How to Do Email Marketing: 9 Easy Steps to Start in 2025
Email marketing is one of the most effective and affordable ways to grow your business, build customer relationships, and increase sales. To get started, you need a clear framework that takes you from defining your audience to measuring results.
Below, we break down the nine essential steps to doing email marketing effectively, so you can launch campaigns that improve open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.
Since AI has greatly improved the efficiency of email marketing, AI-powered automated workflows can now replace many of the manual tasks of the past. I will focus on how to leverage AI in email marketing.
1. Define Your Email Marketing Audience
Effective email marketing begins with a clear understanding of your audience. Traditionally, marketers analyzed demographics like age, location, occupation, and interests to create customer profiles. Now, AI can take audience definition to the next level. AI-powered tools can analyze vast amounts of data — including past purchase behavior, browsing history, and engagement patterns — to automatically segment your audience and identify high-potential customer groups.
For example, a company selling organic baby food could use AI to pinpoint young parents who actively research nutrition tips online, rather than relying solely on broad demographic assumptions. By leveraging AI insights, you can create highly targeted and personalized email campaigns, improving engagement, click-through rates, and ultimately, conversions.
2. Set Clear Email Marketing Goals
Every email campaign should have measurable goals. Do you want to welcome new subscribers, boost sales with discounts, or drive traffic to your website? Setting clear objectives keeps your emails focused, prevents them from sounding spammy, and allows you to measure performance accurately.
3. Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform
An email marketing platform simplifies campaign management by offering templates, automation, and analytics. Choose a tool that matches your business needs and scale — whether you need advanced segmentation, integrations with CRM systems, or detailed reporting. Popular platforms like Mailchimp, or HubSpot make it easier to design and track campaigns.
One highly effective option is Bika.ai’s AI Email Marketing Agent. This tool automates lead generation, outreach, and follow-ups from start to finish, making it ideal for sales, business development, partnerships, or founder-led growth campaigns.
4. Determine the Type of Email Campaign
Email marketing works best when you focus on a single call-to-action (CTA). Decide whether your campaign should be a newsletter, a promotional email, a reengagement sequence, or an automated series like welcome emails. Align your campaign type with your goals and ensure your messaging drives the action you want subscribers to take.
5. Build an Organic Email List
A high-quality email list is the foundation of effective marketing. Always collect emails organically instead of buying lists. Use opt-in forms on your website, gated content, social media promotions, or CRM data to grow your list. Make it easy for people to subscribe, for example, by offering a discount pop-up or a free downloadable resource in exchange for their email.
AI now makes it possible to search, collect, and organize leads automatically. Using tools like Bika.ai’s AI Email Marketing Agent, you can automate the process of building an email list without manually sourcing contacts.
The AI agent can:
- Search business emails across Bika.ai datasets based on natural language queries, e.g., “Find AI startups in Germany with BD contacts.”
- Extract structured lead data, including company name, contact person, email, website, and dataset reference.
- Store leads automatically in a centralized database, ready for email campaigns.
This AI-powered approach ensures your email list is accurate, targeted, and continuously updated, while also saving hours of manual work. Combined with traditional opt-in methods like website forms or gated content, AI can help you maintain a high-quality, ready-to-engage subscriber list that drives better results for your campaigns.
6. Segment Your Email List for Better Targeting
Not all subscribers behave the same, and sending the same email to everyone can reduce engagement. AI can take email list segmentation to the next level by automatically analyzing multiple factors — such as geography, demographics, past purchases, expressed interests, and email engagement — to create highly targeted audience segments.
With AI-powered segmentation:
- Behavioral insights: AI can identify which subscribers frequently open emails, click links, or interact with content, and place them in appropriate segments.
- Predictive grouping: AI can forecast which users are most likely to respond to certain types of promotions or content.
- Dynamic updates: As subscriber behavior changes over time, AI continuously updates segments to ensure each recipient receives the most relevant message.
For example, loyal subscribers who often engage with your emails can receive more frequent promotional campaigns, while less active users can be targeted with reengagement content — all automated and personalized by AI. By leveraging AI for segmentation, you can boost open rates, increase conversions, and reduce unsubscribe risk, creating a smarter and more effective email marketing strategy.
7. Create Compelling Email Content
Your email’s content determines whether subscribers engage with your brand. Write attention-grabbing subject lines, personalize your message, and always include a clear CTA. Use simple, scannable layouts with visuals to keep readers interested. Many platforms offer pre-built templates that make it easy to create professional, mobile-friendly emails.
AI can now help you create highly personalized, attention-grabbing emails faster and more efficiently than ever.
With AI-powered tools:
- Dynamic subject lines: AI can generate multiple subject line options optimized for open rates, based on past engagement data and subscriber behavior.
- Personalized messaging: AI can tailor email copy for different segments, incorporating names, preferences, and past interactions to make messages more relevant.
