Useful tools for marketing

You will learn about useful tools for email marketing. You’ll determine how to create and segment email lists. You’ll also learn how to write effective emails that engage with customers. After that, you’ll explore email marketing tools like HubSpot and Mailchimp and learn how they work. Then, you’ll explore crisis management and how to correct mistakes in email marketing.

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Dedication to study

• Videos: 30 min

• Leitura: 2 h 50 min

• Teste: 1 Teste com avaliação

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Learning Objectives

• Create email marketing automation and workflows.
• Build and maintain email lists. Write effective email copy.
• Select the appropriate tools to conduct email marketing campaigns.
• Conduct contact management and list segmentation.
• Employ best practices to handle PII and user data safely.
• Identify practices for email marketing, including automation, tool selection, and building and managing email lists.

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Content

1. Email lists
2. How to write an effective email
3. Tools for email marketing
4. Mistakes in email marketing
5. Review: Useful tools for marketing

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1. Email lists

Welcome to week 3

• Video Duration: 1 minute

Hi again by now you have a general understanding of email marketing and the kinds of emails used by digital marketers. In this section of your learning journey we’re going to be covering all things automation and I’m also going to tell you how to write effective emails. First we’ll go over best practices when it comes to building up your mailing lists. You’ll learn how you can get new subscribers through different tactics like using Google display network, Facebook lead ads and SEO. And after you’ve built up your list you’ll want to segment it. I’ll explain what that means later. But recall from a previous video that segmentation is the practice of dividing an email subscriber list into smaller groups based on criteria like interests, location or purchase history. There are four major ways you can categorize your lists, geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral. After we worked on segmenting some lists will ensure you have the necessary knowledge and resources to write effective emails and you’ll get plenty of practice. Then I’ll introduce you to automation tools like HubSpot and Mailchimp that will make your workflow as smooth as possible. You’ll learn how to avoid mistakes and email marketing and what to do to fix those mistakes if you do make them. All in all this will be a fun section with lots of learning materials and lots of space for you to practice your new skills. And it’s important to be familiar with these concepts because as an email marketer you’ll use all of this possibly on a daily basis. Are you ready? Meet me in the next video.

Build your mailing list

• Video Duration: 6 minutes

Perhaps the most important part of your email marketing campaign is its recipients. After all, without a mailing list, there’s nowhere for your emails to go. In this video, we’ll discover the tactics that businesses use to build up their mailing lists. A huge part of email marketing is lead generation. Lead generation is the practice of collecting a potential customer’s email address. Every time you acquire an email address, you’re generating a lead that could potentially turn into a sale. And since the main purpose of email marketing is to turn possible subscribers into loyal customers, leads are pretty important. The moment you start generating leads, you’ve begun building up your mailing list. How do you go about getting those leads? Email marketers typically use one or more of the following strategies. Website prompts, display ads which are shown in the Google Display Network or through Creatio, SEMrush and Taboola. Social ads like Facebook lead ads, search engine marketing or SEM, referrals, and direct email marketing. One no-cost way to build your mailing list is to create a prompt on your website asking customers to provide their email address. Marketers love this technique because it doesn’t require any additional budget and it’s a single tactic that makes all the difference. Users visit websites for a reason. If they’re visiting your website, they are at the very least intrigued by your brand to some extent. So, it’s a great idea to add a prompt on your homepage that encourages them to provide their email. You can even offer them something in return, like a discount code or some kind of free content. A website prompt is a digital banner that calls on a website visitor to act in some way. Another way is through display ads. Display ads are graphic ads on websites and apps through banners comprised of photos, text, or videos. When used in an email marketing context, they will include a place for the Internet user to fill in their email, or it will link them to a landing page where they can sign up. When the email is filled in, the lead is generated and the email is added to the mailing list automatically. Display ads are an effective way to build up your mailing lists, but keep in mind that they do come at a cost. At many organizations, there is no budget allotted for list building. You may want to focus on some best practices that don’t require spending. Of course, you may work in an organization that does have a budget for list building. Recall that when someone creates a website or a blog, they have the choice to opt into the Google Display Network, and if they choose to do so, the ads will appear on their site. Those are display ads. Another great way to get email addresses added to your mailing list is through the use of social media ads. If you use social media, you’ve probably seen social ads before. If you don’t use social media personally, you can always go back to the course before this one to learn more about it. Social ads are paid advertisements on social media platforms targeted to social media users. Some social media channels offer ad formats specific for lead generation. For example, Facebook has lead ads. These are similar to display ads in that they combine text, images and a URL that links to a website where customers can learn more or buy products. However, these ads feature a form, where users submit personal information such as their name, email, or anything else the advertiser chooses. And, rather than existing on a website or blog, they exist on social media. Let’s say a book publisher wants to build up their email list using Facebook lead ads. The publisher provides an incentive for people to sign up for their list. Anyone who adds their email to the blank field can download one chapter of their newest book at no cost. All they have to do is sign up by providing an email and agree to the terms and conditions set by the brand. You learned about search engine marketing in a previous course. But let’s talk about its relationship to your email marketing campaign. Recall that SEM is the increase of a website’s visibility in a search engine through paid advertising. If you are using google.com to search for something, you will see some paid text ads above the organic results. This is an example of search engine marketing. One way to build your list using SEM is to include a discount or other type of incentive written out in plain text in your ad, enticing those who subscribe immediately in the ad copy. Another way is to use SEM specifically for email marketing lead generation. So if a customer is browsing a website, they may see an ad for your company with a form included directly in it. They can fill out the form then in there resulting in them subscribing to your list. One way to get additional emails without added cost is to rely on customer referrals and forwards. A customer referral is a word of mouth initiative that encourages existing customers to introduce their family, friends, and contacts to become new customers. Think about how much you trust your best friend or closest family member. If they told you you’d like something, you might believe them. Customer referrals are incredibly valuable because research has found that people are four times more likely to buy a product when they are referred by a friend. If your brand has a loyalty or a referral program, you can offer subscribers points, discounts, or credits toward their next purchase, in exchange for them sharing a referral link with friends. Or you can keep it even more simple and ask them to forward the email to friends. Either way, the goal is to get another subscriber and even possibly another customer, and referrals and forwards can help you achieve that. While we are talking about building your list, it’s important to discuss the ethics around handling Personally Identifiable Information, or PII. PII basically refers to any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. When people share information with a company, it’s important to use it in ways that build trust and for only the intended purpose. Your subscribers didn’t have to share this information with you, but they did, and in doing so, they are trusting your company to use it for good. As a digital marketer, it’s your job to make sure you are up-to-date on your country’s latest laws and legislation regarding PII. Okay let’s recap. To generate leads or build your mailing list, apply these tactics. Use website prompts, display ads, which are shown in the Google Display Network or through Creatio, SEMrush and Taboola, social ads like Facebook lead ads, search engine marketing, referrals, and direct email marketing. We’ll talk some more about lists throughout this section, so stick with me.

