Do you want to hone your digital marketing skills or even learn the basics? Check out these email marketing courses–no degree necessary.
When you own a business in today’s world, you need to wear a lot of different hats. Sure, it’s important to focus on your business and the bottom line, but that means learning the ins and outs of things like marketing, design, and writing. When it comes to email marketing, it’s not always easy to figure out what you can do to help grow your company and increase exposure.
At first glance, email marketing might seem complex, but there are educational programs available that can make the process more accessible.
While becoming an expert in email marketing or design isn't necessary, understanding the fundamental concepts can enhance your skills as a business owner. For those considering expanding their knowledge in this area, several worthwhile email marketing courses are available.
Let's explore some of the top choices for improving your email marketing proficiency.
If you’re just getting started with email marketing, free courses are a good place to start. Free email marketing courses are a good way to dip your toes without spending any money, plus they provide the knowledge you need to tackle more advanced courses. Here are some of the most popular free email marketing courses.
Here are some of the most popular free email marketing courses.
YourPrimer Free Email Marketing Course
If you’re looking for an email marketing course that’s specifically designed for beginners to get a decent grasp on things, YourPrimer offers an excellent free email marketing course. YourPrimer’s email marketing training helps teach you how to craft more effective emails, how to get past spam filters and into inboxes, how to use email testing, and how to build a team of email marketing experts.
The best part about this email marketing course is its short length. If you have about 35 minutes, you can complete YourPrimer’s free training and learn the basics of email marketing.
Wishpond Email Marketing Masterclass for Beginners
Similar to YourPrimer, the email marketing course offered by Wishpond is an excellent option for novices seeking to grasp the essentials of email marketing. This concise program can be completed in approximately half an hour, making it ideal for those with limited time.
The Wishpond Email Marketing Masterclass for Beginners provides a solid introductory framework, which proves valuable if you decide to pursue more advanced studies in the future. This course serves as a stepping stone, equipping you with fundamental knowledge that can be built upon in more comprehensive programs.
Like most free email marketing classes, this class doesn’t offer certification for completion. While you won’t earn certification, you’ll gain a better understanding of email marketing.
Simplilearn Course to Learn Email Marketing
The convenient thing about taking an email marketing course online is that there are no structured classes. Having the freedom to take classes when you want, and go at your own pace, is something that Simplilearn offers its students.
Going from an interested party to a certified email marketer happens in a short amount of time with this free email marketing course. The course includes five hours of video and once started, students have 90 days to complete the modules and get certified.
This course allows those who have a little knowledge of HTML to hone their skills. If there is anything in the course that is already in your repertoire, it can be easily skipped. If you do not have experience with HTML, the course will guide you from the basics.
Udemy Email Marketing Made Easy for Beginners
If you're in the market for something a bit more visual and to the point, check out this course from Udemy. The professor not only teaches strategy but lives it. In addition to lessons, he is currently an active digital marketer.
This course was put together with small business owners in mind. It is tailored to people who don't have a ton of free time or the budget for a new employee. Video-centered, the professor actually shows you the process of creating emails to send out through a screen share.
This course is best for someone looking to understand email marketing and how to grow their email list. There isn't a place to connect with or ask the instructor questions. However, the content is broken down into short increments. That makes it easy to follow as well as digest.
Note: Technically, this course is not free. However, you can get it free by trying Udemy's Personal Plan for free for seven days.
Coursera's "Use Mailchimp to Build an E-mail Marketing Campaign"
Similar to Udemy, Coursera offers tons of online courses with certificates to help you learn email marketing strategy and how to use various email marketing tools.
This 2-hour course is designed for beginners and guides you through creating a customized email marketing campaign using Mailchimp's free version, covering features, design tools, and campaign distribution.
In this course, you'll learn to create interactive emails with calls to action, gaining hands-on experience with our popular email marketing tool. The course offers a shareable certificate upon successful completion and is structured into six step-by-step lessons, making it accessible to most learners with basic digital marketing knowledge.
