Top 10 Best Email Marketing Books for Data-Driven Marketers | Delivra

• Updated on: 2018-11-14
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Looking to accelerate sales? Attract an army of new brand advocates? Build more personalized experiences that help your customers feel more connected? Create communities around your brand?

More than likely, you have a long list of marketing goals and objectives like these that you’re regularly updating and monitoring.

No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels to help you succeed. And it also delivers among the highest ROI of all your marketing initiatives.

Even though email marketing has been around for a while, there’s still room to gain more insights to bring it to its full potential as a tool.

We compiled this list of 10 books that help you gain more from email marketing, Some of them are entirely about email strategies, while others can help you address certain components of your email plan, including producing engaging content, building your brand, and measuring results.

Take a look at these 10 best email marketing books you should have on your bookshelf, downloaded on your Kindle or tablet, or checked out on Audible:

Email Persuasion: Captivate and Engage Your Audience, Build Authority and Generate More Sales with Email Marketing by Ian Brodie is considered one of the leading books about developing a strategy for email marketing and the author, Ian Brodie, breaks it down in a way that’s easy to understand and follow.

If you and your marketing team have been winging it, launching an email strategy without a solid plan, Brodie provides a step-by-step guide that helps you think more strategically about developing an email marketing plan.

It goes over the practical steps it takes to build relationships with your subscribers, get new clients and increase sales through email, social media, and other channels.  

Here’s what Gordon Dahl, Digital Media Sales Consultant had to say about “Email Persuasion”:“If you want to build a high-quality, high-converting email list in an ethical and engaging way, this book is for you. Ian Brodie takes the fluff out of email marketing and shows how to get the job done with easy-to-follow systems, tools, and principles.”

Brodie has a long history in the email marketing industry, teaching consultants and other marketing professionals how to nurture relationships and win business through email marketing. This book does a good job of capturing his expertise in the field.

One of the newest books on the list, the Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Businessby Susan Gunelius focuses on the steps you need to take build a strong foundation on your way to building a substantial list of engaged subscribers who will become lifelong customers.

The author, Susan Gunelius, a marketing and strategic branding expert, notes the challenges businesses are facing as the competition for getting audience attention becomes more difficult. Her answer to that dilemma lies in developing a comprehensive email marketing plan that can evolve as your business evolves.

Other tips include how to convert subscribers into customers and brand advocates; how to develop conversion funnels; how to use email automation to help you save time and keep subscribers engaged; how to use automation to develop personalization strategies and to win back customers; and how to use tools to enhance deliverability.

Connecting with your subscribers includes engaging content, along with great design, visuals, timing, and the right promotions.

If your marketing team is falling short in the ability to write content that persuades your audience to take action, you may need to invest some time in learning the art of copywriting — the key to influencing people to take action.

In Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, Ann Handley, a marketing specialist and speaker, makes the process of writing engaging content less intimidating, This book has quickly risen to the top of marketers’ list for producing better content marketing campaigns.

Pick it up to start learning how to better connect with your audiences.

When compiling your library of marketing books, Email Marketing Rules: Checklists, Frameworks, and 150 Best Practices for Business Success 3rd Edition by Chad S. White should be an essential addition. Considered one of the top masters of email marketing wisdom, Chad White gives a step-by-step overview of the 150 best practices for building a strategy that’s designed for long-term success.

White, who has worked as a marketing researcher for Salesforce, ExactTarget, Responsys and Litmus, has his own share of advocates. Several marketing industry leaders have enthusiastically endorsed his Email Marketing Rules: “Email marketing is more critical than ever. Email Marketing Rules is timely, relevant, and necessary,” says Jay Baer, President of Convince & Convert.

In this rendition of Email Marketing Rules: How to Wear a White Hat, Shoot Straight, and Win Hearts, Chad White compiles a list 108 rules that help you learn how to set the right goals, target the ideal subscribers, streamline your subscription process, design emails that engage, and leverage social media and mobile as part of a comprehensive marketing plan.

Even if you think you already know what it takes to build a great email campaign, it’s a good idea to review these rules as a refresher. You may be getting off track without a few reminders. White, a leading marketing experts, offers the guidelines that can ensure your email strategy is delivering to expectations.

Want to build a massive list of subscribers that actually want to connect with your brand?

As you already know, that task is not always that easy. In Email Marketing Demystified: Build a Massive Mailing List, Write Copy that Coverts, and Generate More Sales, author Matthew Paulson gives you a roadmap about the strategies and techniques that can lead to a subscriber list that will actively engage with your brand for the long run.

Paulson outlines the work you need to invest in building that type of list, including how to optimize the stages of your email marketing funnel, writing compelling copy that converts and develop tactics that ensure your emails have a better chance of being opened.

He also throws in some personal stories about how he was able to personally generate $2 million per year in revenue using the email marketing strategies that he recommends.

At the heart of every marketing plan is your brand, specifically the story of your brand. It’s the key to making a connection with your audience. In Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message so Customers Will Listen, leading brand consultant and author Donald Miller helps you identify the story of your brand by using seven storytelling phases. These are outlined in chapters like: “A Character,” “Has a Problem,” “And Meets a Guide” and “Who Gives Them a Plan.”

By keeping the elements of this storytelling format in mind throughout all your communications, including email marketing messages, Miller says you can make sure your audiences are listening and will see your services or products more favorably than those of your competitors.

If you think you really haven’t defined your brand, add Building a Story Brand to your collection. You will get the insights and direction you need to simplify your brand message so that your audience can readily understand it and respond to it.

In Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans and Followers, Jeffrey Rohrs goes beyond what it takes to build a substantial email list. He guides readers to a comprehensive understanding of why the entire business should function with the goal of building, engaging and helping their audiences, He advocates for honesty in marketing.

He explains how you can accomplish that authentic goal of capturing proprietary audiences through email marketing, social media, and other avenues. At the end of each chapter, Rohrs gives a helpful summary. He also provides case studies, strategy mapping, and roadmaps to guide your own strategies.

Here’s what marketing leader and author Seth Godin says about Audience: “This is a strategic book, a plea to recognize (before it’s too late) the value of earning audience engagement.”

In most B2B scenarios, email marketing is directly tied to filling the sales funnel. Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling delivers lessons on how to use the sales funnel and other channels to encourage more sales conversations, fill your pipeline with quality leads, and, ultimately, win more sales.

“Jeb Blount turns the most despised activity in sales — prospecting — upside down,” says Mark Hunter, author and speaker. “He nails it with his insights, humor, and expertise, making this a book every salesperson, entrepreneur, and executive must read. Get ready to come away with more strategies and ideas and you’ve ever found in one place.”

The book includes lessons on developing powerful voicemail techniques, reducing prospecting friction and leveraging Blount’s take on a 4-step email prospecting framework to create emails that compel prospects to respond.

In Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype, leading marketing consultant Jay Baer challenges you to completely turn your perspective about marketing upside down through three frameworks that focus on your prospects and customers: Top-of-Mind Awareness, Frame-of-Mind Awareness, and Friend-of-Mine Awareness.

Whether you’re part of a small marketing team or a massive team, the principles in Youtility can help you better achieve your goals by changing your mindset. Baer also provides plenty of examples of companies that are adopting the useful mindset when building relationships with their audiences.

By using the Youtility principles, which center onhelpingyour customers and prospects (not selling to them), you can start building a central communication theme that carries through in your email marketing strategy, social media campaigns and other aspects of your content marketing.

As consumers’ digital habits continuing to evolve, these 10 books on the lasting power of email marketing can be the key to helping you gain a more competitive edge.

If you have any other recommendations, please tell us about them!