How To Make an Email List: 13 List Building Tips

How To Make an Email List_ List Building Tips (1)

Give your best tip for small businesses to make an email list. What is one thing they should consider when building the list?


To help you build an email list successfully as a small business, we asked marketing professionals and business owners this question for their best insights. From installing a pop-up form or slider on your website to offering a free product or service to collect emails, there are several tips that would help you get potential customers to sign up to receive email communication about your products and services.


Here are 13 list-building tips these leaders follow to build their email lists:

  • Install a Pop-Up Form or Slider on Your Website
  • Create Lead Ads on Facebook
  • Don’t Buy an Email List But Use Opt-in Pages
  • Use Giveaway Strategies to Build Email Leads Quickly
  • Create a Value Proposition on Social Media
  • Personalize Content and Offers
  • Offer Exclusive Content
  • Collaborate With Other Businesses
  • Focus on Offering Quality Over Quantity
  • Use Social Media Sharing Option in Your Emails
  • Seek to Build Relationships
  • Start as Early as You Can
  • Offer a Free Product or Service to Collect Emails

Install a Pop-Up Form or Slider on Your Website

The pop-up form works very prominently for your website. And it can easily get the attention of visitors, and make them agree to click on any link or sign up. But remember that, sometimes pop-ups may look annoying and gather a negative reputation. To avoid this, you can use some proven ways to make it effective instead of annoying. Like: 

– Show them after they stay on your site for 1-2 minutes.
– Set the popup to show every visitor once or twice a week. Showing them a pop-up on every page really annoys them. 

If you don’t like the idea of a popup, think about a slider. It works somewhat like a pop-up, but only appears when a visitor slides down the page a bit. Plus, it can be set in the corner of the page which means that the visitors will have attention, but if they don’t like to press skip, they can still continue scrolling down and get a full view of the page.

Daniel Foley, Director of Marketing, SEO Stack

Create Lead Ads on Facebook

Since most small businesses undervalue the effectiveness of Facebook ads, I believe creating lead ads on Facebook to be the single most crucial consideration when developing an email list. Facebook’s 2 billion monthly users and targeting options make it a powerful resource for discovering new clients and expanding email databases. Because Facebook lead ads let you create a form that potential customers can fill out without leaving the social media platform, they are especially useful for growing your email list. The freebies advertised in your ad could be anything from an ebook to a checklist, a product sample to an in-depth guide. Lead ads on Facebook are effective if you’ve targeted the right audience and your lead magnets are particularly compelling to them.

Gerrid Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, Joy Organics

Don’t Buy an Email List But Use Opt-in Pages

I don’t recommend buying an existing email list from a third party because the demographics and interests of those people might not fit your target consumer base criteria. Additionally, the chances are high that many of those emails are no longer active. If businesses want to build an email list, I suggest they do so with opt-in pages and exchange value-filled content for the prospect’s contact details. Paid advertisements are the way to go to drive traffic to their opt-in page. Email marketing is beneficial because it helps maximize a business’s potential revenue. However, email marketing works best to nurture existing patrons and develop relationships to increase customer lifetime value.

Tristan Buenconsejo, Founder and Managing Director, TriBu LinkBuilding

Use Giveaway Strategies to Build Email Leads Quickly

A solid strategy for growing targeted email leads fast is to use a giveaway strategy through social media. Giveaways build buzz around a brand by offering discounts or prizes to users who sign up for emails and tag their friends. Giveaways can quickly and effectively persuade many leads to sign up for email subscriptions depending on the prizes. Signing up is low-risk for users and relatively low-cost for businesses that gain additional traffic and conversions from their newfound customers.

To retain new users most efficiently, companies must be sure to follow up these giveaway campaigns with other campaigns designed to engage user action with a brand. If brands fail to follow up, they may see a drop in their newly acquired leads after announcing the winners of the giveaway.

Zach Goldstein, CEO & Founder, Public Rec

Create a Value Proposition on Social Media

Use social media to your advantage. Grow a following there and have a link to your email list for special offers. You need to have a value proposition when getting people to sign up for emails, and that could include a chance to be alerted to new product drops, sales, or even a discount code on their next purchase.

Ann McFerran, CEO, Glamnetic

Personalize Content and Offers

Everyone loves being treated as unique individuals, and when a business accommodates this all-important factor in their email promotions, the response is bound to be favorable. After all, who doesn’t enjoy the right kind of attention? In personalizing email content and even delivering offers that are unique to a customer, a small business is able to provide services that few larger companies can. This helps them stand apart from their competition and gives customers a valid reason to do business with them.

Azmaira Maker, Ph.D., Founding Director, Aspiring Families

Offer Exclusive Content

If your business has a ton of content, you can leverage email sign-ups so that only members can gain access to it. This is an effective way to build up your email list as you’re offering exclusive content in exchange for just an email address. The content you offer them can range from articles and ebooks to even educational courses and videos. If you are an eCommerce site, you may even be able to give your members access to exclusive deals and first-dibs on new releases.

It’s up to you if you want membership to be paid, but if it’s free, make sure this is clear to your audience as most people will be turned away from the initial sign-up request. Offering exclusive content through email sign-ups will help you build a list of valuable members as these are ones who are frequent viewers of your business and website.

Bill Lyons, CEO, Griffin Funding

Collaborate With Other Businesses

One of the best ways to grow your email list is to collaborate with other businesses, especially those in complementary industries. If you’re in e-commerce, partner with a local brick-and-mortar business to offer a discount to customers who sign up for your email list. Or, if you’re a B2B company, collaborate with another business to co-host an event or webinar – you can promote the event through your email list and collect sign-ups at the same time. Collaboration is not only a great way to grow your email list, but also build relationships with other businesses in your industry.

Todd Saunders, General Manager, BIG Safety

Focus on Offering Quality Over Quantity

There are several reasons why focusing on quality over quantity is the best tip for building email lists. First, when businesses focus on quality, they are more likely to attract subscribers who are actually interested in what they have to offer. This means that businesses are more likely to generate leads and sales from their email list.

Secondly, when businesses focus on quality, they are more likely to build a list of subscribers who are less likely to unsubscribe. This means that businesses will be able to keep their email list active for a longer period of time, which will ultimately lead to more leads and sales. Finally, when businesses focus on quality, they are more likely to create a better overall experience for their subscribers. This means that subscribers are more likely to remain on the list and continue to engage with the business.

Farzad Rashidi, Lead Innovator, Respona

Use Social Media Sharing Option in Your Emails

Using the social media sharing option in your emails increases click-through rate (CTR) as compared to not using it. And you can engage more people to become part of your email list. Additionally, you can get many more benefits by adding a social sharing option in your email like: 

– Giving a sharing option to your recipient allows you to increase your reach. If your existing customers like something they share it with their family and co-workers which drives more potential customers to join your email list. 

– It improves your SEO ranking because too many shares on social media engage good traffic and more link backs to your website, which will definitely improve your SEO. 

Remember that, you can further find out which offers people love to share. So you can consider this next time to get more subscribers.

Joe Troyer, Chief Marketing Officer, ReviewGrower

Seek to Build Relationships

It can often be treated like throwing paint at a canvas to see what sticks, but actually, a smaller more purposefully built email list can be much more successful, especially when it comes to press contacts.

Firstly, you will contact people who are actually keen to hear from you, and you won’t be getting highlighted as spam by certain journalists or even entire journalist teams. When growing this list, I think it is best practice to reach out first, introduce yourself and your business and ask them if they would mind you reaching out with future events or announcements. This more personal touch is much more likely to see a positive response, as opposed to them just starting to receive emails from somebody they’ve never interacted with, and a company they’ve never heard from

Alex Mastin, CEO and Founder, Home Grounds

Start as Early as You Can

Start as early as you can. It’s like with investing: it’s always a good time to start but you always wish you bought that Bitcoin in 2012. As soon as you start getting your first leads, sign-ups, or customers, add them to the email list (of course, you need to ask first). Even if you don’t start sending them emails right away, you’ll have them in your database and you can always come back to them.

Marelle Ellen, CMO, Promoty

Offer a Free Product or Service to Collect Emails

One tactic I’ve found to be quite effective for building an email list is to give away a free product or service. To be clear, the product or service shouldn’t require much time, effort or money. For example, if you operate a local bakery, think about offering a free mini cookie if the person signs up for your email newsletter. If you operate a law firm, it could be an invite to a free 30-minute webinar with a licensed attorney. The key is the free product or service should be enticing enough to lure the consumer to sign-up for your email list, but not enough to completely satisfy their needs.

Alaina Ross, Co-Founder & Registered Nurse, Sleep Family

14 Best Practices for Using Website Pop-ups

Best Practices for Using Website Pop-ups

What are the best practices when implementing website pop-ups?


To help you find effective ways to implement pop-ups for your website, we asked content marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best insights. From personalizing pop-ups to the customer lifecycle to using an enticing sign-up phrase, there are several ways to best create and feature your pop-ups to get positive response from visitors to your website.


Here are 14 best practices these leaders follow to implement website pop-ups:

  • Personalize Pop-Ups to the Customer Lifecycle
  • Make Sure Your Pop-Up is in the Best Interest of Your Customer
  • Match Pop-Up Timing With User Behavior
  • Go for a Short-Timed Pop-Up
  • Be Creative With Your Pop-Up Message
  • A/B-Test Ahead of Time
  • Collaborate With Websites in Your Niche
  • Make Your Pop-Up Simple and User-Friendly
  • Let Your Email Pop-Up Appear Toward the Exit
  • Use Visuals for Your Pop-Ups
  • Keep Pop-Ups as Unobtrusive as Possible
  • Make Your Pop-Up Easy to Close
  • Avoid Leaving a Bad Experience With Your Pop-Up
  • Use an Enticing Sign-Up Phrase With Your Pop-Up

Personalize Pop-Ups to the Customer Lifecycle

A huge mistake I see across all industries is serving irrelevant popups to visitors who have already done the thing you’re asking them to do. For example, serving newsletter subscription popups to visitors who are already subscribed, serving content download popups to visitors who have already downloaded that content, serving free trial popups for visitors who are already customers. Not only is it very annoying to visitors, but it’s also a huge wasted opportunity to keep visitors moving along and engaged in the next step of the customer journey.

Personalize pop-ups to move them along to the next step. For example, get anonymous traffic to subscribe to the newsletter, get newsletter subscribers to join a webinar, and anyone else left to start a free trial.

