How to Create an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

It’s easy to treat email marketing like digital junk mail, sending occasional newsletters to everyone on your subscriber list. But for small business owners, consultants, and creators, a well-executed email strategy can be an important driver of success.

If you’re sending email blasts without a clear plan, it’s time to create one. Here's how to build an email marketing strategy that builds relationships, helps visitors become clients, and creates lasting loyalty.

メールマーケティングとは何ですか？

The most obvious form of email marketing is promotional, like ecommerce discount offers and invitations to sign up for services. But email marketing is a broader term that covers any form of relationship-nurturing communication with subscribers on your list. Newsletters, confirmations and reminders, product updates, and business news are all different types of email marketing messages.

For example, you might send a welcome sequence to introduce new subscribers to your brand or share helpful tips and educational content that helps customers get closer to their goals. Any messages that help nudge subscribers toward a closer relationship with you—and ultimately toward making a purchase—fall under the umbrella of email marketing.

9 steps to build your email marketing strategy

Developing an email marketing strategy requires careful planning. Follow these steps to build a system that consistently drives results. Repeat all of the steps any time you plan a big campaign, like a holiday or event promotion, and keep your overall strategy in mind when sending one-off messages.

1. Audit your audience

Start by examining what you're working with right now. Export your email subscriber list and analyze three key metrics: total subscribers, engagement levels, and list health.

Create three engagement segments:

• Highly engaged: Opened 3+ emails in the last 30 days

• Moderately engaged: Opened 1-2 emails in the last 30 days

• Inactive: No opens in 30+ days

This exercise reveals your most valuable subscribers and shows where to focus your efforts. A fitness coach might discover that 40% of their list consists of highly engaged subscribers who regularly click through to workout videos, which makes them prime candidates for upsells.

Next, identify your untapped audience by comparing your total subscribers to the size of your audience elsewhere. These are website visitors, social media followers, and customers who haven't joined your email list yet. Make it easier for your existing audience to join your email list from other channels through tactics like pop-ups, featured posts, and in-store reminders.

Finally, maintain your list health by periodically removing subscribers who haven’t engaged with any of your campaigns over a 6-12 month time frame. This keeps your email open rate high, which sends positive signals to email providers and makes it less likely for your campaigns to end up in the junk folder.

2. Set clear email marketing goals

Replace vague objectives like “get more subscribers” with specific, time-bound goals that impact your bottom line. Your email marketing goals should directly support your business objectives. For example, if you're launching a new service, your email goal might be "generate 50 bookings with a launch sequence."

Some other example goal frameworks by business type:

• Ecommerce: Increase email-driven revenue by 30% this quarter

• Service provider: Generate five new client consultations per month through email

• Content creator: Grow email list by 500 subscribers and achieve 25% open rates

• Local business: Drive 20% of monthly foot traffic through email promotions

3. Choose the right email marketing platform

Pick a platform that matches your technical comfort level and business needs. Consider ease of use, automation capabilities, analytics depth, and integration options.

• For beginners: Prioritize drag-and-drop editors, pre-built templates, and simple automated email workflows.

• For growing businesses: Look for advanced segmentation, A/B testing capabilities, and performance analytics.

• For established brands: Focus on sophisticated automation, CRM integration, and advanced contact management features.

Many all-in-one website platforms offer integrated email marketing tools. Squarespace Email Campaigns, for example, makes it simple to reflect your website branding in your email design, segment subscribers, set up automations, and import subscriber data from website forms.

Essential features to look for:

• Audience segmentation

• Automated email sequences

• Mobile-responsive templates

• Detailed analytics and reporting

• Integration with your existing tools

Learn how to use automated emails to improve your customer experience

4. Build your list strategically

Focus on quality over quantity when growing your email list. A smaller list of engaged subscribers will always outperform a large list of uninterested recipients. Keep your list focused on the right people by removing consistently inactive subscribers and invalid email addresses that bounce.

Make subscribing easy and appealing with prominent signup forms on your website, like header, footer, sidebar, or pop-up placements. Offer compelling free incentives like discount codes, downloadable resources, exclusive content, or entries into giveaways.

