Email marketing is helpful for businesses in many ways when it’s done right, from building relationships to getting new users to buy.

It’s a promise, though. A good email marketing strategy takes into account all the steps a customer takes, works with different email marketing strategies, and sets the stage for campaigns with clear goals.

Email marketing expert Josh Rosenblat says, “Email marketing is both an art and a science.”
“The art is being able to write emails that stand out in everyone’s very full inbox, and the science is being able to pick and choose how you want to divide your audience.”

What is an email marketing strategy?

A business needs an email marketing strategy to figure out how to use email to achieve its goals. Email strategies that work use transactional, promotional, customer life cycle, and newsletter efforts to reach their sales, service, relationship, and loyalty goals.

This is what a good email plan includes:

• Background on marketing approach. Since email marketing is part of your business’s marketing plan, don’t forget to include your value proposition, key messages, marketing goals, and target audience research. You can also align email with your other marketing efforts by adding important dates from your marketing calendar, like holidays or new product launches.
• Goals for email marketing. Your email marketing goals are smaller objectives that support your overall marketing goals. They explain how your email efforts will help your business reach its wider objectives.
• Value argument for newsletters. If you include a newsletter, explain what subscribers will gain from it. This differs from your business’s value proposition, which explains how your company helps customers overall.
• Email list. Provide details on how you collect leads and the methods you use to gather contact information of potential customers.
• Important tools. The platforms you use for email marketing, your online shop, CRM system, and analytics provider all fall under this section.
• Content for email marketing. While content creation is ongoing, many business owners plan key transactional flows and customer life cycle emails before launch and begin building a content library.

ALSO READ: The Power of Email Segmentation: How to Personalize Emails for 5x Higher Conversions

Why is creating an email marketing strategy important?

Email marketing efforts that work can help e-commerce businesses get new customers, keep old ones, spread the word about their brand, and make more sales. Even though these perks aren’t always present, they usually come at a low cost: a 2025 Hubspot study says that email marketing activities usually bring back $36 for every dollar spent.

A good email marketing plan helps you handle at least two projects at the same time. That allows you to test which types of emails work best. It also creates a strong link between what your business offers and what your audience needs.

This makes it possible to build email campaigns that strengthen customer relationships and establish your credibility with a larger audience.

How to launch an email marketing strategy

Email is a powerful and flexible way to market, and a good email marketing plan helps business owners get the most out of their campaigns.

Eight steps will show you how to make and start an email marketing plan:

1. Pick an email service

Email service providers (ESPs) are tools that help companies plan, run, and monitor email marketing efforts. A good platform makes it easier to manage customer data, maintain an updated contact list, send emails, segment customers, and analyze reports.

Many ESPs also include built-in automations, customizable templates, easy-to-use design interfaces, and flexible integrations.

Choose email marketing software that integrates with your online store. This allows you to connect your products directly to your customer communication and makes it easier to track performance, test strategies, and gain insights.

2. Make plans

Review your marketing strategy and make sure email campaign goals align with your business objectives.
For example: If your business goal is to get 20% more website visitors in three months, your email marketing goal could be to drive 10% of that traffic through email campaigns.

3. Get people to sign up for your email list

One of the biggest strengths of email marketing is that it’s owned media. You’re not dependent on social platforms or ad networks. You control the channel, keeping customer information in-house.

To build your email list, offer lead magnets such as discount codes, exclusive content, quizzes, or giveaways.
Use splash pages, landing pages, pop-ups, and calls to action to promote sign-ups effectively.

4. Know the law

Effective email marketing strategies follow compliance rules. Failing to protect customer data can damage trust and lead to hefty fines.

Different regions have different privacy laws, like the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR. Best practice is to follow the strictest standards.

Two key compliance practices:

• Use double opt-in. Confirm subscriptions through both a sign-up form and a verification email.
• Make unsubscribing easy. Provide clear unsubscribe links to maintain trust and compliance.

5. Set up email automations

Automated emails ensure timely communication triggered by customer actions.

Types of automation:

• Transactional emails (order confirmations, shipping updates, payment receipts).
• Customer life cycle emails (welcome emails, cart abandonment reminders, birthday/anniversary offers).

Always have automations active at key customer journey stages, especially welcome emails.

6. Make a plan for your email newsletter

Newsletters are powerful for content marketing, trust-building, and audience engagement.
They should deliver value beyond sales, sharing educational, informational, or entertaining content.

If your business has a blog, use it as a base for content. If not, curate high-quality resources that keep subscribers engaged.

7. Divide your audience into groups

Segmentation improves email deliverability and engagement. Sending relevant content to the right audience reduces unsubscribes and spam complaints while building trust.

You can segment based on customer loyalty, purchase history, or engagement level.
Even small businesses can create a sense of personalized interaction at scale through segmentation.

8. Keep an eye on performance

Email marketing success depends on testing, tracking, and adjusting.
Regularly review key email metrics to measure progress against your goals.

Your email strategy should evolve—review it every 1–3 months to refine and optimize campaigns.

5 email marketing strategy tips

Once your email plan is up and running, focus on improving the content, layout, and subject lines of your emails, while using email to strengthen customer communication.

Here are five email marketing tips to make your efforts more effective:

1. Make sure there are clear calls to action (CTAs)

Always make it clear what you want the reader to do. Even in an informational newsletter, include opportunities for actions like checking out, writing a review, or learning more.

Design is key: CTAs should stand out—often with brightly colored buttons or header images.
Strong CTAs drive interaction beyond the inbox and help measure campaign success.

2. Keep it short

Email copy should be concise. Readers usually spend 30 seconds to a minute on emails.
Keep it engaging, clear, and to the point.

Instead of cramming too much info, use emails to guide readers to product pages or other content hubs.
Emails should act as gateways to your online store or website.

3. Make plans to get involved

Email is a two-way channel. Use campaigns to encourage user-generated content, feedback, and questions.

Asking for responses builds stronger relationships.
Engaged customers are those who already care about your brand—make them feel seen and valued by allowing interaction.

4. Make subject lines better

Subject lines determine open rates. They should be short (under 50 characters), create urgency, and be tested through A/B experiments.

Strong subject lines often make the difference between campaigns that succeed and those that don’t.

5. Be yourself

Show your brand’s authentic personality. Customers want to connect with the people behind the brand.

Use emails to highlight your brand values and vision in a genuine way.
Authenticity builds trust, interest, and long-term engagement.