How to Start an Email Marketing Business in 2024

What Is an Email Marketing Business?

An email marketing business sends email campaigns from its email platform, effectively using it as a marketing channel to increase customer numbers and drive sales. 

It combines marketing strategy with technology and business savvy to create a significant return on investment by sending email messages to an email list to turn subscribers into customers and clients.

Based on our first-hand experience, while using your Gmail or Outlook account or other platform (as examples) is possible, some small business owners utilize email marketing software to track their email marketing goals. 

Going down this path allows you to view reports and conversions more easily and can be an effective online marketing approach for your organization.

Additionally, this type of business requires an effective strategy and often benefits from automation, which frees up company resources. 

To be successful, the email content must be engaging and relevant — it often relies on quality content in your online advertising, a high degree of knowledge, and a focus on building relationships with your target audience to achieve high open rates and responses and increase your active contacts list.

The aim is not just to send offers to an email list — the strategy involves testing various subject line ideas and email templates. A successful email marketing business needs segmentation to tailor messages for specific facets of its audience to grow its online leads. 

Email marketing can operate on various email marketing platforms, such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact. These businesses have tools that help email marketers refine their campaigns to improve engagement and deliverability in bulk. 

Email marketing services can also ensure that the email list complies with regulations — something everyone operating in the online marketing space should remember!

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that involves sending emails to a subscriber list to make sales by promoting products or services. The list can be sent to potential customers or be used to enhance customer engagement for existing customers.

Email marketing is often most successful when combined with other forms of internet-based marketing, such as social media, video content, and search engine paid ads. 

When someone has received your email marketing, you’re not trying to sell your product from scratch to make web conversions. Instead, you can drive more visitors and online traffic to your websites and hopefully encourage them to part with their dollars!

Email marketing campaigns can range from regular newsletters to simple email content advising subscribers of sales or new products. The purpose is to move subscribers along the sales funnel, converting potential customers into repeat customers and encouraging more signups. 

The Importance of Email Marketing for Businesses

Based on our observations, email marketing is a great choice for communicating with customers in the online business world. It allows businesses to reach out directly to their audience via their inbox and even address them personally by their names. 

This is unlike other marketing avenues and areas, such as social media — one of the major reasons to consider adding it to your marketing strategy toolbox!

With metrics like open rates and click-through rates (how many clicks are going through to your website), it’s easy to gauge the effectiveness of a marketing strategy. 

As it benefits from automation — as does everything in marketing! — it’s an easy way to contact customers without increasing workload or costs, meaning you won’t spend millions. 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing

While email marketing has advantages, you should still be aware of the downsides. 

As per our expertise, though adding it to your marketing strategy makes sense, relying on email marketing alone will not solely increase your sales percentages. 

Instead, combine it with others you’re already using to increase your digital presence and be at the forefront of potential customers' minds before you even send your first email!

Advantages of Email Marketing

• Cost-effective

Email marketing is cheaper than other marketing channels, which is especially attractive for small companies and startups.

• Targeted

Thanks to segmentation and personalization, email campaigns can be tailored to particular demographics as well as to the interests and behaviors of list subscribers.

• Engaging

As emails land directly in your subscribers' inboxes, engagement rates are often higher than other marketing types.

• Easily optimized

Thanks to analytics, email marketers can quickly analyze what is working and what isn’t to make better optimization decisions.

• Increases revenue

Email marketing is a great way to drive sales, particularly when your emails contain offers, discounts, and incentives to purchase. 

Challenges of Email Marketing

• Failed delivery

Emails can end up in spam folders or have high bounce rates, particularly if you’re not using a trusted email list buying service like BookYourData!

• Hard to stand out

Modern inboxes are getting increasingly cluttered, so it can be hard to stay at the top and grab the reader's attention among all the other marketing emails.

• Compliance

With new email regulations such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM, email marketers must ensure they comply with strict laws surrounding the use of personal data and contact information, such as email addresses. 

• Labor intensive to maintain lists

Ensuring your email marketing list is active and relevant takes continuous effort with various elements, such as managing subscribers, opt-ins, and the unsubscribe process. 

Steps to Starting an Email Marketing Business

To start your own email marketing business, you need to plan carefully and have a clear email marketing strategy to allow you to meet your business goals. 

Luckily, we’re here to give you some of our top tips and a step-by-step guide for starting your email marketing business!

Define Your Goals and Audience

Our analysis has shown that you should define what you want your email marketing efforts to achieve. This could be:

• Increasing your web traffic
• Improving customer loyalty
• Increasing online sales.

Understanding your target audience is also key. You need to focus on ensuring your messages resonate with your subscribers and establishing yourself as an authority to enhance your campaigns' effectiveness and relevance.

Don’t make this a sidebar element of your business — knowing your customer is the key to driving more sales!