Segment your mailing list

• Video Duration: 5 minutes

If you were having a party, you wouldn’t want to invite someone that you knew wouldn’t want to come, right? The same is true in regards to sending your email list to someone who wouldn’t care about the content in it. In this video, you’ll learn the basics of email list segmentation and its benefits. Segmentation is the practice of dividing an email subscriber list into smaller groups based on criteria like interests, location, or purchase history. Once you build an email list, you need to segment it. Using segmentation, a company is able to deliver the most relevant content to its subscribers. The more tailored and personalized the email is, the more likely subscribers are to enjoy their emails, which can result in sales and brand loyalty. You can segment your list based on any number of criteria. But most companies segment their lists by geography, psychographic characteristics, demographic data, and behavioral data. Let’s explore what each of those means. When you’re segmenting your list by geography, you might do it by location, climate, population, language, or environment. This segmentation focuses on the physical location of your subscribers. If your brand is offering free shipping on all orders for the month of October but you’re only offering it in the United States, you will want to segment your list by country so that international customers aren’t misled or confused. And you wouldn’t want to send an email written in Mandarin to a German speaking country, right? If you intend to send emails out in a few different languages, consider segmenting by language. Let’s say you work for a clothing company in Asia. Because of the extreme variances in weather from region to region, you may want to segment your emails by environment or climate. In Asia there are many geographic regions with varied climates, such as the desert, the rainforest, and the tundra. Customers that experience cold winters, like those in Japan, China, Russia, and Korea, might be interested in your company’s new winter coat. But customers in more tropical, Vietnam and Thailand, might not be. Another way to segment your list is by psychographic characteristics. Psychographic characteristics are based on customers’ activities, interests, and opinions. This includes factors like lifestyles, values, and hobbies. If you handle digital marketing for a local grocery store, you might segment based on dietary preferences. Are some subscribers vegan or gluten free? Segmenting by lifestyles and diets can help ensure you send useful, targeted content to people, while also ensuring you don’t send anything unappealing or offensive. If you work for a health and wellness company, your subscribers that enjoy cycling might want to know about the most famous bike paths in the world. But you may have subscribers that prefer running, in which case you’d be able to send them a list of running trails instead, thanks to segmentation. The next category to segment your list by is demographics. Demographic data includes information such as age, gender, income level, and family status. Segmenting by demographics is great because it’s based on fairly consistent information, whereas psychographics are more subject to change frequently. Let’s say you handle email marketing for a company that books travel. Your company has a special romantic getaway idea that they want to include in their newsletter.

This is an example where it’s important to know if each subscriber is single, in a relationship, married, in a domestic partnership, or has a family. So you may want to segment your lists by family status. Or let’s say a famous band from the 1980s is going on tour again for the first time in 20 years. The concert venue that you handle email marketing for, wants to announce that they will be performing at your venue. However, subscribers who are under a certain age may not find this interesting at all. Thankfully your list is segmented by age groups so you can target subscribers whose age suggests they may enjoy the band. And finally, let’s talk about behavioral data. Behavioral data refers to the actions your customer takes or doesn’t take when it comes to shopping on your website. This is one of the most important categories, because it gives you a glimpse into how a customer engages with your specific brand and products. Purchasing habits, spending habits, browsing habits, loyalty to your brand, and engagement with your website, are all great ways to segment your list based on behavioral data. If you work for a sporting goods store, knowing whether a subscriber is visiting your site for the first time, or if they’ve been a longtime customer, can help you change your messaging and get the right email to that customer. For a new customer sending an email that says it’s nice to meet you, here is 10% off, will work just fine. For a long time customer, you might send an email with a message like, it’s great to see you again, here’s 10% off on your favorite team’s gear. If you want to reward customers who purchase frequently from your website, you’d segment your list based on customer loyalty to your brand. That way, only your most devoted customers receive the most exciting offers. Before we move on, let’s recap. We covered four very common categories of email marketing segmentation, geography, psychographic characteristics, demographic data, and behavioral data. And as you choose one category, you can break it down even further and target audiences more specifically.

Segment lists using Constant Contact

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

Segmenting is the act of dividing an email subscriber list into smaller groups based on criteria like interests, location, engagement, or purchase history. When you segment email lists, you’re able to target and engage with different audiences so every subscriber gets content relevant to them with the goal of delivering better results for your business.

When you send an email, you want readers to open it, read it, engage with it, and take the action you want them to take. If they relate to the content and feel it adds value in some way, they’re much more likely to complete those actions.

In this reading, you will gain a high-level understanding about how to use a tool called Constant Contact to segment your lists.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is an online marketing tool that offers many capabilities. This reading focuses on using Constant Contact for email segmentation. Constant Contact offers a 60-day free trial for Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certificate learners, so that you can practice using the tool during the following two activities.

