Do you think with the rise of social media & influencer marketing, email as a channel is 

Think of email marketing as a home cooked meal. 

You might go around visiting a number of exciting restaurants (quirky ads), but a meal cooked at home will always remain a staple. You'll keep coming back to it. It’s 

reliable, cost-effective, and you have complete control

That's exactly what email marketing is. But...

”My emails are landing in our reader's Spam Inbox.”

“People are reading my emails but not clicking on the CTA button.”

"Readers are unsubscribing from my email list."

We have often heard marketers talk about these pain points. And that is 

 why we have built this foundational guide. Through this guide we want you to learn how to 

squeeze out all the benefits of a solid email marketing strategy.

a guide that gives you a list of proven email marketing templates that will 3x your conversions. 

Through this guide, we will learn about email marketing in a 

 guide covers 6 important aspects of Email Marketing in-depth:

 your emails from being spoofed & improve email deliverability.

 your email marketing channel by building a 

 knowledge in email marketing and want to 

 email as one of their core marketing channels.

Learning is tough. It takes effort. Lots of it. It's not easy to pull the brakes on your work or life and sit down to learn when you have the option to spend your time in a million other ways. 

But now that you've taken this step for yourself, let's do it right. 

Don't think of this guide as just another piece of content to read and learn from. Instead, take it a step-by-step process, which if you follow will help you achieve the above outcomes. If you find yourself dozing off - take a break, stretch and come back. Take notes, read, re-read, process, practice and apply. 

Set up your work desk and sit there (We know, the temptation to be on your bed is real)

Put your phone on silent, switch it off for the next hour if possible. 

Grab your favourite cup of tea or coffee and settle in. 

Outcomes from the Foundations of Email Marketing

Get an in-depth understanding of everything you'll learn and the outcomes you can expect.

Although there are a hundred different ways to look at audience segmentation, we will look at it in 

crack an email content format which is repeatable & scalable.

Audience Segmentation

Learn 4 ways to segment your audience to personalize your messaging in your marketing emails.

Understanding Goals in Email Marketing

Learn about the 3 fundamental goals in email marketing to take every decision for your campaign with full clarity.

At any given time, a marketing email can have any 1 out of these 

You use email marketing to acquire leads when your customer has become 

 they’re facing and they’re actively looking for a solution. Here, your lead could be in 2 possible situations:

First, they know that your product/service exists.

They have either signed-up on your website using their email ID or visited your website to 

 like an e-book, checklist, etc. in exchange for their email ID.

Or second, they aren’t aware that you exist.

Your potential customer is facing a problem which your product/service can solve, but they aren’t aware about you. This is where 

Why does email marketing work for this user segment?

Once a potential customer is on your email list, you can nurture them over time rather than stressing about immediately converting them. An email list allows you to stay in touch with your leads even if they're not ready to buy immediately, keeping you top-of-mind for when they are.

How can you use email marketing to acquire leads?

 to acquire leads through email marketing. 

 Articulate the problem for your customer. 

 Provide a high-value resource in exchange of their email ID.

The goal is not to immediately pitch your product/service, but to simply add value. A good example would be how 

It clearly states the problem the resource will help you solve: Send error-free campaigns + how the resource will help you achieve it.

It provides you with a detailed pre-deployment email marketing QA checklist in exchange of your email ID.

Once you have have acquired a lead, you can slowly proceed to 

 to move them further into the sales funnel.

Goal 1: Acquiring Leads

Learn how you can acquire leads through email marketing.

The customer is aware about your product/service. They have already opted into your email list but they are still considering different options. They want to make an informed decision and haven’t made a purchase from you yet. The 

, how do the different options compare in terms of 

There are two key reasons why email marketing is a highly effective channel to convert leads into customers:

Emails support content of all kinds. You can add a lot of interactive elements in your campaign using 

 AMP provides you with a website like experience within your inbox. You can perform tasks like submitting multi-step forms, adding items to carts, etc., all right inside your email. 

You know that longer a potential customer contemplates, the lower the chances of conversion. 

With AMP email, you can reduce the time between contemplation & conversion by giving your subscribers an option to 

Second, you can personalize your messaging.

You can segment your audience based on data collected from their behaviour on the websites and curate personalized messaging for them. 

 does it. Amazon has access to a lot of user data such as products you liked and viewed, items in your shopping cart, and your purchase history. This allows them to send you personalised product recommendations.

How can you use email marketing to nurture your leads?

The process of acquiring a lead and then nurturing them to get them to buy from you is a slow and gradual process. One way to do this is through 

At the most basic level, a nurturing sequence 

When you first sign up on Notion, you are sent a sequence of 8 emails spread across 1.5 weeks. The sequence helps you learn about Notion’s various features and get comfortable with it.

Once you are familiar with the tool and have tried the free version of a few features, Notion starts sending you emails about features on their paid plan.