Choose an Email Marketing Service Provider

When you’re ready to launch your first email marketing campaign, choose an email service provider that suits your business needs. 

There are a lot of platforms out there, including HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Constant Contact, all of which offer a range of features and automation tools to run email campaigns. 

When choosing a provider, ensure it provides high levels of customer service, user-friendly analytical looks, and allows for integration with other marketing tools.

Build and Segment Your Email List

Your email marketing list forms the backbone for your email campaigns. Use signup forms on your website, blog, or social media pages to collect email addresses. 

Don’t forget to make it as easy as possible for potential customers, too, so that all they have to do is fill in their information and click a button. The easier the process, the fewer mental (and physical) barriers you’re putting in the way of sign-ups.

Segmenting your list is also key — your subscriber list can be divided into groups based on demographics, purchase history, and engagement levels, allowing for targeting email content and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Design and Create Effective Email Campaigns

Email templates that align with your aesthetics and branding are key to your email marketing success. 

Ensure your email design includes your company logo and colors, and use an easy-to-read layout. 

Focus on crafting and drafting compelling copy for your body text and using engaging subject lines and headlines that grab the readers’ attention. Then, proofread your work before you hit send!

The Importance of Tracking and Measuring Results

Measuring results will give you insights about what’s working and what isn’t regarding your email marketing efforts. 

Your ESP’s reporting tools will monitor click-through rates, conversion rates, and how they relate to your ROI.

The data can be used to adjust strategies and improve future email campaigns, leading to better performance and more success in the future.

Best Practices for Email Marketing Businesses

Regarding email marketing, certain practices have been shown to enhance engagement and conversion rates among subscribers. However, this requires a strategy that focuses on the target audience.

Building and Managing Email Lists

Our track record demonstrates that your email lists are possibly the most important tool you have. So that your email marketing achieves high open rates and demands engagement, you’ll need to pay close attention to who you’re contacting in the first place.

Incorporating a seed list strategy into your email campaigns can significantly enhance deliverability and ensure your communications reach the inbox.

The Importance of Organic List Building

Organically growing your list means you’re growing your list out of subscribers who have volunteered to receive your emails. This ensures you are communicating with people who have an interest in your brand or services. 

It also improves engagement and effectively reduces bounce rates and emails ending up in the spam folder.

Segmenting Your Email List for Better Targeting

List segmentation is when you divide your list into smaller, targeting segments based on various factors. This includes:

• Demographics
• Customer behavior
• Purchase history. 

This allows for more personalized emails, increased customer engagement, and measurable results. 

For example, a haircare company could segment a list based on the type of products a customer had previously bought. This would then allow them to target their marketing for curly hair products towards people who had previously bought similar products. 

Regularly Cleaning and Updating Your List

Maintaining a clean and up-to-date list is key. List cleaning means removing inactive subscribers and incorrect email addresses and updating information about your subscribers. This leads to higher deliverability rates. 

Designing Engaging Email Content

The content of your emails is one of the most important aspects of your email marketing. After all, if your content is not engaging and relevant to your audience, you won’t see any results!

Crafting Compelling Subject Lines

The subject line is the first thing that grabs a reader’s attention and prompts them to open an email. It needs to be concise, to the point, and intrigue the reader into opening the email. 

Using Responsive and Mobile-Friendly Designs

Most users open emails on their mobile phones, so using a responsible email design is key. 

Make sure your emails use mobile-friendly designs that look good and are easy to read no matter the screen size. This will improve user experience and engagement. 

Incorporating Strong Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

Your CTA, or call to action, prompts your subscriber to take the next step, which could be making a purchase, redeeming a coupon, or even visiting your website. 

Make sure your CTA stands out in your emails and that it is clear what the subscriber should do next. 

Personalization and Automation

Personalization makes your customers feel seen, and automation saves you and your company time and allows for your model to be scalable.

The Power of Personalized Emails

Personalized content is tailored content that focuses on the subscribers’ interest and their previous interactions with your company. 

You can use data and insights to help you craft personalized emails that make your customers feel valued — this will lead to improved loyalty and increased revenue. 

Setting Up Automated Email Campaigns (eg, Welcome Series, Cart Abandonment)

Time is money, and automation is a huge money-saving strategy for an email marketer. 

Ensuring you have emails that are triggered by customer actions will boost engagement. 

Send welcome emails to new subscribers at signup, and if a customer abandons their online cart, send cart abandonment emails to remind them to finish their purchase. 

Using Dynamic Content for Relevance

Dynamic content changes based on the information, behavior, and preferences of the subscribers. 

This could include:

• Giving out product recommendations
• Recommending local events
• Giving exclusive offers tailored to past purchases or locations. 

