tinuiti.

com

The Complete Email Marketing Guide

for Brands in 2020
Greg Swan
14-17 minutes

Email is arguably the most important marketing channel for any

business that is built around customer relationships.

Email marketing can accelerate your customer relationships, build

your brand message, and drive cost-effective revenue for your
business.

It’s how jewelry brand Bryan Anthony’s hit record holidays that lifted
overall company revenue by 281% while increasing customer
lifetime value and repeat buyers 354%.

In this guide, we break down the components of a successful

email marketing program, from list growth to email testing,
that drives business growth, with insights from our email
strategists.

Email is the most mature digital marketing channel there is. With its
unbeatable ROI, it’s no wonder email has been able to stand the
test of time. Email remains strong in the era of social media and
the smartphone. It enhances the mobile experience, proving to be a
powerful complement to emerging communication channels.
— Mandi Moshay, Associate Director, CRM & Email at Tinuiti

Jump to a Section

1. What Is Email Marketing?

2. Email Marketing Best Practices & Basics

3. The 4 Essential Email Campaigns & Email Newsletters

4. Email Design & Creative Strategy

5. Email Testing & Optimization

1. What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the oldest medium for marketing directly to your

customers, but that doesn’t mean it’s outdated. 91% of internet
users send and receive regular emails, making email advertising a
valuable marketing tool.

Email is the most cost-effective marketing channel where you can

reach customers directly in their personal inboxes. With a well-
executed email campaign, you can create a correspondence with
your customers rather than bombarding them with ads.
If you build email newsletters around curated audiences, your
campaigns are more likely to be marketed to consumers who
actually want them.

Why Email Marketing Is Vital for Acquiring and Retaining

Customers

With virtually every ecommerce site, social media platform, or

digital application requiring an email address for sign-up, email isn’t
going anywhere anytime soon.

According to eMarketer’s Email Marketing 2019 report, 91% of

internet users send emails, making it the most popular digital
activity, even out-ranking Search and Digital Video use.

As one of the few owned media channels, marketers have

more control over the content and reach of their email
marketing campaigns, making it a vital component of any
brand’s acquisition and retention marketing mix.

2. Email Marketing Best Practices & Basics

If you want to know how to do email marketing for your

business, then you need to master the basics before moving
onto more advanced processes such as AI and personalization.

This includes setting goals, creating an email list, your first email
newsletter campaigns, and the triggers that automate each
sequence.

Sending mass emails out to customers isn’t always effective, so

creating an organized method to dictate which customers are
receiving what email content is key.

Find the right Email Service Provider (ESP)

Your email service provider is the foundation for your email

marketing operations. Creating campaigns, triggers, and tracking
email performance would be impossible without a dedicated email
service provider.

The good news is that there are more email service providers than
ever before.

Should you use Klaviyo? Mailchimp? Or another? It all depends on

your priorities and budget. If you need help selecting an ESP, check
out How To Select an Email Service Provider.

Create an email list (and grow it)

Managing your customers starts by cataloging who has
subscribed to receive your emails.

Creating a master list of your active customers is the first step.

From there, you can segment your customers by different criteria
that will influence how to do email advertising for your company.

Here are a few examples of basic email segments to consider:

Demographics: Factors like age, gender, and marital status

influence consumer actions

Location: Different locations may call for different products or

services

Purchase Activity: Tracking purchases can help guide what

content you direct to each customer

Engagement levels: Interests based on categories, topics, or

products viewed

The more you can segment your email lists, the more personalized
and relevant your messaging will be for your audience.

For more on growing and optimizing your email list, check out 7
Ways to Build Your Email List Into a Marketing Powerhouse.

Grow your email list with capture forms

There are many different ways to grow your email list, from email
capture forms to checkout and product promotions.

