Email newsletters.

Why a business needs a newsletter

Email is the only channel where the list belongs to you. A social network can shut down or cut your reach, the cost of advertising can double, but the list of addresses will remain and keep working.

The second advantage is that it is a channel for people who already know something about you. It is less suited to attracting new customers and excellent for repeat sales, bringing back those who left to think it over, and retaining regulars. The cost of a contact here is incomparable with advertising.

But the channel has a strict condition: the emails must be expected. Mailing without consent is spam, and it does not just fail to work — it damages the domain and the sender's reputation for a long time.

Goal and subscriber list

Start by formulating the goal. Increase repeat purchases, bring back those who abandoned their basket, drive traffic to the website, maintain awareness — both the content of the emails and their frequency depend on the answer.

Then comes the list. It must be built by you and with explicit consent: a sign-up form on the website, a checkbox at checkout, an exchange for a useful resource. Bought lists produce spam complaints and blocks, not sales.

When collecting, record straight away what will be useful later: name, interest, sign-up source, what the person bought. Without this data, neither segmentation nor personalisation is possible, and without those the newsletter turns into blasting one email out to everyone.

Segmentation and personalisation

Segmentation is dividing the list into groups that need different emails. You can divide by behaviour, interests, purchase history or stage of the journey to a deal. A newcomer who has only just subscribed and a customer who has bought three times should not receive the same message.

Personalisation is using what you know about the person. Addressing them by name is its simplest level and far from the main one. Recommendations based on past purchases, and emails that take into account what the person looked at on the website, work much more strongly.

Both affect the same thing: open rates and click-throughs. An email that looks personally addressed is opened noticeably more often than a mass mailing — and sent to spam less often.

An email that gets read to the end

An email has three parts, each with its own job.

• The subject line decides whether it gets opened at all. It must be specific and honest: clickbait gets opened once, after which people unsubscribe from that sender.
• The content must be useful in its own right — answer a question, solve a problem, offer something applicable. An email that only sells gets read as far as the second line.
• The call to action — one clear button. When an email has five links of equal weight, none of them gets clicked.

Formats are worth varying: an analysis, a round-up, a short video, a poll. Monotonous emails stop being noticed even without an unsubscribe.

Mobile deserves a separate mention. Most people read email on their phone, so that is where the email is checked first: large type, a single column, a button you can hit with a finger.

Automated sequences

The most profitable part of email marketing is emails that go out on their own, triggered by an event rather than a schedule. Set up once, they work continuously.

The basic set is small: a welcome series for new subscribers, an abandoned-basket reminder, a post-purchase email with instructions and a request for a review, and reactivation of those who have not opened anything for a long time. These four scenarios cover most of the job.

Automation wins on timing: the email arrives at the moment the person is thinking about you, not two weeks later in a general mailing.

Frequency and consent

Frequency is found by trial. Emails that come too often irritate and provoke unsubscribes; ones that come rarely are forgotten, and the person stops recognising the sender. A guideline: write when you have something to say, but no less than once a month, otherwise the list goes cold.

Unsubscribing must be simple and visible. A hidden button does not keep a subscriber — it turns an unsubscribe into a spam complaint, and that hits the deliverability of all your emails.

The legal side comes down to two things: mail only with consent, and store subscriber data in line with personal data requirements. This is not a formality — it is the basis of the trust without which the channel does not work.

What to measure and what to test

The basic metrics are deliverability, open rate, click-throughs, unsubscribes and complaints. They need to be viewed over time: what matters is not the absolute percentage but the change relative to your own past campaigns.

Then comes A/B testing. Test one element at a time: the subject line, send time, content, image, button wording. If you change everything at once, the result will explain nothing.

And most importantly — count money, not opens. A newsletter with a lower open rate but a precise segment almost always brings in more than a mass mailing with high percentages.

It is useful to leave subscribers the option to reply: the responses and suggestions in reply emails reveal what the statistics cannot show.

Frequently asked questions

Where do the first subscribers come from?

From among those already connected with you: customers, event attendees, website visitors. A sign-up form in exchange for a useful resource builds the first list fastest.

Why do emails end up in spam?

Most often because of subscriber complaints and mailing without consent. Properly configured technical domain records, an honest subject line and a visible unsubscribe button help.

What open rate counts as normal?

It depends heavily on the niche and the quality of the list, so it is worth comparing with your own past campaigns rather than with other people's figures.

Do I need a dedicated email service?

Yes. Mass emails cannot be sent from an ordinary mailbox: there will be no statistics, no unsubscribes and no decent deliverability.

What to do next

Start with two steps: put a sign-up form on the website and set up a three-email welcome series. That is enough for the channel to start building a list and bringing in the first enquiries without daily work.

We set up newsletters and prepare the content for them — this is SMM. Next, you may find our breakdowns useful: how to put together a content strategy and how to run A/B testing.