How To Build Your Email Marketing Strategy (Steps & Examples)

Social algorithms are unpredictable and, quite frankly, a little frustrating. One moment, your content is reaching hundreds or even thousands of people. The next moment, a random algorithm update leaves you with only a trickle of views or engagement. 

If you’re tired of the emotional rollercoaster that comes with solely relying on social channels to reach your audience, it’s time to consider email marketing. Not only will it give you more control over content reach and engagement, but it will also help you build more personalized relationships with your audience. 

Keep reading to learn the exact steps for building a winning email marketing strategy as an online creator.

Skip ahead:

• What is an email marketing strategy? 
• What are the benefits of an email marketing strategy?
• How to create an email marketing strategy
• Email marketing best practices 

What is an email marketing strategy? 

An email marketing strategy is a detailed plan for how you will reach the right audience via email. 

It shows how you will get people to sign up for your emails, build and nurture relationships with email subscribers, and achieve specific goals — whether that’s selling an online course or other digital products or driving engagement to your social content. 

On top of that, an email marketing strategy also sets success parameters — that is, how you will measure whether things are working well or not. These could be email metrics like subscriber growth, open rate, click-through rate, and the like. 

What are the benefits of an email marketing strategy? 

Why should you spend time creating an email marketing strategy instead of randomly sending generic emails to a large, undifferentiated audience? Because the latter option, while easier, is simply a waste of time and resources. 

A good email marketing strategy will help you: 

1. Reach the right audience with the right message

An email marketing strategy lets you learn more about your audience. During the strategy creation process, you’ll group your audience based on different criteria like location, pain points, age group, and the like. 

With this information, you can customize each email to match the needs and preferences of different audience groups. For example, let’s say you’re launching a grow your audience course for creators, and your audience consists of YouTubers and Instagram influencers. 

Instead of sending a generic promotional email, you can create separate emails for the audience segments, highlighting the benefits of your course in a way that is relevant and appealing to each group. For example:

• For YouTubers: Emphasize how the course can help them grow their channel, optimize their video content, and increase viewer engagement.

• For Influencers: Focus on how the course can help them enhance their social media presence, improve their content strategy, and boost follower interaction.

This makes the content more relevant, increasing the chances that they’ll sign up for your course. 

2. Use your resources effectively 

After creating an email marketing strategy, you’ll have a clearer idea of what you want to achieve and allocate your resources to the efforts directly tied to that goal — instead of wasting time and money on random trends. 

For example, let’s say your goal is to sell your online course. In that case, you can set up a drip marketing campaign to acquire and nurture leads into customers. But if your goal is to build expertise and authority, you can invest in weekly newsletters for audience education. 

Of course, you can always test new ideas. The difference is that with a strategy, you can easily track and analyze results to see if things are working as planned. If yes, you’ll know to double down on the new idea. And if not, you can make changes based on data.

3. Measure results accurately 

An email marketing strategy clearly states how you will measure success — whether that’s in terms of clicks, subscriber growth, or some other metric tied to your goals. With these, it’s much easier to track your efforts objectively to know if they’re working instead of getting carried away by random metrics.  

For example, let’s say you set a goal to boost email engagement but notice that while you’re getting more subscribers, people aren’t clicking on the links in your emails.

While it’s great to have more subscribers, subscriber growth isn’t really helping you reach your goal of increasing engagement. It’s like having more people show up at a party, but no one is dancing. So, you need to rethink your strategy and focus more on getting those subscribers to interact with your emails, not just signing up. 

How to create an email marketing strategy

Now that you know why an email marketing strategy is a must-have, let’s get into the weeds of creating one. 

1. Set one goal

Set a single goal for your email marketing strategy to eliminate distractions and ensure that your efforts and resources are focused on the same thing. 

Without this, things will easily go out of scope. For example, you might start by thinking, “I want to grow my email list,” but end up sending salesy emails asking people to buy your upcoming course or check out your latest TikTok video. 

Now, let’s talk goal-setting properly. How do you know if you’re doing it right? The quickest way is to check if your goal passes the SMART test. Ask yourself these questions:  

• Can I explain my goal in one simple sentence? 

• How will I know I’ve achieved this goal? Can I quantify my success? 

• Is the goal realistic based on my available resources and constraints? 

• Does this goal fit into the bigger plan for my business or career as a creator? 

• What is the deadline for achieving this goal? 

For a creator who’s just starting email marketing with little or no budget, a SMART goal can be: I want to have 100 email subscribers by the end of the quarter. It clearly states what you want to achieve, has a clear timeline, and fits into your reality as a creator starting from scratch. 

2. Segment your audience 

What do email marketing and the Harry Potter series have in common? Honestly, not much. But one thing the latter teaches us is the importance of segmentation. 

