What Is Email Marketing and How to Get Started

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is sending targeted emails to people who've given you permission to contact them. That last part is key — it's not spam. It's reaching people who actually want to hear from you.

You know those newsletters you subscribe to? The ones where you actually open the email because the content is useful? That's email marketing done right. It's a direct line to your audience — no algorithm deciding whether your message gets seen.

Why Email Marketing Works So Well

Here's the stat that gets marketers excited: email marketing returns an average of $36 for every $1 spent. That's not a typo. No other marketing channel comes close.

Why? A few reasons:

You own the list — Your Instagram followers belong to Instagram. Your email list belongs to you. If Facebook changes its algorithm tomorrow (again), your email list is unaffected.
It's direct — Your email lands in someone's inbox. They see it. They might not open it every time, but they see it. Social media posts reach maybe 5-10% of your followers organically.
It's personal — You can segment your list and send different messages to different groups. New customers get a welcome series. Repeat buyers get loyalty offers. Everyone gets what's relevant to them.
People check email constantly — The average person checks email 15 times a day. Your audience is already there.

Types of Marketing Emails

Not every email is the same. The three main types:

Newsletters — Regular updates about your business, industry, or useful tips. The goal is to stay top-of-mind and provide value. Send weekly, biweekly, or monthly — whatever you can sustain consistently.
Promotional emails — Sales, discounts, new products, special offers. These drive immediate action. Use sparingly — if every email is a sales pitch, people unsubscribe.
Transactional emails — Order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, appointment reminders. These aren't "marketing" exactly, but they're a touchpoint with your customer and an opportunity to be helpful and professional.

How to Get Started

1. Build Your List (Never Buy One)

Buying email lists is a terrible idea. Those people didn't ask to hear from you. They'll mark you as spam, your emails will stop getting delivered, and you might violate anti-spam laws.

Instead, build your list organically:

Add a signup form to your website
Offer something valuable in exchange (a discount, a free guide, a useful checklist)
Ask customers at checkout if they want to receive updates
Include a signup link in your email signature

A list of 500 people who want to hear from you is worth more than 50,000 purchased email addresses.

2. Choose a Platform

You don't need anything fancy to start:

Mailchimp — Free for up to 500 contacts. The most well-known platform. Good templates, easy to use.
ConvertKit (now Kit) — Popular with creators and small businesses. Great automation features. Free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) — Free plan with 300 emails/day. Good if you also want SMS marketing.
Buttondown — Simple, no-frills newsletter tool for people who just want to write and send.

3. Write Subject Lines People Open

Your subject line determines whether someone opens your email or ignores it. Some principles:

Keep it short — Under 50 characters. Many people read email on phones.
Be specific — "5 ways to save on shipping this month" beats "Monthly newsletter"
Create curiosity — Without being clickbaity. "The one thing we changed that doubled our response time" works. "You won't BELIEVE what happened" doesn't.
Avoid spam trigger words — "FREE!!!" and "ACT NOW" are fast tracks to the spam folder

4. Respect the Rules

Email marketing has real legal requirements:

CAN-SPAM Act (US) — Every email must include your physical address, a clear unsubscribe link, and honest subject lines. You have 10 business days to process unsubscribe requests.
GDPR (Europe) — Requires explicit consent before emailing someone. Even if you're a US business, this applies if you have European subscribers.

These aren't just legal checkboxes — they're good practice. Respecting your subscribers builds trust.

5. Find the Right Frequency

The sweet spot is different for every business, but here's a guideline:

Too little — People forget who you are. When you finally email, they unsubscribe because they don't remember signing up.
Too much — People feel overwhelmed and unsubscribe.
Just right — Consistent enough to stay top-of-mind, infrequent enough that every email feels worth opening.

For most small businesses, once a week or every other week is a good starting point. The key is consistency — pick a schedule and stick with it.

The Bottom Line

Email marketing is one of the most effective tools in your marketing toolkit, and it doesn't have to be complicated. Start with a small list, send useful content, and be consistent.

Want help setting up email marketing for your business? Get in touch — we'll help you pick the right platform and build a strategy that actually gets opened.

