helps you move ahead in the right direction. After all, you should know what you want from it. 

Because this will help you in creating a relevant solid strategy that’ll take you closer to your goals. 

It should be specific and measurable, something like getting 1000 people to your list in the next 6 months and making $1000 per month (i.e. $1 per month per subscriber) from your email list.

And more importantly, you need to know how will you monetise it. 

Will you offer them your own premium products and services or sell other’s products to make a commission out of it?

Knowing answer to these questions is very crucial part of your email marketing success and this will also help you create an effective email marketing strategy for your business.

(C) Determine your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

Know your worth by understanding your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). It’s equally important to “show off” your USP to the subscriber (future client), otherwise you might lose in the overcrowded competition. 

If you are a beginner, you might find a huge competition around. However, as you gain more expertise and build an authoritative brand, you’ll start leaving your competition behind. 

But as long as you are a beginner, you need to tell them how will you fulfil their needs better than the rest.

Why they should choose you over your competition? 

If you can do so and succeed in convincing them, then you will get an edge over your competition and stand out in the crowd.  

(D) Get the Right Resources for Your Email Marketing Needs

Having access to the right tools and resources is very crucial part of creating a winning email marketing strategy for your business. You need to have access to all resources that you need like tools, widgets, forms, etc.

And this is where most beginners commit mistake and choose the wrong tool – only to regret later.

If you are a small business having very small budget or almost no budget for email marketing, you can’t afford to pay for pricey tools and costly resources.

I still remember the day when email marketing tools only used to offer 30-days free trail. I started the free-trial for email marketing software, and email marketing pup-up plugin with the big dreams of becoming successful in email marketing. But soon, I had to give up on my dreams as I couldn’t afford to pay for both tools separately.

But gone are those days, and now, you don’t need to pay for each of them separately.

Thankfully, ConvertKit offers completely free user account for creators having no budget for email marketing. Yes, completely free account up to 1000 subscribers (no need of free-trial). Click here to sign up for free ConvertKit account.

ConvertKit is one of the best tools that has come up with more than enough features you need for not just getting started with email marketing, but also run a profitable online business by selling products and services so that you may automate your business like a professional.

It is endorsed by many top marketers, it’s ideal for content creators, bloggers, affiliate marketers, and digital creators in general.

And the good thing is: unlike my early days, you don’t need to pay for multiple services separately.

You just need one free tool for all your email marketing needs – it’s ConvertKit.

Once you have got access to the right tool, the only other resource required for successful email marketing strategy is: Email Copywriting Skill.

You may either hire a copywriter to write better email copies for more conversions or you may write it yourself.

I personally prefer writing myself and I’ll share my secrets in the later part of this article (so keep reading), but your choices may be vary.

(E) Know Your List Building Strategy and Traffic Sources for Email List Building

Knowing your target audience, email marketing goals, monetisation strategy, USP, or even having the best tools in hand is of no use – if you fail to get people to your email list.

Therefore, you need to elaborate on your traffic sources and strategy to get people to sign up and join your email list. So, ask yourself and find answers to these questions:

• How would you get people on your list?
• What are the main traffic sources?
• Would you need to run ads to get visitors to your landing page or you would leverage free organic marketing methods like blogging & SEO, video marketing, podcasting, social media marketing, etc. ?

In the case of blogging, you should have a pre-planned content strategy. Similarly, in the case of using YouTube as your primary traffic source, you should have your customer journey planned out like a sales funnel. I do this very effectively on my YouTube Channel.

Step 2: Build an Email List

You can’t send emails to random people. You can only send emails to people who allow you to send emails.

And one way to get people’s permission is by getting their consent by asking them to join your email list. Because you can only add people to your list only if they self allow you.

Randomly adding people to your list without their consent is not only a bad practice but also illegal in some countries and is considered spamming.

Since it’s a bad practice to send marketing emails without having consent from the targeted email list.

Therefore, the question is:

How to build an email list of laser targeted and interested people who allow you to talk directly in their inbox?

It’s simple. You have to ask them to join your email list. 

But keep in mind, simply asking like, “Hey, enter your email address to subscribe to the newsletter !” or “Hey join my email list” isn’t going to work. 

Almost no-one is going to convert this way. 

Instead, you need to give them a very clear reason why they should join your email list.

You can do it in various ways. Some just prefer to give away something for free in return for an email address like e-books, checklists, video tutorials, etc… whereas others just promise newsletter updates. 

It depends on your strategy and industry. 

For example, on this website’s landing page, I offer a 7-day free mini-email course about starting a profitable blog that generates passive income. 

