Email Marketing Strategy

An email marketing strategy is a structured plan for how a business should use email marketing to interact with customers and reach specific communication goals. It involves building email campaigns, sending them to subscribers, and achieving various marketing objectives, including higher brand awareness, better website traffic, more qualified prospects, and improved sales.

In this video, Caleb Smith, a marketer at SendPulse, explains how to design an email marketing strategy.

In this article, we’ll uncover why it’s important to have an email marketing strategy and how to create one. We’ll also provide you with the best strategies that sell.

Why is it essential to have an email marketing strategy?

An email marketing strategy is crucial for every business because it helps marketers outline an effective plan of action necessary to reach their target audiences with relevant messages. When you create a strategy related to email marketing, you can better discover your audience, understand what they like and need, and deliver content that resonates with their pain points. With all this information, you can group your subscribers into segments based on their behavior, preferences, purchasing history, or stage in the buyer’s journey. This way, your emails will be more effective and timely.

Personalized messages tailored to your audience’s needs allow you to connect directly and interact with them at the right moment. You can also send subscribers discounts, promo codes, and other enticing offers directly to their inboxes, increasing products’ chances of being noticed. Consistent, valuable, and relevant email campaigns allow you to build trust, nurture prospects, and establish stronger relationships with existing customers. They foster sales and customer loyalty, which is important for every brand.

When you deliver emails to subscribers’ inboxes regularly without being intrusive, you can stay in the minds of consumers. Prospects who see your brand name often are more likely to purchase from you rather than from a business they’ve never heard of. This results in better brand awareness and recognition.

Now that you know some of the most essential reasons to develop an email marketing strategy, it’s time to proceed to the next section and figure out how to create one for your business.

How to create an email marketing strategy?

Developing an email marketing strategy can be challenging if you don’t know where to start. That’s why we’ll provide the steps necessary for a successful strategy.

1. Set email marketing goals. Every email campaign should have clear, specific, and realistic objectives. These can include generating more leads, increasing sales, improving customer loyalty, or strengthening relationships with your subscribers. When you have SMART goals at hand, you know what you need to accomplish to reach them effectively.
2. Pick the necessary email marketing tools. Finding the right tools is one of the most crucial steps to setting up a successful email marketing strategy. A marketer needs an Email Service Provider (ESP) with an automation tool, among other useful features. With a multifunctional marketing platform like SendPulse, you’ll be able to build professional email campaigns and deliver personalized messages to the right people according to your schedule.
3. Determine the target audience. You should also focus on building your email subscriber list. To do this, you need to identify the target audience your company serves. For instance, if you own a baby clothes store, your target audience primarily consists of mothers-to-be. Thus, it makes sense to use conventional means to get the email addresses of this demographic.
4. Identify the appropriate list-building tactics. Subscription forms are an excellent way to build mailing lists. Consider creating one for your website. To drive even more subscriptions, you need to add a lead magnet. Useful reports, discounts, bundle offers, free tools, trials, and templates will encourage your site visitors to share their email addresses more eagerly. When creating a subscription form, ensure it contains a minimum number of fields to avoid scaring off users.
5. Divide your mailing list into segments. Segmentation is an effective tactic for sending highly targeted email campaigns. You can segment your mailing lists based on location, gender, occupation, age, behavior, etc. This enables you to deliver relevant and personalized messages that resonate with your subscribers’ needs.
6. Identify the types of emails to send. There’s a great variety of emails you can send to your audience. The choice of email style depends on the aim of each specific campaign. For example, if users have just joined your mailing list, you can send them a welcome email. This is the perfect moment to introduce your company and unveil the benefits of your product. When users add items to their shopping carts but don’t check out, you can always deliver abandoned cart emails to boost sales.
7. Create a schedule for sending emails. To ensure subscribers read your promotional messages, find the best time to send them. Experiment and determine when subscribers are most engaged.
8. Format the email content. For a successful email marketing strategy, messages in promotional emails should be presented perfectly. Carefully choose formats, fonts, and text sizes depending on the type of emails you are creating.
9. Optimize your emails for mobile. According to Statista, 49.3% of people use their smartphones to open emails. Therefore, it makes sense to optimize email content for mobile to reach this audience. Some ways to ensure that email content is mobile-friendly include creating short subject lines, using single-column templates, displaying small images, adding visible call-to-action buttons, avoiding menu bars, and applying a large font size.
10. Take advantage of A/B testing. With A/B testing, you can determine which email copy works best by swapping out different aspects of your email, such as subject lines, images, CTAs, headlines, offers, and so forth. When you have a chance to test several emails, you can identify which of them resonates with your target audience better and boost your strategy’s performance.
11. Monitor email performance reports. Adjusting your strategy based on these reports and feedback is crucial for refining your email marketing efforts. Stay attuned to how subscribers perceive your campaigns to identify areas needing attention quickly. Alternatively, you can use specialized email marketing software like SendPulse, which provides built-in analytics to track key metrics. With this platform, you can monitor open rates, unsubscribe rates, click-through rates, deliveries, bounces, spam complaints, and more.