If you want the best possible resources or you’ve already gone through some of these free email marketing courses, there are more in-depth paid alternatives that can provide you with job-ready skills in email strategy.
Here are some of the best email marketing courses that aren’t free.
Mailchimp Email Academy
The Mailchimp Academy is an excellent resource for improving your email marketing skills. It offers a comprehensive overview of strategies and techniques, particularly beneficial for those already using Mailchimp's platform.
To access the academy, you need to be part of the Mailchimp & Co program. This is a straightforward process for Mailchimp account holders and doesn't involve additional fees for course access.
One of the key advantages of completing Mailchimp courses is the certification you receive. You can earn various certifications, including email automation, Mailchimp proficiency, and email marketing expertise. These credentials can be valuable for demonstrating your skills to clients or employers.
SkillShare Email Marketing Essentials
SkillShare is known for offering tons of great online courses, and the same can be said about their Email Marketing Essentials course. This course will teach you everything you need to know about email marketing, including how to develop your voice, tone, and core principles, what to write in an email, different types of emails, and tips for editing your emails once they’re complete.
You can try SkillShare Email Marketing Essentials free for 7 days, but you’ll need to pay $14/month in order to get full access to everything. Not only is this a comprehensive email marketing course, but it’s also very affordable. Unfortunately, SkillShare doesn’t give you the opportunity to earn certification.
SimpliLearn Advanced Email Marketing Certification Training
If you’re looking for a more advanced email marketing course that helps you build on what you learned in your beginner courses, the SimpliLearn Advanced Email Marketing Certification Training course is a good option. This email marketing course skips straight past the basics and moves right into the more advanced parts of email marketing, so it’s best to start with a more basic course first.
With SimpliLearn, you’ll learn how to write better subject lines, write emails that deliver results, and automate your emails to save time and money. At the end of the course, you can earn certification after passing your test.
Reliablesoft Email Marketing Course
For some people, it’s easier to stick with one email marketing course rather than switching from a beginner to an advanced course. With the Reliablesoft email marketing course, you can learn everything you need to know about email marketing without starting out with a beginner class. Reliablesoft covers everything you need to know about email marketing, including how to create an email list, techniques for growing your email list, and advice that helps you increase engagement.
Normally, the Reliablesoft email marketing course costs $600, but you can get access to this course for as little as $119 when Reliablesoft is offering a sale. At the end of the course, you can earn your digital marketing certification by passing your exam.
Email marketing remains a vital strategy for companies of all types, including non-profits and e-commerce ventures.
However, the strategies and techniques required can vary significantly depending on your specific goals and industry.
Recognizing this, many organizations offer specialized email marketing courses tailored to different needs. Let's explore some of the best email marketing courses available for small business owners, non-profits, and e-commerce enterprises.
Email marketing for small business owners
Small business owners often need to take on multiple roles, including that of a marketer. For these entrepreneurs, email marketing courses that focus on efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and building strong customer relationships are particularly valuable.
The "Email Marketing Mastery" course offered by Udemy is an excellent choice for small business owners. The course content covers everything from list building to crafting compelling email content, creating welcome emails and other types of emails, and even creating landing pages, with a special emphasis on strategies that work well for small businesses.
Email marketing for non-profits
Non-profit organizations face unique challenges in their email marketing efforts, often needing to balance fundraising appeals with mission-driven content and volunteer engagement. TechSoup offers a comprehensive email marketing course bundle specifically designed for non-profits.
This self-paced, five-course series covers everything from building an email marketing strategy to advanced techniques like segmentation and analytics.
The track includes:
- Courses on goal setting and benchmarking.
- Creating target lists.
- Growing your email list.
- Making your emails stand out in inboxes.