Corey Haines, SwipeWell

Make Sure Your Pop-Up is in the Best Interest of Your Customer

Make sure that your pop-up is in the best interest of your customer and not yours.
In order for it to be enticing, it needs to address the #1 pain point of your ideal customer profile and offer a free solution to that problem. By reverse engineering your ICPs pain point, you will ensure that your pop up has a high conversion rate, isn’t annoying by leaving a bad user experience, and is highly relevant to your customer (the reason why they came to your website in the first place).

Shoaib Mughal, Marketix

Match Pop-up Timing With User Behavior

It’s crucial to test what timing and intents fit best when trying to convert users through pop-ups. For example, shooting out a pop-up to sign up for your newsletter as soon as a user opens a new page is probably going to get shot down. Depending on why users are visiting a site, companies can leverage event tracking, split testing methods, and buyer personas to create pop-ups that match users’ intentions, timing, and goals. Pop-up content that populates at the wrong time, or with content that isn’t relevant to users won’t help increase conversions.

Jason Panzer, Hexclad

Go for a Short-Timed Pop-Up

Your pop-up should be less disruptive and shouldn’t last more than four seconds. Visitors are on your page because of a goal they want to achieve; it may be reading your content, signing up for your service, etc. And it can become annoying if something is blocking them from achieving that goal. As much as you can, keep your pop-up simple and straight to the point and ensure that it takes a few seconds. Interested visitors will interact with your pop-up if they want to, and the duration of time won’t force them to interact with the pop-up.

Simon Bacher, Simya Solutions

Be Creative With Your Pop-Up Message

Many websites implement pop-ups when a user is on their site. Some appear right away, while others wait 30 seconds, or for the user to reach a certain section on the website for the pop-up to appear. While not instantly bombarding a potential customer is a good practice, what the pop-up says is even more important. The bottom line is that businesses want email addresses so that they can market their products and follow up with customers who didn’t purchase. Customers know this and so they are hesitant to add their email for fear of being spammed by emails all the time. I know, because I’m one of those people who are hesitant to give out my personal email to companies. 

Last year, we changed the wording on our pop-up and have seen a 3.5 to 4 % increase in submissions. Instead of “signing up” we have the user “receiving VIP Benefits”. People want that instant gratification feeling. They get it with our pop-up and receive a promo code. It’s the same functionality just worded differently.

Seth Newman, SportingSmiles

A/B-Test Ahead of Time

Be sure to utilize ab testing when implementing website pop-ups. Create two different pop-ups and then figure out which one will drive more clicks. Test out different background images, copy, layout, and the amount of time it is displayed for. Ideally, you don’t want a pop-up that never closes on its own, but it’s important to figure out if three seconds or thirty seconds yields better results. Ab testing will help you figure out which pop-up is most effective in improving your conversion rate.

Michael Bell, Manukora

Collaborate With Websites in Your Niche

Try to collaborate with websites that have a similar niche to you, it will help you significantly in finding a large potential customer base easily. People visiting the website will carry similar interests to that of the website, which will automatically indulge them in clicking the pop-ups. You are likely to gain more engagement through such kind of collaboration or paid promotion rather than showing your popups through a website that has a completely different niche than you. It is important to focus on the integration of interest to gain more and more leads at a faster rate without facing the loss of resources, which you might have to face if you go with a website with a completely different niche. It is because the people visiting the page are likely not interested in your popup. After all, currently, re is something else on their mind.

Jeremy James, Blue Water Climate Control

Make Your Pop-Up Simple and User-Friendly

Pop-ups are annoying, however, pop-ups on the website can encourage users one step closer – like the email sign-ups through coupons. This works because most people, when they see a coupon, are attracted to it and they want to try the product and experiment with how it works. This works for many companies who use a simple and user-friendly method. The pop-up gains the users through a simple email address space and at one click it drives to the conversion. Therefore, you acquire the visitor’s email address and make an influence with the exciting products of your brand.

Brigid Davey, Nimble

Let Your Email Pop-Up Appear Toward the Exit

The best type of popup for your website is the exit intent popup. It is not a good option to have a popup asking for your email address while you are still searching the site. It is annoying and can lead to increased bounce rates. A much better option is to have the email popup appear when the intent is already begun to exit the website. This way you can give them an offer and try to get permission to email them before they leave the site.

Doug Darroch, Renaissance Digital Marketing

Use Visuals for Your Pop-Ups

All information on the internet benefits greatly from the inclusion of images and other visual components. Lots of studies have found that they improve the overall appeal of websites, especially when they feature actual people. As an added bonus, visuals can help direct the focus of the user exactly where you want it to go. This includes window pop-ups. Yours will have a greater impact if you incorporate visuals. It adds a level of excitement, novelty, and interest to your marketing efforts, increasing their effectiveness. However, it is not necessary to always use full-size pictures. Some designs just need a more interesting background pattern or some brighter accent colors to really stand out.

Billy Parker, Gift Delivery

Keep Pop-Ups as Unobtrusive as Possible

I have A/B tested many different pop-ups. The best practice when implementing website pop-ups is to make it as unobtrusive as possible. To attain this, you need to set the trigger correctly, and I have found setting the popup trigger after they have been on a page for over 30 seconds is the best. If your trigger is too sensitive, the popup will just annoy the user, and they will bounce immediately.

Jordan Woolf, We Buy Houses in Bama

Make Your Pop-Up Easy to Close

When creating a pop-up, you want to make sure it provides value to the user and doesn’t disrupt their browsing experience. A best practice is to make sure you have an “X” button in your pop-up to allow users to close it if they want to. Creating an easy way out of your pop-up will make sure users aren’t annoyed by it, and they’ll be more likely to stay on your website.

Peter Beeda, fhalend

Avoid Leaving a Bad Experience With Your Pop-Up

Popups disrupt the user’s journey and can leave a bad experience. However, if the popup is genuinely valuable and offers the user something for free (that they’d otherwise pay for) you can expect incredible conversion rates. This is exactly what I did with Ticker Nerd, my investing newsletter that has since been acquired. All pages had a popup that promised to show visitors the investing process. And we did exactly this. We broke down exactly how we surfaced interesting stocks. Our emails were often reopened up to 10 times in some cases.

Luciano Viterale, Luciano Viterale Consulting

Use an Enticing Sign-Up Phrase With Your Pop-Up

A great popup should have the following: 

– specific timing (does it show after 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, or on exit)
– a great image or offer
– a first name and email field
– something other than “subscribe to my newsletter” 

There is nothing more unappealing than “subscribe to my newsletter.” Pop-Ups should entice others to sign up. For example, “Grab my free Mailchimp Cheat Sheet!” sounds a lot more exciting than “subscribe to my newsletter.”

Emily Ryan, Westfield Creative

9 Benefits of Outsourcing Email Marketing Initiatives

Benefits of Outsourcing Email Marketing Initiatives

What is one benefit of outsourcing your email marketing initiatives?



To help you appreciate the benefits of outsourcing your email marketing initiatives, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best insights. From bringing in fresh perspectives to your initiatives to getting highly personalized email marketing, there are several benefits that you could gain from outsourcing your email marketing to experienced professionals.


Here are nine benefits these leaders gain from outsourcing their email marketing initiatives:

  • Bring in Fresh Perspectives to Your Initiatives
  • Save Costs on Recruiting and Training of In-House Team
  • Ensure High Quality Writing
  • Improve Response Rates With Professional Expert
  • Free Employees for Other Productive Tasks
  • Reduce Cost Through Selective Outsourcing
  • Guaranteed Email Delivery
  • Free Your Time to Focus on Higher-Level Business
  • Get Highly Personalized Email Marketing

Bring in Fresh Perspectives to Your Initiatives

Getting a fresh perspective on your initiative. While internal marketers are already familiar with brand voice and directives, someone from the outside will be able to look at the company messaging from a different point of view. Outsourcing marketing initiatives can be an advantageous strategy because they can think outside the box. While they may need time to get up to speed with brand information, the outsider’s point of view can better assess the needs of the average consumer. Getting a fresh perspective is key.

Stephen Skeel, 7 Wonders

Save Costs on Recruiting and Training of In-House Team

Building a team of in-house email marketers will require precious time and resources — resources that could be put to better use in other areas of your organization. Your HR teams will need to work twice as hard to fill new roles, train the new hires and track their progress. Outsourcing these email marketing campaigns to seasoned experts is way more affordable than handling this mammoth task yourself and the best part — you’ll have the desired results without any guesswork or experimentation.

Harry Morton, Lower Street

Ensure High Quality Writing

We all have our fields of expertise and if writing is not one of yours, then outsourcing your email marketing initiatives is a wise choice. You can have great products and services, but if you do not know how to catch the attention of your reader with your writing, or how to properly guide the recipient into your sales funnel, then it will matter little about the quality of your offerings. 

Having a skilled writer craft your subject lines, engage the reader from the first sentence of your content body, and know how to get your most important message across in the fewest amount of words, will be critical in your success. In outsourcing your email marketing initiatives to skilled professionals, you will ensure that the content of your promotional efforts is of the highest quality, and could be the difference between further engagement or having a sales opportunity slip away.

Matt Miller, Embroker

Improve Response Rates With Professional Expert  

The effectiveness of an email marketing campaign is directly related to campaign-specific conversion metrics used to monitor a campaign’s performance. Metrics such as click to open rate ratios, unique click rates, and hard and soft bounce rates, among many other forms of engagement, are monitored to optimize the success of a campaign.

Outsourcing your email marketing initiatives to specialists leads to increased efficiency, and detailed, strategic, and well-written campaigns. This tasks professionals with an abundance of expertise and experience in monitoring key metrics, A/B testing, and developing specialized email copy, which is bound to increase response rates.

Datha Santomieri, Steadily

Free Employees for Other Productive Tasks

Employees can be more productive with their workday instead of focusing on the build of email marketing campaigns. This can be extremely time-consuming and employees can be using their time in a more effective way. Outsourcing allows workers to focus on content strategy while an outside agency goes right to the experts who may be more efficient in delivering the assets and the build. It’s a win-win on both sides.

Jodi Neuhauser, Ovaterra

Reduce Cost Through Selective Outsourcing

Outsourcing can be beneficial financially because you do not have to outsource all your marketing. If you just need assistance with one part of it, you can find people to do so. For instance, if you already have a great email template but need someone to help with the copywriting aspect, you can outsource for that so that you do not have to pay someone for all other parts of your marketing emails. Take advantage of the freedom to choose exactly what you need to outsource so that you can still keep some of your email marketing resources in-house and save money.

Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency

Guaranteed Email Delivery

In an email marketing campaign, the deliverability of emails plays a major role in the success of the campaign. There are a lot of factors such as being blocked by ISPs, emails landing in spam folders, A/B testing for headlines so that they don’t get flagged by spam filters, etc. If you are trying to do this with an in-house team or by yourself this can be a challenge.

Outsourcing to email marketers or firms who constantly do campaigns and are always up to date with the latest trends and updates will help ensure that your emails reach the audience’s inbox. This can be a major factor in the success of your campaign. It can also ensure that the graphics and images don’t get striped in the delivery and your email marketing campaign can convert the prospects to customers.

Tiffany Homan, Rental Property Calculator

Free Your Time to Focus on Higher-Level Business

One benefit of outsourcing your email marketing initiatives is that you can focus on the higher-level aspects of your business. You no longer have to worry about the nitty-gritty details of managing your email list, sending out emails, and tracking results. Instead, you can focus on making sure that you are providing an excellent product or service to your customers and clients. This will help them become more loyal fans who will continue to recommend your company to their friends and family members.

Chad Rubin, Profasee

Get Highly Personalized Email Marketing

Personalized messages are one benefit of outsourcing your email marketing campaigns. Due to a lack of time and money, many businesses see the value of personalized emails but do not implement them within their own operations. When you outsource, providing knowledgeable prospects and other employees with 1:1 tailored experiences is hassle-free. Make your email campaign stand out from the competition by adding customization down to the smallest details.

Implement an email campaign that would produce a measurable return on investment by utilizing the prospect’s existing information. Someone needs to spend time and expertise on doing this. An efficient email campaign is the result of hours of steadfast work, from setting up automated behavioral triggers in the mail to carefully selecting extremely enticing photos. The best course of action for email personalization is outsourcing. Your consumers will feel appreciated and receive exactly what they need thanks to those targeted emails.

Raviraj Hegde, Donorbox

11 Reasons Why Your Email Campaigns Fail

Reasons Why Your Email Campaigns Fail

What causes email marketing campaigns to fail?


To help you best identify the causes for email marketing campaign failures, we asked marketing experts and business leaders this question for their best insights. From focusing on open rates instead of click rates to using outdated subscriber lists, there are several reasons for email campaign failures that you may learn from to best address any problems with your email marketing strategies.

Here are 11 reasons why an email marketing campaign may fail:

  • Focusing on Open Rates Instead of Click Rates
  • Ineffective Subject Lines
  • Not Putting Enough Thought into Your Copy
  • Not Doing A/B Testing to Identify the Best Strategies
  • Incorrect Email-Targeting Strategy
  • Sending Emails Without Permissions
  • Emails Being of No Clear Value to Subscribers
  • Emails Rely too Heavily on Imagery
  • Your Emails Are Not Welcoming Enough
  • Inability to Personalize Emails in a Cookieless World
  • Using an Outdated Subscriber List

Focusing on Open Rates Instead of Click Rates

Sending an email that does not promote an actionable response does little good to provide something other than awareness, and this is why marketers should instead focus on optimizing emails for clicks. Open rates are growing more and more unreliable, especially in the wake of iOS 15 where all emails default to an open, often giving a business a false read on the effectiveness of their email campaigns. 

The goal should not be to increase open rates, but rather to encourage actual engagement. Therefore, your attention should be on sending the right content to the right audiences at the right time, making certain there is a prominent call to action, as well as visually engaging and interactive elements, and punchy headlines that creates a sense of urgency. By not incorporating click-boosting elements into your emails, you may get subscribers to open them, but the likely result will be a quick deletion or missed sales conversion.

Greg Gillman, MuteSix

Ineffective Subject Lines

The biggest reason email marketing strategies fail is because the offer is never read. This means that you must write short, enticing subject lines that urge the recipient to actually click to view the email’s contents. Think of your subject line as a sneak peek to what’s inside, so be sure to include any sales, discounts or important company information – as space allows.

Shaun Price, MitoQ

Not Putting Enough Thought into Your Copy

Copywriting isn’t the same as writing long-form content. The latter aims to inform while the former aims to sell. And if your advertising copy is boring, sub-par, and simply not eye-catching enough, even the best content will go missed by your customers. To really nail this element of your email marketing campaign, study some of the most effective campaigns to get better at creating impactful copy that will reel in your customers.

Harry Morton, Lower Street

Not Doing A/B Testing to Identify the Best Strategies

You need to do some A/B testing to better understand what email marketing strategies are more useful. Every business is different and has different email audiences, and this is why A/B testing is such an important method for identifying the best email marketing strategies for your particular business. Otherwise, you will feel lost in terms of how to increase your email engagement.

Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency

Incorrect Email-Targeting Strategy

It is incorrectly targeted. People are savvy about their email use and are already flooded with content and even spam mail, and they will ignore or delete emails that aren’t immediately relevant to their interests. It is essential to target your emails and the specifics of the campaign to people who have relevant interest in your brand. By being more specific, you can cut through the noise and get noticed by consumers who are willing to engage with your brand. Targeting the most relevant leads is key.

Brett Estep, Insured Nomads

Sending Emails Without Permissions 

You have probably already been the subject of an unauthorized email marketing campaign. Similarly, you can certainly understand why a consumer cleans out their inbox and starts clicking the “unsubscribe” buttons on emails. When customers feel like they’ve been tricked into receiving tons of emails from marketers, they typically feel like their privacy has been invaded. Most of the time, they will delete your emails, unsubscribe from your list, and in the worst-case scenario report you as spam. Avoid having your messages blocked and automatically redirected to the spam bin by obtaining permission from your target audience instead.

Ilija Sekulov, Mailbutler

Emails Being of No Clear Value to Subscribers

Your emails must convince a busy consumer or professional to provide you permission to send them periodical messages. A small “sign up for our newsletter” button is not enough in today’s digital age. You need to provide clear value to subscribers via compelling content, insightful information, special deals, or other tactics to command their attention and inspire action. If you can’t accomplish this, then your email marketing campaign will inevitably fail.

Datha Santomieri, Steadily

Emails Rely too Heavily on Imagery

We all know how fickle email service providers can be when it comes to serving images correctly, especially in a newsletter format where there may be multiple. If you’re already struggling with deliverability issues or you’re seeing a decline in open rates, the last thing you should do is add more images. Even campaigns from the outset can fail because they rely too heavily on images, and the end result is a spammy-looking email template that doesn’t resonate with audiences. Stick to plain text where possible, and use images sparingly.

James Taylor, Digital Tool Report

Your Emails Are Not Welcoming Enough 

Don’t forget the welcome email! Would you decide to skip the “Hi, how are you doing? I’ve missed you,” part of the phone call with an old friend because you were already friends with them? No! The same goes for marketing email campaigns.

Just because your email campaign is going out to your subscribers does not mean you can skip the welcome email – the welcome email is actually the most important part and has the highest open rate. The welcome email is your way to connect with your subscribers, deepen your relationship, let them know how special they are to you, and tell them what exciting things your campaign has in store for them. And because subscribers like knowing how special they are to you, welcome emails have the highest open – so take advantage of this guaranteed visibility. If you’re lazy and decide to skip the welcome email, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to connect with your audience and your campaign may fail.

Karim Hachem, Sunshine79

Inability to Personalize Emails in a Cookieless World

Optimizing the user experience, delivering personalized messages, and maximizing consent rates — all while respecting users’ privacy is crucial to any email marketing campaign’s success. In a future without third-party cookies, successful email marketers will be those that prioritize gathering first-party data; user data from their own websites, app, social channels, etc. Then they’ll need to use it responsibly by emphasizing consent-based approaches.

Jon Torres, SEO Marketing Guy

Using an Outdated Subscriber List

One reason an email marketing campaign might fail is outdated data. You can have the most attractive deal ever, but still fall short because of inactive subscribers. Always maintain the most up to date information on your email subscriber list and remove unengaged users regularly. Another good tip for this is to run email verification on subscribers that have not been emailed in thirty-plus days.

Kevin Callahan, Flatline Van Co.

8 Back-to-School Email Campaign Strategies

Back-to-School Email Campaign Strategies

What are the best back-to-school email marketing campaign strategies?


To help you best target your back-to-school email marketing campaigns, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best strategies. From making the campaign relevant for all ages to appealing to college students with contests, there are several strategies that may help your email campaigns win over customers to patronize your back-to-school offerings.

Here are eight back-to-school email campaign strategies:

  • Make The Campaign Relevant for All Ages
  • Entice With a Buy-One-Donate-One Offer
  • Highlight Relevant Self-Care Routines
  • Launch a Back-to-School Loyalty Program
  • Offer Exclusive Discounts and Coupons
  • Structure The Email Like a Class Schedule
  • Personalize Your Emails
  • Appeal to College Students With Contests

Make The Campaign Relevant for All Ages

Incorporate the back-to-school theme for everyone! Make the idea seem relevant for those no longer in school to avoid unwanted messages. For example, play with the wording by using the theme as a time for everyone to learn something new or take a refresher course. Try something like, “When the kids head back to school, choose a new hobby like yoga. Use this 20% off coupon to start learning today!”

Jeff Goodwin, Orgain

Entice With a Buy-One-Donate-One Offer

One of the best back-to-school marketing email campaigns is buy one, donate one. For every purchase a customer makes, donate one of the same items, or the monetary equivalent, to a charity that helps students in need. Those who want to make a difference will prefer to buy your product over another business. Additionally, the charitable donation and associated marketing will hugely boost brand awareness.

Kevin Callahan, Flatline Van Co.

Highlight Relevant Self-Care Routines

Self-care during the school year is so important. How are students supporting their mental and physical well-being after class, homework, and extracurricular activities? Brands can highlight self-care routines such as product recommendations or tactics that lower stress levels. This is a relevant and timely marketing campaign that puts the consumer first.

Natália Sadowski, Nourishing Biologicals

Launch a Back-to-School Loyalty Program

One solid back-to-school email marketing campaign strategy is launching a loyalty program. Alongside back-to-school sales, have your email newsletter offer students, parents, or teachers the chance to enroll in your customer loyalty program. Tell them all the reasons to keep coming back and why your program is the best. Go a step further and incorporate how it can help them achieve in the classroom too.

Sasha Ramani, MPOWER Financing

Offer Exclusive Discounts and Coupons

Many companies ramp up their marketing efforts during the back-to-school season, as parents and students alike are looking for great deals on everything from clothes to school supplies. However, with so many businesses vying for attention, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd.