In Harry Potter, the new students are sorted into houses as soon as they arrive at Hogwarts. Similarly, before making any big decisions in your email marketing strategy, you need to sort your audience into groups or segments. Segmentation makes it easier to understand your audience and craft emails that get their attention. 

In Harry Potter, the instructors use a magic sorting hat to segment the children — which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, sorting hats don’t exist in the real world, so you need to rely on data instead. 

You can extract this information from the channels where people are already engaging with your brand and content. Instagram, for example, has an audience tab containing demographic information about your followers, such as gender and age range. You can also segment your audience based on their income levels, values, and interests.

Next, choose the top segment that aligns with your email marketing goal. For example, if increasing course sales is your goal, then it makes sense to segment your audience based on income. You can send high-ticket offers to top-earning subscribers. And discounts and coupons to lower-tier earners.

Learn more: What is customer segmentation and how to do it right

3. Choose the tactics for building your email list

The most crucial step in any email marketing strategy is figuring out how to collect email addresses and subscriber information to build your email list. Otherwise, you’ll have no one to email. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building an email list; it all depends on your resources. If you’re working alone with a shoe-string budget, consider:

• Promoting your email on the channels where you already have an audience, such as your social accounts.

• Collaborating with another creator for cross-promotions, trade by barter style. This means that you’ll promote their resource to your audience, and they’ll do the same for free. 

• Creating a lead magnet, like an ebook or webinar, that prompts people to join your email list in exchange for the resource. 

With more wiggle room in your budget, you can explore paid options like: 

• Sponsoring a newsletter or some other content channel that has a relevant audience 

• Running paid ads on social media or search engines

• Paying an influencer to promote your newsletter 

4. Select your email marketing platform 

An email marketing platform is where you’ll host and manage your email campaigns. Here, you can design and send out emails, monitor performance through metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, and organize your subscriber list, among other things. 

If you’re overwhelmed by the sheer amount of email marketing platforms available, it’s understandable. Marketing technology is an exploding industry, expanding 24 percent over the past two years with a whopping 9,932 solutions ranging from analytics to video platforms.

Here are a few things to consider as you vet different email marketing software to find the right fit:  

• Functionality: Is there one email marketing function you need to do really well? Or do you need support across multiple different marketing tasks? Does the platform deliver on your must-haves?

• Customizability: How much control do you want over the design and layout of your emails? Will you be relying on pre-built templates? Or do you need advanced customization?

• Management: Do you need a platform that a single person or lean team can operate? Or do you have a bigger marketing team with a dedicated resource who can manage the system and your contact data?

• Simplicity: Do you have the time and resources to learn a more robust system, or do you need an out-of-the-box solution you can start using in minutes? Do you need a drag-and-drop editor? Or would you rather dive into the HTML code?

• Ease of use: Is the interface intuitive, clean, and easy to navigate? Can you easily find the tools and options you need to do your job?

• Reports: Do you need reporting in real-time? Does it capture the metrics that are most important to your business? Do reports run automatically or require manual work?

• Niche: Does an all-purpose system include the metrics and features you’re looking for? Are there options built specifically for your industry that better understand and support the unique tasks and reporting needs that you have?

• Price: What tiers of pricing are available? How is pricing structured – by the number of contacts, message volume or flat-rate subscription? What added features cost more? How will pricing change as you grow in size?

• Scalability: Do you have room to grow into the platform if you need to add new features in the future? How will it accommodate your audience as it grows?

• Support: Are customer support staff responsive and knowledgeable? How can you contact them — by phone, email or chat? Do they offer self-support options like tutorials and guides?

• Integrations: How will your marketing automation software fit into your existing tech stack? How can you connect it to existing platforms like your CRM or your website?

Read more: 13 Best AI Email Marketing Platforms

5. Create an email opt-in form

An opt-in form is what people fill out to join your email list. It’s usually easy to set one up in your email marketing software, so you have all the information in one place. But, if your software doesn’t have this feature for some reason, you can create an opt-in form using a free tool like Google Forms. Remember to link the form to your email marketing software to collect subscriber information centrally.  

You can use several forms within your email marketing strategy, but the most simple forms include two fields: one for their name and another for their email address. The more fields you include on your email form, the more information you’ll get from your customers, allowing you to market to them more effectively. 

For example, suppose your course is about helping busy professionals with productivity. In that case, you can include form fields that ask about their lifestyle, like the size of their family and what industry they work in. The information you gather from these fields will allow you to tailor your emails and promotions to topics that pertain to them based on their answers.

Be careful not to make your forms too long and detailed. Often, people are too busy to fill out lengthy forms. Some people may be uncomfortable sharing personal information. To get more people into your marketing funnel, you should prioritize a frictionless process while considering user experience.