Also, there is an affiliate marketing e-book on the sidebar. 

Similarly, you’ll find other online marketing experts promising exclusive marketing tips (not shared on the blog), content upgrades, and offering PDFs of definitive guides. 

And even some will offer exclusive training and tutorial videos for free. Got it? 

There are many other examples. You can analyse top-performing websites in your niche and see what they are doing. 

So, it is called a lead magnet, magnet because it attracts prospects and leads like a magnet.

 And there’s nothing wrong with it. Your email subscribers do enjoy your emails as long as you provide them something valuable. However, they’re also free to unsubscribe anytime.

Lead Magnet Ideas for Email List Building

There are plenty of lead magnet ideas but here I’m listing some most popular lead magnet ideas:

• E-Book
• Case study 
• Checklists 
• Definitive guide 
• Free trial 
• Webinar 
• Cheatsheet 
• Content upgrades 
• And so on.

Keep in mind that the lead magnet should be highly relevant so that you may be able to attract your target audience. If your lead magnet is not highly relevant to your offer, you’ll end up attracting less targeted prospects which would ultimately lead to lower conversion rates.

Here, the 2nd step to creating a strategy (which I already mentioned above) comes into play as you need to identify your target audience and create a freebie for them.

So, I highly recommend you do some research and come up with an idea that makes your audience feel “wow”. 

You can also make use of online community, Facebook groups, forums, etc. to find burning questions/problems in your niche.

And once you find the most frequently asked question that your target audience is asking or the biggest pain point in your target nice, simply create an excellent lead magnet that solves the problem of your target audience.

Characteristics of an Excellent Lead Magnet

And if you are wondering how to know whether your lead magnet is good or not, here are the crucial elements of an excellent lead magnet: 

• An excellent lead magnet solves a real problem 
• A good lead magnet should be highly relevant 
• A great lead magnet is ultra specific
• A nice lead magnet would be instantly accessible 
• An effective lead magnet is easy to consume 
• An awesome lead magnet is highly valuable 
• A perfect lead magnet shows your expertise and USP

Creating a freebie isn’t that hard and once you’ve prepared the freebie, you just need to show it in front of the right audience. 

Best Places to Show Lead Magnet Freebies for Email List Growth

Some of the best options to place it and show off your lead magnet freebie are – 

• A dedicated landing page converts amazingly well. You can use drag-and-drop landing page builder tool like Leadpages to create high converting landing pages 
• Popups suck but convert very well. Exit-intent popup is a good choice. Use the Optin Monster plugin to create exit-intent pop-ups
• Alert bar (the sticky notification bar at the top of website header) also works quite effectively. I use Leadpages to create this alert bar on top and it converts like crazy
• About us Page is also a great place to place your newsletter sign up form
• Within blog posts like content upgrades and PDF version 
• And everywhere else you think the chances of conversion 

But don’t over place it and make it irritating otherwise it will hurt the user experience. I have previously visited some blogs where the webmaster had placed the alert bar, exit intent pop-up, newsletter sign-up form in the sidebar, sticky sign-up form in the bottom – all together on the same page.

When I visited the web page, my experience as a user was pretty bad, so I instantly clicked off the website within a few seconds and never visited again.

So don’t overly complicate things like that. Keep it simple and minimalistic so that it doesn’t affect the user experience on your website.

If you want to create lead generation forms, pop-ups, landing pages, and automatically deliver it to the user’s inbox,  you may use ConvertKit for the whole process. I use ConvertKit as my go-to email marketing tool and the good thing is: it’s completely free up to 1000 subscribers. You can click here create a free account.

In ConvertKit, you can easily create beautiful forms, popups, and landing pages using its pre-made templates and drag & drop editor. 

Delivering lead magnets through ConvertKit is also pretty easy. 

Just open the form and click on the second icon from the right sidebar. 

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From here, you can upload documents i.e.- lead magnet, or provide the link to the lead magnet so that they can access it when they confirm a subscription. 

It’s a cool feature because it works for both double opt-in and freebie delivery at the same time. 

You can also edit email content like changing CTA from “confirm subscription” to “Download Now or Instant access for the freebie.”

Check out this step-by-step tutorial to learn how to set up ConvertKit to automate everything.

Step 3: Start Sending Emails and Follow up

Usually people think that email marketing is all about just delivering a lead magnet and then reaching out whenever they want to sell something or when they publish a new blog post.

But, it’s not like that.

If you just send a freebie or lead magnet and then don’t communicate and follow-up with your email subscribers, you’re soon going to lose their attention and the subscribers will become inactive.