Email Marketing Metrics, Automation, and Deliverability

Let's go deeper into the numbers and technical side of email marketing.

Open Rates, Click Rates, and Conversion Rates

The three metrics that tell you whether your email marketing is working:

Open rate — The percentage of recipients who opened your email. Average across industries: about 20-25%. Above 30% is great. Below 15% means something needs to change (your subject lines, your sending frequency, or your list quality).
Click-through rate (CTR) — The percentage of recipients who clicked a link in your email. Average: about 2-5%. This tells you whether your content is compelling enough to drive action.
Conversion rate — The percentage of recipients who took the desired action (made a purchase, booked an appointment, signed up for something). This is the metric that actually matters for your bottom line.

Important caveat: Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (introduced in iOS 15) pre-loads email images, which artificially inflates open rates for Apple Mail users. This means open rates are less reliable than they used to be. Focus more on clicks and conversions.

A/B Testing Subject Lines

Most email platforms let you A/B test — send two versions of the same email to small segments of your list, see which performs better, then send the winner to everyone else.

The easiest thing to test: subject lines. Write two versions, send each to 15% of your list, wait a few hours, and the platform sends the better-performing version to the remaining 70%.

Over time, you'll learn what resonates with your audience. Some audiences prefer questions, others prefer statements. Some like emojis, others don't. Testing removes the guesswork.

Email Segmentation

Sending the same email to everyone on your list is like shouting into a crowd. Segmentation means dividing your list into groups and sending each group content that's relevant to them.

Common segments:

New subscribers — People who signed up in the last 30 days
Active customers — People who've purchased recently
Inactive subscribers — People who haven't opened an email in 90+ days
By product/service interest — People who clicked on specific products or topics
By location — If you have a physical location, local customers might get different content

Segmented emails get 14% higher open rates and 100% higher click rates than non-segmented ones. The effort is worth it.

Automation Sequences

Automation means emails that send themselves based on triggers. Set them up once and they run forever:

Welcome series — When someone subscribes, they automatically get a sequence of emails introducing your business, sharing your best content, and guiding them toward a first purchase. Usually 3-5 emails over 1-2 weeks.
Abandoned cart — If someone adds a product to their cart but doesn't check out, they get a reminder email. These recover an average of 10-15% of abandoned carts.
Re-engagement — If someone hasn't opened your emails in 90 days, trigger a "We miss you" sequence. If they still don't engage, clean them off your list.
Post-purchase — After a purchase, send a thank-you email, then a follow-up asking for a review, then a related product recommendation.

Deliverability: Getting Past the Spam Filter

Sending an email doesn't guarantee it arrives. Deliverability is the art and science of actually reaching the inbox. Key factors:

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — Email authentication records in your DNS. Without these, email providers are more likely to flag your messages as spam. Your email platform will guide you through setting these up.
Sender reputation — Email providers track your sending history. If lots of people mark your emails as spam, your reputation drops and more emails go to junk.
List hygiene — Regularly removing bounced addresses, inactive subscribers, and invalid emails. A clean list has better engagement rates, which improves your sender reputation.
Content quality — Emails full of spammy words, excessive images, or broken links are more likely to get filtered.

Your website's DNS — the same system that powers your domain — plays a direct role in email deliverability through SPF and DKIM records. If you're managing DNS through Cloudflare, adding these records is straightforward.

List Hygiene: Why Cleaning Matters

A big email list isn't always a good email list. Dead weight hurts you:

Sending to addresses that bounce increases your bounce rate, which damages your sender reputation
Inactive subscribers who never open your emails drag down your engagement metrics
Low engagement signals to email providers that your content isn't wanted

Clean your list regularly:

Remove hard bounces (invalid addresses) immediately
Remove soft bounces after 3-5 consecutive fails
Run a re-engagement campaign for subscribers who haven't opened in 90 days
Remove anyone who doesn't re-engage after the campaign

A smaller, engaged list will outperform a large, disengaged one every single time.

Need help with email deliverability or building automation sequences? Get in touch — we'll make sure your emails actually reach the people who want to read them.

Last reviewed for accuracy: February 2026

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What Is Email Marketing and How to Get Started