Email segmentation in Constant Contact

To begin, it’s important to understand the difference between lists, segments, and tags. Watch this video from Constant Contact to learn more: Tutorial: Differences Between Lists, Tags, and Segments. Once you understand how lists, segments, and tags work in Constant Contact, you can start segmenting.

Next, create an account. You can sign up for the free trial using this link. Or if you already know you’re going to use Constant Contact over a long period of time, you can sign up as a paid customer.

Consider whether you already have a list or are creating a list for the first time. You can import an existing list into the program, or you can get started with just a few contacts. Visit the contacts page to start creating and adding lists.

Click “Add Contacts” to access several ways to add people to your list. If you will be adding contacts one at a time, click “Create a new contact.” If you have a spreadsheet or file that contains your contacts, you can upload that by clicking “Upload from file.” You will be given a few other options as well.

Once you have created or uploaded your lists, click on “Segments” in the navigation bar just under “Contacts.” Here, you can start sending targeted emails based on engagement, or you can click on “Create A Segment.” You will be redirected to a new page where you can name your lists and decide how you want to segment them. Click on the “Add A Block” dropdown menu and select one of the options. From there, you can break it down even more.

Constant Contact allows you to get very specific with your identifiers. For instance, if you want to send a promotional email to subscribers that are coffee fanatics with March birthdays, you can do that.

Once you make those adjustments to your list, click “Save” and your list will be created. Head back to the “Segments” panel to look at the lists you’ve created.

Additional Resources:

After you’ve created your segments, we can learn more about creating and sending emails via Constant Contact by watching Tutorial: Create an Email.

To learn about other features like click segmentation, watch Tutorial: Using Click Segmentation in an Email.

Activity: Segment an email list with Constant Contact

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

  • Access Contact List

Activity Exemplar: Segment an email list with Constant Contact

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Email list and segments

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed segmented email list. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Your Constant Contact account should contain the following:

• A list of contacts uploaded from the Contact List spreadsheet

• A new custom field created for Age Range so that the titles of all column headers in the spreadsheet match the corresponding field names

• An email list renamed to make it easy to identify which contacts the list contains

• Two list segments, which contain the following Contact Details:

  • People who live in southwestern states (California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, or Utah)

  • People who have birthdays in April

Practice: Segment your mailing list into target audiences

• Ungraded Plugin Duration: 30 minutes min

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2. How to write an effective email

Write effective emails

• Video Duration: 4 minutes

Although marketing emails have become more design focused and streamlined than they used to be, the most important part remains the same the content. You can create the most beautifully designed emails but if the copy isn’t compelling, informative or adding value for the reader, it won’t matter. If you aren’t sure where to start with your emails, don’t worry it’s a big task. Writing emails is a skill that takes practice but in this section we’ll provide you with some best practices and guidelines that will help you do so effectively. Let’s start by talking about your subject line. This is the first thing your recipients will read before they click into the email. So, the most important thing is that it answers the question, what are you offering? And when it comes to your subject line, prioritize clarity over catchiness and if you feel like it’s clear enough, add a little excitement. Here’s an example, let’s say my company is an emerging online audiobook and podcast company and my email’s purpose is to introduce the business to my audience. So I ask myself, what am I offering? And how can I be clear about that? The subject line might say something like books for your ears. That clearly explains my company’s mission, concisely or bookworms you’ve been waiting for us. So that it’s clear who my target audience is and that they’ll be interested in what my company has to say. Now, let’s move on to the body of the email. Recall that the body of an email is the text in the main content of your email. When you’re writing it, you want to consider the following questions how can this content help your reader? What stories can you tell them? After you’ve answered those questions, you can prioritize writing in the second person, personalizing the email, telling about the benefits rather than the features and being brief. Ensure you are always speaking directly to your readers by using second person language. The second person point of view is used for giving directions, offering advice or providing an explanation. It means you are always using the pronouns you, your, and yours like how I’m speaking to you now. The only time you aren’t referring to your audience as you, your, or yours is when you are using their name. Email marketing automation tools allow you to use merge tags or personalization tags to make emails as personal as possible. A merge tag or personalization tag is a code that allows the writer to insert unique user data from their mailing list into emails. These tags will vary depending on which programs you were using and we don’t need to get too far into the details on them. But sometimes it’s as simple as typing “fname” to prompt the program to include the reader’s first name. So, if we are talking about the body text of my audiobook company’s email, I would type hey, “fname” what’s your favorite book? We’ve got it. And if my reader was named Angelique, she would see, hey, Angelique what’s your favorite book? We’ve got it. After I’ve created a clear and clever headline and I’ve personalized my first bit of body text I’ll want to explain why the reader should care about my company. I can do this by talking about how it will benefit them rather than the actual features of the product or service. So my body text might read something like, hey, Angelique, what’s your favorite book? We’ve got it. And if you like to listen to your books rather than reading them, we’ve got you. Listen on your way to work, at the gym or while you’re doing the dishes. Listen anytime you deserve it. Now, the final thing I’ve made sure to do is be brief. There’s no reason to go into very specific detail about your company product or service. Keeping your email short and succinct will keep your readers interested and it won’t make them feel like they’re doing a lot of work to read the email. After your body, include a call to action of some kind. This may include a button encouraging readers to try a product now or visit your website. For my make-believe audiobook company, I might end the email with a clickable button that reads, try it for free now. We’ll have some activities for you to practice but I would encourage you to practice writing emails on your own. It can be really fun. As you do that, remember that for your subject line ask yourself what you’re offering the readers. As you write your body, ask yourself, how can this help your readers? What stories can you tell them? And wrap it up with a call to action that clearly says what you want them to do. I’ll meet you back here later.

More tips on writing effective emails

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

Crafting the perfect email can be a difficult task, no matter how much experience a digital marketer may have. It’s a skill that takes plenty of practice, and it also requires you to test out what your audience likes. As you learn about crafting effective emails in this reading, keep in mind that it may take some time for you to become a master marketing email writer. If you feel like you’ve already got what it takes to write a great email, use this artifact to finetune your skill even more.