Such inactive subscribers are called to be “Cold” subscribers and as your email subscribers become cold, they won’t open your emails and engage with your emails in the future.

Thus, your email open rate, click through rate, and other conversion metrics will decline.

Therefore, you need to follow up with them consistently and communicate within their email inbox to keep them active and engaged. 

👉🏻 Note:- With consistency,  I don’t mean that you need to frequently send multiple emails. If you do so, it would be irritating and subscribers will get annoyed. In return, this will result into proceeding them to unsubscribe from your email list. 

You have to balance it according to your industry.

For example, They may just want to get weekly updates on your new offers, or even they might want daily tips. 

You will probably see positive results if you place a strong but relevant CTA and stay consist in communicating with your email subscribers.

By communicating, I mean building a strong relationship with your email subscribers by constantly providing them valuable stuffs that either educate them or entertain them. 

For example, if you sign up for my 7-days free email course to start a profitable blog, you daily receive one lesson in your inbox. 

With these emails, I educate my email subscribers through one-email every day for 7-days. 

And the Best part?

I don’t have to manually send these emails once every day to each person who joins my email list. It’s fully automated. (Just one-time work) 

Sounds amazing, right?

Yes, it is.

And that’s why it’s always recommended having an automated email sequence for new subscribers. 

Because it helps you to build better connections with your new subscribers.

How to Create an Automated Email Sequence?

To create an automated email sequence for new subscribers in ConvertKit, follow these simple steps:

1. Inside your ConvertKit dashboard, go to Automations and followed by Sequences in the top navigation bar where you create email sequences. And then, click New Sequence button.

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Now, name the sequence like a 7-day mini-course. You can change the name anytime later as well, so don’t worry, it’s only for your reference. 

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 2. So, now the sequence is created and you can see the sequence editor.

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3. Here, you can add emails from the sidebar and choose when to send like after 1 day, 2 days, or 7 days.

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4. Moreover, You can even set filters to remove certain groups of subscribers from your email sequence.

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Apart from this, you need to follow up with them from time to time with great content.

Later in this blog post, you’ll learn how to write a good email copy. So just keep reading!

Step 4: Track, Test & Improve your Email Marketing Game

Measuring and tracking analytics helps you take your marketing game to the next level. Be it social media marketing or search engine marketing, and email is also no different. 

Testing and analysing your metrics helps you to understand different things and find out what’s working and what’s not. 

Almost all popular tools including ConvertKit allows you to see comprehensive analytics with various metrics like open rate, unsubscribe, link clicks, and some other important metrics. 

Here’s how it looks like in ConvertKit – 

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For example, 

• If your open rates are low then you need to improve email headlines. 
• If more people are unsubscribing to your email list then it simply means you’re not providing them what they need.
• If your click rate is low, it means your CTA are not prominently placed in the right place.

As you can notice that just by knowing these basics beforehand and then testing, analysing, and understanding your metrics like this way you can figure out exactly what’s working best for you and what’s not.

And then you may optimise your marketing efforts accordingly to improve your email marketing campaign results.

And it is necessary if you want the maximum out of it. 

How to Write A Good Email Newsletter Broadcast? 

After reading the above mentioned steps to getting started with email marketing as a beginner, you must have understood that testing, analysing, and improving is very important for your email marketing success.

And reading your metrics is very crucial to improve your email marketing efforts. But the sad thing is: you can only get analytical metrics and data if a good number of people open and read your emails.

One way to get people to read your emails is increasing your trust and authority. Apart from that, sending an awesome newsletter will also boost your email open rates.

If you send them valuable content then they would be excited and eagerly waiting to open your future emails otherwise they won’t care.

But sending valuable content is just half-part of the mission. The other part is: writing a great email copy that encourages them to keep reading.

But how would you write a great email copy?

Learn to Write Great Email Copy in 5 Easy Steps

There are various elements which makes a great email copy but, I’m listing down 5 of the most important tips to send a newsletter that get people to read:

Step 1: Figure our Email Newsletter’s Goal

Just like every marketing effort, you need to understand your goal for each email you send.

Whether you are writing an email for the automated email sequence or writing an email newsletter broadcast, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with that email.

Your goal can be anything depending upon the action you want your email subscribers to take. But always remember that if you want to take your email reader from point A to point B, then your email should act as a tool to take them through that path.

Step 2: Write a Killer Email Subject Heading

Start with a killer subject heading. Your email subject headline is very crucial.

If you fail to write an attention-grabbing headline, then people are not going to open your emails, and if they don’t open, they won’t read the rest of the things no matter how valuable that is.

