As with any type of marketing, your first step in email marketing should be to set goals. Do you want to use email to showcase products and services or bring more visitors to your website? Do you adopt email campaigns in driving increased ROIs, like distributing a coupon that brings in sales? No matter what your goals are, a good place to start is by building a list of people who’ve expressed an interest in your business or value offerings. But the million-dollar question is ‘how do you find these people and get their email addresses?’. Thankfully, it isn’t as difficult as it may seem. Start by asking them in exchange for a specific value.

Let’s examine a practical scenario. Supposing you own a pet supply shop, when you chat with customers, offer to notify them about discounts and special offers if they provide an email address. If you have a website, include a form that encourages visitors to subscribe to your mailing list, while giving them some form of value — which could be an eBook on general tips about your offerings.

Keep in mind that people must give you permission to send them commercial emails, and many countries have laws that require consent.

Your email marketing options

While there are many options to choose from, most email marketing tools share a few common features. The first is a contact database that stores your customers’ information. At the minimum, databases allow an email address for each contact. Most software services allow you to include additional information like name, mailing address, and other information.

Build your email database by adding the customer data you already have. Most services allow you to upload data from a spreadsheet — a handy feature if you have a lot of information to upload. Next, you want to give people the option to subscribe (and unsubscribe).

Most email services provide an online form that you can add to your website by copying and pasting some of the code. Visitors can submit this form to sign up for your emails. This data is then automatically transferred to your contact database.

One thing to keep in mind: forms are customisable, so you can request for the specific customer information you want. But your online sign-up form should be short and super-easy to complete — you’ll have more success growing a subscriber list if you don’t require too much information. All you need is their email address to get started! If you have information about customers, you can use it to sort the customers into lists. Let’s take the pet supply shop scenario again! If you know that a particular set of customers own cats, you can group them in a “Cat list” and send them cat food offers.

Customers who own dogs would be on the “Dog list”, and get different offers. The more information you have about your customers, the more relevant your emails can be.

Now you’ve got your database, let’s talk about the emails.

Email templates allow you to create a design that matches your brand. You can reuse your template for similar email campaigns. Many people read email on their mobiles, so be sure yours are mobile-friendly. Many email marketing tools allow you to preview your email on different devices before you send.

Another great feature to know about is the ability to schedule when your emails go out. An email marketing tool can be used to track what people do when they receive it. You might find that most of your customers open their email first thing Monday mornings or during lunch on Friday. You can then use your email service to record those preferences and send future emails at more relevant times.

Email marketing services also track who clicks the links in your email. These links typically go to pages on your website. You can then track what those people do, once they’re on your site. As you learn about your customers’ behaviour, you get to deliver more personalised content. Lots of email marketing services offer a personalisation feature that places relevant content into an email template, based on a person’s interests. You can use this feature to send specific messages to different people within your database.

While most of your emails will contain general information that “all pet owners will appreciate”, your email template can include one or two fields for content that is tailored to suit each pet-specific group. By targeting each group with a personalised email, you increase the chances that they will not only read your email but also click to visit your website.

Evidently, email marketing tools make running a successful email program much easier. Next, let’s explore how to craft a compelling email and how to best manage your campaign.

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