20+ Best Email Marketing Books to Read Right Now

Let’s start with the truth: Email marketing might not have the fresh excitement or glamour of its newer-to-town cousin - social media marketing. However, you’ll often get more bang for your buck with email marketing than many of the newer forms of digital marketing.

There are plenty of options for learning more about email marketing, starting with websites and blogs and ending with workshops. Nevertheless, if you’d like to learn the basics and have a comprehensive idea of how everything works, it’s better to start with the most obvious option - a good book!

List of best email marketing books

1. Email Marketing for Dummies (John Arnold)

Regardless of where you’re standing as a professional - either you’re a beginner testing the waters or a seasoned specialist - this book can be handy for both!

A newbie in the email marketing work can use this to pick up the basics of the craft and better understand all the tools and techniques available to them. At the same time, an expert can go back to their roots to organize and refresh the knowledge they’ve accumulated over the years, use the book as a source of inspiration, or simply have some light reading! No matter your goals, “Email Marketing for Dummies” by John Arnold has something for you.

The book is divided into 6 sections, each of which includes lots of practical and up-to-date information about the art of email marketing.

• The first section. Explains the fundamental concepts within email marketing, explores the benefits of email marketing for businesses, and shows how to incorporate this strategy into your current business model.

• The second section. Displays how to plan out your email marketing strategy, identifies your campaign objectives, and builds your mailing list. By the end of this part, you will know how to ensure your recipients are excited to open your emails.

• The third & fourth sections. Contain all you want to know about the actual emails as well as how to create the most almighty email. Starting with the visual design of your email copy and ending with generating the most enticing subject line. Plus, Arnold also shows how to simplify your life by automating several of the critical processes.

• The fifth section. Talks about collecting responses and assessing your email marketing campaign for subsequent adjustments.

• The sixth section. Debriefs the most common mistakes in email marketing and how to avoid them.

2. The New Email Revolution (Robert W. Bly)

If you are not a complete stranger to marketing, chances are you have already heard about Robert W. Bly. He is a famous author of numerous publications on the most avant-garde platforms (i.e., Entrepreneur) as well as a series of successful self-development books. He has been helping business owners to prosper since 1982, when he published his first guide.

In one of the parts of “The New Email Revolution”, Bly shares his best email copywriting tactics and techniques, as well as teaches the reader how different words can have a different impact on prospects. After completing this section, you can choose the most appropriate verbs for your CTA (call-to-action), construct, and structure your emails in an effective way.

On top of that, the author also reveals the secrets of the successful implementation of visual content into your emails. By doing so, your campaigns could stand out among the competitors’ copies in the prospects’ inbox.

Beginners should read this book among the first few, as the sooner you sharpen your email copywriting skills, the better.

3. Email Marketing Rules: How to Wear a White Hat, Shoot Straight, and Win Hearts (Chad White)

Amazon reviews believe that “Email Marketing Rules: How to Wear a White Hat, Shoot Straight, and Win Hearts” by Chad White is “an essential item on every email marketers’ bookshelf.” With a name like that, we bet it is!

The book is packed with useful, practical information, and handy extras, such as study cases, checklists, and frameworks. It comprises 3 major parts, each of which tells the reader about one of the key cornerstones of email marketing.

• The first section includes email marketing rules
• The second provides an insight into the successful email marketing strategy
• The last one discusses the email marketing’s future

4. Email Marketing Rules: Checklists, Frameworks, and 150 Best Practices for Business Success 3rd Edition (Chad White)

With another book by Chad White, you can find easy-to-understand guidance on setting goals, developing strategic frameworks, understanding “deep metrics,” building high-performing lists, managing inactive subscribers, automating campaigns, as well as writing compelling messages.

If sometimes you love to skip the theory and start practicing right away, this book is perfect for you. It is definitely not an entry-level email marketing book, but mid-level and advanced specialists will find it extremely useful.

5. Email Marketing Demystified (Matthew Paulson)

As a serial entrepreneur and the runner of MarketBeat.com that publishes newsletters to more than 250,000 investors daily, Matthew Paulson knows a thing or two about email marketing and how to make it work for your brand.

So, in his book “Email Marketing Demystified,” he doesn’t only try to put an end to the common misconceptions about email marketing but also gives many helpful tips and tricks for implementing it into your business model.

The book contains 9 chapters, each of which offers theoretical insight into email marketing and practical advice. Almost every chapter includes a case study to actualize the knowledge and put a face to a concept.

Some of the most helpful topics Matthew Paulson covers include:

• Choosing the most suitable mailing service for your business.
• Building your email list both through your website and even without it.
• Bumping the value of your mailing list.

The hidden gem of “Email Marketing Demystified” is Paulson’s discussion on outbound email marketing. Just in one neat chapter, he shows you how to reach people who aren’t your subscribers directly through emails and not end up in spam.

