Guerilla marketing is all about marketing on the cheap — using creative brains instead of cash brawns to identify and reach your audience.

Guerilla Email Marketing vs. Guerrilla Email Marketing

The word “Guerrilla” is Spanish, meaning “little war.” Originally, the term described an approach to military tactics that gave nonstandard combat forces (resistance fighters, civilians, or anyone else who lacked formal military training or who wasn’t part of an army as such) an edge over larger, more conventional military forces. Guerilla tactics would depend on ambushes, quick raids, and hit-and-run attacks. Since their numbers were smaller, guerilla fighters would leverage mobility, speed, and clever improvisation to prevail over heavier, slower armies.

While doing some SEO research, we discovered that English speakers usually misspell this word. Although it’s spelled with two R’s in Spanish, there is three times more search volume for the misspelled version of the word. We pride ourselves on keeping our writing error-free, but we also love high volume search terms, which is why we are (reluctantly) spelling the term incorrectly.

In marketing terms, guerilla tactics are often unconventional, low-cost, and designed to rapidly gain exposure for a product or message. When it comes to emails, guerilla tactics are a perfect fit. Email is already a low-cost, high value marketing channel.

Is Email Dead?

Email, not the sexiest tool in the marketing shed, is an underrated, overachieving guerilla marketing tool that if you are not using — and pronto — you are losing. Email is not dead!

Friends, we already talked about how to magnficentify your subscriber list, but if you don’t remember, click through, take a quick refresher and come back for the sizzle to go with that steak.

Once you are up and running, systems in place, building a bright and beautiful subscriber list, it’s time to use it to your best advantage — for fun and profit.

This post will tell you all about:

  • What email marketing is and why it is important
  • 10 Steps to a basic email marketing system and
  • Guerilla marketing with email best practices

What Is Guerilla Marketing with Email and Why Is It Important?

The basic idea behind email marketing is that you build a subscriber list and then nurture and grow the list through offering high quality content.

Eventually, once you have built trust, you can make compelling offers to your list (audience) to buy your high quality products and services.

Trust requires consistency, so set up a schedule of content production and publishing, and then stick to it.

High quality is important, so don’t try to do too much. Spreading themselves too thinly is exactly the kind of mistake email guerillas will want to avoid. Email guerilla marketing requires precise targeting and framing to maximize the reward for the lowest expenditure.

Why You Care

The reason you care about email marketing is that it is a more targeted, successful form of marketing than most others. Very significantly, it is the only non-algorithmic marketing tool in our toolkit. In other words, everyone you send an email receives it. You don’t have that kind of control with social media, SEO, or advertising.

If people have taken the time to join your list, it’s because they are already, at least a little, interested.

By leveraging their interest and building their trust, you can convert your audience to paying customers.

10 Steps to a Basic Beginner’s Email Marketing System

Here’s what to do:

  • Use an email subscriber form with a clear call to action that makes signing up easy
  • Make sure people understand what you’re offering (newsletter or blog, for example) and then offer it consistently
  • Use social proof by including testimonials near the sign up form
  • Offer an incentive (such as a free download) to join
  • Send the email from a human — such as yourself (you’re human, aren’t you?)
  • Send a summary of your content and a link to your website each week at about the same time
  • Send a thank-you note
  • Send a — personal — follow up email to those who have not responded or clicked through after a few days (put a reminder in your phone or schedule this in your calendar)
  • Make it mobile (more and more people check their email from their phones. Do you?) and
  • Use analytics to make sure it’s working
  • Fortunately, for bright and beautiful beginners like you, emails service providers such as MailChimp (my personal fave) can provide some form of all of the above.

It may take a minute (or quite a few) to get it all configured, so just tackle each of the above steps one at a time.

Don’t be afraid to get help because, yes, it can be frustrating to set up an email marketing system from scratch!

Guerilla Marketing with Email Best Practices

Here are some tips and tricks that marketing pros know make the best of your website visitor’s experience and help you win converts:

  • Use an email service provider so you can track your campaigns (and, as you progress, access a wealth of other useful and important information). It’s the pro way to go!
  • If you get a bounced email, use your best email guerilla marketing instincts and find your man (or woman) through Twitter or LinkedIn and build towards an invitation to rejoin
  • Send personal emails to hot prospects — it’s worth it
  • Use 1 to 2 typefaces — only — so your email looks fresh and contemporary
  • Include your logo in the upper left hand side of your email
  • Learn to write short, snappy and descriptive subject lines
  • Make the body of your email short and easy to read
  • Have a landing page for opting in that also includes your logo and social media buttons and
  • Send a test to a friend to make sure everything makes sense
  • Get started with this system and these tips and you will start to see results. Or your money back.

A Word About GDPR

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. The regulations flow from European Union privacy laws. 

Key components include:

  • Banning pre-ticked consent boxes
  • Keeping email consent separate from other terms and conditions
  • Make it easy to unsubscribe
  • Keep evidence of consent

Even guerilla email marketers need to make sure they are compliant. Why? Three reasons: 1) It’s considerate to respect privacy 2) It’s bad business to trick people into becoming subscribers — they don’t really care about your product 3) It’s illegal and unethical to violate GDPR.

If you’re not sure whether you’re compliant, conduct an audit and take the steps you need to get into compliance. 

Your Turn

What have you learned about email guerilla marketing? What do you think the challenges will be?

Could your growing business benefit from an email guerilla marketing blitz? 

Find us on Facebook or Twitter, or click below to book a free digital marketing strategy session.

Proud B Corp