The purpose of your email

When you prepare to send emails to your subscribers, you’ll need to have a purpose. Ask yourself why you are sending an email in the first place. It could be to announce a new product launch, to educate your subscribers with relevant tips and tricks, to offer a discount code or announce a sale, or many other reasons. Make sure there is motivation behind every email. Doing so will allow you to create context for your email. If you know why you want to send an email, you’ll have an easier time deciding what to say in it.

The narrative in your email

Now that you know the importance of having a purpose behind your email, you can decide what the narrative should be like. If you aren’t well-versed in writing, storytelling, or marketing, that’s OK. You’ll want to think of emails from your readers’ perspective. Ask yourself, “what kind of narrative do my subscribers want to read?”

If you are sending an email to announce a product launch, you might want to tell the story of how the idea came to life. Who came up with the idea for the product? What motivated them to do it? How long did it take to create? What problem does the product solve? Consider adding all of these details in your email so that the reader is engaged with the narrative and they relate to it in some way.

If you aim to educate your readers with a weekly newsletter featuring tips, tricks, product uses, articles, and more, try to develop a theme for each week. This theme will give your email a general narrative. Use internal and external resources and links that fit into this theme so that the newsletter feels cohesive.

If you’re announcing a sale on your website, you might want to explain why there’s a sale and how it will benefit them. Are you celebrating the company’s birthday or another holiday? Are you trying to sell inventory so you can bring new inventory in? Is it an end-of-the-season sale? Crafting a narrative about why you’re having a sale can help convert potential and loyal customers.

The tone of your email

The tone of your email will vary depending on the purpose and the narrative. As you reflect on your purpose and narrative, think about what tone aligns with them. The tone should always be courteous and helpful in some way, but you should feel free to add a few other qualities to it based on what your goal is.

Going back to previous examples, if you are announcing a new product launch, consider using a bright and enthusiastic tone, and include language that gets the reader excited.

For your weekly newsletter where you’re educating your readers and giving them tips and tricks, consider a professional and light tone. It might include authoritative language because you want to communicate that you are the expert on this topic.

If you’re announcing an upcoming sale or your brand’s birthday, maybe your tone is spunky and thankful—you might use language that shows your gratitude to your customers.

Pro tip: Reading your emails aloud will help you understand what your subscribers feel as they read your work, and it will help you decide if you like the tone you’re using.

Note: Regardless of your purpose and narrative, you’ll want to make sure the tone fits your brand voice so that your readers feel familiar and comfortable reading it.

Key takeaways

Determining the purpose, narrative, and tone of your email before you begin writing will help keep you on track as you write. As you are crafting your email, you should refer back to the purpose, narrative, and tone that you started with and make sure you are aligned with them.

Activity: Write an effective retention email

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%
  • Access Quiz:

To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to template: Retention email

Activity Exemplar: Write an effective retention email

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Retention email

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed retention email. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Review each section of the email:

• The subject line tells the reader what you are offering and grabs their attention.

• The body includes personalized, inviting language that introduces the app. It describes the app’s features, the free trial being offered, and how the app will benefit the reader. It is clear, concise, and conversational and addresses the reader in the second person.

• The call to action tells the reader what to do, based on the campaign’s goal. It is two-to-five words long and is formatted to stand out.

• The closing is sincere and expresses gratitude to the reader for their business.

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3. Tools for email marketing

Helpful tools for effective email marketing

• Video Duration: 2 minutes

When it comes to digital marketing, automation has become the key to a campaign’s success. Email marketing automation helps you find your audience and serve them only the content they want. Email marketing automation tools help email marketers generate leads or turn strangers into customers. With automation, email marketers can send personalized messages to each individual subscriber.

Email marketing automation is the practice of using software, programs, and technology to manage email marketing processes automatically. Email marketing automation makes the email marketing process simpler and smoother. It ensures your campaign stays organized and on track, and it happens in the background so you can be completing and focusing on other tasks if necessary. Automation has positively affected our lives in countless ways. Whether it’s driving a car instead of walking, managing your money by using software rather than manually balancing your checkbook, washing your clothes in a machine rather than by hand, or anything else that you do in your everyday life. Automation just makes things simpler. It’s the same with email marketing. As a digital marketer, you’ll absolutely want to become acquainted with these automation tools, because they’re integral to the success of your marketing campaign. That’s largely due to the fact that marketing automation tools, ensure your emails don’t lose your personal touch. With automation, you can track emails automatically. And the real key to automation success is just how targeted your emails can be. Using automation, you can efficiently build up your list, segment that list, send automatic welcome and acquisition emails to new subscribers, follow up with newsletters, promotional emails, and retention emails using templates, and easily track the engagement and behavior of each subscriber. And depending on which tool your organization uses, all of those capabilities, actions, and insights, and more will live in the same place, your marketing automation tool. Later, you’ll learn about specific automation tools, such as Hubspot, Mailchimp, and Salesforce, but there are countless other options when it comes to marketing automation tools. Regardless of what you use for marketing automation, all of these tools are a very important aspect of email marketing, and they will help you become that much better at digital marketing.

