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Building Your Email Marketing Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide

  • Writer: Jonathan Eyres
    Jonathan Eyres
  • Sep 23
  • 2 min read

Updated: Sep 30


Lighthouse by the sea with a cloudy sky, brown grass, and text: "Building Your Email Marketing Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide."

You’ve got the tools, the tactics, and the metrics… but now it’s time to pull it all together. Think of this as your roadmap for creating an email marketing strategy that actually delivers results (and doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out).

Step 1: Define Your Goal

  • Sales? Brand awareness? Customer retention?

  • Your emails should always work toward one primary objective.

    Hand holding a brass compass with cardinal directions visible. The needle points north. Background shows blurred greenery. Outdoor setting.

Step 2: Know Your Audience

  • Use segmentation basics: Prospects, Customers, Loyalists, Dormant.

  • Tailor messaging to each group instead of blasting one-size-fits-all campaigns.

Step 3: Choose the Right Tools

  • Honda Civic or F-350 Super Duty? The tool matters, but only if it matches your goals.

  • Match software to your business model (Mailchimp for starters, HubSpot for enterprise, etc.).

Step 4: Build Your Content Calendar

  • Mix educational, promotional, and engagement-focused content.

  • Plan around events, product launches, and seasonal campaigns.

Step 5: Automate the Repetitive Stuff

  • Welcome sequences, nurture workflows, cart abandonment reminders, and re-engagement campaigns.

  • Automation keeps leads warm without you burning out.

    Close-up of a black keyboard key with "Email" in white text on a light blue background, conveying a digital communication theme.

Step 6: Craft Emails That Perform

  • Subject line = the brain

  • Preview text = the eyes

  • Body copy = the heart

  • CTA = the hands

  • Design/layout = the spine

Step 7: Measure, Refine, Repeat

  • Track the metrics that matter: opens (with a grain of salt), CTR, conversions, unsubscribes, and bounces.

  • Remember: Apple Mail Privacy Protection, security filters, and bot clicks can distort numbers.

  • Use trends over time, not one-off results, to guide your decisions.

    a man in a work environment wearing a white button down shirt and glasses looks at his phone in front of his computer with a smile.

Final Thoughts

A successful email strategy isn’t about sending more emails—it’s about sending the right emails to the right people at the right time. With the right structure in place, your campaigns will stop feeling like random blasts and start working like a well-oiled machine.

And that’s a wrap on our Email Marketing Series! Next week we'll explore Marketing Analytics 101: Turning Data Into Decisions. Check back next week and every week at The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing: Strategies, Trends, and Best Practices.

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