- Optimized CTAs: AI can suggest the most effective calls-to-action based on audience behavior and campaign goals.
- Design assistance: Many AI-integrated platforms automatically recommend layouts, visuals, and formatting that improve readability on both desktop and mobile devices.
For example, AI can automatically generate a series of email variations for different customer segments — one for frequent buyers, another for new subscribers — ensuring each recipient receives the most relevant content. By leveraging AI, you can create professional, engaging, and high-converting emails with less manual effort and more precise targeting.
8. Test Your Emails with A/B Experiments
Testing helps you discover what works best for your audience. Run A/B tests on subject lines, CTAs, images, and content variations to identify which versions drive the highest engagement. For example, testing two different subject lines can show you which one generates more opens. Continuous testing refines your strategy and maximizes results.
9. Measure Email Marketing Results with Analytics
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Track metrics like open rate, click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, and unsubscribe rate. These insights reveal how well your campaigns perform and where to optimize. For instance, a high bounce rate may indicate an outdated list, while a strong CTR shows your content is resonating.
AI can take this analysis a step further by automatically processing campaign data and generating actionable insights. Instead of manually reviewing spreadsheets, AI tools can:
- Identify patterns and trends in subscriber behavior
- Highlight which subject lines, content, or CTAs are performing best
- Predict potential issues, such as inactive segments or declining engagement
- Recommend specific improvements to optimize future campaigns
By leveraging AI for analytics, you can quickly understand your campaign performance and make data-driven decisions without spending hours on manual analysis, enabling faster iteration and higher ROI for your email marketing.
Types of Marketing Emails You Should Use
Not all emails serve the same purpose — and understanding the main types of marketing emails helps you connect with customers at different stages of their journey. Below are five of the most common and effective email formats businesses use to build relationships and drive results.
1. Welcome Emails
Welcome emails are the first touchpoint between your brand and a new subscriber. They set the tone for future interactions, thank the subscriber for joining, and often include helpful information or exclusive offers. A strong welcome email makes a lasting impression, builds trust, and increases the chances of long-term customer loyalty.
2. Lead Nurturing Emails
Lead nurturing emails guide potential customers through the sales funnel. By delivering personalized, relevant content tailored to their needs, these emails build trust and keep your brand top of mind. Over time, nurturing campaigns increase conversion rates and strengthen customer relationships.
3. Newsletter Emails
Newsletters are one of the most popular email types, sent on a regular schedule to share updates, industry insights, and promotions. They help keep subscribers engaged, showcase your expertise, and foster a sense of community around your brand. Well-crafted newsletters boost customer retention and brand recognition.
4. Dedicated Emails
Dedicated emails focus on a single message — such as promoting a product, announcing an event, or offering a discount. With a clear call-to-action (CTA), these emails are highly effective at driving immediate results, making them ideal for short-term campaigns with specific goals.
5. Reengagement Emails
Over time, some subscribers may become inactive. Reengagement emails aim to win them back with incentives, exclusive offers, or personalized messages. These campaigns reduce list churn, revive customer interest, and often convert dormant subscribers into active buyers again.
Why Following Email Marketing Regulations Matters
Running a successful email marketing campaign isn’t just about catchy subject lines or high open rates — it also requires strict compliance with legal standards. In the U.S., the primary law governing commercial emails is the CAN-SPAM Act, which aims to reduce unsolicited messages and protect consumer inboxes.
Here are key practices to ensure compliance:
- Be upfront about your intent – Make it clear that the email is from your company and not a disguised personal message.
- Keep details accurate – All sender information and subject lines must reflect the true nature of your campaign.
- Gain permission first – Only contact users who have willingly subscribed to your mailing list.
- Offer one-click opt-outs – Make the unsubscribe process quick and hassle-free, without asking for unnecessary details.
- Remove users promptly – Stop sending emails to unsubscribed contacts within 10 business days.
Following these rules may seem restrictive, but they actually protect your business. A simple unsubscribe option reduces spam complaints, safeguards your sender reputation, and increases the chances that future campaigns land in the inbox instead of the spam folder.
Final Thoughts
Doing email marketing the right way means moving step by step: define your audience, set clear goals, choose the right platform, determine your campaign type, grow your list, segment your subscribers, create engaging content, test variations, and measure results.
With AI integrated at every stage, these steps become faster, smarter, and more effective. AI can automatically identify high-potential leads, build and segment your email list, generate personalized subject lines and content, optimize CTAs, and analyze campaign performance to provide actionable insights. By combining traditional email marketing best practices with AI-powered automation and analytics, you can maximize engagement, boost conversions, and cultivate long-term customer loyalty — all while saving time and reducing manual effort.
AI transforms email marketing from a repetitive task into a data-driven, scalable strategy that continuously improves with every campaign.
