What is email marketing
Also known as: newsletter, email campaigns, email blasts
Email marketing is the use of email to communicate with a list of contacts who agreed to receive messages from a company: newsletters, offers, content, announcements and automated sequences. It is an owned channel that does not depend on any social network's algorithm, but it requires a quality list, technical authentication of the domain and messages people want to open.
A wine shop sent the same promotion to its whole list every week. Sales per send fell and unsubscribes rose.
It switched to a newsletter every two weeks, featuring three labels and their stories, and separated people who usually buy red from those who prefer white and sparkling. It sends less, each message matters more to its reader, and sales per send climb again.
Types of sends
| What it is for | |
|---|---|
| Newsletter | Keeping the relationship with content and news |
| Promotional | Announcing an offer or campaign |
| Transactional | Confirming an order, payment, signup or password change |
| Automated sequence | Welcome, nurturing, abandoned cart |
| Re engagement | Winning back contacts who stopped interacting |
Gmail's rules
Since February 1, 2024, Gmail requires every sender to use SPF or DKIM authentication, valid forward and reverse DNS records, a TLS connection, standard message formatting and a spam rate below 0.3% in Postmaster Tools. Ideally, according to Google itself, the rate should stay below 0.1%.
Senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts also need SPF and DKIM together, DMARC, alignment between the sender's domain and the authenticated domain, and one click unsubscribe, plus a visible unsubscribe link in the message body.
Lists and consent
Privacy laws require a clear purpose for using personal data. Brazil's LGPD, for example, requires processing for legitimate, specific, explicit purposes informed to the person. In practice: people need to know, when signing up, that they will receive marketing emails, and they need to be able to leave easily.
A purchased list is a problem twice over: it has no clear consent trail and it tends to trigger spam complaints, which drag down delivery for the entire list.
Good practices
- A clear subject line that says what is inside.
- A recognizable sender, ideally always the same.
- One goal per email, with one main button.
- Comfortable reading on phones and text, not only images.
- Segmentation by what each contact has shown interest in.
- A frequency agreed at signup, and respected.
- Periodic cleanup of contacts who have not engaged for months.
What to measure
- Delivery rate.
- Clicks and conversions per send; opens became less reliable because some email apps load messages automatically.
- Revenue per send and per contact.
- Unsubscribes and spam complaints.
- Spam rate in Gmail's Postmaster Tools.
Frequently asked questions
What is email marketing?
The use of email to communicate with contacts who agreed to receive a company's messages, through newsletters, offers, content and automated sequences.
Does email marketing still work?
It works for companies with a permission based list that send relevant messages. It is an owned channel, independent of social reach, and usually has a low cost per send.
Why do my emails go to spam?
The most common reasons are missing domain authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC), a low quality list, many spam complaints and no easy way to unsubscribe.
Can I buy an email list?
It is not advisable. A purchased list has no consent trail and tends to generate complaints that hurt delivery for the whole list.
What spam rate does Gmail accept?
Gmail asks senders to keep it below 0.3% and recommends staying below 0.1%, as measured in Postmaster Tools.
Related terms
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Rodrigo Fávaro
Founder of ROO3, a marketing and technology agency in São José do Rio Preto, Brazil. Builds AI products running in production (Tobia, gerar.app, Pense Mercado) and maintains the AI Benchmark, a public ranking of AI models.
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