Also, most people read emails using their mobile phones, so you only get a limited number of characters to grab their attention.

So make sure it’s short but catchy enough to encourage people to open and read the email.

Step 3: Make them Interested in the First Line

Most people open the email and read just the first few lines to decide whether to continue reading further or press the back button.

That’s why it’s so important to make your first few lines even more engaging and relatable, so that you may grab their attention to keep them engaged and reading through the entire email.

Step 4: Connect and Communicate in the Email Body

Body is your main content where you will convey your message and connect with your audience. This part should provide them the super value that they feel it’s worth opening and be excited about your further emails.

When it comes to body part of the email, different people have different preferences. Some keep it short and simple, while others keep it long-form. You can also tell stories to engage with your audience which is one of the most effective copywriting secrets that work.

Step 5: Nail your closing with a Strong Call to Action (CTA)

Wrap up your email with a strong CTA to accomplish your end goal. Make it even more convincing by using power words like Now, Instant, Click Here, Grab, Access, and so on.

👉🏻 Pro Tip: Avoid using multiple call to actions. Your email should contain only one end goal. The more options you provide the readers, the more they get confused, which ultimately delays them from taking the action.

This is how you can write a good email newsletter in 5 simple steps.

Other Important Tips for Writing a Great Email Copy

I have been writing and sending email newsletters for several years, and I have found some of the email writing tips to be very effective. While writing an email copy, follow these important tips for writing a great email copy:

1. Meet the Reader’s expectations

You should always try to meet your email subscribers’ expectations and deliver what they want.

If they want weekly updates or offers then reach out to them weekly. If they expect daily some new tips then do exactly that. Because if they expect one email per week and you’re sending them daily mails, then it becomes annoying.

So, the key is to be consistent without being annoying and provide them exactly what they want. 

2. Don’t be Promotional Every Time

If you reach out to them every time just to promote something then it’s going to be boring. Try to send informational emails mostly and sometimes promotional too for profits.

If you are worried about overdoing it unknowingly, you may try 80-20 rule of email marketing where 80 out of 100 times, you are sending just pure valuable content without being promotional, while rest 20 times, promote and sell something for revenue generation.

3. Include U.G.C (User-generated content):

User generated content is one best ways to boost engagement rates. For example, you can just host a weekly AMA (Ask Me Anything) session. Or simply request users for their feedback and suggestions.

When you do that, you’ll often noticed a high engagement rate and people responding to you effectively.

Some of the Best Email Marketing Practices for Advanced Users

Here I’m sharing with you some of the best email marketing practices that will help you to increase your open rates and improve overall performance:

1. Avoid “Spam” Filters –

If your email consistently goes into the spam folder of the user, then this is one of the worst part of your email marketing. So you need to ensure that your email is delivered in the primary folder and not labeled as the spam.

But it’s worth noting that sometimes, even 100% legit emails are labeled as spam, and you can do nothing about that. However, if your all email are constantly hitting the spam folder, then something is wrong and you need to fix it.

Although ConvertKit takes deliverability very seriously and itself ensures that your emails are not labeled as spam, yet if you follow some common rules, you can probably avoid the spam folder.

How to Avoid Your Emails from Going to Spam Folder?

Before I tell you how to avoid your emails from going into spam folder, let’s learn why an email goes into spam folder. Here are some common reasons for your email being labeled as spam: 

• You didn’t get permission from the person to send email or even worse, you purchased a list and the person on the list doesn’t even know you.
• No unsubscribe link 
• You didn’t provide a physical address. 
• Your engagement rates are too low.
• Your IP was previously used for spam. 

👉🏻 Note: Many cheap email marketing tools provide such blacklisted IP which ultimately affects your email deliverability. Therefore, I highly recommend you to always use a reputable email marketing services provider like ConvertKit.

Alright, now that you know the reasons for any email being marked as spam, let’s learn what you can do to avoid spam folder:

• Always get user’s permission before adding them to your email list.
• Never purchase an email list from different industry or niche.
• Ask users to whitelist your email and mark important.
• Encourage your email list to send reply or add your email to contact list.
• Always use email service providers with clean and whitelisted IP for better deliverability (ConvertKit has the best deliverability).
• Provide them with an option to unsubscribe whenever they wish.
• Don’t use spammy subject lines.
• Avoid writing spammy words or words with bad reputation in the email body.
• Use your custom domain emails like you@yourdomain.com in the sender’s email field.
• Add your physical address in the sender’s address field.

2. Send Personalised Emails in Friendly Tone

When you personalise your emails using their name like “Hey Ram, hey Rahul, etc…”  it makes them feel special.

