Email Marketing: Strategies, Tools & Best Practices

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote a business, connect with customers, and drive sales. Despite the rise of social media and new communication tools, email remains a powerful digital marketing channel. In fact, over 4.3 billion people use email daily, making it one of the largest platforms for reaching a global audience.

Whether you’re a small business or a global brand, email helps you stay top of mind with both potential and existing customers. It's ideal for sharing updates, promoting products or services, and sending transactional emails like order confirmations and shipping updates. Plus, with the right tools and strategy, email marketing can be automated, personalized, and scaled easily.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a digital strategy used by businesses to communicate directly with people through email. It involves sending messages to a group of contacts, often with the aim of promoting products or services, sharing content, or providing important updates. The core goal of email marketing is to build relationships with your audience and encourage meaningful actions, such as purchases, sign-ups, or visits to your website.

What sets email marketing apart? It gives you direct access to your target market's inbox. When someone gives you their email address, they are essentially giving you permission to communicate with them personally. This makes email one of the most effective tools for reaching customers, especially compared to platforms like social media, where algorithms often decide whether your content gets seen.

Emails come in various forms. Some are purely promotional, aiming to spark interest in a sale or a limited-time offer. Others are transactional emails, sent in response to a user’s activity, like an order confirmation or account alert. Many brands also send email newsletters on a regular basis to keep subscribers informed and engaged with useful content, company news, or educational tips. These newsletters play a key role in staying top of mind with your audience.

At the heart of every successful email marketing campaign is a clear email marketing strategy. This strategy involves understanding who your audience is, how often you should contact them, and what kind of content will make them click. Every email should be supported by a clean, mobile-friendly email template, a compelling subject line, and a strong call to action that guides the reader toward your goal.

7 types of emails you should be sending

Email marketing offers a variety of formats to connect with your audience, each tailored to different goals and customer touchpoints. Promotional emails are the most common type. These are used to highlight new products or services, announce seasonal sales, or offer exclusive discounts. Their main objective is to drive immediate action, often supported by a persuasive call to action that directs readers to a landing page or online store. These emails are perfect for creating urgency and generating quick conversions.

Lead nurturing emails

Lead nurturing emails are designed to build relationships with potential customers over time. Instead of focusing on immediate sales, they provide valuable content, tips, and offers to keep the audience engaged. These emails are crucial for guiding leads through the sales funnel and turning them into loyal customers.

Dedicated emails

Dedicated emails are another type that focuses on a single topic, offer, or promotion. These emails are used when you want to communicate something specific, such as a product launch, event invitation, or limited-time sale. Since the email focuses entirely on one message, it helps to avoid distractions and encourages the recipient to take action.

Milestone emails

Milestone emails are sent to celebrate specific customer achievements or anniversaries, such as account birthdays, purchase anniversaries, or membership milestones. These emails help strengthen the relationship with customers by showing that you value their loyalty and are aware of their journey with your brand.

Survey emails

Survey emails are used to gather feedback from customers. Whether it’s a post-purchase survey or a satisfaction check, these emails help brands understand their customers' needs and improve products or services. By involving the customer in this process, you also enhance engagement and loyalty.

Retention emails

Retention emails aim to keep your existing customers engaged and encourage repeat business. These emails focus on customer satisfaction and offer value, such as loyalty rewards or personalized product recommendations, helping to prevent churn and maintain long-term relationships.

Cart abandonment emails

Cart abandonment emails are crucial for e-commerce brands. These emails target customers who have added items to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase. A well-timed reminder can prompt them to return and finalize the purchase, often with the incentive of a discount or free shipping.

Order confirmation emails

Order confirmation emails confirm a customer’s purchase, providing reassurance and order details. These emails also present an opportunity to cross-sell or upsell related products. Transactional emails go beyond purchase confirmations they are triggered by user actions, like resetting a password or signing up for an account. They confirm activities and build trust, while also presenting an opportunity for subtle upselling or cross-selling by showcasing related products or services.

How you should be designing your emails: a checklist

An effective email design grabs attention and makes your message easy to read. Better still, designing emails with a clear goal and CTA in mind will always drive conversion. To make sure you're setting yourself up for success, here's a quick checklist you can follow:

Use a clear layout hierarchy to guide readers toward your call to action

Organize content in a logical flow - headline first, supporting points next, and your main CTA last. Employ font sizes, bolding, or color accents to highlight the most important elements and naturally steer the eye. The goal should be to direct your customer to one CTA, so avoid anything that doesn't contribute to that.

