5 Tips for Email Marketing Success (Even if You’re Just Starting Out)

Many of our clients are newer to email marketing. They’ve done a great job at investing in their audience in other ways: in-person book tours, collecting a database of donors, using social media to connect with their audience, and creating resources that speak to their fans’ interests or needs. When we work with our clients to overhaul their website or build a membership site, we’re usually bringing up email marketing as well.

This blog post isn’t meant to be the most technical or definitive guide to email marketing but it does contain a lot of the things we share with our clients when we’re encouraging them to start using email as a channel to connect (or when we’re encouraging them to shift their existing email marketing practices). 

Get to know your ESP

Your email service provider (ESP) has a unique personality! It’s important to understand why it’s uniquely great. If you chose it because it’s cheap, you still need to investigate what it does best. If you inherited the platform or didn’t originally choose it, you can always change it. Keep in mind that each company (we’re talking ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Beehiiv, Active Campaign, Constant Contact, a CRM that we haven’t listed here, Flodesk, etc) has different quirks, weaknesses, and strengths. All are not made equal. And if you have absolutely no interest in figuring this out, look for someone who can help you. 

Why are you marketing via email?

Are you going to send promotional emails out? Are you going to send a weekly newsletter? Are you going to want an email that gets sent out right after someone joins your list introducing you or your business so that they become engaged right off the bat? Are you trying to upsell a course or membership? It’s important to think about what you want to use email marketing for and then start writing or drafting.

We need you to type that text out!

I get so sad when I see an email hit my inbox and the entire thing is an image. It’s hard to read (especially on a phone), I can’t search for any keywords or phrases in my email software to find the email later, it’s not accessible, and it makes sharing even more difficult. Have you ever forwarded an email with a photo? It works 20% of the time. We’re going to need you to type out as much text as possible within your email platform because it makes everyone happy and it makes it into more inboxes (and fewer spam folders). You will learn very quickly that everyone is very limited to a small selection of fonts within your email platform and most of them won’t be your official brand font. I get it. It’s a bummer. Take time to grieve. And then move on.

Make it easy to share

Your email is fun and cute and smart! Make it easy to share and then make it easy for the person who received that shared your email to opt in. I can’t tell you how many times I get an email forwarded to me by a friend and I don’t know how to join. Link back to wherever someone can opt in please! 

Screentime reports are in

Everyone is on their phone. Yes, there are people who read emails on a computer but so many people are on their phones almost all of the time. Make sure you consider the fact that your email will be read on a teeny tiny screen so make your fonts bigger than you think and remember that images will get small. 

PS Like I said, this post doesn’t even get into segmenting, automations, referral programs, and the pros/cons of specific email service providers. We do love talking about that, however. If you want to chat all things email marketing, let’s chat.