In today’s digital era, email marketing continues to be a vital strategy for businesses, especially startups, because of its affordability and significant return on investment.

According to Campaign Monitor, every $1 spent on email marketing typically generates about $38 in return.

Email marketing boasts high engagement rates, with an overall open rate of 26.8% and a clickthrough rate of 1.89%, per Get Response‘s Email Marketing Benchmarks report. This significantly surpasses the typical engagement rates of other online marketing channels. For instance, the average engagement rate for Facebook is only about 0.27%.

Furthermore, the retention and conversion rates of email marketing outperform other marketing channels. Email consistently delivers a strong return on investment, usually higher than other digital channels.

eMarketer reports that the average return on investment (ROI) for email marketing stands at 122%, making it 4x more effective than any other digital marketing means.

What is Email Marketing for Startups?

For startups, email marketing entails using email as a channel to distribute educational, promotional, or sales materials to potential and existing customers subscribed to their email lists.

This strategic approach enables startups to enhance customer conversion and retention rates and bolster their brand’s visibility. It’s used to cultivate relationships with potential customers, keep current customers informed or updated about your brand, offer discount coupons and similar incentives to encourage customer loyalty, and more.

Source: Sprout Social

Email marketing is crucial because it gives you direct access to potential customers or returning clients without the need for intermediaries. This allows for a personalized, targeted approach in your marketing efforts and a more in-depth understanding of your customer base, leading to more effective marketing strategies over time.

Why Startups Must Adopt Email Marketing? 7 Potential Benefits

Startups should adopt email marketing for several compelling reasons:

• Cost-effectiveness: Email marketing is affordable, making it particularly attractive for startups with limited budgets.
• Direct communication: Email allows direct communication with customers, improving the chances of your message being seen and considered.
• High engagement: Statistically, email marketing often has a higher open and clickthrough rate compared to other marketing methods.
• Personalization: It enables personalized communication based on the subscriber’s preferences and behavior, which can significantly increase conversion rates.
• Automation: Automated email campaigns can save time and resources while keeping your brand in front of the audience.
• Measurable: It’s easy to measure success through open rates, clickthrough rates, conversion rates, etc., allowing continuous strategy improvement.
• Audience building: It’s an effective way to build a loyal audience, as customers consciously opt-in to receive your emails.

Step-by-step Email Marketing Guide for Startups

Here are some strategies for effective email marketing for startups:

• Adopt effective yet ethical email marketing practices
• Adhere to legal requirements and guidelines for email marketing
• Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly
• Conduct A/B experiments with your emails
• Categorize your email subscribers
• Avoid inundating your recipients
• Periodically declutter your subscriber list
• Establishing your email marketing approach:
  • Identify your email recipients (could be potential, paid/subscribed, free, or churned users)
  • Choose the platforms for collecting emails (consider opt-ins, social networks, landing pages, website hotspots, webinars, blogs, and more)
  • Decide on the types of emails to dispatch (could be instructive, marketing or sales oriented, feedback solicitation, etc.)
  • Establish your email dispatch frequency
• Choose an email marketing platform that suits your needs
• Building email campaigns:
  • Recognize target audience
  • Define campaign objectives
  • Craft a strong subject line
  • Develop persuasive messaging
  • Include impactful CTA
• Measure, track, and adapt

Now, let’s understand in detail what each step encompasses.

Step 1: Adopting an Email Marketing Strategy

Implementing effective email marketing practices while maintaining ethical standards ensures that your startup’s campaigns build trust, engage users, and comply with regulations. Here’s how to approach it:

Observe Legal Guidelines for Email Marketing

Start by ensuring your email marketing complies with relevant laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act (in the U.S.), GDPR (for EU users), or India’s IT Act.

Essential prerequisites involve securing clear permission prior to emailing, offering a straightforward method for recipients to opt out, and guaranteeing the honesty of your email content (avoiding deceptive subject lines or sender details).

Ethical marketing helps avoid legal penalties, and fosters trust with your audience.

Make Emails Mobile-Optimized

A significant portion of users check their emails on mobile devices. Make sure your emails are optimized for mobile, with responsive designs that adjust to different screen sizes, and ensure simple, clear formatting that’s easy to read on smaller screens.