One way to make your company’s email marketing campaign stand out is to offer exclusive discounts and coupons to subscribers. This will not only entice recipients to open your emails, but it will also encourage them to take advantage of your special offers. You can also segment your email list by school district or type of student (e.g., elementary, middle, or high school), which will allow you to customize your message and ensure that it is relevant to each recipient. By taking the time to craft a well-targeted and engaging email campaign, you can make sure that your business gets noticed by the right people during the busy back-to-school season.

Here’s an awesome resource from Coupon Cheif to help.

Jim Campbell, Wizve – Digital & Affiliate Marketing Agency

Structure The Email Like a Class Schedule

We’re firm believers in the equation that if you make emails fun, people will read them and scroll further. A great back-to-school example would be to structure your email in a way that reads like a class schedule. Start with “Period 1: Math”, then offer your tips or product recommendations such as a calculator. Next, “Period 2: English”, then offer the same such as a dictionary or writing utensils. You can even break out funny things like “lunch” or “recess” and feature a lunchbox or sport supplies. A big part of email marketing is being able to put your reader in the environment of what you’re discussing and this is a clever way to do that.

Kelly Skelton, Fat Kid Deals

Personalize Your Emails

One tip is to personalize your emails. By including students’ names in the subject lines of your emails, you can make them more likely to open the messages. Additionally, including students’ names in the content of your emails can help create a more personal connection with your readers. This will result in more engaged readers, who are more likely to take action on the content you provide.

Karen Ebanks, Karan Real Estate

Appeal to College Students With Contests 

Marketing to college students is a bit different from marketing to the parents of K-12 school children. In college, many students begin to become responsible for their own finances so they have a desire to save money as much as possible.

One way to appeal to this demographic is to include a contest in the newsletter. The contest could have a prize that would be highly desirable for college students such as a laptop or an Amazon gift card. The email can include a CTA asking people to share it on social media in order to generate more buzz around the contest, and therefore, more sales. It could be an essay contest or a drawing contest to give students the chance to showcase their creativity. Of course, the overall theme of the newsletter would be back-to-school, so it can also include fun trivia facts and reviews or insights from other college students. Ideally, the contest winner should be announced at least two weeks prior to when students return to the classroom.

Jibran Qazi, MCPD

10 Ways To Measure Success of Your Email Marketing Campaign

10 Ways To Measure Success of Your Email Marketing Campaign

What is the most effective way to measure the success of an email marketing campaign?


To help you best measure the success of your email marketing campaigns, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best insights. From using the open rate to tracking how many subscribers reach your predefined goal, there are several ways you may adopt to effectively gauge the level of success your email marketing campaigns.


Here are 10 ways to measure the success of an email marketing campaign:

  • Use The Open Rate
  • Check The Average Click-through Rate
  • Consider The Spam Complaints and Forwarding Rates
  • Look at The Email Conversion Rates
  • Use The Outcomes of A/B Testing
  • Gauge Interest Levels by Unsubscribe Rates
  • Analyze Your Return On Investment
  • Track The Number of People Who Visit Your Website
  • Use The Bounce Rate
  • Track How Many Subscribers Reach Your Predefined Goal

Use The Open Rate

It’s my view that this is the best way to gauge the performance of an email marketing campaign because open rate is the most common metric to look at after running a campaign. Open rate is a metric that measures the percentage of your email recipients who clicked on the link in your message.

There are a lot of variables that go into what constitutes a “good open rate,” such as the industry and the quality of the email list. 18 percent is the average open rate forecast for 2021, according to Campaign Monitor’s recent benchmarks. However, open rates can be influenced by factors such as the sender’s name or subject line.

Gerrid Smith, Fortis Medical Billing

Check The Average Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This is, in my opinion, the most effective way to gauge the performance of an email marketing campaign, as the click-through rate (CTR), which measures the proportion of recipients who clicked on a link within your email, is widely used.

To get a high click-through rate, consider the industry, the topic of the material, the amount of links and calls to action just like you would with open rates. Similarly, a survey by Campaign Monitor found that last year’s average click-through rate was 2.6 per cent. Email campaigns that urge users to visit your website, such as a blog post or an online shop, necessitate a high click-through rate (CTR).

Edward Mellett, Wikijob

Consider The Spam Complaints and Forwarding Rates

Since there are so many possible activities recipients might do after receiving an email campaign, this is my preferred method of measuring its success. Keep an eye on a few of these to see if there are any abrupt spikes or trends. These activities include spam complaints, which measure how many individuals have reported your email as spam in their mail provider. Keep a watch on these metrics, even if you don’t expect any of your email campaigns to be flagged as spam.

You never know when a particular campaign or subject line can cause an increase in spam complaints. The forward rate is a metric indicating how many individuals forwarded or shared your email campaign with a recipient after they received it. By keeping an eye on this measure, you can determine whether or not a piece of content or a particular campaign has struck a chord with your audience and been forwarded to friends, family, or coworkers.

Sumit Bansal, TrumpExcel

Look at The Email Conversion Rates

Take a look at your email conversion rates. This is a great measure of a campaign’s success because it’ll let you know if your audience is interested in what you’re offering and how you’re offering it, but it will also provide some insight as to how your audience prefers to engage. For example, is your audience most likely to fill out a form for more information, or go straight to making a purchase? These considerations are crucial in measuring your email marketing campaigns and in determining what works best for your brand and product/service.

To determine your email conversion rate, divide the total number of completed actions by the total number of emails delivered, and then just multiply by 100! Track this metric, adjust your strategy accordingly, and watch your email marketing campaigns gain more traction over time.

Gigi Ji, KOKOLU

Use The Outcomes of A/B Testing

I believe this is the best way to measure the performance of an email marketing campaign since A/B testing or split testing is an excellent way to test certain components of your email campaign by sending two different versions of an email and comparing the results.

Sending the same email with two different subject lines or the same subject lines but with a different call-to-action (CTA) button works well when only one part of a campaign is being evaluated. With split testing an email campaign, you’ll have access to stats that you can compare directly against each other. Open rates for a specific subject line, for instance, might go up, but click-through rates for a specific CTA button might go up.

Kenny Kline, BarBend

Gauge Interest Levels by Unsubscribe Rates

As a consultant, my main method of measuring success for my email marketing campaigns is by monitoring unsubscribe rates in the 24 hours following a newsletter being sent. This is important for me because I’m speaking directly to a specific SEO audience of like-minded consultants and SEO’s, so unsubscribe rates keep me largely in check by outlining a direct correlation between whether the content is being seen positively or negatively by its target audience.

James Taylor, James Taylor SEO Consultancy

Analyze Your Return On Investment (ROI)

To measure the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign, analyze your return from investment (ROI). The profit (or loss) will tell you a lot about the efficiency and profitability of your actions and allow you to plan the next steps. So take a look at gained value and spend value and make calculations.

The basic formula for determining return is: ROI (%) = (Gained Value – Spent Value) / (Spent Value).

However, various online ROI calculators make your life easier. Depending on the score, you see what results your campaign is getting. Executing email marketing campaigns without knowing which strategy is profitable and which is not won’t make your actions successful. ROI is there to tell you whether campaigns generate revenue or deplete the budget.

Nina Paczka, MyPerfectResume

Track The Number of People Who Visit Your Website

This, in my opinion, is the best approach to gauge the performance of an email marketing campaign since it allows you to see exactly what percentage of your total website traffic is a result of your email campaigns. This measure must first be set up in your tracking platform before it can be accessed. All traffic that comes from email will be categorized as “direct” in Google Analytics (unless you help Google tell the difference between email traffic and direct traffic).

Max Whiteside, Breaking Muscle

Use The Bounce Rate

For me, this is the best method for measuring the performance of an email marketing campaign because if you want to analyze your emails’ ability to set goals, focus on the bounce rate of the landing pages connected to your emails. Bounce rates are a measure of how many emails you send but don’t receive any response from your intended audience. Soft bounces and harsh bounces are two different types of bounce rates.

The first can be caused by a fault with the recipient’s server or an overflowing mailbox. Emails can be resent in these situations, but it’s possible that the recipient will receive them after the issue is resolved on their end. A hard bounce occurs when an email is sent to an address that doesn’t exist, is closed, or is otherwise inactive. If you have a high number of hard bounces, your company may be perceived by internet service providers as a spammer.

David Janssen, VPNOverview

Track How Many Subscribers Reach Your Predefined Goal

Each email marketing campaign can have different objectives.
For example, an eCommerce sales email will want a goal around actual product sales. An email newsletter for a B2B company could simply be the amount of subscribers who clicked through to their website.

In some cases, organizations may focus on a vanity metric like open rates as well. Often this is misdirected, however if your email campaign is purely for branding then perhaps this would be a goal in itself.

Miles Burke, Australian Software Guide

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published. 

8 Summer Email Marketing Campaign Ideas That Actually Work

Summer Email Marketing Campaign Ideas that Actually Work

What are some summer email marketing campaign ideas that actually work?



To help you launch a successful summer email marketing campaign, we asked email marketers and business leaders this question for their best tips. From creating offline travel reads to presenting seasonal discounts, there are several summer email marketing campaign ideas that have been proven to capture the attention of audiences.


Here are eight summer email marketing campaign ideas:

  • Create Offline Travel Reads to Capture a Captive Audience
  • Think About Parents in Summer Time
  • Connect Your Emails to the Outdoors
  • Prize Draws and Contests
  • Pay Attention to Summer Sales!
  • Offer Summertime Tips and Resources.
  • Send Emails Later in the Day
  • Present Seasonal Discounts in a Travel-themed Newsletter

Create Offline Travel Reads to Capture a Captive Audience

One creative idea for a summer email marketing campaign is to send a series of “travel reads” recipients can save and read later offline while on car trips or in line at the airport. This trick capitalizes on the idle time spent journeying to summertime locations and lends you a captive audience who is likely to pay you full attention. The most crucial part of the plan is to create content that is practical and helpful and not merely advertorial and to include a call to action to draw folks back online.

Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding

Think About Parents in Summer Time

Summer time can be difficult for stay-at-home parents because they are trying to find constant entertainment for their kids while they’re out of school. While creating a summer email marketing campaign, think about how your product or service could support moms (or certainly dads) that are home with their kids all day. Could you promote something that would distract or entertain the kids? Does your product or service allow the moms or dads to relax once the kids are in bed? Does it make their day easier so they can focus on their children more? Summer means 24 hours of taking care of children for a large group, so create an email campaign that will make their job easier!

