The Ultimate Guide to Starting Email Marketing

Do you know which existed before the other – email or the Internet? If your answer is email, you’re right. The email has come a long way and predates the Internet. According to Statista, the number of email users globally is approximately 4 billion in 2020 and is subject to further increase to 4.6 billion users in 2025. A 2018 study by the Data Government, Singapore revealed that Singaporeans of all age groups use the Internet, with users in the 15-34 age range at 100%. One thing not many of us know is that even with rapid technological advancements, the dissemination of information using emails is increasingly common.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through what you need to know about email marketing and how you can go about creating an effective email marketing campaign.

What Is Email Marketing

Email marketing is a practice adopted by many marketers to reach out and build a connection with prospective customers through the use of email. It can also be thought of as an art and science of sending emails with custom content to subscribers in your email list according to their profiles and backgrounds. 

Importance of Email Marketing

You may be wondering how important email marketing is for your digital marketing strategy. According to a study conducted by the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) in 2015, the return on investment (ROI) for every $1 spent on email marketing is $38. From this finding, it is evident that email marketing is a more effective means of generating leads and conversions than other marketing strategies. 

Steps In Email Marketing

Step 1: Getting Started on Your Email Marketing Campaign

Before embarking on any email marketing campaign, it is important to have a clear idea of the objectives your business hopes to achieve. Be it attracting more traffic to your website, raising brand awareness, or welcoming new subscribers, every campaign is fundamentally different. It is recommended to execute all your email marketing campaigns through an email marketing service. These service providers allow you to easily create and send engaging email newsletters to targeted audiences in your email list. 

Step 2: Build and Segment Your Email Marketing List

Building your email marketing list is a must in marketing campaigns. As this list has the contact information of your target audience, they are quality subscribers who will make your email marketing efforts effective. However, you should not resort to buying an email list in an attempt to build your email list quickly. Instead, organically growing your email list is how you can engage with people who are genuinely interested in your brand.

The next step is to segment your list. Email segmentation refers to the process of dividing your total email subscribers into segments or groups, according to certain factors. There are different ways to segment your subscribers. Some include interests, geographic locations, buyer behaviours, etc. By doing so, you can even personalise your email messages which will increase engagement with your recipients.

Step 3: Craft Your Email Messages and Automate their Delivery

With your email service provider, you can easily create your email marketing campaign with the guides and templates. Some providers even have powerful and useful features that will aid you in maximising your open rate. It is also important to bear in mind the benefits of leveraging the provider’s automated email sequences. An email sequence refers to a series of emails automatically delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes according to their behaviours. Some advantages of practising this are increased lead generation and sales while minimising the effort and time invested.

Step 4: Analyse Key Email Metrics for Your Campaign

There are many metrics that you can use to gain insights into the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. By keeping track of these numbers, you can learn how successful your campaigns are. Here is a non-exhaustive list of email marketing metrics:

• Bounce Rate
• Open Rate
• Unsubscribe Rate
• Conversion Rate

Benefits of Email Marketing

Now that you’ve learned the steps in creating your own email marketing campaign, let’s go through some benefits of email marketing.

More Time-Efficient Campaigns

There exists a vast amount of data to prove that email marketing automation has the ability to save marketers time. The preparation and delivery of email newsletters for every campaign can truly take up many hours. This can reduce the productivity of email campaigns. With the automation of email marketing, you will be freed from executing repetitive tasks as the service takes care of sending engagement emails to your subscribers. 

More Cost-Effective Campaigns

Email marketing can be extremely cost-effective if it is effectively executed. As mentioned previously on the importance of email marketing in digital marketing, this is the strategy that generates the highest return on investment. In comparison to traditional campaigns, email campaigns don’t require a great deal of time and a high budget to run. 

Having Ownership of Your Email List and Content

The main difference between building an email list and a follower list on social media is that you don’t own the follower list on your social media as it belongs to the platform itself. As for an email list, it is a list of contacts you own even if the social media platforms no longer exist in the future. With such ownership, you will be able to consistently interact with and nurture your subscribers and reach your target audience. 

Learn How to Run Effective Email Marketing Campaigns Today

We hope that you now have a better understanding of email marketing and why it is known to be an essential part of digital marketing strategies. Are you interested to learn more about email marketing and how you can run such campaigns effectively? Sign up for our beginner-friendly Digital Marketing course at Vertical Institute today! Learn the fundamentals of email marketing, social media advertising, paid social media, Tiktok advertising, SEM, SEO, and more! Maximise your gains from your marketing campaigns with our experts and instructors, while gaining an accredited certificate in Singapore. 

Besides digital marketing, Vertical Institute also offers UX Design and Data Analytics courses in Singapore. These are some tech skills that are highly in-demand today and will be helpful for your digital marketing career.

About Vertical Institute

Vertical Institute prepares individuals for the jobs of tomorrow. We specialise in teaching in-demand skills, building the next generation of changemakers and inventors through our world-class tech courses and certifications. Singaporeans and PRs can receive up to 70% IBF Funding off their course fees with Vertical Institute. The remaining fees can be claimable with SkillsFuture Credits or NTUC UTAP Funding.