One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is relying solely on social media to sell their products and connect with their target audience. While platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn are great for promotion, brand awareness, and engagement, the tea is:
You don’t own your social media audience.
Just think about it.
Every other day, you have to pivot your social media strategy because there is a new algorithm in place.
Or worse, when ish hits the fan with these social media sites and their tech is down, you find yourself unable to post, and can’t connect with your followers until they say so.
When that happens, you lose your direct connection with customers. But, that’s where email marketing comes in.
Unlike social media, email gives you full control over how and when you communicate with your audience.
In this article, we’ll dive into how to tap into email marketing strategies that work for growing businesses.
Ready to level up? Cool - let’s start with the basics.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a powerful digital marketing strategy where businesses use emails to build relationships, share valuable content, and drive sales. With email marketing, you can connect directly with your audience in a way that’s personalized, measurable, and scalable.
Why is Email Marketing Essential for Startups & Small Businesses?
Every year, email marketing becomes more relevant than ever. With the rise of privacy concerns and changing social media algorithms, businesses are returning to email for reliable and direct communication with their customers.
Plus, with advancements in AI and automation, it’s now easier to deliver personalized, targeted campaigns that keep customers engaged and drive results.
How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform
Selecting an email marketing platform is key to streamlining your efforts and scaling your business. Today’s platforms offer a wide range of services that help with automation, segmentation, landing page creation, A/B testing, and deep analytics.
What to look for:
- Identify Your Business Needs: Start by understanding your goals. Do you need simple automation for sending newsletters, or do you require advanced segmentation and eCommerce integrations?
- Consider Scalability: Choose a platform that can grow with your business. If you're a small startup now but plan to scale, pick a platform that offers advanced features like customer journeys, detailed analytics, or integration with other marketing tools.
- Evaluate Ease of Use: If you're not technical, select a platform that offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface, and a newsletter builder that you can easily build on your own.
- Automation Features: Automation can save you significant time by allowing you to set up welcome sequences, funnels, drip campaigns, and more.
- Deliverability Rates: Your email marketing strategy won’t matter if your emails ends up in the spam folder 😩. Research the platform’s deliverability rates to ensure your emails are reliably reaching inboxes. Platforms like Kit are known for good deliverability.
- Customization & Design Flexibility: Look for platforms that allow you to fully customize your emails and match your branding. Many platforms offer customizable templates, but make sure you can go deeper by personalizing layouts, fonts, buttons, and colors to match your business.
- Third-Party Integrations: If you use other tools to run your business or generate leads, it's important that your email platform integrates smoothly with them—or at the very least, connects with a tool like Zapier for easy integration.
- Analytics & Reporting: Data is critical for optimizing your campaigns. Choose a platform that provides robust analytics, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversion tracking, so you can measure success and make informed decisions.
- Pricing & Value: You always want to make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck. Some platforms offer free tiers or affordable pricing for startups, but the trade-off might be limited features. Evaluate what you’re willing to invest for the tools you need, and make sure the price fits within your budget.
- Customer Support & Resources: Look for platforms with reliable customer support and a knowledge base of resources like tutorials, webinars, and forums. This can be crucial if you need help with setup or troubleshooting down the line.

Popular Email Marketing Platforms
Some of our favorite platforms that we’ve used or researched before are:
Beehiiv: A powerful tool designed for newsletter growth, with advanced monetization and analytics features.
Substack: Perfect for writers and creators looking to build paid subscription-based newsletters with ease.
Mailchimp: A robust all-in-one platform offering email automation, audience segmentation, and CRM tools.
Kit (Formerly known as ConvertKit): Ideal for creators and entrepreneurs, Kit excels in easy-to-use automation and customizable email sequences.
Drip: Tailored for eCommerce businesses, Drip offers deep customer segmentation and personalized email campaigns.
Flodesk: Known for its beautifully designed templates and user-friendly interface, great for creatives and small businesses.
Klaviyo: A go-to for eCommerce brands, offering advanced automation, personalized messaging, and strong integrations with shopping platforms.
Okay, now how do I become a beast at email marketing?
Once you've selected your platform of choice, here are some tips and strategies that can help you maximize your efforts and reach your goals.
1. Welcome New Subscribers Immediately
If someone just signed up to receive your emails, they are the perfect people to connect with immediately because they either loved your landing page and opt-in offer, or they are generally very excited about your company and what you have going on. Take advantage of this momentum by talking to them early.
Just think about it.
First impressions are everything. An immediate touchpoint keeps the momentum going and helps build trust with your audience.