Email Marketing for e-commerce
E-commerce businesses rely on email marketing to drive sales, promote products, and retain customers. For those looking to master email and SMS marketing strategies specifically for e-commerce, the advanced email and SMS marketing for ecommerce course offered by CXL is an excellent choice.
This 1.5-hour course is designed for marketers working with 7+ figure DTC brands or e-commerce founders aiming to maximize their store's revenue through these channels.
The course covers crucial topics such as email revenue attribution benchmarks, first-party data collection and utilization, customer journey automation, and list segmentation strategies.
It's valuable for those looking to move beyond promotional-based marketing and create more sophisticated, customer-centric email campaigns.
The curriculum is structured to help learners understand how to forecast email revenue, improve engagement and conversion rates, and balance sending frequency with segmentation for optimal results.
Upon completion, students receive a certificate to be added to their LinkedIn profile, potentially boosting their professional credentials in e-commerce marketing.
Are certificates in email marketing worth it?
You might be wondering, is it actually beneficial to get certified in email marketing? The reality is that email marketing certification is worth it because it helps you keep up with the latest trends in digital and email marketing. With all the options you have for getting certified online, it’s well worth spending a little money to learn about email marketing and get certified.
Email marketing trends you’ll learn from top courses
As businesses strive to cut through the noise in overcrowded inboxes, staying up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices is crucial for success.
Top email marketing courses not only teach the fundamentals but also provide insights into emerging trends that are shaping the future of this powerful marketing channel. Here are some important trends you'll learn from the best email marketing courses:
Personalization and segmentation
Top email marketing courses emphasize the growing importance of personalization and segmentation in crafting effective campaigns. Key points include:
- Moving beyond one-size-fits-all email blasts
- Techniques for collecting and leveraging customer data
- Creating highly targeted segments
- Implementing dynamic content based on recipient attributes
- Advanced personalization strategies
- Using behavioral data, purchase history, and engagement metrics for sophisticated segmentation
- Improving open rates, click-through rates, and conversions through personalization
Automation and workflows
Another critical trend covered in top email marketing courses is the increasing role of automation and workflows. Topics typically include:
- Setting up triggered emails
- Creating complex, multi-step email workflows
- Nurturing leads through the sales funnel
- Integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning in email marketing automation
Leveraging predictive analytics to optimize:
- Send times
- Subject lines
- Content for individual recipients
Examples of automated campaigns, such as:
- Welcome series for new subscribers
- Abandoned cart reminders
- Re-engagement campaigns for inactive users
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Benefits of email marketing courses
For someone new to email marketing, email marketing courses not only give you the resources you need to learn the ins and outs of the craft, whether that's through videos, articles, and discussions with your mentors and peers, but more importantly, they allow you to practice what you've learned.
Many email marketing courses provide quizzes, case studies, and interactive learning opportunities that let you gain hands-on experience, taking you through the entire process, from picking enticing topics that benefit your business to sending emails out to the right people. They can help you gain confidence and avoid mistakes as you start.
Many email marketing courses also enlist the help of tried and true marketing experts. These are professionals who have been running campaigns for years. They have gone through the growing pains of seeing how customers engage. Why set out on your own from scratch when you can benefit from someone who has been there?
In the end, an email marketing course will provide you with tools that you can learn from but keep and use in the future. All the presentations, notes, and reading materials are things you can go back and reference. It will be helpful once you're ready to start sending your own marketing emails out.
You will see how email marketing works, but more importantly, you will learn what engages a community. The analytics from email marketing campaigns will make you a better marketer. You will understand what the customer base is interested in seeing. From messaging to what they're clicking on, it's priceless information.
Weigh your options
Whether you want to spend your time sharpening your email marketing skills or not, email is an essential marketing channel in the modern age. According to DMA, companies can expect an average ROI of $36 for every dollar they spend on email marketing.
However, certifications aren’t right for everybody, and some business owners might not think email marketing courses are worth the cost.