How to choose an email marketing tool

• Video Duration: 2 minutes

Like many other jobs, email marketing comes with its challenges. How would you decide on templates for your campaign? A design? What type of tone do your emails need to have? How will you even manage every single aspect of an email marketing campaign, from sending a large volume of targeted emails to tracking your insights? Luckily, there are tools that were created to streamline this process for email marketers. Email marketing automation tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Salesforce are all great options for sending emails. Although you will still have to remain engaged in your automation processes, for the most part, these tools will do a lot of the work for you in the background, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your campaign, like planning strategy and writing engaging copy. In this video, I’ll give you a very high level introduction to a few of those industry leading tools. I’ll talk specifically about HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Let’s get into it. HubSpot is one of the most commonly used email marketing automation tools, mostly due to the non-cost version which offers robust features. Through personalization, you can offer different experiences based on your personas and key audiences. Since it’s so customizable, HubSpot allows for intuitive and effective A/B testing and email marketing, which is invaluable when it comes to finding out what kind of emails your customers engage with. Another one of the more popular marketing automation tools is Mailchimp because of its user interface and robust email template editor, making the automation process effective. Mailchimp’s automation tools include pre-built journeys, which offer customizable workflows for some of the most common marketing automation use cases. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an industry leader in many ways. When it comes to email marketing automation, the Salesforce platform is well-liked because it offers powerful customization. It’s a little more expert level than the others, but with that comes more capabilities like customizing your interface. That’s a very high level look at a few different types of email marketing automation tools. You’ll get a much more extensive and specific look at them in the following readings. But I hope you feel you have the foundational understanding of the pros and cons of each of them. And if you join an organization that uses a particular tool that you aren’t unfamiliar with, don’t worry, you’ll be able to apply what you learn here to many different automation tools. The ways the tools work and the tasks they perform are similar. You’ll just have to learn the specific features, and to learn more about these specific tools, be sure to visit their websites.

Send emails in HubSpot

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

This reading provides a high-level understanding on how to craft an email in a leading digital marketing tool. The goal of this reading is not to take you through every single step of an email marketing campaign, but instead to provide you with an overview. There are links at the bottom of this reading for resources where you can learn more about this tool.

Capabilities in HubSpot

HubSpot allows users to manage all their marketing channel activity in one place. When it comes to email marketing, you can use HubSpot for many different email marketing tasks.

The image below illustrates actionable steps in the email marketing campaign process with HubSpot. First, you set a goal for your business. Next, you manage your contact database and segment those contacts. Then, you create personalized and targeted emails and decide when each user should receive those emails by selecting the delay time between email sends. You test your emails, and finally, you analyze your email performance.

HubSpot offers their email marketing tools at no cost. Set up an account and start exploring. Then, keep reading to learn how to craft an email in HubSpot.

Crafting an email

Creating an email that will engage your subscribers is a huge part of a successful campaign. Tools like HubSpot help to make that process easier. Next, you’ll learn about HubSpot features that can help you write an effective email.

Creating the email

Once you’ve created your HubSpot account and logged in, navigate to Marketing -> Email.

Then, click Create email, and select a template. Using a template allows you to have a professionally designed, uniform look for each of your emails. If you opt to use a template, you can customize it by adding elements from the Content panel on the left side of the page. Drag and drop images, buttons, social media icons, text, videos, and more.

When dropped into the email editor tool, each element can be customized and tailored to look the way you want. To move items after they’ve been placed in the email editor panel, hover over them and click on the blue edge. Then, drag them to new positions.

Try out and explore these features to get an understanding of the customizable elements. For example, if you want to add a button that prompts readers to “Shop Now,” you can adjust the copy, the length of the button, the spacing around the button, and much more.

Next, click on the Design panel and change color schemes, fonts, headings, spacing, and other elements. To prompt the Section settings panel to appear, click the gray area just outside the email content. This will allow you to add various columns, and customize spacing and patterns for that section of your email.

While several elements are customized in the left panel, text is customizable through the toolbar at the top of the page.

To undo any errors you’ve made, use the undo icon in the top left corner of the email editor.

To read about personalization, editing email footers, advanced settings, and more, visit this page.

Previewing and sending the email

Before you send your email, preview it by clicking the Actions dropdown menu, and select Preview. In the Devices tab, you can preview the email on desktop and mobile. You can even opt to view the email as each particular contact. To do that, click the Preview as specific contact dropdown.

To read all about sending test emails and setting up A/B tests, visit this page. After you’ve tested your email, you’re ready to send it. At the top of the screen, click the Send or schedule button. Click the Send to dropdown and add the list(s) you wish to send the email to. To ensure you exclude subscribers you don’t want the email to go to, add them to the Don’t send to dropdown.

You can either Send your email now or you can Schedule for later.

Additional Resources:

• HubSpot Email Marketing Guide

• HubSpot: how to create an email marketing campaign

Activity: Optional - Create an email in HubSpot

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

  • Access Quiz:

Activity Links

This activity uses HubSpot’s drag and drop email editor, which is available to all users. If the editor is updated, the steps below may differ from your experience of the tool. Visit HubSpot’s Knowledge Base for information on the latest version:

• Create marketing emails in the drag and drop email editor

If you prefer to use the classic editor (available to Professional and Enterprise users), learn about the latest version from HubSpot’s Knowledge Base:

• Create and send marketing emails in the classic editor

To use the supporting materials for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

• Link to supporting materials: Odos welcome email

• If you have an existing HubSpot account, go to the Hubspot Partnership Page and select Log in. If you’re new to HubSpot, click Start free or get a demo. On the next screen, select Get started free. Then, follow the prompts to create a new account.

• When you are in step 6, If you have previously set a default logo, you can override it without affecting your settings.

• When you are in step 6, Visit HubSpot’s Knowledge Base to learn more about what you can do in the drag and drop email editor.

Activity Exemplar: Create an email in HubSpot

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplars for this course item, click the links below

Links to exemplars:

• Odos Eyewear email - version 1

• Odos Eyewear email - version 2

• Odos Eyewear email - version 3

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed data visualizations. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Note: The exemplars represent three possible versions of the Odos welcome email. They use a few of the design, formatting, and layout options available in the HubSpot email editor. Your email will likely differ in certain ways. What’s important is that you’ve gained experience using an industry-standard email marketing tool.

Each exemplar includes the Odos logo, the full text of the welcome email, and 1–2 stock images that relate to the content of the message. The message layouts are broadly similar, but they use different formatting and design options to create varied results.

Version 1

Layout

• The logo, first stock image, and “You + Odos = a perfect pair” section are stacked vertically.

