Email Marketing Dos and Don'ts for Small Businesses
Suley Tangun
Digital Marketing Specialist
Email remains one of the most direct ways for a small business to stay in touch with customers, and one of the easiest to damage without noticing. A few habits separate lists that perform from lists that end up in spam folders.
Do: warm up a new sending domain gradually
If you are sending marketing email for the first time, do not email your entire list on day one. Start with a smaller, engaged group and build volume over a couple of weeks. Mailbox providers judge a new sender partly on how it behaves early on, and a sudden spike from an unfamiliar domain looks like spam.
Don't: buy a list
Bought lists perform badly and, in the UK, create a real legal problem. Under PECR, you generally need specific consent before sending marketing emails to individuals, and the people on a bought list never agreed to hear from you. The narrow "soft opt-in" exception only covers people whose details you collected during a sale, or negotiations for a sale, and who were given a chance to opt out. A bought list also brings bounces and complaints that can damage your sender reputation for months, affecting the people who did sign up.
Do: make unsubscribing easy
A clear, one-click unsubscribe protects your deliverability. People who cannot leave easily mark you as spam instead, which does far more harm than an unsubscribe. Google and Yahoo now require bulk senders to support one-click unsubscribe in marketing messages, so this is no longer optional at volume.
Don't: send from a "noreply" address
It tells customers you do not want to hear from them. A real, monitored address, even a general one, builds trust and invites replies, and replies are a good signal to mailbox providers that people want your email.
Do: split your list before you send
Sending the same email to everyone, regardless of what they have bought or clicked, is one of the most common reasons engagement stalls. Even a simple split, such as new subscribers and existing customers, makes each email more relevant with very little extra work.
Don't: obsess over subject line length
Advice about exact character counts is largely out of date, because inboxes display subject lines differently on every device. The more useful question is whether it sounds like a person wrote it. Be specific rather than clever.
Email is not the only channel worth getting right. If you are deciding between organic and paid social media, that comparison is worth reading before you split your budget.
Keep it simple and consistent
Good email marketing comes down to consistency and good list hygiene rather than clever tricks. If you would like a system that gets read rather than deleted, email marketing is something I build, so get in touch to discuss it.
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Frequently asked questions
How often should I email my list?
Consistency matters more than frequency. Weekly or fortnightly both work, provided you keep to it. Bursts of activity followed by long silences tend to hurt engagement more than a steady, less frequent schedule.
What's a good open rate to aim for?
It varies a lot by industry and by email platform, and open rates are less reliable than they used to be because some email apps now count an open automatically. I would watch clicks, replies and enquiries alongside opens, and compare against your own past sends rather than an industry average.
Does the email platform I use matter?
To a degree. Deliverability, segmentation tools and pricing as your list grows vary between platforms, so it is worth choosing carefully before you build a large list on one you may want to leave later.
Should I remove inactive subscribers?
Yes, every so often. Subscribers who have not engaged in six months or more pull down your engagement rate and can affect deliverability, because mailbox providers watch how your emails perform overall. Try a short re-engagement email first, then remove those who do not respond.