Avoid spam-like elements to boost deliverability

Emails overloaded with large images or dozens of hyperlinks can trigger spam filters. Make sure you're balancing visual interest with text, limit links to the essentials, and include meaningful alt text for every image.

Use a responsive email template

With most users checking email on mobile, a template that automatically adjusts to different screen sizes is crucial. Ensure buttons remain tappable, text remains legible, and images scale appropriately - nobody likes looking at stretched images or templates that don't respond to mobile formats.

Maintain brand consistency

Consistent visual branding builds recognition and trust. Align your email’s style guide with your website, social posts, and other touchpoints so that subscribers instantly know the message is yours.

Keep it clear and scannable

Scannable content keeps readers engaged. Break your emails into bite-sized chunks, use subheads to section information, and choose web-safe fonts that render well across email clients.

Include visuals - and don't forget alt text

Eye-catching images can boost interest, but many clients block images by default. Write descriptive alt text and structure your copy so that the core offer remains clear even if your visuals don't load.

Test out your design elements

Compare and contrast your emails in testing - different button colors, headline wording, or image choices. That way, you can easily gauge which resonates (and converts) best. Test one variable at a time to isolate its impact on opens and clicks.

Analyze and iterate

Make sure you're consistently reviewing metrics like open rate, click-through rate, and conversions. Use those insights to refine your templates, tweak calls to action, or adjust content hierarchy for continuous improvement.

How and why to start segmenting your mailing list

Email segmentation is the art of splitting your subscriber list into smaller, targeted groups based on criteria like demographics, purchase history, or past interactions. Instead of blasting one generic message to everyone, you tailor each campaign to resonate with a specific audience - so your emails land in inboxes, not the archive or spam folder.

Demographic Segmentation

Group your audience by who they are - age, gender, job title, or company size. For example, send a “New Barista Recipes” email just to café managers aged 25–40.
How to achieve it: Capture demographic details on signup forms or via your CRM, then simply filter using these attributes once you've got them recorded. With Leat, you can even automate this in our lists tool.

Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation allows you to target customers based on where they live or shop - country, city, or even climate. Think “Summer Sips” offers for subscribers in Florida and “Cozy Drinks” for those in cooler climates.
How to achieve it: You can easily pull location data if you record your transactions on a customer-by-customer basis. Leat integrates with your POS so you can easily pull location data based on transactions, as well as tracking your online sales.

Behavioral Segmentation

Reach people based on what they do- site visits, email opens, or clicks. For instance, trigger a “Still interested?” follow-up when someone abandons their cart, or a "We miss you!" email to some of your customers that need re-engagement.
How to achieve it: Use triggers in your email automation that are based on customer actions or interactions, whether it's inactivity in a certain period or habitually purchasing a particular product.

Transactional Segmentation

Divide customers by purchase habits - recency, frequency, and monetary value. Reward VIPs who spend over $500/month with exclusive perks or early access. You can check out our article on RFM segmentation to see how you can do this in more depth.
How to achieve it: Leat syncs every sale from your POS and e-store, letting you build segments like “High-Value Customers” or “New Buyers.”

Engagement Segmentation

Segment customers based on whether they're engaged, dormant, or in need of some re-engagement. Send a “We Miss You” offer to anyone who hasn’t opened an email in 60 days.
How to achieve it: Leat tracks opens and clicks automatically - just filter by engagement score to target the right group.

Why You Need Email Marketing Automation

We couldn't write about email marketing without mentioning automation. Whether it’s welcoming new subscribers, sending reminders for abandoned carts, or following up with customers after a purchase, Email marketing automation helps keep your communication consistent and effective.

One key benefit of automation is that it can help improve your email marketing strategy by delivering highly targeted content based on user behavior. In case you need convincing, we've listed some of the main benefits of email automation for you here:

• Automated emails generate 320% more revenue than non-automated emails.

• Welcome emails see a 63.9% open rate and 14.3% CTR, versus single-send campaigns.

• Trigger-based campaigns can drive 4× more revenue and 18× greater profits than batch sends.

• Trigger emails account for 20%+ of total email marketing revenue.