“You can use pop-ups and website messaging in every stage of

your marketing funnel – from acquisition to nurture – to create
highly targeted and refined customer journey touchpoints that
capture and convert leads faster than ever before.”
— Jenna Ochoa, Partner Marketing at Justuno

If you plan to use onsite pop-ups for email capture, you will need to
think about your:

Audience targeting

Timing

Promotional strategy

There are also many ways to optimize sections your website for list
growth, such as your:

Global footer

Checkout checkbox

Navigation bar

Blog signup

Email personalization and privacy are important for longterm

success

Personalizing your emails is essential if you want people to open

and interact with your messaging.

This requires you to know your audience, your segmented lists, and
tailoring your subject lines, copy, and creative to compel your
audience to take action.

“If you’re not personalizing, you’re lost in a sea of emails. It starts

with having CRM data readily available for personalization. Using a
tool like Heap enables you to track user activity with a simple
snippet. This gives you visibility on how users are interacting with
your website and product pages to understand how to personalize
the emails you’re sending out.”
– Kevin Charette, Marketing Operations Manager at Heap

Email newsletters allow customers a way to offer information about

themselves to a brand they trust, so it’s important not to betray that
trust. Using email surveys and quizzes allows you to gather
customer feedback, but it’s important to use that knowledge
responsibly and adhere to email marketing best practices.
Email is a very personal channel, so privacy should also be
top of mind as an email marketer.

Especially with GDPR and CCPA legislation that requires you to

abide by a framework for collecting and using user data. Make sure
you are you have settings that ensure compliance in whichever
countries your customers might reside.

To maintain compliance, brands must tailor their data collection and

use to the specific countries in which they operate or where their
customers might reside. In general, adopting the highest standards
across the board is your best bet to stay ahead of new legislation
pending across several states.

— Mandi Moshay, Associate Director, CRM & Email at Tinuiti

Lean on automation to scale your program

The more you use AI to gather and analyze data, the faster you
will be able to make smarter decisions that can scale your
email marketing performance.

Most of today’s ESPs include machine learning and automation

features that allow marketers to better organize, understand, and
predict customer behaviors based on email engagements.

Make sure you are taking advantage of automated triggers, email

newsletters, and promotional email campaigns that can support
your marketing objectives.

3. The 4 Essential Email Campaigns & Email

Newsletters

While email campaigns vary from company to company, there are a

certain few that are universal no matter what your product or
service.

Let’s take a look at four essential email campaigns your customers

should be receiving on a regular basis.

1. Welcome Newsletter

The most common first interaction with a potential customer is the

welcome newsletter. It’s the best opportunity you have to start your
customer relationship, introduce your brand, and showcase your
mission, products, and services.

This email gives the customer a sense of who you are and what
your company is doing―think of it as you introducing yourself to the
customer.

You’re not limited to sending a single welcome email either.

Mailchimp recently found that sending a series of welcome emails
yielded 51% more revenue than sending a single email.

2. Abandoned Cart Email Campaign

It’s estimated that as many as 80% of carts are abandoned before

purchase. This means that companies are losing out on a
significant amount of sales―luckily, this is a problem that’s easily
remedied.
It’s important to know that an abandoned cart isn’t bad news, it
actually means that a potential customer is at the very end of the
finish line, you just need to help them over with the right abandoned
cart campaign. This can include incentives to compel them to finish
their checkout process.

3. Product Promotion Email Campaign

Most of your customers aren’t checking out your website every day.
This means that if you have a sale or promotion going on, they’re
probably not going to know about it unless you reach out.

By setting up product promotion campaigns, you can inform

consumers about new products or deals they might be interested in
while also increasing brand awareness.

On top of that, tracking the results of product promotion campaigns

can give you valuable insights about customer preference and
shopping habits.

4. Holiday Promotion Email Campaign

Holiday promotion emails are similar to regular product promotions

but are used to specifically promote seasonal holiday sales.

Since consumer shopping trends to increase over the holiday

season, holiday promotion emails can be incredibly effective at
increasing sales.
Remember to constantly optimize your email campaigns with
regular testing.

For a full list of essential email campaigns and sequences, check

out The 8 Email Campaigns Your Business Absolutely Needs In
2020.