• The full-width “Browse frames” button acts as a divider between the two main sections of the email.

• The “More ways to try Odos” section uses layout 2, with two stacked text elements on the right and a single image element on the left.

Design and formatting

• The subject line uses a personalization token (“Welcome, Brian!”)

• The email uses a serif font (Georgia) for both the headings and the paragraph text.

• The bold color palette fits the brand’s personality and complements the first stock image.

  • The body color is light pink, allowing the text to stand out.

  • The background frames the message body with a darker raspberry color.

• The polka-dotted background pattern enlivens the design and matches the playful tone of the message.

Version 2

Layout

• The logo, single stock image, and “You + Odos = a perfect pair” section are stacked vertically.

• The “Browse frames” button is full-width and acts as a divider between the two main sections of the email.

  • A solid divider (50% width) creates further separation.

• The “More ways to try Odos” section uses layout 2, with a single text element in each section.

Design and formatting

• The subject line uses a personalization token and a glasses emoji “Welcome, Brian! emoji”.

• The email uses a sans serif font (Trebuchet MS) for both the headings and the paragraph text.

• The color palette complements the background of the stock image.

  • The body color is white, which allows the text to stand out.

  • The background frames the message body with a medium blue-gray.

• The confetti background pattern enlivens the design and matches the playful tone of the message.

Version 3

Layout

• The logo, single stock image, and “You + Odos = a perfect pair” section are stacked vertically.

• The “Browse frames” button is not full-width.

• The “More ways to try Odos” section uses layout 2, with a single image element on the right and two stacked text elements on the left.

Design and formatting

• The subject line uses a personalization token and a glasses emoji “Welcome, Brian! emoji”.

• The email uses a serif font (Merriweather) for the headings and a sans serif font (Tahoma) for the paragraph text.

• The color palette complements the folded glasses in the stock image.

  • The body color is white toward the top of the message and pale orange toward the bottom. The change in color divides the two main sections of the email.

  • The background is a slightly darker shade of orange.

• The chevron background pattern enlivens the design and matches the playful tone of the message.

Send emails in Mailchimp

• Reading Duration: 30 minutes

In this reading, you will get a high-level understanding on how to craft an email in a leading digital marketing tool. The goal of this reading is not to take you through every single step of an email marketing campaign. There are links at the bottom of this reading for resources where you can learn more about this tool.

Capabilities in Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform that allows businesses to reach out to their target audiences via email campaigns. Mailchimp is an industry leading tool for many reasons. It allows marketers to grow, manage, and segment their audience for more targeted marketing. Mailchimp also offers a customizable email builder that comes with a variety of templates and design tools, which will get into shortly. Finally, Mailchimp offers advanced reporting tools that help track campaign performance and results.

Crafting an email

Creating an email that your subscribers will engage with is a huge part of a successful campaign, and tools like Mailchimp help to make that process easier. In Mailchimp, you can create a Regular email. Then, using a campaign building checklist, you’ll add recipients, adjust your settings, and choose your template. But first, you will want to sign up for a free account here.

Creating the email.

Once you’ve created your Mailchimp account, click the Create button. Then, select Email. Choose Regular, Plain Text, or Template. Enter your campaign name when prompted.

This name will only appear in Mailchimp, and will not be seen externally by any of your contacts. Click Begin to start creating. A checklist will become available at this step that will help guide you through each step. A green checkmark will appear as each step is completed.

Click Add recipients to select the audience you want to send this email to. Select your chosen Audience in the dropdown menu, and if you want to add a certain segment or tag, feel free to do that from the dropdown menu that says Segment or Tag. Personalize this email by clicking the Personalize the “to” field.

To adjust the From email that will appear in your readers’ inboxes, click on Edit From. Feel free to change the name and email address that appears in the Name and Email Address fields if you need to. Save those settings and move on to the Subject section.

In the Subject section, you can adjust the subject line and preview text. Click save.

Next, you’ll want to design your email. Click Design Email. Mailchimp has several predesigned templates that you can choose from by clicking into the Layouts panel. When you choose one, you’ll be able to customize the template for your brand and message. Add a new image by clicking the Image button in the design panel on the left side, and add elements like text boxes, videos, images, new buttons and more, by hovering over the Plus signs in your template.

Preview and send the email

Preview your email by clicking Preview. Toggle between the images of the computer monitor and the phone to preview it on desktop and mobile.

Click Continue and you’ll be taken back to the checklist screen. Make sure there are green checklists next to each step to ensure you’re ready to send. Feel free to scroll down and examine any other settings that you may want to change.

After you’ve completed the To, From, Subject, and Content sections of your email, you can opt to schedule your post or send it now. Do so by clicking either the Schedule or Send button. Please note that the schedule feature is only included with Mailchimp’s Essentials plan or higher.

For more information on Mailchimp’s email capabilities, visit the additional resources below.

Additional Resources:

• Mailchimp: Create a regular email campaign

• Mailchimp: Creative Assistant

Activity: Optional - Set up a Mailchimp campaign

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

Activity Links

This activity uses Mailchimp’s new email builder. If the builder is updated, the steps below may differ from your experience of the tool. For information on how to use the latest version (or the classic email builder), visit the Mailchimp Help Center.

• If you prefer to use the classic email builder, learn about the latest version from Mailchimp’s Help Center.

• On step 1: To use the supporting materials for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to supporting materials: Homework Helpers email

• On step 9: Keep experimenting with different layouts and styles until you are satisfied with the design. To learn more about formatting options in the New Email Builder, visit the Mailchimp Help Center

Activity Exemplar: Optional - Set up a Mailchimp campaign

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplars for this course item, click the links below and select “Use Template.”

Links to exemplars:

• Homework Helpers email - version 1

• Homework Helpers email - version 2

• Homework Helpers email - version 3

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed data visualizations. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Note: The exemplars represent three possible versions of the Homework Helpers email. They use a few of the design, formatting, and layout options available in the Mailchimp email builder. Your email will likely differ in certain ways. What’s important is that you’ve gained experience using an industry-standard email marketing tool.