6. Choose your email metrics 

Email metrics are how you track the effectiveness and success of your email marketing strategy. These metrics should be tied to your goal. For example, if your goal is to get more people to engage with your email, you can track metrics like open and click-through rates. 

Here’s a list of the most common metrics to track in your email marketing strategy: 

• Click-Through Rate: This is the percentage of subscribers who click links in your emails. Click-through rates are one of the best indicators of your email list engagement. A “good” click-through rate varies based on industry, so it’s essential to know your benchmarks.

• Conversion Rate: Tells you how many people took you up on your email’s offer. If you send an email promoting an upcoming webinar, your conversion rate would be the number of subscribers who registered for the webinar. The conversion rate is another key metric because it indicates how successfully your emails generate leads.

• Bounce Rate: This is the total number of emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox. Too high of a bounce rate or a rising bounce rate could indicate issues with your sender’s reputation.

• List Growth Rate: The list growth rate measures how fast your email list grows. Subscribers will naturally unsubscribe from your emails over time (which is good if they’re not the right fit), so it’s important to add new subscribers continually. To calculate your list growth rate, subtract the number of unsubscribers from the total number of new subscribers. Divide that by the total number of email addresses on your list, and multiply the result by 100.

• Open Rate: Open rate (the number of people who open your emails) used to be one of the most straightforward email metrics to track and gauge the success of your campaigns. However, this is no longer the case as of 2021. When Apple released its iOS 15 update, it introduced a new “Mail Privacy Protection” feature that:
  • Automatically loads all images from emails
  • Hides IP addresses and the location of email recipients

This update means that all of your email subscribers that have iOS 15 devices (iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches) will appear as opened whether they did or not. Since Apple iPhones are roughly 48% of the U.S. smartphone market, and most people read emails on their phones, open rates are inflated and not as accurate. While you can still use open rates to gauge marketing success, click-through rates and the other metrics mentioned above should take precedence. 

Email marketing best practices 

Now that you’ve created a strategy, the next step is to put it to the test. As you create your first email campaign, keep the following best practices in mind:

1. Email design best practices

The way your audience experiences your emails is critical to the success of your marketing efforts. The overall look and structure of your emails have a far-reaching impact on performance metrics like click-through and open rates. 

With that, here are some quick and easy tips to transform your email design and deliver the best experience to subscribers.  

1. Choose one topic and CTA per email

One of the most common mistakes marketers (especially course marketers) make is covering too many topics and sharing too much information in an email. To avoid confusing or overwhelming your readers, each of your emails should have one clear message and one clear request. If a topic you’re covering is complex, consider breaking the emails into an anticipation-building series.

2. Keep your email length between 50-125 words

While not every email has to stay beneath this word limit, you should make your emails as succinct as possible. The shorter your email is, the more likely it will be read in its entirety.

3. Keep the most important parts of the email at the beginning

People spend an average of ten seconds reading marketing emails. In other words, readers are not patient enough to read all the way until the end to get what they need from your email. You have to hook them by front-loading the most important info so they can get value from your emails, even when they’re short on time.

4. Make your email readable with line breaks and visuals 

Write for readability. Break text into paragraphs that are no longer than three sentences. Use headings and bulleted lists to make your content easily skimmable. Add visuals like pictures, infographics, gifs, and memes to grab attention and keep your audience reading.

5. Stick to simple colors

Choose just one or two colors for your emails. Typically, you’ll use your brand colors. The fewer colors you use, the cleaner your design will look, preventing the reader from being distracted from the content.

2. Email copywriting best practices 

What is the key to writing emails that get opened, read, and clicked? Writing great marketing emails doesn’t require creativity or journalistic talents to nurture and convert your subscribers. The point of email copywriting isn’t creativity, and you don’t have to be a wordsmith to get great results. A compelling email:

• Speaks directly to your target audience
• Includes curiosity-inducing subject lines
• Has a concise body content with one specific goal

Here’s how to incorporate these three winning ingredients into your email copy:

1. Understand your ideal customer persona/profile (ICP)

Before you begin writing any marketing material, you must first understand who you’re writing for. 

• How well do you know your target audience? 
• What do they care about? 
• What single action do you want them to take after reading your email?