6. Email Persuasion (Ian Brodie)

Ian Brodie is a well-known name in the marketing industry, with numerous publications and cases that scored a feature in BusinessWeek, BBC World Service, MarketingProfs, and many other trustworthy sources. “Email Persuasion” is his killer book, which is written for all the enthusiasts interested in learning the art of communicating with their target audience, using the power of emails to create a strong relationship with your prospects, and turning them into loyal customers.

The book provides a very clever structure that lets you use it as a step-by-step guide. Ian kicks it off with an inspirational introduction where he explains why you may want to implement email marketing into your business model, as well as how you can benefit from it before he moves on to the first chapter.

This book is not just a collection of theoretical knowledge but also lots of ready-to-use templates, examples, and content plans for you to kickstart your own email marketing campaign.

7. Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Business (Susan Gunelius)

If you’re running a small business, online or offline, this book is your key to learning all the basics - from building email lists to generating revenue using various techniques.

Susan Gunelius notes that the competition for getting audience attention becomes more and more difficult. Her answer to this dilemma lies in developing a comprehensive email marketing plan that can evolve as your business grows.

You can find other useful tips in this book, including:

• How to convert subscribers into loyal customers and brand advocates
• How to develop conversion funnels
• How to utilize email automation to save time and keep subscribers engaged
• How to use automation to build personalization strategies and win back customers
• How to use tools to enhance deliverability

8. Email Marketing Mastery (Tom Corson-Knowles)

This is actually an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn email marketing without technical mumbo-jumbo.

With this book, you will not just understand how email marketing works, you will also learn how to analyze where it is a great time and place to implement email marketing campaigns in your business. The book provides a practical checklist of 8 factors for you to consider before setting up email campaigns.

The book also shows you how to launch your campaigns and overcome various technical difficulties. This book has it all, from building your first email list and engaging subscribers to generating traffic and revenue.

With a case study that is available apart from the previously mentioned 8 factors, beginners can use “Email Marketing Mastery” to learn how to set up autoresponders and get the most out of them.

9. The Email Lifeline (Anik Singal)

Sometimes you just wish to get started and build your email list without a lot of excessive research, pre-planning, and strategizing. If this is the case, Anik Singal’s book is exactly for you.

You don’t need to put in a ton of (often wasted) effort to make your email list a success. The book helps you build your list, choose the right products to promote, leverage event-based marketing, and many more.

10. 22 Ways to Supercharge Your Emails (Jack Stone)

This book will teach you how to boost email engagement as well as revenue generated from your email campaigns. It’s great for everyone in the E-commerce niche, not just email marketers.

Furthermore, Jack Stone provides you with tested strategies and shows you examples and real cases of those in action. You’ll learn how to grow your list efficiently, create outstanding CTA messages, give attractive discounts, convert more readers into real buyers, motivate your customers to buy again and again with the help of email marketing, and much more.

11. Email Marketing for Profit (Jason Morgan)

“Email Marketing for Profit” by Jason Morgan was released in 2018, and it contains all the fresh and relevant email marketing guides and strategies. This is a complete guide, which covers everything from basics to advanced techniques and the revenue generation aspect.

The author will show you how to create a business that is mostly based on email marketing and completely automate it for the best results. It covers efficient list-building, competitor analysis, most common mistakes and how to avoid them, CTAs, conversion optimization, and much more. You’ll see examples, real cases, email message templates, landing page templates, curated lists, and more. A lovely all-in-one package.

12. Fanatical Prospecting (Jeb Blount)

In most B2B scenarios, email marketing is tied directly to filling the sales funnel. “Fanatical Prospecting” by Jeb Blount delivers lessons on how to use the sales funnel and other channels in order to encourage more sales conversations, fill your pipeline with quality leads, and ultimately, win more sales.

In addition, the book includes lessons on how to develop powerful voicemail techniques, reduce prospecting friction, and leverage Blount’s take on a 4-step email prospecting framework to create email marketing campaigns that compel prospects to respond.

13. Everybody Writes (Ann Handley)

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

If your team is falling short in the ability to write content that persuades your recipients 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 this book, Ann Handley - a marketing specialist and speaker - makes the process of writing engaging content less intimidating. The book has quickly risen to the top of marketers’ list for creating better content marketing campaigns.

14. Blog Writing (Anthony James)

Email marketing does not just require a certain degree of technique understanding but also copywriting and conversion optimization skills. This book by Anthony James will display how to make your content more noticeable, and let you grab more traffic with fewer efforts. You can find plenty of tips to apply to email copywriting as well.

Besides useful copywriting tricks, you’ll learn more about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and much more.