4. Email Design & Creative Strategy

In a world where consumers receive hundreds of emails every day,

it’s important to send email campaigns that stand out among
the crowd.

Most of the time, this comes down to the design of your emails.
Humans are wired to process visual information. It’s estimated that
90% of the information processed by the brain is visual, meaning
that humans tend to respond better to images than text.

“The goal of your email design is to reduce the cognitive load. You
want your emails to be clean and concise.”

— Sammi Nutsongtat, Klaviyo Design Specialist

It’s important to create email designs that are appealing to the eye
and attractive enough to cut through the mix of other promotional
emails.

Want to know how to design emails that convert? Learn more with
Anatomy of An Email: Email Template Design Best Practices.

Make it interactive, clean, and concise

If an email is difficult to read or unpleasant to the eye, chances are

it’s going to end up in the trash. To avoid this, use designs that
are clean and simple.

Utilizing bold, straight lines and white space will give your emails an
airy, spacious feel while simultaneously making it easier to find the
most important parts of your email.

Then you can highlight or even animate certain features to make

them stand out even more.

Brand intelligently and maintain consistency

Branding should remain consistent throughout all marketing

channels―that includes email. Any email campaigns that you
launch should carry your company’s branding elements. This
includes:

Logos

Color scheme

Design

Consumers don’t like to be shocked, which is why it’s important to

make sure that your email design stays consistent. Otherwise, your
customers may be turned off or not even recognize your emails.

This doesn’t mean you can’t ever switch things up, however.
Experimenting with your design can lead to innovative new designs
that could even outperform your initial creative. Just make sure to
test them out on a small segment of users first before sending it to
your entire mailing list.

5. Email Testing & Optimization

Email advertising is fluid and changing, which means you can’t just
set it and forget it. Your best results will come from regular email
testing and optimizing to find what works with your audiences.
Email Testing

When it comes to testing your emails, there’s nothing off-

limits―everything should be tested. Most of today’s major ESPs
include features that make it easier to run A/B tests and track
results to find the winning variation.

In our industry, we talk about email A/B testing so frequently that

we assume all email marketers are executing them. The truth
is only 31% of brands test a majority of their emails and 39% don’t
test their emails at all. Why? Because it’s easier not to.

― Jenny Tran, Strategist, CRM & Email at Tinuiti

Your regular email A/B testing should include:

Copy

Imagery

Send times

CTAs

Subject lines

Product offerings

When testing out the various factors in your emails, it’s important to
have set KPIs so that you can measure performance and identify
what’s working and what’s not.

Common KPIs include:

Number of emails delivered

Number of emails opened

Bounce rate

Clickthrough rate

Unsubscribes

Email Optimization

Once you’ve tested out your emails and measured their

performance, it’s time to optimize them. By identifying what
variables need to be improved, you can optimize your emails for
success, test them again, and repeat.

How you should optimize your emails can vary depending on your
initial design. Common optimization techniques include:

Resizing images

Redesigning overlay
Changing the subject line

Optimization should be considered an ongoing process. As trends

and consumers change, so will the success rate of the variables
within your emails.

Build Your Foundation for Email Marketing

Success

Email marketing in 2020 is constantly evolving, which means your

email strategy should be as well.

Use these email marketing best practices to create email

campaigns that are both appealing and increase conversions.

Tinuiti Email Marketing Case Studies:

Two Blind Brothers Increases Revenue 16x

Purium Increases Calendar Campaign Revenue by +269%

Bryan Anthonys Partners with Tinuiti to Increase Email Marketing

Revenue 1,027%

Ready to learn more about email marketing?

What’s New in 2020: Expert Insights for a Successful Email

Marketing Program

CRM & Email Marketing Predictions for 2020

Email Deliverability 101: What is it and why should you care?

The Case for Email Cadence

Diagnosing Low Open Rates in Your Email Program

Better Together: Email & SMS Marketing Guide

The Next Three: Email Triggers To Set Up After Welcome, Browse,

and Cart