And when your email tone is friendly and conversational along with personalisation, your email readers will connect with you at a deeper level and become your fan.

So, don’t miss a chance to make your email list subscribers feel special.

3. Run A/B Testing Experiments 

A/B Testing is also known as split testing where you create different variations of your campaign and send one type of variation to one group of subscribers and the second variation to the another group of subscribers.

It allows you to test various elements and figure out what’s working and what’s not. It’s a bit advanced thing and many professional digital marketers use it to do their best.

Here is how A/B Split Testing Experiments Work:

I do this quite frequently in ConvertKit. When I’m not sure which email subject line would perform better, I would simply create an A/B test for email subject line and hit send.

ConvertKit would send 2 variation of emails with subject line A and subject line B to only 30% of my email subscribers in the first few hours.

And once it gets enough data about email open rates for both variation of emails, it would pick the email with best performing subject line as winner and then send the winning subject line email to rest 70% of my subscribers.

Well, this is about A/B testing of email subject line only, you can do lot more and get the data driven answers for better optimisation for your email marketing strategy.

In the case of email marketing, you can test various subject lines, layout, call to actions, design, email subscribe button, form, widget, headlines, and other important things as well.

4. Segmenting your Email List Subscribers

Segmenting your email list means to divide your list into more narrowed and targeted groups so that you can send highly targeted and relevant emails.

Segmenting an email list is often commonly ignored but highly effective strategy to boost open rates, engagement, clicks, sales, and conversion. Businesses like me often leverage segmenting to boost open rates and conversions.

For instance, if you blog about blogging then some of your subscribers may be just starting their first blog, some of them interested in enhancing their writing skills or some want to learn some advanced strategies and also may sign up through different-different lead magnets and email subscribe forms. So their expectations and interests would also vary.

Now, if you send the advanced level blogging tips to a beginner, that wouldn’t be a good idea. Similarly, if you send beginner level blogging tips to an advanced level blogger, that would also not make any sense.

This is why segmenting your email list is a great idea. Because by segmenting your email list, you can send highly targeted emails that are relevant to each subscriber.

There are many criteria to segment your list as mentioned below.  To get started with segmenting your email list, here are few criteria you may consider: 

• Lead magnets (based upon which lead magnet a person subscribed to your list) 
• Interests 
• New vs old
• Preferences
• Levels, and so on…

Similarly, you can choose any other segmentation rule and criteria of your own that suits your business, but just don’t forget to segment your email list.

Most people don’t segment their email list due to lack of knowledge or tech overwhelm, but ConvertKit makes it so easy that even a non-techy user can easily do it. I highly recommend you to use it to your advantage.

5. Kick Out or Delete the Inactive Subscribers

Every email marketing software offers various plans depending on the size of your list.

Although ConvertKit counts only confirmed subscribers, thus saving you a lot (as compared to other email marketing software tools) when you are managing a big email list, yet why pay for inactive email subscribers especially in the starting when your budget is tight? 

First, try to revive them and if they never open your email, just delete them to kick them off.

Email subscribers become inactive for multiple reasons. For Example, in case they changed their email address or deleted it, or they are not interested in the topic anymore.

So, just delete them and clear inactive people from your email list otherwise it would also affect your open rate metrics. 

If you are using ConvertKit, you can even unsubscribe them and you are good to go because ConvertKit doesn’t count unsubscribed users in your email size. But if you are using any other email marketing service provider, don’t forget to delete them so that you may avoid extra charges.

Frequently Asked Questions about Email Marketing

Conclusion

It’s quite evident that email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies that gets you consistent results no matter what.

And, email marketing is pretty effective if done in the right way. 

After reading this, if you are still ignoring email marketing for your business, you are basically acting as 18-year old me when I was aware of importance of building an email list, but I ignored it only to regret later.

I wish I had taken it seriously and started email marketing a few years earlier, I could be earning 2 or even 3 times more revenue than my current revenue.

And it’s truth: your revenue growth is directly proportional to effectiveness of your email list.

With this ultimate guide to email marketing, I have tried to cover all the essential things about email marketing and provide you everything you needed to know about email marketing as a beginner.

We’ll learn some advanced strategies in another blog post or case study.

Now that you know how to get started with email marketing for your business, it’s time to take action and put in the efforts to make it happen.

I’m confident enough that by following this ultimate guide to email marketing for beginners, you can get started with email marketing and run your first email marketing campaign. 

So, claim your free ConvertKit account and start building your email list today. 

If you still have any doubts or queries, leave a comment below, and also join our Facebook community to ask.