Logan Mallory, Motivosity

Connect Your Emails to the Outdoors

Summer invokes thoughts of vacations and theming your email around the positive emotions associated with sunny carefree days is a great way to build a summer email marketing campaign. Reading emails is primarily an indoor activity which is opposite of what we pair with summer, thus, creating a connection to the outdoors and activity is a must in order to build a successful campaign.

Sending emails with fun outdoor activity suggestions, a summer music playlist through Spotify, or best beaches to visit checklist, can tie your business to that theme of fun. When customers receive this email, they will feel those positive emotions and associate with your business, building the connections you desire. By tailoring your email to touch on the positive emotions people associate with summer, you will build a successful marketing campaign that will lead to conversions.

Cody Candee, Bounce

Host Competitions to Begin Conversations

In my opinion, this “begins a conversation in your community with your customers,” which in turn strengthens their loyalty to your company. The Father’s Day holiday is a great opportunity to host a candy guessing or essay writing contest for youngsters. Your summer email marketing campaign will stand out from the crowd of generic newsletters with this added touch of warmth and humanity. Competitions are a great way to develop low-cost, high-return content for your email and social media marketing campaigns. Promote contests and freebies through your newsletter and other online outlets. Prizes in Starbucks’ Summer Game competition are both enjoyable and useful, and the event is seamlessly integrated with the company’s loyalty program.

Jay Bats, ContentBASE

Pay Attention to Summer Sales

Summer holiday sales are an effective marketing campaign because consumers are primed to look for deals and are ready to shop at certain times of the year. Memorial Day and the Fourth of July are holidays where people search for steals on products and services. Back to school is another time when people are ready to spend. Tap into the natural cycle of sales for a compelling summer marketing campaign.

Sumeer Kaur, Lashkaraa

Offer Summertime Tips and Resources

Summer is the time when most people are out enjoying the sunshine. According to Marketing Insider Group, email newsletters have a 23.4% open rate. What happens after people open these emails is entirely up to the marketer. No matter what industry your business is in, you can use related summertime tips and resources in your newsletter. 

For example, if you’re running an online food publication, you can add a new summer recipe to your weekly newsletter. It’s important to include a CTA and link at the bottom like “check out more of our sizzling summer recipes”. This will drive traffic to your website by increasing engagement. Helpful tips such as how to keep your bread from molding during the summer months establish authority for the brand and drive interest by providing useful information that consumers are looking for. Tips coupled with resources create strong newsletters with higher engagement rates than those that simply include company updates or news alone.

John Cammidge, JTC Consultants

Send Emails Later in the Day

In the summer, many people are enjoying the sunshine. They’re outside doing activities. They may even eat dinner later because it gets dark later. So don’t send your marketing emails when your audience isn’t as likely to be reading. Understanding the seasonal lifestyles of your customers is a key to success.

Scott Lieberman, Touchdown Money

Present Seasonal Discounts in a Travel-themed Newsletter

Summer is a time when a lot of people travel. Beach destinations and outdoor adventures in the mountains resonate with people. Using color schemes often associated with summer such as orange, yellow, and light blue can make your email more visually appealing and relevant to summer readers.

Additionally, images of beaches or the wilderness reinforce the idea that summer is in full effect. Once you have a solid email template, write or have an email copywriter create the body of the email. Subject lines like “splash into our summer sale” or “25% off on everything under the sun” can get more people opening your emails.

Aside from offering seasonal discounts in the newsletter itself, you can include a giveaway on the landing page with travel items or tickets to a coveted holiday destination. Research from Unbounce suggests that giveaways increase subscriptions by more than 700%. With more subscriptions comes more conversions. This is how your newsletter can get more traction this summer.

Dustin Ray, Inc File

The Do’s and Don’ts of Email Marketing

The Do's and Don'ts of Email Marketing

What is the most common mistake brands make with their email marketing campaigns?


To help you identify common mistakes with email marketing campaigns, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best advice. From not ignoring email personalization and data to including a strong call-to-action, there are several do’s and don’ts that may help you conduct effective email marketing campaigns for your business.


Here are 12 do’s and don’ts of email marketing:

  • Don’t Ignore Email Personalization and Data
  • Make Emails Natural and Avoid Branding
  • Don’t Neglect Mobile Users
  • Allow Users Control Over Their Subscriptions
  • Avoid Spelling and Grammar Mistakes
  • Don’t be Desperate for Engagement
  • Test Your Email Content for Effectiveness
  • Avoid Obnoxious Subject Lines
  • Do Not Use Black Hat Techniques
  • Make Your Emails Load Fast
  • Don’t Leave Out The Value When You Email
  • Include a Strong Call-To-Action

Don’t Ignore Email Personalization and Data

The most common mistake brands make with their email marketing campaigns is that they do not work on email personalization and don’t rely on data when setting up email campaigns. This results in low open rates, high unsubscribe rates, and high spam complaint rates. To avoid making this mistake, brands should focus on email personalization and use data to segment their email lists. This will help them send more relevant and targeted emails that are more likely to be opened and clicked on. Additionally, brands should also use data to track the performance of their email campaigns so they can continually optimize and improve them.

Iryna Kutnyak, Quoleady

Make Emails Natural and Avoid Excessive Branding 

The first step for a successful email campaign is that people open your email. Second, people need to start reading your content. This sounds easy, but in reality, companies fail on precisely these two steps. Why? Because the email is recognized as an advertisement right away. Email is the one channel where the brand does not help. 

People read emails from people. We consider emails from a company (especially if we do not know them well) as spammy. Therefore, do not brand your emails. Do not use HTML markups too much. Do not try to deliver a shiny brand experience. Instead, mimic how a natural person would write. Just plain text and probably an image. Keep it short. Do not include multiple topics. Just send out the one fact you want to convey without much background noise. People will appreciate reading information. Not an advert.

Stephan Wenger, B2B Marketing World

Don’t Neglect Mobile Users

One common mistake brands make with their email marketing campaigns is neglecting mobile users. If someone cannot read an email at a glance, they will likely simply not read it period. Having messy or warped content anywhere in the preview can put people off from reading an email out of fear it is spam or malware too. Always remember that text, graphics, etc. look different on a computer screen, versus a phone screen.

Tony Chan, CloudForecast

Allow Users Control Over Their Subscriptions

One of the worst email marketing mistakes your company can make is limiting the control users have over their settings. Let your users manage their subscriptions and give them the chance to choose the type of content they want to receive. Not assuming that all of your customers want to sign up for all your emails or newsletters shows them that you care about their preferences and helps you keep them interested. Your customers should feel excited when they get one of your emails, not annoyed.

John Cheng, Baotris

Avoid Spelling and Grammar Mistakes

Simple spelling and grammar mistakes. I just don’t trust a brand when they send me marketing emails and I catch easy spelling and grammatical errors. The company loses my trust immediately because it shows me they don’t respect their customers. If a company can’t put the time and effort into doing a simple spelling and grammar check, why should I expect them to put time and effort into their product, or customer satisfaction? If a company doesn’t respect their customers, why should customers respect them?

Karim Hachem, Sunshine79

Don’t be Desperate for Engagement

You know that feeling you get when you walk into a furniture store and a salesman rushes you before you’ve even had a chance to get your bearings? Don’t be that. There are few bigger turn-offs to email list subscribers than being bombarded with front loaded content. Lambasting consumers with emails right after they sign up for your email listing are surefire ways to get labeled as spam in their minds. And we all know where spam goes. Don’t be desperate for engagement. Design your email flow to be conscious of your readers’ time and personal agency. It’s always better to have one email over a six that got tossed in the trash bin.

Alex Chavarry, Cool Links

Test Your Email Content for Effectiveness

We see many brands fail to test how effective their content converts their users. Use split testing methods to make sure the emails you send to generate leads or convert sales are using effective content to do so. Each target audience reacts differently to branded content. The best way for your business to know what they’re using as marketing content is effective is to test the content against other variations until they have optimal results. When you don’t test your content, you make a shot in the dark. To get the best ROI for your business, invest in strategic marketing testing to ensure your business can do what it’s made to do.

Kevin Miller, kevinmiller.com

Avoid Obnoxious Subject Lines

Obnoxious subject lines will deflate any email marketing campaign. Even the best products and promotions don’t stand a chance with consumers if the marketing campaign does not get its foot in the door. Annoying subject lines will get that door shut in an instance. Effective subject lines should peak the curiosity of the target audience and avoid utilizing a salesy tone. Consumers do not want to be sold over email. Email sales pitches equal spam in their mind. A true value add that is visible from the subject will grab the attention of customers. Every effective marketer should also consider testing subject lines in order to see what resonates with their customer base.

Katy Carrigan, Goody

Do Not Use Black Hat Techniques

When talking about email marketing campaigns, most mistakes fall within the category of black hat techniques for improving visibility online. One common mistake that we have experienced is adding people to newsletters that they haven’t signed up for, as well as buying subscribers. These practices might seem like they increase the reach at first glance, but can be very dangerous and harm the authenticity and legitimacy of your email marketing campaigns. This is so due to the fact that as a result of this practice, your emails will be sent to the “spam” folder, and consequently place the connection between your brand and the spam folder for the people that receive those emails. Make sure you avoid that, and only use white hat techniques to improve web traffic and brand visibility, as there are many ways to promote a successful email campaign.

Marco Genaro Palma, Genaro Palma

Make Your Emails Load Fast

If you’re sending an email to a customer or potential customer, make it a priority to create one that loads within two seconds or less of clicking. If a customer has decided to open your email, you only have seconds to make an impression. This shouldn’t mean that you stuff your email with heavy visual content like stock images and videos to a point where it affects the loading speed., set a cap on the number of images used and compress the media as much as possible to get the best of both – a shorter load time and an attractive email. Furthermore, you can consider using impactful content that grabs and keeps the attention of the recipient instead.

Igal Rubinshtein, Home Essentials Direct

Don’t Leave Out The Value When You Email

Marketing campaigns often include promotions that are content-rich, as we wish to entice our target audience by offering value, but somehow, many businesses make the mistake of removing that element in their email marketing efforts. It is important to understand that your business has more than products to offer your customers, it has knowledge and expertise. By designing your email to offer value, whether it is answering questions, providing the latest industry information, or offering helpful tips, you will motivate your customers to open your email. Neglecting to do this, and limiting them solely to advertisement status, will have your quickly losing interest, and you will see your open rates decline, as well as your subscribers.

