The short version: Email marketing consistently delivers the highest ROI of any digital marketing channel, roughly 36 dollars back for every 1 dollar spent according to Litmus. The businesses winning with email right now are not sending more, they are sending smarter: smaller lists, sharper segmentation, and emails that sound like a human wrote them.
Let me tell you why I keep coming back to email
I have been in marketing for over two decades. I have watched channels rise and collapse. I was an influencer before the word existed. I built audiences on platforms that later changed their algorithms and gutted my reach overnight. Twitter, Facebook organic, Pinterest traffic, all of it wobbled at some point.
Email never wobbled for me.
When I was rebuilding my business after a rough few years, my email list was the one asset I still owned. Not rented from a platform. Not subject to an algorithm update. Mine. That distinction matters more than most people realise until the day a platform turns on them.
So this is not a neutral overview. I think email and marketing belong together, permanently, and I want to make the case for doing it well rather than just doing it.
The numbers you need to know before you start
Let's get the data on the table:
- Average email open rates across industries sit between 20% and 40% depending on the sector (Mailchimp benchmarks, 2024)
- B2B email click-through rates average around 2% to 5%
- Abandoned cart emails recover roughly 5% to 15% of lost sales when sent within one hour
- Welcome emails generate up to 320% more revenue per email than standard promotional emails (Experian data)
- Segmented campaigns drive 760% more revenue than one-size-fits-all blasts (Campaign Monitor)
That last one is the one I would tattoo on every marketing manager's forearm. Segmentation is not a nice-to-have. It is the whole game.
What most people get wrong about email marketing
They treat it like a megaphone. They have something to say, they say it to everyone on their list, and they wonder why their unsubscribe rates are climbing.
Email is not a broadcast medium. It lands in a personal inbox. The people reading it chose to hear from you, which means they gave you something precious and you should not waste it by sending them things that have nothing to do with why they signed up.
I see businesses making the same mistakes repeatedly:
- Buying email lists (please do not do this, it destroys deliverability and it is largely a waste of money)
- Sending every email to every subscriber regardless of behaviour or interest
- Writing subject lines that sound like ad copy rather than a message from a person
- Ignoring their welcome sequence and going straight to selling
- Never cleaning their list and then wondering why open rates are dropping
Deliverability is a real issue that most small businesses ignore until they are in trouble. Gmail and Outlook are now using engagement signals heavily. If a large chunk of your list never opens your emails, the inbox providers start routing your messages to spam. Clean your list every 90 days. Remove anyone who has not opened in six months. Yes, it hurts to shrink the number. Do it anyway.
The tools worth knowing about
I am not going to recommend one platform and say it works for everyone. Here is an honest breakdown:
- Mailchimp: Good for absolute beginners, free up to 500 contacts. Gets expensive fast. Automation is adequate but not sophisticated.
- ConvertKit (now Kit): My personal preference for creators, consultants, and anyone selling digital products or services. Visual automation builder is useful. Starts from around 25 dollars per month for up to 1,000 subscribers.
- ActiveCampaign: Powerful CRM and automation combined. Ideal for small businesses with more complex sales funnels. Starts around 15 dollars per month but the plans that matter start at around 49 dollars per month.
- Klaviyo: The standard for ecommerce, especially Shopify stores. Behavioural triggers and segmentation are best in class. Free up to 250 contacts.
- Brevo (formerly Sendinblue): Good value for transactional email volume. More developer-friendly.
If you are a solopreneur or small consultancy, start with Kit. If you run an ecommerce store, go Klaviyo. If you have a sales team and a CRM you need to connect, look at ActiveCampaign.
What a good email strategy looks like
Here is the skeleton I use and recommend:
Step 1: Build your list with a real reason to sign up
Not "sign up for my newsletter." Nobody wakes up wanting more newsletters. Give them something specific. A checklist, a short guide, a tool, a template, a mini-course. Make it something that solves one specific problem for one specific type of person. The more targeted the lead magnet, the better your list quality will be.
Step 2: Write a welcome sequence that earns trust before it asks for anything
Five to seven emails sent over the first two weeks. Email one delivers what you promised. Emails two and three tell your story and build credibility. Emails four and five share your best content or case studies. Emails six and seven make a soft offer. This sequence runs automatically. It is the hardest-working thing in your business once it is set up.
Step 3: Send a regular broadcast on a schedule you can maintain
Weekly is the sweet spot for most businesses. Fortnightly if weekly is not manageable. Monthly is the minimum. The moment you go quiet, people forget why they signed up and your next email feels like a stranger knocking on the door.