• Abandoned-cart recovery emails boast a 41.2% open rate, 21% CTR, and 50% conversion.

• Automated nurture flows lead to 47% larger purchases from engaged subscribers.

• Triggered emails average a 38.0% open rate and 6.8% click-through rate.

• 45% of subscribers engaged with follow-up emails after a re-engagement campaign.

Email Marketing Best Practices

To make your email marketing campaigns as effective as possible, it's crucial to follow some best practices that help maximize engagement and conversions. First, it’s essential to focus on email deliverability. Even the most well-crafted email is useless if it ends up in the spam folder. To improve deliverability, ensure that your emails have a clear, compelling subject line and avoid using trigger words that might flag your message as spam. Regularly cleaning your subscriber lists by removing inactive contacts also helps maintain your sender reputation.

Personalization

Personalization is another key aspect of successful email marketing. Use the data you have on your subscribers to send relevant content. This can include using their first name in the subject line or sending offers based on their previous purchases. A personalized approach helps create a deeper connection with your audience and encourages them to take action.

Timing and frequency

Timing and frequency are equally important. Sending emails too often can overwhelm your subscribers and lead to unsubscribes, while sending too few may cause your brand to be forgotten. Test different sending frequencies to find the sweet spot for your audience. Additionally, consider the timing of your emails. For instance, a promotional email sent on a Monday morning may perform better than one sent late on a Friday.

Mobile-friendly

Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly. With many people reading emails on their phones, it’s essential that your email templates are responsive and easy to navigate on all devices. Lastly, always include a clear call to action. Whether you're encouraging subscribers to buy a product, sign up for a webinar, or read a new blog post, a strong CTA guides them toward the next step.

Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing tools are essential for businesses that want to manage, automate, and optimize their email campaigns effectively. These tools make it easier to design emails, track performance, and engage with your audience in a personalized way. Here are some of the top email marketing platforms that can help you build and execute a successful email marketing strategy.

Mailchimp

One of the most popular and user-friendly email marketing platforms, especially for small businesses. Known for its intuitive interface, Mailchimp offers an array of features, including drag-and-drop email builders, advanced segmentation options, and detailed analytics. It also integrates well with many other platforms, making it a versatile choice for businesses looking to automate their email campaigns.

Additionally, Mailchimp's email templates are customizable, allowing you to create professional-looking emails with ease. The platform also offers free plans for those just getting started with email marketing.

Klaviyo

A robust platform designed for e-commerce businesses. It offers powerful automation tools, which allow you to send tailored messages based on customer behavior. Klaviyo is especially known for its advanced segmentation capabilities, enabling businesses to send highly personalized promotional emails or transactional emails.

By integrating with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Klaviyo makes it easy to track customer interactions, such as purchases and browsing behavior, to create automated workflows that drive conversions. This tool helps you build strong relationships with existing customers and target new ones with precision.

Leat

An emerging tool that combines simplicity with powerful features. Leat offers a great solution for small to medium-sized businesses. The platform offers advanced automation features, A/B testing, and email deliverability optimization, which ensures that your emails land in inboxes rather than spam folders.

Leat is also known for its responsive email templates, which adapt perfectly to both desktop and mobile devices. As your subscriber lists grow, Leat allows you to scale your campaigns and fine-tune your messaging to achieve the best results.

ActiveCampaign

A standout platform, particularly for businesses looking to integrate email marketing with other forms of marketing automation. ActiveCampaign excels in customer relationship management (CRM), allowing you to create detailed customer profiles and send personalized emails based on data. The platform’s email marketing tools, including A/B testing, dynamic content, and segmentation, make it a powerful choice for creating highly targeted campaigns.

ActiveCampaign is particularly useful for businesses that need advanced features such as multi-step workflows and predictive sending, helping you to improve email marketing automation and deliver relevant content at the right moment.

Conclusion

Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to engage with customers, build relationships, and drive conversions. By understanding the various types of emails, implementing segmentation, and utilizing automation, businesses can deliver highly personalized content that resonates with their audience.

Following best practices and choosing the right email marketing tools like Leat, Klaviyo, and ActiveCampaign can help streamline your campaigns and enhance results. Whether you’re targeting new leads or nurturing existing customers, email marketing continues to be a powerful tool in any digital marketing strategy, offering valuable insights and measurable outcomes.