Anthony Puopolo, Rex MD

Include a Strong Call-To-Action

Many brands neglect to include a strong Call to Action in their email marketing campaigns. One of the necessary components of driving good conversions through email marketing is including a colorful, ‘loud’ request to users to progress through the sales funnel. The best CTA’s pop out from an email, usually in blue, red, or orange, to get users’ attention about a product’s value. When the next steps to buying or browsing a product get lost in the content of a marketing email, businesses lose out on conversions due to expecting users to work harder than they likely will. 

The key to driving the best conversions is to use obvious CTA’s that make progressing through the sales funnel as easy as possible for users. Focus on your emails’ visual appeal and plant strategic CTA’s that grab users’ attention.

Shawn Munoz, Pure Relief

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published. 

9 Mailchimp Image Size Recommendations For Email Campaigns

9 Mailchimp Image Size Recommendations For Email Campaigns

What size should images be for Mailchimp email campaigns? 


To help you know the right size of Image to use for Mailchimp email campaigns, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best recommendations. From 72 pixels per inch at low resolution to ideally 600 x 421 pixels, there are several image sizes suggested that may give you the best quality of pictures for your Mailchimp email campaigns.


Here are nine recommended image sizes for Mailchimp email campaigns:

  • 72 Pixels Per Inch at Low Resolution
  • 600 Pixels Wide
  • 72 Pixels Per Inch at Low Resolution
  • Less Than 600 Pixels Wide
  • No Larger Than 719 Pixels Wide
  • 557 in Width
  • Less Than 1MB Or 72dpi
  • No Larger Than 1200px
  • Less Than 1MB Without Compression Or Cropping
  • Ideally 600 X 421 Pixels

600 Pixels Wide

If you’re talking about size in terms of dimensions, I will propose 600 pixels wide for a picture featured in a campaign and take up your email’s entire width. I’ve found 600pixels to be excellent in all conditions after years of using Mailchimp and other email marketing tools. Height gives you more options. Because people can scroll, even on smartphones, you can take photos quite tall. If you require a tall image, slicing it into slices/chunks and layering them one on top of the other is a frequent strategy. It will appear as if they are a single image if you don’t leave any margins or spacing. Suppose you were building a tall graphic for an e-commerce store where you showcased product categories, for example. In that case, you might create the image so that you could split it into slices, each slice referring to a different category or promotion. You may even build separate links for each slice pointing to those categories.

Oliver Andrews, OA Design Services

72 Pixels Per Inch at Low Resolution

Size the image at 72 pixels per inch. For print, it would need to be around 300 pixels per inch to come out crisp and clear, but on a screen it doesn’t need to be that large. Taking the resolution down makes the file considerably smaller, so it won’t bog down your email marketing platform.

Jae Pak, Jae Pak MD Medical

Less Than 600 Pixels Wide

Mailchimp’s email templates are 600 pixels wide, so your pixels maximum should be less than 600 to render correctly. I’d suggest 564 pixels for full-width images. You also don’t want your images to be too large to slow loading time for your email recipients. In order to make your email responsive, check out Mailchimp’s website for their recommended widths based on the type of email you’re sending.

Isaiah Henry, Seabreeze Management

No Larger Than 719 Pixels Wide

If you want to make sure people can see your images, you’ll want to make sure they are no larger than 719 pixels wide. This will make sure that people on any device can see them. You’ll also want to make sure your images are no larger than 5 MB so that people don’t see “loading” bars when they open the email. For best results, you’ll want to make sure that your images have an aspect ratio of 9:16 so that they look good when they are displayed in your emails. You’ll also want to make sure you have your images edited and optimized for email so that they download quickly.

Farhan Advani, BHPH

557 in Width

For Mailchimp images, resizing photos to a width of 557 and setting “keep proportions” for their heights ensures that your image will format properly across all platforms. Images larger than a width of 557 can displace your newsletter — 557 is the ideal size for all of your Mailchimp email campaigns.

Adam Shlomi, SoFlo Tutors

Less Than 1MB Or 72dpi

When using Mailchimp for email campaigns, it is of the utmost importance to be aware of the size limitations of images. In general, the image size should never be over 1MB and a pixel density of 72. However, there are other factors that need to be considered as well.  

One main consideration is the width of the image. You can have a 1MB image, but it can be too wide. Mailchimp will try to autosize the width, but this can lead to major distortion and formatting issues. So it’s best to insert the correct width image from the start. Here’s the breakdown: Full width image – 564px; column section images – 264px; column section images – 164px  These are just basic values. The more complex the campaign, the more considerations will be needed. But, if you stick with 1MB, 72dpi, and the widths above, your campaign should run without issues.

Devin Schumacher, SERP

No Larger Than 1200px

Mailchimp images shouldn’t be any larger than 1200px wide, but the height of the image can vary based on your templates, messaging, and goals. This is important for the folks receiving your emails because if your images are larger than 1200px, the email will take longer than it should to load, which could lead to dissatisfied customers or even people choosing to just delete your email rather than wait for the download. This can often be improved by compressing images a bit, though a good rule of thumb is to consistently keep Mailchimp email campaign images 1200px wide or smaller.

Gigi Ji, KOKOLU

Less Than 1MB Without Compression Or Cropping

Keep your images under 1MB as a maximum file size, but don’t distort them through compression or cropping. Sending smaller images in Mailchimp is important to reduce lag and potential data fees for your customers, but don’t just condense or compress your images without a proper assessment. A distorted image will give off a lack of professionality, and it can do more harm than good. For that reason, send images that were initially designed small, instead of artificially compressed or cropped ones.

Alex Wang, Ember Fund

Ideally 600 X 421 Pixels

600 x 421 is the ideal size for images in Mailchimp email campaigns. Larger images will be automatically resized. Additionally, Mailchimp recommends a resolution of 1200 x 842 pixels to maximize visibility on retina displays. You should also consider any margin styles or padding in the Campaign template before choosing an image. Still, 600 x 421 pixels are the optimal dimensions to fit well with any of Mailchimp’s templates.

Ray Leon, Pet Insurance Review

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published. 

7 Mailchimp Certification Benefits For Marketers

7 Mailchimp Certification Benefits For Marketers

What are the benefits of getting a Mailchimp certification?  


To help marketers see the benefits of earning a Mailchimp certification, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best insights. From keeping you current on trends to showing employers you are dedicated, there are several benefits of getting Mailchimp certified that may encourage you to add this program to your learning and development initiatives.


Here are seven Mailchimp certification benefits for marketers:

  • Keeps You Current on Trends
  • Learn How to Create & Automate Email Campaigns 
  • Showcase An In-demand Skill
  • Insider Access to Special Events
  • Enhances Your Credibility
  • Charge More for Your Expert Services 
  • Shows Employers You Are Dedicated 

Keeps You Current on Trends 

The benefit isn’t as much the certification itself, although that does give you access to some marketing tools, a badge, and an approved freelancer status. The benefit is what you learn in obtaining your certification. It’s like taking free marketing courses.

The amount you learn to gain certification to be a freelancer through Mailchimp gives you an edge with your clients. It keeps you current on trends and updates that are important to you and your clients.

Baruch Labunski, Rank Secure

Learn How to Create & Automate Email Campaigns 

One benefit of getting a Mailchimp certification is that you would learn how to create and send newsletters, email campaigns, and other automated emails. Additionally, you would be able to track their success using analytics, and make necessary adjustments to improve the effectiveness of your communications. You would also be able to troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

Natalia Brzezinska, PhotoAiD

Showcase An In-demand Skill

Email marketing is one of the most in-demand skills for marketers. A Mailchimp certification sends a message to employers that you are a valuable asset to a team. The more you know about how to personalize, segment, and analyze data in email marketing, the more you have to offer. A Mailchimp certification is a great thing to add to your resume to help you stand out and prepares you for a job in email marketing.

Sumeer Kaur, Lashkaraa

Insider Access to Special Events

A Mailchimp certification grants you access to exclusive events, webinars, and product news. These special opportunities, offered only to those with this special certification, are a great way to consistently feed your mind valuable insight into the marketing industry.

You can further take advantage of these benefits by networking with other like-minded professionals with similar career goals. Once you’re Mailchimp certified, a whole new world of valuable information and exclusive opportunities are afforded to you.

Datha Santomieri, Steadily

Enhances Your Credibility

Being able to flaunt a Mailchimp certification and thus call yourself a Mailchimp Partner instantly lends credibility to your credentials. This badge of honor separates you from others in freelance marketplaces such as Fiverr and Upwork in terms of knowledge and skillset. Mailchimp is widely recognized as one of the leading marketing automation platforms and email marketing services in the world, so a stamp of approval from them is an invaluable feather in your cap—it also looks great on a resume!

Jordan Duran, 6 ICE

Charge More for Your Expert Services 

Mailchimp’s certification program is a great way to show you know your stuff when it comes to email marketing. It takes just 2 hours to complete, and you can watch the video lessons on your own time. Once you pass the exam, you get a badge that shows up on your profile and is able to showcase to prospective and current clients.

When people are searching for an email expert, they’re looking for someone who’s knowledgeable and trustworthy—and Mailchimp certified tells them you are. You’re likely also able to charge clients a bit more for your services because of your certification too. Plus, if you’re looking for a job, it makes your résumé stand out.

Nick Cotter, newfound

Shows Employers You Are Dedicated 

The benefits of getting a Mailchimp certification are many, and one of the most important is that it will help you land a better job. Since many businesses and marketing agencies rely on Mailchimp for their email marketing, the demand for people with the skills to work with this software will only grow. If you are serious about landing a job in the marketing field, getting a Mailchimp certification will show employers that you are dedicated to furthering your education.

Eugene Chimpoy, Church Helper

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published. 

6 Ways To Use Canva and Mailchimp

6 Ways To Use Canva and Mailchimp

How can you can use Canva and Mailchimp, together?   


To help you best use Canva and Mailchimp together, we asked marketing professionals with experience in both tools this question for their best insights. From creating engaging email banners to newsletters, there are several was to use Canva and Mailchimp together to enhance your email communication and marketing efforts.


Here are six ways to use Canva and Mailchimp together:

  • Create Engaging Email Banners
  • Personalize Emails With Customer-Centric Designs 
  • Set Up a New Team Member Onboarding Email Sequence
  • Create Data-driven Emails With Infographics
  • Design Graphics to Fit the Dimensions You Need 
  • Create a Newsletter

Create Engaging Email Banners

You can use Canva to find visually engaging banner templates to be used as banners at the top of your marketing emails. Within these banners you can include important announcements such as big sales coming up. By seeing this aesthetically pleasing content right when opening these emails, your readers will receive a positive impression of this company as professional and creative.

Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency

Personalize Emails With Customer-Centric Designs 

You can use Canva to personalize emails to your customers. If, for example, they like a certain design of ours, we can use Canva to craft an email with that design aimed at them to help convince them to take the next step. Then, we take that design and send it to Mailchimp through Canva, directly enabling us to send beautiful, personalized emails to our customers without having to use multiple apps or programs.

Nataly Vanunu, Boho Magic

Set Up a New Team Member Onboarding Email Sequence

While usually used for customer outreach, Canva and Mailchimp make a great pair for internal email campaigns. For instance, a new team member email sequence can include timely reminders each step of the way, with one call to action in a video or presentation link.

Managing new employee onboarding reminders doesn’t have to be overwhelming or dull. Inexpensive tools like Canva and Mailchimp can support your small business growth including employee onboarding, so you can focus on quality time with your people and customers rather than manually send reminders.

Benjamin Meskin, Cabrella

Create Data-driven Emails With Infographics

Canva and Mailchimp don’t only go together with marketing. If there’s any data you’re presenting in an email, for a client, digital outreach, or within your company, you can use both programs for appeal and simplicity. You can design infographics with incredible ease in Canva by inputting the right keywords in the elements sections. They have intuitive charts and ready-to-go templates if you need a little more help with the visual presentation of the information.

Link your Mailchimp account to Canva, and you’ll be able to import these graphics seamlessly into your carefully crafted email. Presenting data with visuals can make your email more readable, unique and attractive.

Nicole Ostrowska, Zety

Design Graphics to Fit the DImensions You Need

Canva is an excellent platform to create appealing graphics for email newsletters. You can design graphics to fit the dimensions and branding of your newsletter in Canva and then upload them into Mailchimp. Graphics make email newsletters more interactive and visually pleasing. Canva and Mailchimp are best used together, like peanut butter and jelly!

Breanne Millette, BISOULOVELY

Create a Newsletter

One way that you can use Canva and Mailchimp, together is to create a newsletter. A newsletter will help your company stay in touch with customers by providing information about current events, sales promotions or new arrivals. They are also a great way for companies to promote upcoming products or services as well as share their latest updates on the business itself.

Adil Advani, MyPrep

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.

7 Things To Know About Mailchimp Send Time Optimization

What is one thing to know about Mailchimp’s send time optimization?    


To help you better understand Mailchimp’s send time optimization, we asked small business owners and marketing experts this question for their best insights. From understanding that automated emails are not offered to recognizing the software’s first try isn’t perfect, there are several things to be aware of before using Mailchimp’s send time optimization.

Here are seven things to know about Mailchimp’s send time optimization:

  • Automated Emails Are Not Offered 
  • It is Very Timely
  • You Still Need to Do Your Own Research
  • Mailchimp Uses Data Science
  • You Must Choose a Plan 
  • Send Time Optimization May Not Work The Same Day
  • The Software’s First Try Isn’t Perfect

Automated Emails Are Not Offered

Send time optimization is not available for automated emails. You must craft the email. Mailchimp analyzes user engagement patterns for their emails to determine the ideal time for sending an email to achieve maximum engagement. By turning on send time optimization, Mailchimp will send the email on your desired sent date at the appointed time. You can still send email campaigns, but they aren’t automated.

Bill Glaser, Outstanding Foods

It is Very Timely

Mailchimp’s send time is on point and timely. It is very difficult to stop a campaign once it is in motion and sent out. Make sure that you have proofread the material multiple times in order to see that everything is on par with messaging and it is good to go.

Shaun Price, MitoQ

You Still Need to Do Your Own Research

There has been a lot of research done about the best time to send a message to an email subscriber. Still, the answer truly lies in what works best for your audience. While Mailchimp offers time optimization as a perk, you should still do your own A-B tests to see what jives with your audience that sends messages to your subscriber count at different times. Then, use a comparative reporting feature to help identify which had the best open and conversion rates.

Stephanie Venn-Watson, fatty15

Mailchimp Uses Data Science 

Send time optimization takes a lot of the guesswork out of ensuring your email campaigns are read by your email list contacts. Using data science, Mailchimp’s send time optimization figures out when your email contacts are most likely to interact with your messages. It then schedules emails to be sent at that time, increasing the chances that they will be received and read. It’s a useful tool for increasing contacts’ engagement with your emails.

Candie Guay, Envida

You Must Choose a Plan

You have to be signed up for either the Standard or Premium plan to access Mailchimp’s send time optimization features. Consider whether you are willing to afford these plans and whether this is a worthwhile investment. You could always try it for a month or so to see if your email engagement rates increase during this time.

Drew Sherman, Carvaygo

Send Time Optimization May Not Work The Same Day

Though Mailchimp’s send time optimization is a great capability, it’s not always an option if you’re sending a same day email. You can implement the optimization tool when scheduling emails that are further out, but it can only be used when there are five hours left in the day. That five hours is based on the time zone you’ve set for the Mailchimp account.

Logan Mallory, Motivosity

The Software’s First Try Isn’t Perfect

Mailchimp counts send time optimization based on the previous behavior of recipients; however, it doesn’t have all emails in the database. The software may lack data about recipients you contact for the first time, so its estimation wouldn’t be so successful. Therefore, keep in mind that your campaign will work better and better with every use of your sending list.

Karolina Zajac, PhotoAiD

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published. 

10 Creative Virtual Assistant Jobs With No Experience

10 Creative Virtual Assistant Jobs With No Experience

I started, 7 years ago, as a Virtual Assistant, helping clients with everything from Mailchimp to invoicing to simple email communication. It was an incredible way to start working for myself from home while gaining a lot of online marketing experience.

And there are many different types virtual assistant jobs. What is one creative virtual assistant job that someone can obtain with little to no experience?   

To help you with finding a creative virtual assistant job at the entry level, we asked  CEOs and career experts this question for their best insights. From content researching to working as a social media virtual assistant, there are several suggestions that may help you find the perfect virtual assistant job in the future.

Here are ten creative virtual assistant jobs that require little to no experience:

  • Content Research
  • Virtual Assistant For a Travel Company
  • Copy Editor or Proofreader
  • Engage in Social Media Posts 
  • Virtual Administrative Assistant
  • Content Production
  • Email Marketing
  • SEO Content Writer
  • Graphic Designer
  • Social Media Virtual Assistant

Content Research

For someone looking for real-world experience in a creative niche, starting off as a content researcher could be the right fit for you. This role is typically offered by companies who are really serious about the quality of their content. The applicant would want to exhibit that they could research for content ideas and trending topics, and learning to do keyword research could even be another big plus to add to your resume.

Lindsay McCormick, Bite

Virtual Assistant For a Travel Company 

One creative VA job someone can obtain with little to no experience is becoming a Virtual Assistant for a travel company. A travel company is always looking for people who are familiar with the travel industry and can help manage different areas of the business, such as social media, customer service, and marketing. If you have some experience in the tourism field or are just passionate about traveling, this could be a great opportunity for you.

Claire Westbrook, LSAT Prep Hero

Copy Editor or Proofreader

Proofreaders and copy editors have similar goals: to ensure written material is error-free. Corrections to grammatical or stylistic problems, poor formatting, and typos are checked by proofreaders before a work is printed, published, or placed online. Copy editors do the same thing, but they may additionally edit phrases or paragraphs for correctness and clarity. Companies that produce a lot of written material may hire part-time or full-time proofreaders or copy editors, but this work can also be done as a contractor or freelancer. A proofreader or copy editor must have a thorough grasp of English spelling and grammar rules, as well as a sharp eye for detail. Experience in the company’s field or acquaintance with their style guide will be a plus. Copy editors and proofreaders frequently have degrees in English, communication, or related fields, but they can also work without prior professional experience.

Jay Bats, ContentBASE

Engage in Social Media Posts

Chances are that you have experience posting content to social media, and engaging with other people’s posts. Clients will pay you to do this on their behalf, to help them drive engagement on their own profiles. Look for eCommerce brands and others who want to engage new audiences and pitch them on the idea of hiring you.

Dennis Consorte, Snackable Solutions

Virtual Administrative Assistant

Administrative assistants may respond to emails, plan meetings, make memoranda, maintain databases and files, or execute other clerical activities as assigned by their employers. Executive assistants are administrative assistants that usually work for a company’s executives. In addition to administrative chores, they may plan their executive’s travel, take notes for meetings, and conduct research. 

An ideal candidate will be flexible in their work schedule, be well organized, self-directed, and have strong problem-solving skills. Many administrative assistants can now work full- or part-time online in an increasingly digital world. (However, not every administrative or executive assistant just works online, so check the job description carefully!) Most of these jobs require only a high school diploma, although some employers prefer a college diploma. These positions are entry-level, but executive assistant positions may require additional experience.

Sumit Bansal, TrumpExcel

Content Production

If your passion is creating, curating, and editing videos or images, you could start a VA business as a content production creator. Creating content is extremely time-consuming and most businesses don’t have time to commit to this and will look to outsource these tasks. You can offer to help with: Writing blog posts. Researching content ideas. Creating graphics. Sourcing photos. Editing pictures. Creating videos.

Stewart McGrenary, Freedom Mobiles

Email Marketing

If you have a flexible work schedule, creative teams are often looking for extra help. For example, you can help them organize their email lists so that you can learn more about email marketing. It’s super important to understand that in order to become a full on digital marketing expert. No matter what task you’re doing, make sure you’re focused and thinking about it deeply so that you can ask any questions later. This is what helps you learn and grow and shows that your interest is real.

Anne-Marie Faiola, Bramble Berry

SEO Content Writer

Creatives should consider a content writer job in SEO. This digital marketing strategy uses keywords in blog posts and websites to increase domain ratings while improving organic search methods. Most SEO agencies can teach writers a specific formula, which is great for those with little experience in SEO but a strong writing background. This is a career that is easy to learn, with or without a college degree.

Lillie Sun, Three Ships Beauty

Graphic Designer

Graphic designers create images that communicate an organization’s, brand’s, or individual’s ideas, messages, and aesthetics. Graphic designers use text, images, or both to produce digital art or transform handmade art to digital. Graphic designers can create logos, product packaging, infographics, social media imagery, and even website and software aspects. An online career, graphic designers operate mostly alone utilizing a computer and other equipment they may easily keep at home after they know what their employers or clients require. 

