Start An Email Newsletter For Your Business in 6 Easy Steps

Being able to show up in the inboxes of people who love and want to hear about your business is an incredible opportunity. You can share your business journey, best tips, and offers with a community of people who want to hear from you - this is invaluable to your business!

And with email newsletters, unlike social media, they won’t miss what you have to say just because they didn’t happen to be online at the right time.

Getting set up on with email marketing is easy - there are just 6 steps to get all set up and get going! 

1. Pick a (free) email platform (like MailerLite or Sender)

For most of my clients, I’ve started them off with Mailerlite, which has the most robust free plan out of most email marketing providers and is super secure! On a hunt for a comparable software for beginners I found, tested and loved Sender.net. It has a clean design, walks users through every step of getting set up and guides you through every single one of their features. 

There are a lot of great options out there, take a look at this comparison to pick the right platform for your business or project. 

UPDATE: These days, I typically recommend Flodesk for service providers and either ConvertKit or Squarespace Campaigns for product-based businesses!

2. Add in any subscribers you might have from any other mailing lists you had.

If you’ve ever collected emails at a trade show, at a market or on your website pop them into a spreadsheet with First Name and Email columns! You will be able to upload this as a CSV file to add in people to your email list. 

Note: that with EU regulations, you can’t send any form of marketing emails to an individual person (not a company) without their explicit consent. So only add people that have given you their permission. 

All that said, I have an email list specific to clients that I use to update them about days I plan to take off from work and other important changes in my business. However, I don’t market to them and I can email them because doing so I’m fulfilling the contract we have (according to the GDPR). 

If you already have an email list and are moving email marketing platforms - say from a free one you used to get started to a paid one that you have levelled up to - you can download your email list(s) and upload them to your new platform. Some email marketing platforms can even integrate to move all your contacts more easily!

3. Create a standard branded email template to use when you send out emails.

This will save you from redesigning each email you send out! Mine looks like this in MailChimp: 

I use this same template every time I send out an email to my list - then it’s all with the right colours, sizing and font. I then add the relevant blog posts, events, and photos to share to my monthly newsletter!

4. Add set up tags create groups for customers, members, etc. 

In my one email platform, I have several email lists: 

1. Current Clients

2. Past Clients

3. Newsletter/Marketing List (these people have signed up by opting in and getting a free resource from my website). 

   • I also have sublists for which resource they’ve signed up for!

4. Workshops

5. Use something like Zapier to create automations! 

Want your newsletters to automatically be shared on LinkedIn? Or for a Slack channel to get a notification every time you get a new email subscriber? What about having new subscribers automatically added to your Sales pipeline and client management software? People who’ve bought a specific product or service (like a membership) to be added to an email list?

You can set up these automations and more to reduce the admin tasks you have to do to make your business run effectively.

6. Create a signup form (and a freebie so people do sign up)

This can either be on your website or through your email marketing software (or a combination). 

If you don’t have a website yet, create a landing page with your email marketing software. 

If you do, create sign up forms on your site and link the storage to your list. How you do this will depend on which newsletter platform you chose and where you host your website. If you aren’t sure how to do it, I guarantee you that Google has the answer. 

Bonus step: Send out emails!

No matter how small your email list is - you should actually be using it! Start by creating an automatic welcome email (or sequence) that goes out to every new sign up to introduce you, your business and what you can do for them.

Then send out regular emails to your clients. No matter how small your list is! Nurturing this small list has given me a better idea of who my audience is (people who don’t fit unsubscribe) and my list has nearly doubled since I started actually sending out content! Who knew? 

Would you rather have some help getting your systems all setup? Let’s talk!