Now that you know how to create an email marketing strategy, you should also explore the strategies that will help you increase sales for your company. Let’s dive in.

In this section, we'll share some effective tips and best practices to empower your email marketing strategy. These techniques will help you boost sales, increase customer satisfaction, and build loyalty.

1. Provide an incentive in exchange for an email address

Consider adding a lead magnet to your subscription form to drive users’ interest. With its help, you can significantly increase the number of subscribers and make a lead's first purchase a less stressful experience. Give your site visitors an incentive they can't pass up. Remember that it should be valuable for your potential clients. You can offer free shipping on users' first order or a coupon to get a discount on their first purchase. To speed up your leads' decision-making process, invoke fear of missing out and make it a time-limited offer.

Below is a lead magnet HubSpot uses to attract new prospects. In exchange, site visitors must provide their email addresses to download the company’s report.

2. Segment subscribers right from the subscription form

Segmentation is a must for eCommerce. Your store may have various categories for men, women, and children. If you send emails promoting kids' wear or women's clothing to men, your email open rate and user engagement will suffer. With segmentation, you can send targeted and relevant campaigns to each user on your mailing list. Provide some additional fields to get the information you need. For example, you may request users’ gender or information about the categories of goods they’re interested in.

After subscribers fill in your form, this data will be added as a variable to your mailing list. Then, you can choose either a specific variable or a mailing list segment to send your email campaign to. As a result, every subscriber will receive the offers they’re interested in.

Look at Puma's subscription form. In exchange for an email address, users receive a first-purchase discount and are invited to share their date of birth and shopping preferences to receive special offers.

3. Send a welcome email

A welcome email is your opportunity to make a strong first impression on potential clients. To engage and educate your audience more effectively, you can choose to send a single email or a series of three messages.

A welcome email series can help you achieve many goals. You can set a friendly tone of communication with your brand, tell subscribers about the benefits of choosing your company, share top-rated goods, or make a special offer.

Below is Coursera’s welcome email, which invites new subscribers to update their profiles and set their preferences for even better-personalized experiences.

4. Segment clients based on their behavior

Go beyond standard segmentation based on information about your subscribers. Hundreds of customers visit your online store every day, browse product cards, add items to their shopping carts and wishlists, and make purchases. You can track their behavior and create corresponding segments for cart abandoners and users who view the same pages and add the same goods to their shopping carts. Then, you can send them promotional campaigns and increase sales.

Below, you can see the type of emails subscribers receive after they request to cancel their Netflix membership. The streaming service provides information about the effective date of the cancellation and a visible call to action, encouraging customers to restart their subscriptions as soon as they want to enjoy Netflix shows and movies.

5. Upsell and cross-sell

With these marketing techniques, you can build customer retention and loyalty and increase sales. Both tactics involve selling more than a customer intends to buy.

Marketers use cross-selling to encourage users to buy complementary products in addition to their orders. For example, brands often offer a phone case or earphones with a smartphone, as these items are frequently used together, making the promotion highly relevant. Upselling, however, involves offering more expensive or upgraded products than the customer initially considered. Additionally, you can drive more sales by providing links to related products, helping customers complete a look or enhance their purchase.

For example, Oysho uses an effective upselling strategy that allows customers to see a complete look at the model, including a product they like first. They can see the look instantly and find additional products they would like to buy.

6. Send milestone emails

Milestone emails help build long-lasting relationships with clients. This type of email usually indicates a certain stage of the customer lifecycle, such as a client’s birthday or anniversary. Due to their personalized nature, these campaigns have great open rates and CTR. To send a milestone email, you need to collect data such as customers’ birth dates, subscription dates, first purchases, or any other significant events.