Some high-converting lead magnet ideas by industry might be:

• Consultants: Free assessment tools, industry benchmarking reports, strategy templates

• Ecommerce: Exclusive discount codes, style guides, early access to sales

• Content creators: Resource libraries, behind-the-scenes content, community access

• Local services: Maintenance checklists, seasonal guides, appointment booking perks

Make sure to create urgency around your lead magnet by emphasizing the value. Instead of "Download our free guide," try "Get instant access to the 7-day email course that helped 1,000+ entrepreneurs double their revenue."

A key mistake to avoid: purchasing email lists. This leads to poor engagement, spam complaints, and potential legal issues. Organic growth takes longer, but creates genuine business value and an audience that cares about what you have to share.

Get more ideas for collecting emails and growing your list

5. Map your customer journey

Understanding the buyer journey helps you create targeted content that speaks to people exactly where they are. Design your email content to line up with the stages potential customers go through, from discovering your brand to becoming loyal advocates.

The five-stage customer journey:

1. Awareness emails (like welcome sequences) introduce your brand and set expectations.

2. Consideration emails provide educational content and showcase your offerings through tips, case studies, or testimonials. A marketing consultant might send weekly emails featuring client success stories and actionable tips. A skincare brand could share ingredient education and routine guides.

3. Decision emails include promotional campaigns and behavior-triggered messages like abandoned cart reminders or consultation booking follow-ups. These emails should remove barriers to purchase with social proof, urgency, or additional incentives.

4. Retention emails focus on post-purchase follow-ups. A software business might send onboarding sequences and feature tutorials. A clothing brand could provide styling tips and care instructions.

5. Advocacy emails encourage reviews, referrals, and community building. These might include requests for testimonials, referral programs, or invitations to join exclusive communities.

Keep in mind that the timing of each customer journey varies by industry. Consulting services often require multi-month nurturing cycles, while ecommerce customers might go from awareness to purchase in a few days.

Learn how to apply the buyer journey to your customers

6. Segment your audience

Divide your email list into targeted groups so you can send more relevant content that your subscribers actually want to read. Even basic segmentation can improve open rates substantially.

Common ways to segment subscribers are:

1. Demographics: Age, location, job title

2. Customer lifecycle: New subscriber, first-time buyer, repeat customer, lapsed customer

3. Behavior: Purchase history, email engagement level, website activity

4. Preferences: Product interests, content topics, communication frequency

5. Value: High-value customers, budget-conscious buyers, premium service users

Start with a few basic segments tailored to your most important buyer personas and expand from there as you gather more data.

For example:

• A fitness trainer might segment by fitness level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and send different workout recommendations.

• An online retailer could segment by purchase category and send targeted product recommendations.

• A consultant might segment by business size and send industry-specific case studies.

• A local restaurant could segment by dining frequency and send different loyalty rewards.

7. Create your content strategy

If you fill your prospective customers’ inboxes with salesy emails, they’ll be annoyed and eventually unsubscribe. While some promotional emails are necessary, the majority of your emails should focus on genuinely useful or interesting content that helps your prospective customers without being overly promotional.

There’s no one perfect formula for this—it varies across industries—but your breakdown might look something like the below.

1. Broadcast emails (30% of sends): Time-sensitive announcements, product launches, flash sales, event invitations, company updates

2. Newsletters (50% of sends): Regular value-driven content including tips, industry news, behind-the-scenes stories, customer spotlights, curated resources

3. Automated emails (20% of sends): Welcome sequences, abandoned cart reminders, post-purchase follow-ups, birthday offers, re-engagement campaigns

Here’s a simple content rotation example that shows this dynamic in action:

• Week 1: Educational content with actionable tips

• Week 2: Product or service spotlight with social proof

• Week 3: Personal story or behind-the-scenes content

• Week 4: Community highlight or user-generated content

Start with once weekly and increase or decrease based on engagement levels. Watch your unsubscribe rates—if they exceed 2%, you may be sending too frequently. Open rates are another good indicator that your content is (or isn’t) resonating with your audience. If you notice your open rate decreasing, it’s time to take action: Experiment with different email subject lines, send a wider variety of content, or reduce the number of promotional emails you send.