The truth is that it’s important to weigh your options before you decide which courses you want to take or what type of certification to obtain. Is the money you’re spending on education worth the return?
Effective email marketing can be a great tool for your business, but it’s important to follow best practices and educate yourself about marketing trends as well. With these email marketing courses, you can get a better understanding of what email marketing is, how it works, and how it can help your business.
When it comes to email marketing and automation, Mailchimp makes things simple. With Mailchimp, you get access to some of the best training resources, plus we provide tools that help you automate emails and create more effective email marketing campaigns. Try Mailchimp today and see what better email marketing can do for your business.
Email marketing courses FAQs:
Is email marketing the same as email copywriting?
To answer this question properly, understanding copywriting is key. When you consider both sides, copywriting is really the backbone of all messaging. Email marketing needs email copywriting to sustain the goal of creating interaction.
Without the proper connection from copywriting, there is just an email of info without a call to action. So, in essence, email marketing needs email copywriting to be successful. While their purposes overlap, they are two separate topics.
Is email marketing part of content marketing?
Yes, content marketing is an accumulation of several different digital platforms. Each comes together through copywriting to send out a message. That message should motivate potentially interested parties to make some sort of conversion. A click, share, comment, or even an online purchase would be the end goal of content marketing.
Email marketing is part of that overall movement, as are blogs, videos, and social media. In fact, more often than not, email marketing is connected to all the other content marketing components through the details in the e-blast.
What skills do you need to be an email marketing specialist?
Having a talent for words is the number one skill an email marketing specialist would need. This person needs to not only talk about the topic but communicate in a way that draws readers in. Being a capable writer should coincide with high levels of comprehension and proofreading. Of course, copywriting that is specifically geared toward advertising and encouraging conversion is where the talent should be leaning.
Next would be understanding marketing campaigns and how to turn them into actionable content. Naturally, to specialize in email marketing, one would need to be able to use templates to create a good-looking and catchy email.
Also, being able to pay attention to the analytics and interpret them is paramount. Doing so will ensure that everyone involved can use the data to make the campaigns better.
Is the best email marketing course one you pay for?
The answer to this question depends on who is taking the course. Before deciding which email marketing course would best suit your needs, it's important to take the time to analyze priorities. For example, what are you hoping to gain from the course? If you're just looking for basic information that would help get you started, a free course is a great way to jumpstart into the field.
Looking for a more in-depth approach? Perhaps one where you can have a good back-and-forth with an instructor or a more advanced skill level? It might be worth it to look into the paid courses listed above. Whether you're somewhere in between or not sure, it would be beneficial to your outlook and studies to start with a free program.
That way, if you decide it isn't for you or you don't have the time to devote to learning, no money is wasted. However, if you take a free course and enjoy it, you might feel compelled to know more. A paid email marketing course is a great way to achieve a more complex look at email marketing.
How long will it take to learn email marketing?
Most email marketing courses let you learn at your own pace. So, if you can only devote little bits of time here and there to one module at a time, there's no need to feel like you're failing or not keeping up.
But if you're able to spend time focusing on the subject, it may take only a month to get a firm grasp on email marketing.
After going through an email marketing course, the next part of the process begins. Understanding what it means to head up an email campaign is only the beginning. Putting what you've learned into practice will be when experience takes off. Combining knowledge with hands-on work will make what you send out better and better over time.
So, learning email marketing doesn't take long, but time will help perfect the craft.
What is the success rate of email marketing?
According to Luisa Zhou, "For every $1 spent on email marketing, marketers make $42. Email marketing is king for one good reason: it has a higher ROI than other marketing strategies." Of course, that number can fluctuate depending on a number of factors, such as industry. Even so, it makes sense that email marketing has such a good return.
The best email lists are ones that are cultivated over time through an active and loyal customer base. These are people who opt in for the goods or services provided. They look forward to updates and sales. When email marketing is done correctly, it's a win/win for everyone involved.