Each exemplar includes the Homework Helpers logo, the full text of the email, and 1–2 of the images provided. The message layouts are broadly similar, but they use different formatting and design options to create varied results.

Version 1

Layout

• The logo, first block of text, and button are stacked vertically (using a text layout).

• The “Who we are” and “What we do” sections use a text & image layout.

  • The images are cropped square to fit the layout.

• The “What parents are saying” section is stacked vertically.

• Dividers separate the sections of the message.

Design and formatting

• The subject line uses an emoji (stack of books).

• The email uses a sans serif font (Lato) for both the headings and the paragraph text.

• To draw attention, the first button is larger than the others. The other buttons use an outline style, but all are pill-shaped.

• The bold color palette fits the brand’s personality and complements the logo:

  • The body color is light green, allowing the text to stand out.

  • The background frames the message body with darker green.

Version 2

Layout

• Except for the last section, all of the text and images are stacked vertically (using both text and text & image layouts).

  • The images are not cropped.

• The “What parents are saying” section uses a plain text block for the header and a column text layout for the testimonials.

• Dividers separate the sections of the message.

Design and formatting

• The subject line uses an emoji (stack of books).

• The email uses a sans serif font (Arimo) for both the headings and the paragraph text.

  • The paragraph text is double-spaced throughout the message, and bolded in the sections with blue body colors.

• All the buttons are square and use a filled style. To draw attention, the first button is larger than the others.

• The white body allows the text and colorful images to stand out. The background frames the message body with neutral slate gray.

Version 3

Layout

• All of the text and images are stacked vertically (using both text and text & image layouts).

  • The message uses one uncropped image in addition to the logo.

• The “What parents are saying” section uses a plain text block for the header and a column text layout for the testimonials.

• A divider separates the “Who we are” and “What we do” sections.

Design and formatting

• The subject line uses an emoji (notebook).

• The email uses a sans serif font (Raleway) for both the headings and the paragraph text.

• The first button is white with blue text, which helps it stand out against the darker background. The other two buttons are blue with white text. All the buttons are rounded and use a filled style.

• Bold background colors (shades of cyan and blue) separate the body section and fit the brand’s personality. The background is a neutral gray, allowing the body of the message to stand out.

Which tools are you familiar with or would like to be familiar with?

• Discussion Prompt Duration: 10 minutes

I’m familiar with tools like Mailchimp and Constant Contact, which I’ve used to create and send marketing emails. These tools offer basic analytics, such as open rates and click-through rates, but I’m looking to become more proficient with advanced analytics platforms like HubSpot and Google Analytics. These tools provide deeper insights into user behavior, allowing me to track the entire customer journey and make data-driven decisions to optimize email marketing campaigns. Gaining proficiency in these advanced tools will help me refine my strategies and improve overall campaign effectiveness.

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4. Mistakes in email marketing

Mistakes in email marketing

• Video Duration: 5 minutes

Although email marketing is an incredibly trusted and effective way to keep your clients up to date, it’s important to note that sometimes mistakes happen. This video will give you some tips for when those mistakes occur so you can recover and so that your relationship with your subscribers isn’t affected. Since you’re sending the emails to your recipients’ inboxes, there’s no way to edit them in real time. Once the email is sent, it’s out of your hands. Some common mistakes are sending a broken link, sending an email to the wrong segmented list, sending an outdated or incorrect email, sending emails with personalization mistakes or sending emails with typos or mistakes in the email copy. The good news is you can take preventative measures to identify mistakes and fix them before you send emails. First, let’s talk about sending a broken link. A broken link is a hyperlink that no longer leads to the correct website for whatever reason. If you’re sending a marketing email that hyperlinks to external websites, pdf documents or something else and the reader gets an error message, your link may be broken. And the best way to ensure this never happens is to double check every hyperlink before you send the email out. It always helps to have another set of eyes on your email as well. So enlist the help of a colleague to ensure everything looks okay. Let’s say you link to a blog from your website in an email but the URL had a typo, how do you fix this mistake? You can redirect them so that the link with the typo sends subscribers to the correct URL. Or you can let it go and aim to triple check next time, because even the most experienced email marketers make mistakes. Another mistake made in email marketing is when an email is sent to the wrong segmented list. Recall that your lists are most likely going to be segmented based on demographics, behavioral data, psychographic characteristics and geography. So, if you want to send a targeted email to your list of 18 to 25 year olds because they’re more likely to purchase a certain item, but you accidentally send it to your 40 to 55 age group, you sent the wrong email. First, to prevent this from happening in the future, you’ll want to create some kind of quality control or QC process for your marketing emails. Quality control is a process through which a business seeks to ensure that product quality is maintained or improved. This might include creating a checklist that ensures you’re using the right format, content, personalization tags and anything else you may want to be extra careful about. If you make the common mistake of sending the wrong or outdated email to your subscribers, don’t panic. There are some steps you can take to fix it. Of course, the best way to fix this mistake is for it to never occur in the first place. This means you need to be incredibly fluent in your automated systems tools and software. Regardless of what tool you’re using, you should aim to be an expert user. This will decrease the likelihood of sending an incorrect email. However, should it happen sometimes all it takes to make things right is a thoughtful follow up email. You may want to have some apology templates already created in your marketing automation tool so that it can go out as swiftly as possible. You’ll need to make it relevant to your specific situation of course. Let’s say you sent an email that said there was a sale on a particular product, but the product is already sold out and the sale ended a week ago. This mistake has threatened your credibility, and you need to apologize to your customer base. In your apology email, you’ll need to admit your mistake, apologize to your subscribers and offer them something to make it right. Your follow up email might say something like, we messed up, we’re sorry. We sent an email claiming a product was on sale, but that product is in fact out of stock and the sale ended last week. To make it up to you, we’re offering you 10% off the entire store for today only. Your subscribers will probably forgive you for the mistake and they’ll definitely appreciate the discount. Perhaps the most common mistake of all is sending out an email with typos. Like the other common mistakes, these typos leave you at risk of losing credibility with your subscribers, and they can be especially damaging when they occur in personalization tags. Sending here’s a gift for you Malcolm, is obviously much more effective than sending an email where you misspell your tag and it ends up reading, here’s a gift for you bracket first, main bracket. To ensure you don’t have typos, grammatical mistakes or personalization errors in your email, conduct an automated spellcheck using an online spellchecker or some kind of plug in on your internet browser like Grammarly. QC your email by proofreading several times and make sure to send a test email to yourself to double check all personalization tags are spelled right. Finally, automated emails can sometimes end up in spam folders rather than in boxes. This could be because you’re not adhering to your country’s spam related laws or because your email seems like it might be spam. Emails may be flagged as spam when they include too many images or images that are too large. Take note of this, and make sure to send yourself a test email first and review that you don’t have too many images. Now that you know some of the most common mistakes in email marketing, I hope you feel equipped to avoid these mistakes in your journey as a digital marketer.