You might also consider signing up for competitors’ email lists to analyze their welcome sequences, promotional campaigns, and newsletters. Save your favorite email marketing examples for reference and note their tone, frequency, and offers.

See more email marketing examples

8. Make your emails feel personal

Move past basic "Hi [Name]" personalization to create relevant email messages that encourage more engagement and conversions. By tailoring your emails to each recipient’s behavior, engagement level, or location, you can offer truly helpful suggestions that boost sales.

Try personalizing in these ways and pay attention to what works:

1. Location-based: John, here's what's happening in Chicago this weekend

2. Purchase history: Since you loved [product], you might like these...

3. Browsing behavior: Still thinking about [product they viewed]?

4. Engagement level: Different content for highly engaged vs. occasional readers

5. Milestone-based: Anniversary emails, birthday offers, achievement celebrations

Some email marketing tools offer dynamic content blocks, which allow you to show personalized images, offers, or messaging within the same email based on recipient characteristics. An online retailer might show winter coats to subscribers in cold climates and swimwear to those in warm places, for example.

9. Track your results and test what works

Rather than guessing if your strategy is working or not, email marketing performance metrics give you a data-backed way to evolve your strategy over time.

Start with a few essential performance metrics:

1. Open rate: Shows subject line effectiveness and trustworthiness

2. Click-through rate: Shows content engagement and call-to-action effectiveness

3. Conversion rate: Measures actual business outcomes

4. List growth rate: Tracks audience development over time

5. Unsubscribe rate: Shows whether your content is relevant to your audience and indicates whether your send frequency is appropriate

Before finalizing your strategy, run small-scale tests to validate assumptions about your audience. For example, test two different signup incentives (e.g., a discount vs. a free guide) to see which drives more subscriptions. Only test one element at a time to clearly identify what drives improvement.

Some simple A/B testing ideas you could start with are:

• Subject lines: Curiosity vs. benefit-driven approaches

• Send times: Tuesday 10 AM vs. Thursday 2 PM vs. Saturday 9 AM

• Call-to-action buttons: "Shop Now" vs. "Discover More" vs. "Get Started"

• Email length: Short and punchy vs. detailed and comprehensive

• Sender name: Business name vs. founder's name vs. team member's name

Get more tips for the best times to send emails

Best practices for email marketing success

As you put your strategy into action, these email marketing principles will help you avoid common pitfalls and build trust with your subscribers over time.

Stay compliant and build trust

Make sure your email practices comply with regulations like CAN-SPAM (a law that sets rules for commercial email) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation for European subscribers). Always obtain proper permission before adding people to your list, provide clear unsubscribe options, and include your physical business address in every email. If you don’t have a brick-and-mortar address, you can use a virtual P.O. box or other similar service.

Some other things to look out for are ensuring your subject lines aren’t misleading or dishonest, processing unsubscribe requests within 10 days, and confirming signup via email for international subscribers, also known as double opt-in.

Design for engagement and deliverability

Over 60% of emails are opened on mobile devices. Use single-column layouts, large tap-friendly buttons, and readable font sizes to create mobile-friendly designs.

To ensure your emails look professional and clear, use headers and white space to indicate what details are most important to the reader. Include prominent call-to-action buttons and alt text for images in case they don’t load or for anyone using a screen reader. Match your design to your website and branding to keep things looking consistent.

Deliverability is a measure of how often your emails land in subscriber inboxes, instead of bouncing or going to spam folders. This includes design factors, like using more text than images in your messages. Experts recommend a 60:40 or 70:30 ratio.

A few other things you can do to keep your deliverability strong are:

• Remove inactive subscribers from your email list

• Monitor sender reputation through deliverability tools

• Avoid spam trigger words in subject lines and content, like “free,” “act now,” or “exclusive deal”

• Encourage subscribers to add you to their contacts

Gather subscriber feedback

Include surveys or polls in your emails to understand subscriber preferences. Ask questions like "What content do you want more of?" or "What's your biggest challenge with [topic]?"

You can ask for feedback in simple surveys linked in your newsletters, survey your subscribers or social media followers annually, or automate an exit survey for anyone who unsubscribes.

Use the feedback to refine your content strategy, segmentation approach, and sending frequency.