Testing and Optimization

Using testing and optimization allows email marketers to respond to trends and the success of their campaigns in real-time. 

The Role of A/B Testing in Email Campaigns

Also known as split testing, A/B testing is when a marketer sends two versions of an email and then measures open and click-through rates to see which performs better. 

The emails can differ in subject lines, email templates, or CTAs. 

Analyzing Key Email Metrics (Open Rate, Click-Through Rate, etc)

Key email metrics can provide insight into how email campaigns are performing. 

Looking at open rates, click-through rates, etc., helps marketers understand subscriber engagement and see what things are working and what isn’t. 

Continuous Iteration Based on Feedback

Use subscriber feedback and data to constantly adapt and improve your email campaigns. 

Use feedback to revise your strategies and tactics, ensuring your campaigns’ relevance and success. This way, you can align your customer needs with your business goals, resulting in better ROI and more satisfied customers. 

Ensuring Deliverability and Compliance

With the rules regarding cookies and email marketing constantly changing, email marketers must stay informed regarding rules and regulations. 

Techniques to Improve Email Deliverability

To ensure your email deliverability is optimized, you must follow practices such as ensuring a good sender reputation and using a well-regarded email service provider. 

Regularly cleaning your email list of old, inactive email addresses in our experimentation and usage can also help improve engagement rate and deliverability.

It’s also essential to avoid triggering spam filters — terms like “free”, “win”, and “guarantee” in the subject line often trigger spam filters, as do too many links and attachments. 

Adhering to GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and Other Email Regulations

Compliance with email regulations such as GDPR in Europe and CAN-SPAM in the United States is crucial for any email marketing business. 

These laws dictate consent requirements, privacy standards, and unsubscribe options. To comply, businesses must ensure that they have explicit permission to send emails, provide clear opt-out mechanisms, and offer transparency about subscriber data usage and storage.

The Impact of Sender Reputation

Sender reputation is a score that email service providers assign based on the quality of an email sender’s campaigns and how their recipients react. 

Factors that influence this include:

• Complaint rates
• Bounce rates
• Spam trap hits.

A good sender reputation improves campaign effectiveness and reduces the chance of your emails languishing in spam folders. 

Leveraging Advanced Email Marketing Features

Make the most of advanced marketing features to ensure your email marketing company meets its goals!

Exploring Advanced Segmentation and Targeting

Advanced segmentation means dividing your email lists into groups based on detailed criteria. This can include user behavior and purchase history and allows more relevant content to be delivered to each segment of your list. 

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Email Marketing

Using AI in email marketing can greatly enhance the segmentation of your email list. 

AI can also be used to optimize sending schedules, personalize your content, and analyze your email campaigns. 

Integration with CRM and Other Digital Platforms

Integrating email marketing tools with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems gives marketers a clear view of customer interactions across platforms. 

This is crucial for messaging, nurturing leads, and providing the best possible customer experience throughout the customer journey. 

Exploring AMP emails

AMP (accelerated mobile pages) for emails is a technology that allows emails to include dynamic content without the customer navigating away from their inbox. 

This commonly includes:

• Filling out forms
• Replying to event invitations
• Browsing product selections

FAQs

Why is segmenting the email list crucial?

Segmenting your list is vital as it allows for communication to be personalized, so you can target your subscribers' specific interests and behaviors. This increases engagement, open rates, and click-through rates and gives you a better ROI. 

How often should a business send marketing emails?

It’s essential to balance keeping subscribers informed of your products/ services and feeling spammy. There is no hard and fast rule on this, as it depends on what kind of products or services you offer. Keeping a close eye on engagement rates and analytics is key — this way, you can adjust your strategy to meet your customers' needs. 

Are there legal constraints to be aware of in email marketing?

Definitely — email marketing is governed by regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. and GDPR in Europe. These laws are designed to ensure sender transparency and provide the option to opt-out. If your business doesn’t comply, it can lead to big fines and damage your reputation.

Key Takeaways

An email marketing business uses email lists to increase customer engagement and sales. Strategic email marketing success relies on using relevant content and following best practices for subject lines, segmentation, and templates. 

Deliverability is key for email marketing, and using techniques to adhere to GDPR and CAN-SPAM is essential. Maintaining a strong sender reputation helps to ensure your email campaigns are successful. 

A good email marketer constantly measures and tracks their results and adapts based on analysis of techniques. Using advanced segmentation, AI, and automation can significantly elevate the success of email marketing campaigns. 

The quality of an email list makes a huge difference to the success of email marketing, and while building your lists organically can take time, using a trusted provider like BookYourData goes a long way toward ensuring deliverability and engagement.

Ready to start your email marketing business journey? Sign up today for 10 free leads and start building your lists with the #1 ranked sales intelligence platform.

[CTA1]

[CTA2]