With this data, you can congratulate your clients on these important events and thank them for being loyal to your brand. Reward them with a unique offer. They will appreciate your care and return to your brand.

For example, Sensatia Botanicals invites customers to enjoy their 20% off birthday discount. The email contains a promo code that will be available for a few days, creating a fear of missing out.

7. Run re-engagement campaigns

It is critical to keep your mailing list healthy. Your subscribers may lose interest in your brand, no longer need your services, or simply forget about you. But don’t hurry to remove them from your mailing list. You can win them back with a re-engagement campaign.

Use this email to find out why your subscribers aren’t interacting with your brand. After users follow the unsubscribe link, you can provide a form with multiple reasons for them to choose from. If you’re not ready to give up, offer an incentive to win them back and remind them about the benefits of being a part of your community. It can be an exclusive offer or a discount.

Below, you can see how Duolingo strives to win back its users using email campaigns. This language-learning platform encourages people who haven’t opened the app for a long time to get back on track.

8. Reward loyal customers

In addition to selling products and providing seamless support to your customers, you should also appreciate their loyalty with special incentives. Implementing a loyalty program is a perfect way to do this. By rewarding existing clients with gifts, discounts, and points, you’ll show them your care and encourage them to stick with your brand.

Below is an example of an excellent incentive from Sol de Janeiro, which begins when users sign up for the brand's newsletter. Subscribers receive exclusive rewards, perks, and points that can later be redeemed for complimentary products.

9. Develop a referral program

A referral program can help you bring qualified prospects ready to purchase into your business with minimal effort and resources. You can invite your clients to participate in the program by sending an email campaign. Besides attracting new customers, you can also encourage existing customers to spread the word about your business. This will help you establish brand awareness and recognition.

Let’s take Olaplex’s referral program. It starts right after you provide your name and email address in a subscription form. The brand offers its new customers to give their friends shampoo for free and get one for themselves after their referrals when they make a second purchase totaling 75 dollars.

10. Run sales for holidays

Sales are an excellent way to increase exposure to your brand and increase conversions. By offering discounts for holidays like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Independence Day, Black Friday, and others, you are more likely to drive interest and encourage customers to buy your products. You can also use techniques to boost fear of missing out, such as limiting the time of the offer, adding a countdown timer, writing an eye-catching subject line, etc.

Below, WizzAir invites its clients to celebrate New Year’s Eve by enjoying a 24% discount on flights in 2025.

11. Send emails with promo codes

Sending promo codes to subscribers is another effective way to drive more purchases. People often seek out enticing offers, so giving them this opportunity can be highly rewarding. Consider sending promo codes that provide a price reduction during special events like an annual sale, holidays, customer birthdays, or anniversaries with your brand. Any occasion is a great chance to capture attention and boost sales through email marketing.

Below, you can see how Puma drives sales with its semi-annual promo code.

12. Create limited-time offers with countdown timers and free shipping

Limited-time offers are highly recommended for customers’ immediate action, sales, and buzz around your company. They create a sense of urgency, resulting in faster purchasing decisions without considering all the pros and cons. When you add a countdown timer or free shipping to such deals, customers will be even more excited about buying from you. Such perks are perfect for bringing more loyal customers to your business and attracting first-time buyers. Besides repeat purchases, you can also sell seasonal stock and avoid excess inventory.

Below, you can see how MAC Cosmetics creates a sense of urgency by setting time constraints and offering free shipping on orders over 100 dollars.

13. Tailor emails based on customers’ needs

Personalizing emails allows you to resonate with your target audience’s needs, preferences, pain points, and interests. You should segment your subscribers into groups based on their purchasing history, items explored, or abandoned products. Then, you can send different emails to audience segments based on their behavior or completed purchases. This will ensure that your email campaigns are relevant and timely, making it easier to encourage repeat purchases. Personalization also increases your open and click-through rates, which leads to new purchases.

Below, you can see how Temu encourages fear of missing out by informing prospective buyers that items in their shopping carts are nearly sold out. This strategy helps the business get customers to check out faster to secure the necessary items.

All in all, your email marketing strategy contributes to the overall success and performance of your business. By reaching out to customers right through their inboxes, you can interact with them and inform them about enticing offers, product launches, and new feature releases, and deliver valuable information. When you have a well-thought-out strategy and all the necessary tools for automating processes related to email marketing, you’ll be able to foster relationships with customers and attain your marketing goals faster.

Last Updated: 10.01.2025