What is email marketing? Here’s what you need to know

Email marketing is the key to your clients’ hearts and wallets. Sounds pretty grandiose, but it’s true.

How true? According to HubSpot’s Annual State of Marketing Report, in 2024, email marketing was still the top marketing channel, resulting in ROI for B2C (business-to-consumer) brands.

And the best part? It requires no trickery, manipulation, or highly technical software to achieve results. With some good ideas and basic email marketing tools, you can create a strong relationship with your ideal audience. This results in a growing brand and happy customers.

Let’s start this article by answering the question: what is email marketing?

Email marketing definition

To get more technical with our definition, email marketing is a form of direct marketing. This means that you don’t use a third-party platform to reach potential customers, but rather contact them directly. 

There are two main types of messages you should send to your email marketing lists: 

• Emails that enhance the relationship with your customers and encourage them to purchase again. These emails should add value to the client without asking them for anything in return.
• Emails that ask for a purchase from new or previous customers for a new product or offer at the moment you present it to them.

Both of these types of emails, however, rest on the same underlying principle: trust. The reason email marketing is so popular, effective, and crucial for your brand is that it helps build trust with your audience, thus increasing sales through customer loyalty.

How trust building works

Let’s take the following scenario as a potential real-world equivalent of how effective email marketing and the trust factor work.

Scenario 1: The friend

Let’s say you’re a skilled videographer. You’ve got a solid portfolio and a passion for storytelling. But lately, your client calls haven’t been landing. Projects you thought were locked in keep falling through after the first meeting.

Over lunch, a good friend who works in coaching brings it up gently.

Hey, can I share something with you? I’ve been thinking about those dropped projects you’ve mentioned. I know how brilliant you are behind the camera, but I wonder if clients are seeing that in your meetings. You tend to speak really softly, and sometimes it comes off like you’re unsure of your ideas—even when they’re great.

I’m not suggesting you change who you are. But what if we worked on how you present your ideas, so your confidence behind the lens comes through in front of clients too?

The situation might be a little awkward, but they’re not wrong. You’ve felt that same hesitation when pitching your work.

Their offer feels safe and encouraging. It’s coming from someone who knows you and wants you to succeed.

Scenario 2: The stranger

Now picture this: after another failed call with a potential client, you spot a comment under one of your social media videos from someone you’ve never interacted with before:

You don’t sound confident. Clients pick up on that. You should check out my course on pitching for creatives—20% off today!

Would you accept? Um, no. I wouldn’t.

Even if they might have a point, the delivery feels off. You don’t know this person. You didn’t ask. It’s criticism wrapped in a discount code, and it feels more like a sales grab than support.

The difference: the relationship and degree of trust you have with each of the two coaching professionals. And, in the world of online business, said distinction is made through effective email marketing.

Why you need email marketing

Effective email marketing allows you to become your clients’ friend and trusted advisor. On the contrary, when used simply to blast out offers and reach random strangers (who may not even be interested), it can turn you into the irritating and obnoxious stranger of scenario number two.

The know-like-trust factor

In the world of marketing, the process of building a strong relationship with your clients and earning their trust is called the “know, like, trust” factor.

1. Know

For people to buy anything from you—be it products or services—they first have to know you. Not only that you exist, but really know you on a deeper level.

They must know what you do, why you do it, and how you do it. Most importantly, they have to understand why that’s different from how everyone else does it.

2. Like

Knowing is just the first step. For strangers to become clients, they must also like you. And let’s be honest here: not everyone is going to like you—and that’s okay (and you shouldn’t try to please everyone).

Your ideal audience, however—the people you’d love to work with—must like you to buy from you. And to like you, they must see and experience more of you and your brand than your offers and deals.

3. Trust

A person who likes you is much more likely to buy from you than a person who simply knows you. But a person who trusts you? Now, that’s a customer! And a returning customer at that. 

Think about a professional you trust with a service or product, like your car mechanic or your hairdresser. Would you ever choose to acquire these services from someone else just because they happened to walk up to you offering a discount? 

No way! Because when it comes down to it, you don’t really want to risk a bad haircut or a broken car.