Use concise subject lines, and don’t overload your email with large images or heavy data that could slow down loading times. Mobile-optimized emails have higher open rates and engagement, offering a better user experience.

Run A/B Testing on Your Emails

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is distributing two different versions of an email to a subset of your audience to see which one yields better results.

Source: Optimizely

Experiment with various components such as subject lines, calls to action (CTAs), the design of the email, or when it is sent. Once you gather insights, apply the best-performing version to your larger list. This continuous optimization helps refine your messaging and increase clickthrough rates.

Segment Your Email Audience

Instead of sending the same content to everyone, segment your email list based on various factors such as customer behavior, demographics, and engagement levels.

Segmentation enables crafting customized content that resonates specifically with distinct groups within your audience. For instance, you could dispatch varied emails to newcomers instead of returning patrons or customize messages based on geographical locations.

This ensures your emails are relevant and highly targeted, which can significantly boost engagement and conversion rates.

Refrain From Overloading Your Audience

Overloading your audience with excessive emails can cause fatigue, raising the chances of unsubscribes or your messages being flagged as spam.

Create a consistent email schedule that keeps your brand at the forefront of your mind without overwhelming recipients. Quality is more important than quantity; sending fewer, more valuable emails can improve your open and click rates.

Regularly Clean Up Your Email List

Over time, some recipients will become unengaged with your emails. It’s essential to periodically clean up your email list by removing inactive subscribers or those who haven’t opened your emails in several months.

This helps improve your sender reputation, enhances your open rates, and reduces the risk of your emails being marked as spam. Before removing anyone from the list, consider sending a re-engagement campaign to gauge their interest.

By adhering to these ethical and effective email marketing practices, startups can nurture a loyal audience, improve the overall performance of their campaigns, and build long-term customer relationships.

Step 2: Establishing Your Email Marketing Approach

An effective email marketing strategy begins with a clear approach addressing key questions: Who are your recipients? How will you gather their contact information? What kinds of emails will you send, and how often? Here’s how to establish a solid email marketing approach for your startup:

Identify Your Email Recipients

The first step in any email marketing strategy is knowing your audience. Your email recipients may fall into different categories, and identifying these will help tailor your content and messaging:

• Potential users (individuals signed up for a lead magnet, webinar, or newsletter.)
• Paid or subscribed users (customers who have purchased your product or subscribed to your service)
• Free users
• Churned users (Reengagement emails for customers who have unsubscribed or stopped engaging with your service)

By segmenting your audience based on their relationship with your business, you can tailor your messaging to better suit each group’s needs and increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

Choose the Right Channels for Collecting Emails

Gather email addresses from multiple sources to build a successful email list. Consider the following platforms and methods for collecting emails:

• Opt-ins on your website: Include simple and clear opt-in forms on high-traffic areas of your website, such as the homepage, blog, or checkout pages. Offering something of value (e.g., a discount, free resource) in exchange for email signups is a popular strategy.
• Social networks: Utilize your social media presence to drive followers to your email list. Run promotions and contests or offer exclusive content to encourage them to sign up.
• Landing pages: Design dedicated landing pages with a strong call to action to capture email leads. These are especially effective when linked to specific campaigns, webinars, or promotions.

Source: Landingi

• Website hotspots and popups: Use strategically placed hotspots or timed popups on your website to grab visitors’ attention and encourage them to join your list.
• Webinars and events: Hosting webinars or online events is a great way to collect emails, as attendees are required to provide their contact information to register.
• Blogs: Embed email signup forms within your blog content, offering newsletters or exclusive updates for those who subscribe. Make the content relevant and valuable to entice visitors to sign up.

A diversified approach to collecting emails ensures a steady flow of new subscribers while building a list of interested and engaged users.

Decide on the Types of Emails to Dispatch

Your email content must align with the goals of your startup and the specific needs of your audience segments. Here are common types of emails you can send:

• Educational emails: Provide helpful content, tutorials, how-to guides, or industry insights. This builds trust and positions your brand as an expert.
• Marketing or sales oriented emails: Promote your products or services through discount offers, new product launches, or special events.
• Onboarding emails: For new customers or subscribers, onboarding emails help guide them through your product or service and explain how to get the most value from it.
• Feedback solicitation: Send surveys or request reviews from your audience to gather feedback and improve your offerings.
• Reengagement emails: Target inactive or churned users with compelling offers or reminders of your product’s value to reengage them.