2. Leverage Personalization and Segmentation
With email marketing, personalization is key. Use your platform of choice to segment your audience by behavior, interests, or demographics, and send targeted emails that speak directly to each group.
Pro Tip: Personalize your subject lines and content to increase open rates and engagement. A/B test to find what resonates best with your audience.
3. Automate for Efficiency
Today, automation is one of the most valuable tools in email marketing. Set up automated email sequences for welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, or other customer behaviors.

4. Be Authentic
When you are creating copy for your emails, be you. Real recognizes real, and being unapologetically you or your brand sells. There is nothing worse than receiving an email that sounds like it was sent from a robot and feels impersonal.
5. Respect Your Subscribers’ Inbox
Timing is key, and it's critical that you test different frequencies to find the sweet spot for your audience. Whether it’s weekly, biweekly, or monthly, consistency and timing is key—but balance it with not overwhelming your audience.
6. Optimize Your Email Design for Mobile
With over 50% of emails opened on mobile devices, optimizing your email for mobile is no longer an idea that sounds good—it’s a necessity. Use responsive email templates to ensure your emails look great on any screen size. The platform that you choose will more than likely already have options that make mobile optimization seamless.
7. Create Irresistible Subject Lines & Preview Text
Your subject line is the first thing your subscribers see, and your preview text (when applicable) is next. Together, these elements will determine whether your email gets opened or ignored. Get to know your audience and learn how to talk to them in a language that they can connect with (and use that as inspo will creating your subject line and preview text).
8. Add Social Share Buttons
If your platform offers this feature, add social sharing buttons to your emails. People love to spread the good gospel, so if your email is poppin, it’s a good chance they will share it with friends.
9. Add Social Proof
Including testimonials, reviews, or user-generated content in your emails can boost trust. Social proof reassures your audience that others are benefiting from your company, making them more likely to take action on what you want, or purchase your product.
10. Include Strong CTAs
Every email you send should have a clear, actionable call-to-action (CTA). Whether it’s signing up for a webinar, purchasing a product, or reading a blog post, guide your audience on what to do next.
11. Preview and Test ALL Emails
Aht, aht, aht! Before you hit the send button on your email, test it out first and look at it on your computer and cellphone. It’s important that you see what others will see before your email officially goes out. By previewing every email, this will allow you to catch any typos, and make adjustments as needed.
12. Batch Create (when you can)
Depending on your business and email strategy, you can create multiple email newsletters at once, and schedule them ahead of time to be sent. If your business model makes sense for you to do this, batch creating can save you time and will allow you to focus on other things.
Other Tips to Master Email Marketing
1. Interactive Content in Emails
Today, interactive emails are becoming more popular than ever. Use surveys, polls, or interactive elements like carousels, gifs, or embedded videos to keep your audience engaged directly within the email.
2. Monetize Your Email List
If you’ve built a strong email list, consider monetizing it by offering ad space in your newsletter or promoting affiliate products. Many businesses are earning additional revenue by partnering with brands or promoting complementary products to their audience.
3. Create a Referral Program
A referral program in email marketing is a strategy that incentivizes your existing subscribers to recommend your newsletter to others, typically in exchange for rewards like discounts, free products, or exclusive access. By leveraging the trust and influence of your current audience, you can organically expand your subscriber base.
Pro-tip: Some platforms like Kit and Beehiiv have a built in referral program that you can leverage - depending on your subscription level.
The best time to implement a referral program is after you’ve built a solid, engaged customer base. This will ensure that your existing subscribers are already satisfied with your newsletter and more likely to encourage others to sign up too,
Lastly - Analyze, Test, and Improve
Email marketing success comes from understanding what works and what doesn’t. It's recommend that you consistently dive deep into your analytics to measure key metrics such as:
👉🏾Your open rate details how many people click on your email to open it up. If your open rate is low, it’s time to rethink your subject lines or sending frequency.
👉🏾Next, your click-through rate, or CTR, details how many people clicked on the links in your email. If people aren’t clicking your links, you may need to refine your content or CTAs.
👉🏾Finally, your unsubscribe rate tells you how many people have decided to unsubscribe to your newsletter. If you get to the point of having a high unsubscribe rate, this means you need to really take a deep look at your email copy, frequency, and overall strategy with connecting to your audience via email.
Let’s wrap it up
Email marketing isn’t just a set-it-and-forget-it tool; it’s an evolving strategy that requires regular analysis, continuous learning, and adjustment. By following the steps above and staying up to date with the latest trends, you’ll build a sustainable email marketing system that grows alongside your business.