15. Content Chemistry (Andy Crestodina)

We are not going to say content is the king, but content is absolutely one of the most important parts of email marketing. As a solopreneur or an email marketing specialist, you need to be quite a pro in content marketing to achieve great results.

Nobody will argue with the fact that an excellent email copy is what makes people read it, engages them, and pushes them to action. In “Content Chemistry” by Andy Crestodina, you’ll learn how content can be used in email marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, and digital marketing in general.

It will explain the social, analytical, and creative aspects of content marketing, while providing a lot of practical scenarios, examples, and case studies.

16. Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen (Donald Miller)

At the heart of every marketing plan is your brand, especially the story of your brand. It is the key to making a connection with your audience.

In this book, leading brand consultant and author Donald Miller will help you identify your brand’s story by using 7 storytelling phases. These are outlined in chapters, such as “A Character,” “Has a Problem,” “And Meets a Guide,” and “Who Gives Them a Plan.”

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

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

17. Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans, and Followers (Jeffrey K. Rohrs)

In this book, Jeffrey Rohrs goes beyond what it takes to build a substantial email list. He guides you to a comprehensive understanding of why the entire business would function with the goal of building, engaging, as well as helping their audiences.

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

18. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype (Jay Baer)

In this book, Jay Baer provides 3 frameworks that focus on your prospects and customers, including: Top-of-Mind Awareness, Frame-of-Mind Awareness, and Friend-of-Mine Awareness.

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

By applying these principles, you can start building a central communication theme that carries through in your email marketing, social media campaigns, and other aspects of your content marketing.

19. Mastering Online Marketing (Magnus Unemyr)

“Mastering Online Marketing” by Magnus Unemyr will give you an in-depth understanding of online marketing in general. It also helps you realize the bigger picture, learn how to create websites and landing pages, optimize them for better conversion, nurture your subscribers, and more.

The book will show you how to grow your metrics and results by adjusting mechanisms and puzzle pieces outside email marketing. Indeed, this book contains lots of useful information and methods related to email marketing, but the ultimate goal is to understand how all online marketing processes work together.

20. Integrated Digital Marketing (Eric Carlin)

“Integrated Digital Marketing” by Eric Carlin consists of guides and strategies on all things digital marketing - from PPC (pay-per-click) marketing and social media marketing to email and content marketing.

This is an amazing book to start your self-education journey - you’ll learn tried and true email marketing tricks, find out more about other digital marketing niches, and learn how to communicate with your targeted audience through various online channels.

21. Digital Minds (WSI)

As one of the leading digital marketing agencies on the market, WSI offers this book for business owners, marketing managers, as well as junior-level digital marketing specialists, including email marketers.

“Digital Minds” helps you navigate through the complicated world of digital marketing. With the help of more than 10 thought-leaders from WSI, you’ll learn more about website building, SEO, marketing automation, and email marketing tricks.

22. Marketing Automation & Online Marketing (George Pain)

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a part of a digital marketing team or you’re running your own business - you understand that automation is the key to scalable results. You’ll want your processes to run perfectly, so you can scale them and switch to other revenue-generation questions, right?

If so, this book by George Pain will provide you with answers to your questions regarding email marketing and SEO. “Marketing Automation & Online Marketing” is great for small and medium-sized companies that have already implemented email marketing processes and now desire to scale and automate them. You can also learn many useful tips on how to choose marketing automation software and services.

23. Zero to $1 Million (Tiz Gambacorta)

This book will actually walk you through the entire email marketing path, from creating your first email list to generating revenue. Tiz Gambacorta has more to offer than just a theory of email marketing - he is not only an author, but also an entrepreneur and online marketer with over 15 years of experience.

With the book, you’ll learn how to build lists, run email marketing campaigns, optimize your messages and offers, and create emails that actually generate revenue.

Beyond books: What should you read about email marketing?

1. Research your competitors & other successful businesses

Start compiling a comprehensive list of your competitors, but don’t stop there.

Take note of businesses that might be going after your target market but perhaps are not your direct competitors. You’ll want to look up companies that are just doing really great things online with their sales, and upland-coming companies who may have innovative ideas you can learn from.

2. Sign up and read their mailing lists

This seems like a no-brainer, but many digital marketers forget that one of the best ways to see what works and what doesn’t is to directly analyze the competition.

Take some time to analyze their emails to see how they’re composed, what language they use, and whether they speak to you (or the target audience) or not.

3. Generate a portfolio of sample email marketing messages

Take the best (and even the worst) email marketing messages from your chosen email lists to create an email marketing campaign portfolio. Then, you can review this portfolio for ideas, inspiration, or even “what-not-todos” before launching your next email marketing campaign.

Wrap up

That’s it! We hope this list of 20+ best email marketing books will help you a lot!

So, have you ever read any interesting email marketing book that doesn’t appear on this list? You can share it with us, and we’ll discuss it together!