Now, let's move onto learning how you can use email marketing to 

Goal 2: Nurturing Leads

Learn how you can nurture leads through email marketing.

Goal 3: Educate your prospects & customers

Here, your target audience is people who are already buying from you 

 those who are still considering other options. You want to retain your existing customers & continue nurturing potential customers to gain their trust & build brand credibility.

Why does email marketing work for this segment?

Email is the winner when it comes to educating your audience base, simple because:

With the right tools and processes in place, you can easily automate your email marketing process to optimize for scale. We will be covering this eventually in the guide in-depth.

Unlike other social media platforms where you are at the mercy of 

, email allows you to crack a singular format that works for you which you can continue to optimize, simply because you 

 You don’t have to break your head every 2 weeks on how to “hack the algorithm.”

How can you use email marketing to educate prospects & customers?

The best way to leverage email marketing to educate your customers is to 

 as your audience base consists of people who are already interested in your product/service. It helps you solve for 

 of everything we've covered so far. ❤️

With that we've completed this section. Consider this a V1 and if you have any recommendations, resources, or information you’d like to contribute, 

Alternatively, you could also email us on learn@growthx.club

 for your emails. You'll learn all the technical aspects you need to take care of to ensure your email does not land in spam.

Goal 3: Educate Prospects & Customers

Learn how you can educate your prospects & customers through email marketing.

Foundational Hygiene

Learn about all the technical steps to be taken to ensure your marketing email does not land in your reader's Spam Inbox.

Before you even think of iterating & nailing your email copy, there is a list of things you need to have in place to ensure that your email 

Your company sends out various kinds of marketing emails. These could be:

It is important to set up a sub-domain for each function. A sub-domain 

acts as a protective shield for your root domain’s reputation.

 It has a different IP address from your root domain.

If a particular subdomain is facing deliverability problems, it's easier to address and rectify it without harming the root domain's reputation. A shared root domain can be impacted by the performance of all emails sent from it. It is also more difficult to recover a root domain from poor deliverability.

You can purchase and manage your domain and subdomain through a domain registrar like GoDaddy or Namecheap.

Step 2: Purchase a subdomain/s of your choice.

Use the domain registrar’s search tool to look for your desired subdomain. You can then proceed to purchase it. If a subdomain of your choice is not available, choose a different subdomain name or consider variations.

Step 3: Set up DNS records for your subdomain.

(DNS records avoid email spoofing & help improve email deliverability.)

After purchasing the subdomain, you'll need to configure DNS records to point it to the desired IP address or hosting server. For this step you can refer to your domain registrar’s documentation or contact the support team for guidance.

After purchasing your subdomain, you can connect it with your choice of ESP (email service provider). Some ESPs you can use:

 to avoid it from getting black listed & also improve email deliverability.

How to set up sub-domains?

Learn why it is important to set up sub-domains for your email ID and how to do it.

Imagine you are at an airport. You can board your flight only after you authenticate your identity i.e. the name on your e-ticket should match the name on your Aadhar card or other proof of identity. 

In the same way, you also need to authenticate your emails. This is primarily to 

avoid spammers from spoofing emails & also to improve email deliverabilty.

SPF determines the mail servers which are allowed to deliver mails for your domain. It is a techincal layer which filters out spammers.

Why is setting up an SPF record important?

Step 1: Open your domain provider’s dashboard. 

Step 3: Create your SPF record as a TXT entry. 

Imagine the Prime Minister of India is sending an email to the President of the United States. It is possible that a hacker could interrupt the pipeline and tamper with the message. DKIM is a email security standard that ensures messages are 

 while travelling between the recipient and sending servers

How to set up DKIM for your domain and sub-domains?

Use your email service provider's DKIM key generator to get a public and private key.

Add DKIM Record to DNS Log in to your domain's DNS settings. 

Create a TXT record using the DKIM public key in this format: 

Use DKIM checkers to verify the record. Then, send a test email to ensure DKIM signing is working correctly.

Regularly check DKIM authentication status.

Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance (DMARC)

DMARC ensures that an authoritative action is being taken if DKIM and SPF don’t pass.

Decide on a DMARC policy: none (monitor only), quarantine (send to spam) or reject (block). 

Example: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc-reports@yourdomain.com 

Log in to your domain's DNS settings. Add a TXT record for _dmarc.yourdomain.com with your DMARC policy. 

Configure your DMARC record to receive aggregate reports (rua tag). Monitor these reports to understand authentication results. 

Gradually move to a stricter policy (quarantine or reject) as authentication improves.

Step 3: Add sender's name and photo (Super important!)

Phew! You are finally past the technical jargons. This section is a light one & unfortunately the most overlooked at. 

With the increase in email phishing & spoofing, it is more important than ever that your email looks legitimate.

2 obvious things you must do to confirm your email’s genuinety: 

How to authenticate your emails?

Learn why is it important to authenticate your email ID and how to do it.

