Email marketing: the three emails that pay

Email is the channel brands neglect because it is unglamorous and then rediscover because it is the only one they own. Nobody can change the algorithm on your list. The problem is that most lists are either silent or shouted at. Three emails fix most of that, and they are not complicated.

Why only three?

Because three is what a brand with one person on marketing will actually keep running. A twelve-email welcome sequence and a win-back flow with branching logic look impressive in a proposal and are abandoned by the second month, half-written, sending a broken link to everyone who signs up. Three emails, each with one job, can be written well, measured honestly and improved one at a time.

They also map to the three moments email is good at: someone has just arrived, someone was about to buy and did not, and the long quiet in between. Nearly everything else email is asked to do is one of those three in a costume.

What should the welcome email say?

It goes the moment someone subscribes, and it has one job: to confirm that the person made a good decision. Not a discount, unless a discount was the reason they signed up, in which case it must be in the first line and work the first time. Who you are, in two sentences. The one product or piece to start with. A reply address that a human reads.

The welcome email is the best-opened message you will ever send, because the person just asked for it. That makes it the place to ask the question that shapes everything after: what are you here for. A single link per answer, and the answer tells you what to send next. Most brands waste this message on a logo and a coupon.

Write it once, properly, then leave it alone for a quarter. The temptation is to keep tinkering. The useful version of tinkering is reading the replies.

What does the abandoned-checkout email do?

Someone put a product in the cart, reached the checkout, and left. The reasons are mundane: the shipping cost appeared, the phone rang, the card was in the other room. The abandoned-checkout email is a reminder, sent within the hour, that the thing is still there.

It should show the product, with its picture, and one button back to the checkout. It should not open with a discount. A brand that discounts every abandoned cart teaches its customers to abandon carts, and within a few months a share of your checkout traffic is people waiting for the email. If the first reminder does not work, a second a day later can answer the usual objection: here is what shipping costs, here is the returns policy, here is the one question people ask.

This is the email with the clearest return of any you will send, because it goes only to people who were already buying. It is also the one most stores have switched on with the platform's default copy, which reads like a receipt. Rewrite it in your own voice. It takes an hour.

What goes in the monthly?

One story, one product, one ask. The monthly is the email that keeps the list warm between purchases, and its job is to be worth opening rather than to sell on the day. A thing that happened in the business. The object you are proudest of this month. A reason to come back, which might be a new product and might be a photograph of how one was made.

The mistake is the newsletter that tries to do everything: six products, three announcements, a founder's note and a survey. Nobody reads it, and the sending platform notices that nobody reads it, which affects whether your next one reaches the inbox at all. A short monthly that people open is worth more than a long one they delete.

Keep the schedule. The same week each month, so the list learns when to expect you. The second campaign we send each month, when there is one, is usually a shorter note about one product or one event, not a second newsletter.

Why does list hygiene matter more than list size?

A list of ten thousand addresses, of which nine thousand never open anything, is a liability. Mail providers watch how recipients treat your messages. If most ignore them, the provider starts delivering your mail to the junk folder for everyone, including the people who wanted it. The size you brag about is the thing hurting you.

• Every quarter, remove anyone who has not opened or clicked in six months, after one plain email asking whether they want to stay.
• Never buy a list, and never add people who did not ask. A purchased address is a complaint waiting to happen, and a complaint costs more than the address was worth.
• Make unsubscribing easy and visible. The person who cannot find the link marks you as spam instead, which hurts everyone else on the list.
• Send from a real address on your own domain, with the records set up that let providers see the mail is really from you. Your platform will walk you through them; most brands never do it.

A smaller list that opens is a better business asset than a larger one that does not, and it is the only kind a lookalike audience can be built from.

Why are open rates theatre?

Because they are no longer measured. The major mail apps now fetch every message, images included, on the reader's behalf and before the reader has seen it, as a privacy measure. The email platform records that fetch as an open. The result is an open rate that drifts upward regardless of what you send, which is why agencies love to report it.

Judge email on what people did after opening: the click, the order, the reply. Set a monthly target for revenue from email and for orders recovered by the abandoned-checkout flow, and report those. If a report leads with the open rate, ask what the clicks were. If the agency does not know, you have learned something about the agency.

How does email sit inside the Standard package?

Email is part of the full loop rather than a channel we sell on its own. The Standard package, at $4,000 a month, includes two email campaigns a month alongside the videos, the carousels, the page optimisations, the articles and the monthly call. The welcome and the abandoned-checkout emails are written and set up in the first weeks and then run on their own; the two campaigns are the monthly and a second, shorter note.

What the package does not include is a platform migration or a list built from nothing. If you have no list, the first job is the sign-up form and the welcome, and the monthly waits until there is someone to send it to. If you have a list that has not been emailed in a year, the first job is cleaning it, and the first send will lose subscribers. That is the list telling you the truth.

Three emails, kept running, will outperform most of what is sold as email marketing. The hard part is not the writing. It is keeping the schedule for a year, which is what a retainer is for.