More than just email advertising

Before we go any further, let’s get one thing straight: email marketing is not just email advertising. It may seem strange to use a negative definition of what email marketing is, but the distinction is crucial.

By email advertising, I mean any and all emails that do nothing more than advertise (or announce) your products or services. Although these emails play an important role in email marketing, when sent out on their own they aren’t effective.

The importance of engaging your customers

Emails that simply advertise your products or services, or notify your clients of current offers, are essentially self-serving. Direct promotions should only make up a fraction of the emails you send out. They’re telling your clients something that you want and need: to sell your products. 

But that’s no way of creating the know-like-trust factor. It won’t help you build a good long-term relationship with your audience and turn them into active, buying customers.

For this relationship to grow and flourish, there needs to be an exchange of values. You offer your clients something they value first, and they later repay that value by buying from you. 

Offering value through your email marketing strategy

So, now you’re aware that an email marketing strategy is not simply email advertising. You also know that it can help you build trust with your audience. The next logical question you’re probably wondering right now is:

“Well, how do I do that?”

And the answer is: “Well, in many ways.”

Besides direct sales emails that you will sprinkle here and there when talking to your audience, there are three other factors you need to consider in order to build a good relationship: knowledge, inspiration, and entertainment.

1. Share your knowledge

The knowledge factor is quite self-explanatory. In the emails you send your audience, share your knowledge and expertise on issues relating to your industry:

• Explain how something works.
• Provide a step-by-step guide for doing something.
• Give your opinion on the best products or software for achieving X and why.
• Do case studies explaining how results were achieved.
• Offer useful and practical information that the audience can take action on. 

When people understand that you’re truly knowledgeable on a topic, they’ll be much more likely to come when they need an expert in your field.

Here are some email marketing tips that can help you with this step:

• 

  How to Properly Write a Formal Email That Gets Results (+ Video)

  

  Laura Spencer

  02 Apr 2023

• 

  17 Professional Email Tips for Better Results in 2025

  

  Laura Spencer

  25 Oct 2022

2. Inspire your audience 

Inspiring your audience leads to likability and trust. For example, if you’re a web designer, you can offer your audience inspiration for new website ideas. Or if you’re a video editor, you can offer them inspiration on ways to create promotional videos. 

When you inspire people to create something new, they will not only like you for helping them move towards a goal they have. They will also keep you in mind when they find an obstacle or decide to hire a professional. 

Why would I go to a total stranger to edit my new promotional video when I got inspired to do it in the first place from something you shared with me? I wouldn’t. I’d come to you. 

3. Entertain them

Offering entertainment doesn’t mean that you have to be a stand-up comedian who also happens to have a photography company or a design studio. Entertainment simply means that you have to offer your material in a way that your audience enjoys. 

You can be funny, high-energy, intriguing, quirky, loud, or a million other things. What you can’t be is bland and boring. No one likes that, no matter what other value you may bring to the table.

For an in-depth discussion of various types of email you can use in your business and the advantages and disadvantages of each, take a look at the following post:

• 

  Which Email Type Is Best for Your Business?

  

  David Masters

  03 Jun 2022

When do you send these emails out?

Truth is, although you shouldn’t email your audience entirely at random, you don’t need to have a perfectly choreographed email sequence worked out a year in advance either.

One of the email marketing best practices is to be consistent. To maintain and promote your relationship and trust with your clients, you should start with an email frequency of once every week or once every couple of weeks. More than that can feel overwhelming and annoying, and less than that can feel random and alienating.

Email marketing campaigns

During particular periods of the year, you’ll need to create more pointed email marketing campaigns that lead to sales. Some examples include:

• When you’re launching a new product or service.
• When you’re opening up appointment slots for the next quarter.
• When you’re offering an online course or webinar.
• When you’re organizing a live event.

But not even these email marketing campaigns will be full of direct sales messages alone, though your calls to actions will be sales oriented. 

Pre-designed email marketing templates​ can help achieve this balance. Most have placeholders and sections that guide you through how you distribute the content in your email marketing campaigns.

