Email marketing
Every other channel is rented. An algorithm changes and your reach halves overnight. The list is the one audience nobody can take away from you — and for most businesses it's the one being emailed twice a year.
from the same list
not promotions
nobody's sending
and the platform
Five automations, running without you.
These are built once and then earn quietly in the background — no send button, no Monday morning scramble. Switch flow to see the emails inside it and what each returned.
- Welcome, and what to expect20 min 20 min 1,284 61.2% 18.4% £3,120
- The one thing customers get wrongDay 2 Day 2 1,198 44.6% 11.2% £1,840
- First offer, with a reason to actDay 5 Day 5 1,141 39.1% 14.8% £6,480
- Social proof — a job like theirsDay 14 Day 14 1,062 33.4% 8.1% £2,260
4% of the sends. Half the revenue.
Almost every business does this the wrong way round — a newsletter to the whole list every few weeks, and no automations at all. But the emails that earn are the ones triggered by something the customer just did, sent to one person at the moment they were already thinking about you.
Campaigns still matter. They're how you announce things and stay present. They just shouldn't be the whole strategy, and they're not where the return lives.
- Flows are built once and keep earning with no ongoing send effort.
- They go to fewer people, which is exactly why they protect your reputation.
A great subject line in the spam folder.
This is the part most people never look at. An email that doesn't reach the inbox has a 0% open rate no matter how well it was written — and the mailbox providers decide that before anyone sees a word of it.
Three DNS records do most of the work: SPF says which servers may send as you, DKIM signs the message so it can't be tampered with, and DMARC tells providers what to do when something fails. Get those wrong and you are anonymous mail from an unverified sender.
The rest is reputation, and reputation is mostly about restraint: emailing people who actually want to hear from you, removing the ones who don't, and never buying a list. One bad send can cost you months of inbox placement.
- SPFWhich servers may send as you Pass
- DKIMSigns the message so it can't be altered Pass
- DMARCp=reject · nobody can spoof you Pass
- BIMIYour logo beside the sender name In progress
score
complaints
bounces
Who gets what, and when.
Sending more email is not a strategy. Sending the right thing to a smaller group usually beats it.
Not everyone at once
The bar is how many contacts are in the segment. The figure is what one contact in it is worth.
- Bought twice or more£18.40 each
- Bought once£6.20 each
- Engaged, never bought£1.90 each
- Dormant 180 days£0.10 each
Opens aren't the win
Curiosity gets the open. It doesn't get the sale — which is why we settle these on revenue.
A contact's first 90 days
Set up once. Every new subscriber walks this path from the day they join, without anyone pressing send.
- Day 0 · 20 min Welcome, and what to expect
- Day 2 The one thing customers get wrong
- Day 5 First offer, with a reason to act
- Day 14 Social proof — a job like theirs
- Day 30 Joins the regular newsletter
- Day 90 · if quiet Win-back, then suppressed
The order we do it in.
Sending to a list in poor health is how a domain gets a reputation it takes months to repair. Hygiene first.
Authentication records, sender reputation, hard bounces and the dormant contacts quietly damaging your placement. We fix all of it before a single campaign goes out — because sending to a list in poor health is how a domain earns a reputation that takes months to repair.
Welcome, abandoned basket, post-purchase, win-back. These are a fraction of the sends and about half the revenue, and once they're live they keep working with no ongoing effort. Newsletters are the layer on top — they should never be the whole strategy.
One message to everybody is the fastest route to being ignored, and then to being marked as spam. We split by behaviour, lifecycle stage and value, so a repeat customer and someone who signed up yesterday don't get the same email. Smaller sends to the right people beat bigger sends every time.
Templates that hold up in Outlook and in dark mode, subject lines written to be opened by the right person rather than the most people, and one clear action per email. If a message is asking for three things it's really asking for none.
Open rates have been unreliable since Apple started pre-loading images, and they were always the wrong target anyway — a curiosity-gap subject line wins the open and loses the sale. We settle every test on revenue, report it weekly in plain English, and retire the losers without arguing for them.
A list needs filling first.
Email is the cheapest channel you have and the only one you own. It just can't acquire anybody on its own.
Search engine optimisation
Brings people who are already looking — the highest-intent sign-ups a list ever gets.
Pay-per-click
Fills the list quickly, and email is what makes that acquisition cost pay back more than once.
Social media
An audience you rent. Email is where you move it so an algorithm change can't take it away.
Email marketing
Flows, segmentation and deliverability — the channel that sells to the same customer twice.
You're hereContent creation
The thing worth signing up for, and the material every newsletter is cut from.
Web development
Where the sign-up form and the basket live — the two places a flow gets triggered from.
Find out what the list is worth.
Give us read-only access and we'll come back with where your emails are actually landing, which automations you're missing, and what the list could return — before you've committed to anything.