Email marketing is the use of email to promote a business and build a relationship with people who have agreed to hear from it, through newsletters, offers, announcements and automated sequences. It sits alongside transactional email, such as receipts and password resets, which serves a customer’s request rather than promoting anything.
How email marketing works
Every email programme has the same four parts. First, a list of subscribers who have given permission, gathered through sign-up forms, checkout and other honest routes. Second, an email service provider that stores the list, sends the emails, handles unsubscribes and reports results. Third, the emails themselves, which fall into two groups:
- Campaigns: one-off sends to all or part of the list, such as a monthly newsletter, a seasonal sale or an event invitation.
- Automations: emails triggered by what someone does, such as a welcome series for new subscribers or a reminder when a basket is abandoned.
Fourth, measurement: deliveries, clicks, unsubscribes, complaints and, most importantly, the orders or enquiries that follow.
For a café roastery selling beans online, that might mean a fortnightly email about new coffees, a welcome series explaining brewing methods, and a reorder reminder timed to when a bag would run out. For a firm of solicitors, it might be a quarterly update on legal changes affecting landlords, sent only to the landlords on its list.
Why it matters
Email reaches people who chose to hear from you, without paying for each view and without depending on a social platform’s algorithm. It is particularly good at turning one-off buyers into repeat customers, and at keeping a service business in mind during the months between a first enquiry and a decision.
In the UK, two sets of rules govern it, and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) enforces both. PECR, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, covers sending the message. Marketing email to individuals, including sole traders and some partnerships, needs their consent, unless the soft opt-in applies. The soft opt-in lets you email people whose details you obtained when they bought, or asked about buying, from you, about your own similar products, provided you gave them a simple way to refuse at the time and in every email since. Every message must say who it is from and include a working unsubscribe.
UK GDPR covers how you handle the personal data: having a lawful basis, explaining it in a privacy notice, keeping data accurate, not holding it longer than needed, and responding to requests. American rules such as CAN-SPAM are irrelevant here; their opt-out model would breach PECR if applied to UK individuals.
Common mistakes
- Treating the list as an audience to broadcast at, rather than people who signed up for something specific.
- Stretching the soft opt-in to products unrelated to what the customer bought, or to customers of a different company in the group.
- Slipping promotions into order confirmations sent to people who declined marketing.
- Sending only discounts, which trains subscribers to wait for the next code.
- Judging success by opens, which Apple Mail Privacy Protection now inflates.
How to act on it
Decide what email should do for your business: repeat sales, enquiries, event bookings or keeping existing clients informed. Check that every contact has a valid consent or soft opt-in basis, and that your sign-up form states what people will receive. Build a welcome series first, then a regular send you can sustain, and measure it against the outcome you chose.
Email works best as part of a plan in which each channel has a job. If you want help deciding what that job is, my digital marketing strategy and consulting work covers it.