Deciding which email to send to which audience segments ensures your content is relevant and engaging.

Establish Your Email Dispatch Frequency

Striking an optimal balance in email sending frequency is essential. Sending too many can inundate your audience, leading to unsubscribes, whereas too few may lead to your brand being overlooked.

Here are some general guidelines:

• Daily: This can work for newsletters or fast-paced industries like e-commerce (e.g., daily deals or flash sales). However, be cautious of email fatigue.
• Weekly: Weekly emails are a common and effective cadence for delivering newsletters, blog updates, or product recommendations.
• Monthly: Monthly emails work well for product updates, company news, or recaps of blog posts or social media highlights.
• Event-triggered emails: These are sent based on user behavior, such as a welcome email after signup or a cart abandonment email. They tend to perform well because they are timely and relevant to the user’s actions.

To fine-tune your approach, track the performance of your emails (open rates, clickthrough rates, unsubscribes) and adjust the frequency accordingly to maximize engagement.

Step 3: Choose a Suitable Email Marketing Platform

Here are the key parameters to look for when evaluating email marketing platforms:

• Ease of use
• Automation features
• Email templates
• Segmentation options
• A/B testing
• Analytics and reporting
• Deliverability rates
• Integrations
• Pricing plans
• Customer support
• Scalability
• List management tools
• Mobile optimization
• GDPR compliance
• Customizable forms

Here are some of the best email marketing platforms to consider:

Platform	Free Plan	Starting Price (per month)	Ease of Use	Automation Features	Email Templates	Customer Support	Best For
Mailchimp	Yes	$9.99	High	Basic	Extensive	24/7	Small businesses
Brevo (previously Sendinblue)	Yes	$99	Medium	Advanced	Moderate	Business hours	Marketing teams
Constant Contact	No	$12	High	Basic	Extensive	24/7	Growing businesses
ConvertKit	Yes	$25	High	Advanced	Moderate	Business hours	Content creators
ActiveCampaign	No	Custom	Medium	Advanced	Extensive	24/7	Advanced marketers

Email marketing has been a key driver of growth for businesses like Mailbrew, a company that used targeted email campaigns to build a loyal subscriber base and drive conversions. Want to learn more about how successful entrepreneurs have used email marketing to grow their businesses? Join us and access our in-depth case studies for free!

Step 4: Building Email Campaigns

• Recognize target audience: Understand who you’re sending your emails to, whether potential leads, current customers, or inactive users. Tailor content accordingly.
• Define campaign objectives: Determine the goal of your email campaign (e.g., lead generation, product promotion, or customer retention).
• Craft a strong subject line: Your subject line is the first thing recipients see. Make it engaging, clear, and relevant to boost open rates.
• Develop persuasive messaging: Write compelling content that resonates with your audience. Keep it concise, informative, and aligned with your campaign’s goals.
• Include impactful CTA: Ensure every email has a clear call-to-action (CTA) that encourages the recipient to take the next step, such as signing up, purchasing, or visiting your website.

Step 5: Measure, Track, and Adapt

Leverage analytics to track essential indicators such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion metrics. Analyze this data regularly and make adjustments to improve future campaigns, including refining content, timing, and targeting.

Your ideal email marketing tool must include analytics and tracking features.

What is the Difference Between Nurture and Email Campaigns?

Email campaigns are often more promotional and targeted at immediate engagement, whereas nurture campaigns focus on building a relationship over time and guiding the prospect toward becoming a customer.

Conclusion

In conclusion, email marketing is a powerful tool for startups to build lasting relationships, drive engagement, and convert leads into customers.

By following key steps—building a targeted email list, establishing an effective approach, selecting the right platform, crafting compelling campaigns, and continuously tracking performance—businesses can ensure their efforts are impactful and aligned with their goals.

If you want to read about how entrepreneurs build their businesses, join us to access our case studies!