The Ultimate Guide (Expert Tips + Data to Know)

I‘m pretty sure I’ve said this in a few blog posts already, so if you‘ve heard this from me before, I apologize, but it’s true: In addition to being a blogger, I‘m in charge of curating and sending out HubSpot’s Marketing Blog newsletter. So, I know a thing or two about email marketing. Done correctly, email marketing can be as powerful as any other marketing tactic today. But notice the key phrase: done correctly. Fortunately, you‘ve get this handy dandy guide you’re reading that will set you up for success in your email marketing strategy. Without further ado, let’s review the best ways to leverage email marketing. I’ll also cover benefits and statistics that show the importance of email, just in case you need extra convincing. Let’s dig in.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves sending promotional messages or newsletters to a list of subscribers via email. The goal is building customer relationships, promoting products or services, increasing brand awareness, and ultimately driving sales. In my experience, email marketing allows me to reach my target audience directly with personalized and relevant content. It’s also cost-effective, easy to track, and provides valuable data for analyzing campaign success.

Marketers have been using email as a channel for almost as long as they’ve been using the internet. The first marketing email was sent in 1978, resulting in $13 million in sales. Email has been one of the most highly used marketing channels ever since. This is because email is a flexible yet cost-effective way to reach many people relatively quickly. I can also personalize my message to target specific audiences and generate leads.

Email marketing can take many different forms. These campaigns can include a single email announcing new content, an ongoing newsletter delivered regularly, or contacting customers about product updates. Email isn’t as shiny as newer channels, like messaging and social. However, email is an effective way to build an audience that gets results. “One of my favorite parts about email marketing is its intimacy,” says Rob Litterst, head of strategy and operations for HubSpot’s Newsletter Network. “Access to someone‘s inbox is sacred, and for a person to welcome you in, there’s already a certain level of trust that you just can’t achieve with other platforms,” he says.

Master the fundamentals of email marketing with a free online course.

When to Use Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a powerful tactic to:

Build relationships. Build connections through personalized engagement.
Boost brand awareness. Keep your company and your services top-of-mind for the moment when your prospects are ready to engage.
Promote your content. Use email to share relevant blog content or valuable assets with your prospects.
Generate leads. Entice subscribers to provide their personal information in exchange for an asset that they’d find valuable.
Market your products. Promote your products and services.
Nurture leads. Delight your customers with content that can help them succeed in their goals.

Email Marketing Benefits

87% of marketers say that email marketing is critical to business success. Email is the third most popular owned media platform B2B marketers used to distribute content in the past 12 months. There are over 4.3 billion email users worldwide, so if you’re looking for a way to reach your customers, email is the perfect place to find them. The number of global email users is set to grow to 4.48 billion users by 2024. As of 2022, email generates $36 for every dollar spent. 51% of marketers say email marketing is the most effective marketing channel, according to our Marketing Trends survey. 53% of marketers are continuing to invest in email marketing in 2023. 33% are increasing their investment in email marketing in 2023. 33% of marketers send weekly emails, and 26% send emails multiple times monthly.

Beyond just the statistics, perhaps the best reason to use email marketing is that you own the channel. Outside of compliance regulations, no external entity can impact how, when, or why you reach out to your subscribers. Time and time again, email proves to be an unsung hero in marketing. While it’s the third most-used marketing channel (beat by social media and websites), a whopping 95% of email marketers call it practical,” says Pamela Bump, head of content growth at HubSpot. “For HubSpot — and our blog team — we’ve deeply leveraged email and even catered blog posts to our very subscribers,” she says. “Over the years, this has driven high ROI, millions of page views, countless conversions, and even customers.” Still have doubts? Consider this: Email marketing has an impressive ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. Furthermore, email marketing revenue is expected to reach $12.88 billion in 2024, according to Statista. In addition to boosting revenue, marketing emails can also boost traffic to your website. I know this from personal experience. As I mentioned earlier, I run the marketing blog email newsletter. One of my responsibilities is to monitor the traffic our blog content generates. So, I personally noticed that blog posts bring in significantly more traffic when they’re included in our email marketing newsletter.

Email Marketing Stats by Industry

Email marketing rules change based on your industry and who you’re marketing to. Below are some email marketing trends for B2B, B2C, e-commerce, and real estate companies that can inform your email marketing strategy.

Email Marketing Stats for B2B

Email is the third-highest owned-media platform B2B marketers used to distribute content in the last 12 months.
44% of B2B marketers say email marketing is the most effective marketing channel.
B2B marketers say email engagement is the fourth most insightful metric when evaluating performance over the past year, more than social media, search rankings, and lead quality.

Email Marketing Stats for B2C

50% of B2C marketers say growing their email list is one of the biggest challenges in their role.
37% of B2C marketers send daily marketing emails to their subscribers.

Email Marketing Stats for Ecommerce

57.2% of marketers say the e-commerce brands they manage have 1,000 to 10,000 contacts on their email lists.
85.7% of e-commerce marketers say the primary business objective of their email strategy is increasing brand awareness.
Roughly 72% of e-commerce marketers say the biggest challenge they face with email is low open rates.

Getting Started with Email Marketing

I know it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the vast possibilities of email marketing, so let’s break down a few key steps to get you started building a solid email campaign that will delight your customers. You can think of these steps as creating a successful email marketing strategy.

1. Create an Email Marketing Strategy

You can learn how to build an effective email strategy and send emails that people actually want to read. It just takes a plan (one that can be broken down into a few key steps). Think of the following five steps as an outline for your email strategy. We’ll dive deeper into some of these in a moment.

2. Define your audience.

Effective emails, whether a campaign or a one-off, start with understanding your audience. Like everything else in marketing, start with your buyer persona, understand what pain points they’re dealing with, and tailor your email campaign to your audience’s needs.

3. Establish your goals.

Usually, before I think up campaign goals, I gather some context. I always want to know the average email stats for my industry and use them as benchmarks for my goals. This should be your process as well. As you can see, these benchmarks vary greatly. Using this guide will help you create realistic goals for your team.

4. Build your email list.

You need people to email, right? An email list (we’ll cover how to build your email list in the next section) is a group of users who have permitted you to send them relevant content. To build that list, you need several ways for prospects to opt-in to receive your emails which we’ll cover in another section in just a moment. Don’t be discouraged if you only have a few people on your list. It can take some time to build. In the meantime, treat every subscriber and lead like gold, and you’ll start seeing your email list grow organically.