Step 4: Segment based on behaviour
Tag people based on what links they click, what pages they visit (if your platform connects to your site), what they buy. Then send them content relevant to those signals. Someone who clicked a link about Instagram marketing should get more Instagram content. Someone who clicked your pricing page should get a follow-up that addresses buying objections. This is not complicated to set up in Kit or ActiveCampaign. It just requires thinking about your subscriber as a person with specific interests rather than an entry in a spreadsheet.
Step 5: Test, and look at the results
A/B test your subject lines. Check your click-to-open rate, not just open rate. Open rate is inflated by Apple's Mail Privacy Protection now anyway. Click-to-open rate tells you whether the email content is resonating. A number above 10% is decent. Above 20% means you are writing something people want to read.
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The thing none of the top-ranking posts are saying
The conversation in email marketing has shifted to AI-generated content, and that is mostly making things worse, not better.
When everyone is using the same tools to generate similar emails, the human voice becomes the differentiator. The emails I send that get the most replies are the ones that sound the most like me. Specific, a bit blunt, with a real opinion in them. They are not optimised for anything except sounding like a real person who has thought about something carefully.
Your subscribers are drowning in generic. Being specific about your own experience and opinion is the most underused competitive advantage in email right now. Not the AI summary of best practices. Your actual view. What you tried. What failed. What surprised you.
That is the thing I wish someone had told me when I started: the goal is not a perfect email. The goal is an email that feels like it came from a person who cares whether the reader finds it useful.
The Subject Line Test I Run Before Every Send (And What It Taught Me)
A few years ago I got tired of guessing which subject lines would work, so I started splitting every campaign 10/10/80: two versions to small chunks of the list, then the winner goes to the rest four hours later. One send stands out because it broke every rule I thought I understood. I sent a promo for a webinar with "Free training: how to build a 6-figure email list" against "I made a mistake with my email list last year." The confession line beat the benefit-driven one by 34% on open rate and, more importantly, drove almost double the click-throughs. People don't open emails from brands. They open emails from people who sound like they're admitting something.
That single test changed how I write every subject line now. I stopped leading with numbers and benefits and started leading with a small, specific admission or an oddly precise detail. "The email I almost didn't send" outperformed "5 tips to grow your list" three separate times across different campaigns for three different clients. It's not a fluke. Curiosity built on vulnerability converts better than curiosity built on value, at least for cold or lukewarm segments. For your warmest segment, the ones who open everything anyway, it barely matters what you write.
One more thing worth saying plainly: most "best time to send" advice is generic noise. I tested Tuesday 10am against Thursday 3pm for the same list over six weeks and saw a 2% difference, well within normal variance. What moved the needle instead was send frequency. Dropping from twice a week to three times a week, counterintuitively, increased revenue per email by 18% because the list got used to hearing from us and stopped treating each email as an event to ignore. If you're only sending once a month "so you don't annoy people," you're probably training them to forget you exist between sends, not protecting your reputation.
- Run subject line splits on at least 15-20% of your list before committing to the winner, not 5%, or your sample size lies to you.
- Track click-to-open rate separately from open rate. A high open with a low click means the subject line lied to the body copy.
- Give any frequency change six full weeks before judging it. Unsubscribe spikes in week one almost always settle by week three.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I send marketing emails?
Weekly is the most effective cadence for staying top of mind without burning out your list. If you can not sustain weekly, fortnightly is acceptable. Sending less than once a month means subscribers forget you between sends, which hurts open rates and increases spam complaints.
What is a good open rate for email marketing?
Industry averages sit between 20% and 40% depending on sector, but open rates are less reliable than they used to be since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates them. Focus on click-to-open rate instead: above 10% is solid, above 20% is strong, and it tells you whether your actual content is landing.
Do I need a big email list to make money from email marketing?
No. A list of 500 highly engaged, well-segmented subscribers will outperform a list of 10,000 cold or disengaged contacts every time. I have seen consultants generating five-figure months from lists under 1,000 people. List quality beats list size.
Is email marketing still worth it when social media is so dominant?
Yes, and specifically because social media is so dominant. You do not own your social following. A platform change, account suspension, or algorithm update can wipe your reach overnight. Your email list is an asset you own outright. The ROI data backs this up: email consistently returns around 36 dollars for every 1 dollar spent, which no social platform matches on a consistent basis.
Related reading: Fun Careers for Women That Pay Well: 10 Real Jobs That Don't Feel Like Work and Social Media as a Marketing Tool: What Works in 2026.
For the bigger picture, see my full guide to digital marketing.
