1. EMAIL MARKETING
ESSENTIALS
for beginners
Anna C. Lindow
Director of Content Strategy
General Assembly
2. @annalindow
@ga
WHY DO YOU NEED
EMAIL?
Simple. It works.
• Offering discounts and deals
• Announcing new products
• Apologizing for mess-ups
• Soliciting feedback on new offerings
• Testing response to different ideas
3. @annalindow
@ga
HOW DO I GET
STARTED?
1. Choose a provider
2. Start collecting email addresses
3. Determine what you want to communicate to your
users and how frequently
4. Build a campaign
5. Deploy
6. Analyze results
7. Learn from your results and repeat
4. @annalindow
@ga
CHOOSE A PROVIDER
1. How big is my list?
2. How often am I going to mail?
3. How fancy do I need to get with design?
4. How fancy do I need to get with targeting?
5. Do I anticipate growth in the near future?
5. @annalindow
@ga
START COLLECTING EMAIL
ADDRESSES
1. On your site via an email signup box
2. On your facebook page with a plugin
3. Tweet about it
4. Ask people to sign up at physical events
5. Team up with people in a similar space and cross-
promote one another
6. @annalindow
@ga
DETERMINE THE WHAT +
THE WHEN
1. Determine a schedule. Weekly? Monthly? Bi-
Weekly? Every day?
2. Can you realistically maintain a newsletter?
3. Do you need to do transactional emails to notify
your users of things?
Pro Tip : Be clear about the difference between
“campaigns” and “transactional emails”
7. @annalindow
@ga
BUILD A CAMPAIGN
1. Choose a template (or, if you’re fancy, code it
yourself!)
2. Write your copy
3. Test
4. Test again
5. Make your friends test
6. Do the spam check in your ESP
7. Seriously, one more test
Pro Tip: HTML + CSS are different for email than for
regular web development! Be warned!
8. @annalindow
@ga
DEPLOY
1. A/B Test
2. Try before lunchtime on weekdays
3. See when your users are opening
4. Be sensitive to multiple time zones if that’s part of
your business
9. @annalindow
@ga
LEARN FROM YOUR
RESULTS + REPEAT
1. Open Rate
2. Click Through Rate
3. Social Sharing
4. Bounces
5. Spam Complaints
6. Conversions