2. Create subject lines and headings that hook readers 

Writing attention-grabbing headlines isn’t as mysterious as it sounds. A hook-worthy headline is simply one that can catch the reader’s eye amongst a sea of other marketing emails. To create one: 

• Write three to five subject line options so you can A/B test and pick the winners. (Disclaimer:  you’ll probably want to A/B test click-through rate over open rates due to the iOS 15 update that skews open rate data —more on that below).
• Keep the length to fewer than 50 characters.
• Include personalization when possible: “The sweetest word in the English language is one’s own name.” Your email form will automatically capture their name, and your marketing software will most likely auto-fill it when you add a command like “[First_Name]” 
• Keep the tone conversational: Avoid language that sounds like a canned marketing email. Use contractions like “you’re” instead of “you are.” Use emojis to lighten things up. 
• Pay attention to subject lines that caught your attention: Copywriters and marketers keep a “swipe file” handy, where they can quickly screenshot or save good copy or ads for inspiration.

3. Be conscious of words that trigger spam filters

While these words are not a guarantee that your email will go to SPAM, it’s good to be aware of them. As you troubleshoot click-through rates and deliverability in the future, it’s helpful to understand how these words could impact your results. 

According to ActiveCampaign, SPAM filters tend to flag words that are associated with:

• Scams
• Gimmicks
• Schemes
• Promises
• Free gifts

Examples of common SPAM words and phrases are:

• #1
• 100% more
• 100% free
• Additional income
• Be your own boss
• Financial freedom
• Free Consultation

3. Email compliance best practices

Email marketing regulations exist to prevent spammers from gaining people’s email addresses without their permission and sending unsolicited emails. If you’re using a reputable email marketing automation platform, you’re most likely already complying with these rules, but you still want some general awareness so you can avoid fines.

Here are some simple ways to remain compliant when emailing your list:

• Ensure you’ve gained permission to email the people on your list with a double opt-in.
• Don’t use misleading header information.
• Use disclaimers that notify the reader that this is a marketing email or ad.
• Include your address.
• Always include an opt-out link that allows subscribers to no longer receive future emails from you.
• Honor opt-out requests promptly (your marketing platform should do this for you automatically).

4. Email list management best practices 

If you were growing a garden, you wouldn’t simply plant additional flowers. You’ll do other stuff like weeding, pruning, and watering flowers regularly. In the same way, you can’t only focus on adding new subscribers to your list; you need to maintain and nurture the existing list by removing inactive subscribers, organizing the list, and engaging with the current subscribers.

1. Practice good email hygiene with list scrubbing

After putting so much work into building and maintaining your email list, the thought of intentionally removing subscribers might sound like blasphemy—but… According to OptinMonster, one-third of your subscribers will never open, let alone click through your emails.

Therefore, you must periodically “scrub” your email list. Email scrubbing means removing unengaged subscribers from your email list so that you can market to people who want to receive your emails. Be sure to scrub your list a few times yearly to keep your email reporting accurate and maintain your sender reputation score.

You don’t want the time, effort, and resources you invest in email marketing wasted on subscribers who don’t want to hear from you. Also, most email marketing platforms charge you based on how many subscribers you have, so technically, scrubbing your email list ensures you’re not paying for people who never read or click your emails.

2. Segment your email list

Segmenting is critical to maintaining a healthy and engaged subscriber base because it allows you to personalize your emails based on what your audience members want to know versus sending the same message to everyone.

Allow subscribers to self-segment with a questionnaire. For example, you can make one of your welcome emails a survey that asks the subscriber what type of information they’d like to consume based on their knowledge and experiences. Then customize your email sequence based on the information they’ve shared. 

For example, you won’t send an email about how to become a social media content creator to subscribers who already have 1,000+ followers. That type of email is better suited for beginners on your list.

3. Set up email triggers

Triggers command your marketing platform to send a specific message to a specific person on your email list. Your platform will operate under “if/then” rules that look like this: If a potential buyer downloads our how-to guide, then they will automatically begin receiving our weekly educational emails on the same topic.

Triggers make for a more personalized customer journey—the opposite of those mass 50% off emails you get from your favorite clothing brand. According to Smart Insights, triggered emails reach 71% higher open rates and 102% higher click-through rates than general email newsletters.

4. Set up contact tags

As discussed above, segmenting is the best way to send relevant, tailored emails that get opened and clicked. Tags are one of the easiest ways to segment your list.

For example, you could segment your audience based on the form they filled out to become an email subscriber. In other words, your tag will answer the question, ‘How did they get on my email list?’ and tailor the content to it. Marketing automation can also help segment your lists automatically by tagging subscribers according to the links they clicked on.

5. Scale email marketing with Thinkific

As an all-in-one creator platform, Thinkific makes it easy to scale your email marketing campaigns effectively. 

You can create automated email sequences to engage with your audience or market your digital product, grow your email list with beautiful landing pages and pop-ups, and expand your marketing reach by creating a referral network for your online learning products.

Launch your email marketing campaigns with Thinkific!

This blog was originally published in December 2022, it’s since been updated in July 2024 to include the most relevant information.