How to fix email marketing mistakes

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

As a digital marketer, you will make some mistakes—everyone does. But, it’s how you react to your mistakes that matters. In this reading, you will learn how to regain the trust of your users after you make a mistake.

Mistakes in email marketing

At some point, as a digital marketer, you’ll probably send emails out to a large number of people. This means that if there is a mistake in your email, several people may see it. That’s ok—as long as you take the following steps to correct and address the mistake. Then, when you land your first role as a digital marketer, feel free to keep this and use it as a checklist for yourself.

Contingency plan:

• Leverage the experts at your company.

  • Have any team members made this same mistake? If so, what did they do? They may offer sage advice to help you resolve the issue.

• Consider whether you should send a corrected version of the email.

  • A minor misspelling or typo in the email may not warrant a follow up or an explanation, but a more pressing error might, such as an incorrect product launch date or sale date.

  • If you do send a follow up email, be clear about the change in the follow up email by bolding it or using color.

• If the mistake was really bad, offer an incentive.

  • An example of an incentive may be free shipping, extending a sale, a discount code, or something else.

• If the mistake is a broken link, redirect the bad link to the correct one as soon as possible.

  • This may not be beneficial for those who have already clicked the link, but it will benefit anyone who hasn’t clicked on the link yet.

• If there’s a possibility someone was upset or offended at the message you sent, you may need to apologize on social media or through a public statement.

  • Whether this is necessary or not may depend on the size of the business, the severity of the mistake, and the company protocol that may already be in place. Consider: is your company so big that it has a plan for this situation? Or is it smaller, and therefore you’re tasked with how to handle the situation? Once you determine that, you can take the necessary steps.

Key takeaways

In the event that you send an email with a mistake in it, you’ll have to decide how to go about fixing your mistake. The action you take will vary based on the situation–the way you react to a typo in your email versus the way you react to a broken link will be different. So when sending emails out, make sure you have a thorough contingency plan in place ahead of time.

Activity: Write an apology email

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

Activity Links

• On step 1: To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to template: Apology email

Activity Exemplar: Write an apology email

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Apology email

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed apology email. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Note: The exemplar represents one possible way to complete the activity. Your apology email will likely differ in certain ways. What’s important is that the email admits the errors, apologizes to subscribers, and tries to make the situation right.

Let’s review each part of the message:

Subject line

The subject line clarifies that the email is a follow-up to an earlier message. It also gives the correct launch date, which means that customers can get this information even if they don’t open the message.

Message body

The message body leads with an apology. It explains what happened, but also describes concrete actions the company has taken to make things right. It also restates the correct launch date and links to the correct page to pre-order the game. The formatting calls attention to the corrections (and the discount offer) to make sure readers don’t miss them.

The tone of the message is light, but sincere. The authors use the subject of the game (time-travel) to gently make fun of themselves and their mistakes. Importantly, however, the humor does not overshadow the apology.

Call to action

The call to action is brief and describes a specific action the reader can take to redeem the pre-order discount.

Closing

The closing expresses appreciation for the readers and ends with a promise to serve them better in the future.

Test your knowledge: Email marketing tools and mistakes

• Practice Quiz. 4 questions. Grade: 100%
  • Access Quiz

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5. Review: Useful tools for marketing

Wrap-up

Video Duration: 1 minute

Hi there. I hope you’re feeling good about your progress to becoming an expert email marketer. And if you don’t quite feel like an expert yet, hopefully at least you are beginning to piece together the importance of automation tools, segmenting, and writing effective emails. In this section of the course, we covered a lot. We took a look at best practices when it comes to building your email lists. We learned that in order to build a list, email marketers often used display ads like the Google Display Network, social ads like Facebook lead ads, search engine marketing, or SEM, website prompts, and referrals. Then we explored the common ways to segment lists. There are endless categories you can choose to segment your list within. But recall that the most common are by geography, psychographic characteristics, demographic data, and behavioral data. Next, we discovered what it takes to write an effective email. And you learned that effective emails aren’t written in the second person. They’re personalized, they discuss the benefits of the product to the reader rather than the features, and they are brief. We explored which tools will help you in your journey as an email marketer. We talked about the pros and cons of email automation tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Salesforce. Finally, you learned about common mistakes in email marketing and how to avoid them. Those mistakes include sending a broken link, sending an email to the wrong segmented list, sending an outdated or incorrect email, sending emails with personalization mistakes, and sending emails with typos. You’ve made some great progress in this course on email marketing, and you’ve still got plenty more to learn. We’ll meet back here soon.

Glossary terms from module 3

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes
  • Access Glossary

Module 3 challenge

• Weekly challenge Quiz. 10 questions. Grade: 100%
  • Access challenge 3

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END! - Week 3 - Course 4