For their own or clients’ graphics, some organizations hire full-time or part-time designers, while others build partnerships with freelancers or contractors they admire. A graphic designer must be creative, artistic, and proficient in the newest design, picture, and layout applications. You’ll also need good communication skills to ensure that you and your client are on the same page.

Jamie Opalchuk, HostPapa

Social Media Virtual Assistant

A social media virtual assistant. It’s a field that has a higher amount of entry-level job postings. They need to ask for something, so what is usually required? Proficiency in social media platforms, which everyone has to an extent in this day and age. They may ask for experience using Canva, a graphic design platform. The platform itself is so well-built and intuitive, it’ll take you 15min to get the hang of it. And just a few hours to understand its functions. Very easy. Apart from that: general communication skills along with an ability to cater them to a specific social network, and an eye for aesthetics. Again, spend some time analyzing different brands or accounts on the chosen platform. You’ll find that grasping the basics is intuitive.

Nicole Ostrowska-Cobas, LiveCareer

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published. 

6 Ways Email Marketing Fuels an Inbound Strategy

What are the best ways in which email marketing fuels inbound strategy? 

To help marketing professionals truly understand the impact email marketing has on inbound strategy, we asked marketing managers and experts this question and their best tips on how to best use email marketing. From remaining relevant to nurturing your audience, there are several simple ways that may help you fuel your inbound strategy.

 

Here are 6 ways email marketing can fuel an inbound strategy:

  • Remain Relevant
  • Turn to Subscribers for Content Ideas & Promotion
  • Refine Your Brand Messaging 
  • Create Long-term Relationships
  • Open Communication and Network
  • Nurture Your Audience
6 Ways Email Marketing Fuels an Inbound Strategy

Remain Relevant

Email marketing can maintain brand awareness and nurture an ongoing relationship between the company and customers. Even if email list leads are not yet ready to close the sales funnel and make a purchase, and even if not every campaign results in conversion, sending timely emails keeps your company at the top of a client’s mind. After seeing your organization’s name repeatedly in their inboxes, leaders are likely to pay your company consideration and make a visit when finally ready to buy.

Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding

Turn to Email Subscribers for Content Ideas & Promotion

One innovative way to keep email subscribers engaged in the content you are producing is to ask for their input. Find out what topics they are most keen on seeing you publish next as blogs or long form guides. Send your email subscribers a quick survey to gather their feedback, align ideas to your inbound strategy and search rank potential, and then when you publish the new content, thank your subscribers by providing them early access.

Segment the survey respondents before you create the content and let them know they can be the first to share it if they wish before you start promoting across your social channels. It is a great way to improve your content ideation, increase organic sharing, and better align your next content pieces to what your audience wants to read.

Colton De Vos, Resolute Technology Solutions

Refine Your Brand Messaging by Funnel Segment

One inbound strategy is to use email funnels to segment different demographics in your ICP. The more precise your brand messaging is to a specific audience, the more likely they will be attracted to your brand or find your messaging relatable. The best way to pinpoint the risk areas of your funnel is to audit each segment for leads, conversions, and churn. You can do this using most analytics software and subsequently tighten your brand consistency where it’s missing the mark. 

Many companies get the basics down with inbound marketing and funnels but fall short on optimization. The more refined your brand messaging, funnels, overall consistency, and so on, the better your returns.

Zach Goldstein, Public Rec

Email Helps Create Long-term Relationships

Whenever you email people who have willingly given you their email address, it’s basically inbound marketing: your prospect has come to you. Adding email to your inbound strategy is a great way of ensuring that your message is coming to those who want to hear it, and it’s perfectly tailored to their needs.

The core of inbound marketing is producing valuable content that meets the demands of your target audiences and creates long-term customer relationships. And there is almost no better way to build a relationship than email marketing. Personalized content, automated messaging and segmented audiences are the most important and effective tools you can use. If you manage to generate content that will make your customers go “oh I really feel like they’re talking to me”, your inbound marketing will be on a great path.

Klara Dumancic, Investors Club

Open Communication and Network

Email marketing can have a positive impact on your business. There are approximately 1.3 billion email users spread across the globe, and the growing number is bringing marketers into the e-mail marketing industry. It provides an open communication system with the consumers, and the option of personalizing the email works as a cherry on top. You can sync it with CRM and improve your customer relationships and grow your business. It can influence your inbound marketing strategy by grouping your customers and providing them with relevant content. The eventual goal of turning leads and generations can be achieved with the intersection of both.

Meera Watts, Siddhi Yoga International Pte. Ltd.

Nurture Your Audience

While email marketing has its limits, it remains the most effective way to nurture people from dabbler to buyer to brand advocate. Too many marketers categorize email as a conversion channel. It certainly plays a role at the conversion stage, but its most powerful use is as a way to warm your audience up before going for the sale.

Bobby Klinck, BobbyKlinck.com

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published. 

9 Ways to be More Gender-Inclusive in Email Marketing

Email marketing video library

What is one way to make your email marketing strategy more gender-inclusive?

To help you create a more gender-inclusive email marketing strategy, we asked DEI leaders and email marketers this question for their best insights. From avoiding generalizations to using a mixed gendered content team, there are several ways to update your email marketing strategy to be more supportive and inclusive to all genders. 


Here are 9 ways to be more gender-inclusive in email marketing:

  • Avoid Generalizations
  • Don’t Focus On Just One Aspect 
  • Focus On Behavior Instead of Gender
  • Expand Your Range of Photos, Icons, Emojis
  • Design Forms that Acknowledge Gender Inclusivity
  • Provide Multiple Options On Email Sign-up Pages
  • Use “To Whom It May Concern”
  • Go Neutral
  • Use a Mixed Gender Content Team
9 Ways to be More Gender-Inclusive in Email Marketing

Avoid Generalizations

Your email recipients are likely a wide range of individuals of different races, genders, cultures, sexualities, abilities and so many other characteristics that make them unique, so your email campaigns should never try to fit your customers all into one neat little box. The language you use in your emails should never be presumptuous or niche in language but instead, should be general and address the different needs and interests of your readers. Use gender-neutral pronouns and rely on behavior metrics of your customers rather than gendered stereotypical assumptions to ensure that your emails remain inclusive to each group.

Saneem Ahearn, Colorescience

Don’t Focus On Just One Aspect 

When thinking about making your email marketing strategy more gender-inclusive, don’t just focus on one aspect. It can be easy to focus too narrowly on your email copy or images when trying to be more gender-inclusive. This can cause issues with the other aspects that are not getting as much attention. You should be giving the same amount of attention to each aspect of your email marketing strategy in order to be truly authentic and inclusive.

Maegan Griffin, Skin Pharm

Focus On Behavior Instead of Gender

Avoid segmenting your email lists by gender. Many consumers have interests that don’t conform to traditional gender roles. Instead of focusing on the gender of your customers, focus on their behavior instead. Their likelihood to open your emails provides more applicable data for you to analyze than their gender does.

Jean Gregoire, Lovebox

Expand Your Range of Photos, Icons, Emojis

Images, icons, and emojis are an integral part of email marketing campaigns today, so ensuring that these visual assets follow the rules of gender inclusivity is essential. Although representing every gender in a single campaign is not often possible, a healthy mix of different genders turns out to be a way better approach than only including one. Doing away with stereotypical visuals and putting in efforts to source the right images go a long way in promoting inclusion and painting your marketing campaign in gender-neutral colors.

Jerry Ford, 4WD Life

Design Forms that Acknowledge Gender Inclusivity

If you include a form in your email marketing campaign to collect opinions or feedback, make sure that every element in the form sticks to the rules of gender inclusivity. Collect information related to gender only if it is essential to your campaign. Even when doing so, it is preferable to ask a question on the lines of who the respondent identifies as instead of only offering them the usual traditional options. Also, do away with the now redundant title section that asks respondents to choose their preferred one.

Azmaira Maker, Ph.D., Aspiring Families

Provide Multiple Options On Email Sign-up Pages

For your email sign-up portal, make sure you have options not just for “male” or “female,” but for “non-binary,” “other,” and “prefer to withhold.” When you send emails, make sure you either aren’t using gendered pronouns at all or using the increasingly more standard “they.”

Michael Williamson, Hoist

Use “To Whom It May Concern”

Public perception of gender as a spectrum rather than a binary is becoming more and more acceptable by the majority. There are a few bureaucratic issues that appeared, such as coming up with a better and more inclusive language in a promotional/professional setting.

If you’re trying to keep up with the times, which you should, it is time to retire the old “Dear Sir/Madam” at the beginning of your emails. With the advancements in technology, there’s a high chance that your tools know the name of the recipient, in which case your email can start with “Dear <Name>”.

If by some chance you don’t know the gender/name/pronouns of the recipient, you may address them as their department/title in the company, or if it’s a customer you may just say “Dear Valued Customer”. It may be better to be awkwardly formal and write “to whom it may concern” rather than assuming someone’s gender and their pronouns.

Gosia Hytry, Spacelift

Go Neutral

One easy way to make your email marketing methods more gender-inclusive is to simply omit gendered content altogether. If you tend to reference women in your emails, as an example, a gender-inclusive practice might entail shifting to a second-person perspective or using only gender-neutral language. Naturally, this tactic won’t work for every brand or business, but thinking about how you can achieve a gender-neutral approach can still be productive.

Consider your current use of language, images, and even colors. Identify if there are any areas where you can make small changes to reduce unconscious bias. For example, be mindful of the language you use; even when not explicitly gendered, many words have gendered connotations that can alienate some of your leads and dismiss others. At the end of the day, evaluating your current strategies and honing in on areas that promote a gender binary or fail to include diverse genders can help you identify areas of improvement.

Sydney Fuhrman, Conklin Media

Use a Mixed Gender Content Team

One surefire way of delivering a more gender-inclusive email marketing strategy is to infuse your email content team with multiple perspectives. If you already utilize a team approach to running your email marketing campaigns, ensure you have at least one male and one female on the team. Likewise, if you currently just have one person managing your email marketing, consider adding a second person to the team, or at the very least seeking input from another person on the broader marketing team of a different gender. 

For gender-inclusivity it all starts at the top with the people that create the content. Thus, the more that you can create a campaign based on an amalgamation of views and opinions, the better off you’ll be. Even if we think we are unbiased and can incorporate gender-inclusive views into our content, the truth is that everyone has unconscious biases. Not to mention, we simply lack the life experience of the other sex to connect fully with them.

John Ross, Test Prep Insight

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.