An IP address is a unique string of numbers that identifies your email domain. It plays a HUGE role in maintaining your sending reputation. The idea of warming up your IP is to gradually increase the number of emails sent through your dedicated IP.

It builds sender reputation with mailbox providers and 

 Send out emails gradually increasing in volume. 

 Ask the receiver to take an action. This could be: 

➡️ Ask them to click on a link inside the email. 

 of everything we have covered in the above section❤️

With that said, let's move onto the next section to 

learn the A-Z of designing an email campaign 

How to warm up your IPs?

Learn why is it important to warm up your IPs and how to do it.

 You’re trying to decide what kind of cake do you want to bake- vanilla, chocolate, red velvet, pineapple? There are plenty of options. No matter what kind of cake you want to bake, largely this will be the 4 step process you will follow:

Gather equipments & ingredients → Prepare the batter → Bake the cake in the oven → Decorate it.

Each cake might require different ingredients, different baking time & different frosting flavours, but this 4-step-process applies to all of them.

It is a set way of doing something because you know it works. 

To make it even easier to understand, let’s talk about what ‘format’ means in the context of story-telling. You must have noticed one particular 

 that always gathers a lot of likes & views. It is called the 

A person comes from a very humble background → Goes through a series of difficult life-altering events → Makes it big despite a lot of hardships.

You will find ‘rags to riches’ stories all across social media- YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. And they always go viral.

This format works because it gives the reader a sense of hope and inspiration. People are drawn to narratives of overcoming adversity and achieving great success, as they tap into our innate desire for feel-good stories.

Now that you have a decent idea of what ‘format’ actually means. The next question that will must definitely come to your mind is...

Why is ‘cracking a format’ important?

Let’s go back to our example of baking a cake. Imagine you want to start a bakery shop. This of course means that you have to bake more number of cakes in a day. But to be able to scale, you first need to perfect your recipe. You can’t afford to frequently make mistakes. You need to know:

It will take you several tries to perfect your recipe. Only then will you let people know that you are open to sell your cakes.

The same concept applies to email marketing. 

You can’t scale unless you know what works.

Imagine, every time you want to implement an email marketing campaign, if you have to:

It will be extremely time consuming. Beyond that, you will:

You will be able to repeat it across your marketing emails and scale it easily.

What is the 0 → 1 framework to crack email format?

When it comes to any piece of content, be it audio, video or written, at the heart of it, they all are optimizing for 

explains that retaining your audience is a simple 2 step process.

Let's see how can we apply these 2 steps to 

Step 1: Build up anticipation = Great Hook.

To write a great subject line, you need to ask yourself 2 questions:

Do you want the reader to feel excited when they read your subject line? Do you want them to be curious? or shocked? Decide on an emotion, and then create a subject line.

Here are two tools you can use to test your subject line:

You can also take a look at this exhaustive resource of 

 created by Mailmodo, divided by industries:

If you're promising something in the subject line or in the first few lines of the email, make sure that the reader actually gets it- whether it is the discount you promised or an answer to a question you asked in the subject line.

When you are just starting off with email marketing, don't try to think of ideas from scratch, specially when you want to scale. Have your fundamentals on format clear, and then, take a look at what your industry adjacents are doing.

If you are a beauty product company, look at what Nykaa is doing. 

For example, Nykaa sends out notification emails to its customers when a product they checked out on the website but couldn't buy is back in stock.

The subject line gets the reader excited. The line "Guess who's back?" builds further anticipation. And the CTA delivers on that anticipation. i.e. it takes the person to the products page from where they can purchase it.

As a beauty product company, you too can follow a similar format if you want to inform your customers about products being back in stock.

The simple goal is to study your industry adjacents, learn what works for them,

 tweak it to suit your brand → implement → analyze → scale.

Once you have implemented and analyzed enough emails, you will easily be able to build a brand flywheel.

Flywheel = Set format to write your hook, email body, CTA.

Phew, this was a long section. But things are just getting interesting. Next, we will learn how to 

Cracking Email Content Format

 Learn the fundamentals of email content format for improved open rates and click through rates.

Email Layouts & Design

Learn how to pick the right email layout for your campaign and also how to make your email accessible across all devices.

In email marketing, testing your emails is a very crucial step, largely for two reasons:

First, you learn what you need to improve.

And second, you learn what you need to double down on.

But how do you decide what needs to be improved and what needs to be doubled-down on?

​A better performing email will result in:

 way to set up an A/B test for your email?

Imagine it has been a couple of years since you are running your bakery shop. You sell a variety of cakes, cookies, pastries & cupcakes. In the last 2 months, your sales have become a little sluggish. 

In the same way, you need to clearly define the problem you want to solve for your emails.

Is your marketing email landing into the reader’s spam inbox?

Or maybe people are clicking on your email, but not on the CTA button?

Is your unsubscribe rate increasing over the last few months?

After you have clearly defined your problem statement, you 

 that directly affect your problem at hand.