Good email marketing campaigns:

1. First introduce a problem your audience is having.
2. Present the solution to it in the form of a product or service you’re offering.
3. Explain the benefits and value of your offer.
4. Provide social proof of successful results.
5. Sell the product to your audience.

During these campaigns, you may also decide to increase the frequency of your emails. This will help get people to take action within a specific period of time. 

You will want to include some direct sales emails as well. They’ll make up only a fraction of your overall campaign, but drive the greatest number of sales through.

Frequent trust-building emails

During other periods when you don’t have a particular offer to promote, you’ll want to keep things more casual and focused on offering free value with a nice mix of information, opinion, entertainment, inspiration, and motivation, depending on your communication style. 

This more relaxed series will nurture your relationship with your audience through the value you offer them and build trust in your competence as an expert so that when you come back around with an offer again, your subscribers will be ready to buy what you’re selling.

Learn more about some email marketing best practices:

• 

  How to Write a Friendly Reminder Email (Using Best Practices)

  

  Laura Spencer

  15 Feb 2024

• 

  How to Improve Your Email Open Rates (10 Simple Ways)

  

  Celine (CX) Roque

  18 Jun 2023

Where is the email list?

We’ve been talking about your potential customers. But who are these people? Who are you emailing your valuable and entertaining emails to?

In order for an email marketing strategy to work you need, of course, an email list of people who’ve raised their virtual hand and said: “Yes, I’d like to receive information from you.”

So, if you don’t already have email marketing lists, the first thing to do is to set up an account with an email marketing software platform. There, you can start creating the emails we’ve been discussing. Mailchimp and HubSpot are popular choices.

Who are you emailing?

Once you get set up with the technical aspects of your email list, it’s time to populate it. You don’t want to add just anyone on your email marketing lists simply for the sake of numbers. Instead, you want to attract the people that will be interested in your brand. 

That’s why the next thing you need to think about is a piece of free content you can give out to attract your ideal audience to your list. This piece of free content is often called a giveaway or a lead-generating magnet (LGM) and it has to be highly relevant to the products or services you’re offering, so as to bring qualified leads to your list. 

What’s the most common pain point people have that you’re targeting? What’s something valuable you can offer people in return for their email address?

There are many types of lead generating magnets and giveaways you can offer to grow your list depending on your company and industry. Some ideas include:

• A cheat sheet with the products and software you use for doing X.
• A checklist for achieving Y, like a step-by-step list for launching a new website.
• A long-form guide or video training on a process that interests your audience, like “how to edit your own videos”.
• An inspirational manifesto stating the change you’re trying to make in the world.
• A free chapter from your book.

Emailing your current list

If you already have a list, however small it may be, you’ll want to start outlining some ideas of engaging content you can share.

With your ideas defines, pluck them into an editorial calendar to create consistency. And while you’re at it, also start thinking about specific email marketing campaigns you can create to warm up prospects towards an upcoming offer you’re preparing.

If you’re not sure what to email to your list, why not ask them? Send out an email asking people what their greatest struggles are when it comes to your area of expertise and what they’d like to learn from you.

A survey email like this will, of course, work much better with an active and engaged email list. So if you haven’t emailed your list for a while, you might want to start with a different email to warm them up first.

Send them something of value that lets them know that clicking your emails can be highly beneficial to them. That’s the best way to train people to pay attention to your emails and to click on your future offers.

Email marketing is your friend

Email marketing shouldn’t scare you as something overly complicated and advanced that only the “big companies” can do.

All you really need to get going is an email address, a subscription to an email marketing software platform, and a few good thoughts and ideas to communicate to your audience.

Moreover, Envato has an extensive library of creative assets that can help you out. There are tons of email marketing templates​ that are compatible with Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, and other popular email marketing tools. They’re a big time saver and give you a ready-to-go professional starting point for your email newsletter design.

What’s even more important than being your friend, however, is the fact that email marketing can help turn you into a trusted advisor for your audience. Consistent communication that offers valuable and entertaining information creates the best path to your audience’s heart and trust.

And when people know, like, and trust you as an expert in your field, they’ll happily buy from you when it’s time to make them an offer.