When you’re just getting started with email marketing, it can be easy to get hung up on the technical side of things. People get excited about the prospect of using email to make sales.

Rightfully so, because email has the highest ROI of all marketing channels. For every $1 spent on email, marketers get an average of $36 in return. So, it literally pays to invest in email marketing. You can hire a professional to execute a winning email strategy for your business, or you can get good at email marketing yourself.

But the most important aspect of successful email marketing comes before you ever hit send.

To get started with email, do you ultimately need to cross off a bunch of technical to-dos, yes. But there are three things you should be clear on before you pay for an email service provider: know your goal, know your audience, and have a plan.

1. Understanding your business goals

Ask yourself this question: Am I clear on my goals? There is no one-size-fits-all email marketing strategy, so you have to get crystal clear on what your ultimate business goals are. From there, you can begin to think of the best email strategy to reach them.

A) Do you want to build a learning community where you share resources and tools to help others?

B) Are you an artist looking for a way to keep your network in the know about your upcoming shows or appearances?

C) Do you have a specific product or service that you want to sell?

These are all different goals that will require different email marketing strategies, which means you need to put some thought into your “what” and your “why” before you begin sending emails.

Now think about your business goal again. Is that really it, or is there something deeper there?

A) Maybe you don’t just want to build a learning community. Maybe your larger, more specific goal is to help transgender and non-binary talent break through workforce barriers. The learning community you create, then, is a way to accomplish this bigger goal, and understanding exactly what it is will inform the email strategy that gets you there.

B) As an artist, your ultimate goal could be creating a method to share special-access tickets with VIP fans. With this as your goal, you’d have a different strategy and email cadence than someone with a fitness brand who wants consistent sales of athletic wear.

C) And if you are a fitness brand with high-priced gear, you’ll have to consider an email strategy that targets customers who are willing to pay a premium for your products, which will be a different strategy than one for a fitness brand with lower price points.

Expert tip: Email strategies are dynamic, not static. As your business grows and your goals change, so should your email marketing strategy.

2. Know your target audience

You know your goal; now consider your “who”. Some experts might suggest knowing your “who” before your goal, but the main bit is to be crystal clear on both before you spend any marketing dollars, including paying for an email service provider (ESP).

(The last thing you want to do is purchase an email marketing plan and let your account sit idle for months wasting your hard-earned dollars.)

As you think about your main goals, whom do you envision using your product or service? Here are some factors to consider when determining your target audience or ideal customer:

• Who needs what you are offering? (Will it enhance their experience in some way?)
• Who wants what you are offering?
• Who can afford it?
• Are they aware of your brand?
• Are they a new customer or an existing customer?
• Where do they hang out? (IRL and online.)
• What do they do in their free time?
• Do they even have free time?
• Can you (ethically) gain insights into their user behavior or purchase history?

By answering these questions, you’ll build a buyer persona, and that “person” is who you market to every time.

Expert tip: Marketing to your buyer persona is also known as utilizing the rule of one. The rule of one says that when trying to convert on a specific offer, you direct your marketing copy to one person at a time, with one goal at a time, and one call to action.

3. Planning around your target audience?

There are many ways to connect with your target audience, but to do so, you have to know who they are. Answering the questions above is the first step to figuring that out.

Then you can ideate how you want email to interact with your target audience to help you reach your business goals.

Expert tip: Danielle Hoefer, Email Marketing Specialist for Life Line Screening, encourages marketers to, “Do the research and think about things on a human level.” She notes that when marketing to Life Line’s client base of people aged 65+, she uses a large font in emails and even builds content in mind of her clients who use voice-to-text.

“Go to a human level and provide value to your audience in an accessible way. I even do research on what colors are hard to see for senior citizens in order to make Life Line’s emails more accessible to our target audience. The best email marketing strategies will consider their audiences on a holistic, human level first before informing strategy.”

Because Danielle knows her business goals and who she’s targeting, she develops an email marketing strategy with their needs in mind. If you put this into practice, it means reaching your audience with the right language, offers, and frequency.

Why does this work?

“Because people don’t like feeling like they are being marketed to. By connecting on a human level and creating a mutually beneficial email marketing strategy of campaigns, your clients will appreciate your brand and everyone will win!”

— Danielle Hoefer

Example 1: If you run a premium fitness clothing brand and your ideal customers appreciate the exclusivity of high fashion, your email strategy could offer early access to new collections exclusive to email subscribers, and your email copywriting should highlight the quality, durability, and exclusivity of your brand.

Example 2: If you are building an online career development community for transgender and non-binary talent, your emails could incentivize referrals to your learning community by offering free resume reviews for current community members. The idea here is that you’re leveraging the network of your current email list to grow your community in order to help as many trans and NB folks as possible.

The bottom line

Email is a powerful, cost-effective tool for meeting all sorts of business goals, and you can truly make it your own. But before you start, make sure you know who you’re trying to reach and what for.

After you get clear on your goals and intent, you should begin strategizing how to build your email list and researching email service providers to fit your specific needs.