Social media gets a lot of attention, but for small businesses looking for a reliable, cost-effective way to stay in touch with customers and generate repeat sales, email remains one of the strongest channels available. It is direct, personal and, when done properly, it performs consistently well over time.
Unlike social media, where an algorithm decides whether your followers see your content, email lands directly in someone’s inbox. If they have opted in to hear from you, they have actively given you permission to contact them. That is a fundamentally different relationship to a social media follow, and it tends to produce much higher engagement.
Email is also one of the few marketing channels where you own your audience. Your Instagram following can disappear if your account is suspended or if the platform changes its algorithm. Your email list is yours, and it goes with you regardless of what any platform decides to do.
For small businesses in particular, email works well because it is personal. A message from a small business owner to their customers feels different to a promotional email from a large retailer, and that difference matters. People are more likely to open, read and act on an email that feels like it comes from someone they know and trust.
Before you start sending, you need a list of people who have actively agreed to receive email marketing from you. Under UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), you need a lawful basis for sending marketing emails, and for most small businesses that means having explicit consent from each recipient.
What this means in practice is that you cannot simply export your customer contacts from your accounting software and start emailing them. You need people to actively sign up. The most common ways to collect sign-ups are a form on your website, a checkbox at checkout for eCommerce businesses, a sign-up sheet at your premises or a link in your email signature.
The ICO’s guidance on electronic mail marketing explains the rules clearly and is worth reading if you are setting up email marketing for the first time. The key principle is that consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. A pre-ticked checkbox does not count. Do not be tempted to buy email lists. They are almost always low quality, the recipients have no idea who you are and sending to them puts you in breach of PECR and at risk of your sending domain being marked as spam.
One of the most common questions from businesses starting out with email marketing is how often to send. The answer depends on your business and your audience, but for most small businesses a monthly or fortnightly email is a reasonable starting point. More than once a week is almost always too much unless your content is exceptionally strong and your audience has specifically asked for it.
What you send matters more than how often. The emails that get opened and acted on are the ones that offer something useful, interesting or directly relevant to the recipient. That might be a practical tip, an exclusive offer, a behind-the-scenes look at your business, an update on something your customers care about or a round-up of your latest work.
A simple structure that works well for small business emails is a short personal intro, one or two pieces of actually useful content, a clear call to action and a brief sign-off. It does not need to be long. Some of the most effective small business emails are three or four paragraphs. The goal is to be worth reading, not to fill a template.
Your subject line is the single most important part of your email. If it does not get people to open the message, nothing else matters. Good subject lines tend to be specific, relevant and short enough to read at a glance in an inbox preview. A subject line like “Our spring offer is here” is vague and gives the reader little reason to open it. “20% off garden furniture this weekend only” is specific, timely and gives a clear reason to click. “How we saved this listed building’s original timber windows” tells a story and is intriguing enough to open if you are the kind of person who cares about that sort of thing. Avoid subject lines that feel like spam bait, things like “OPEN NOW” or excessive use of capital letters and exclamation marks. These patterns trigger spam filters and damage your deliverability over time.
According to Mailchimp’s email marketing benchmarks, average open rates vary considerably by industry, from around 20% for retail up to 40% for some professional services sectors. If your open rates are below the benchmark for your sector, the subject line is usually the first thing to examine.
Your website and your email marketing should work together. At the most basic level, that means having a sign-up form on your website so that visitors who are not yet customers can join your list. A simple form in the footer, a pop-up triggered after a few seconds or an inline form on a relevant page all work.
If you are running an eCommerce store, the integration goes further. Post-purchase emails, abandoned cart sequences, product review requests and win-back campaigns for lapsed customers are all automated emails that run in the background and generate revenue without needing to be sent manually each time. Setting these up takes some initial effort but pays off consistently once they are live.
For most small businesses, Mailchimp is a good starting point. It integrates easily with WordPress and WooCommerce, has a free tier that suits businesses just getting started and is intuitive enough to use without technical experience. There are other platforms worth considering depending on your needs, but Mailchimp is a reliable, well-supported choice for businesses new to email marketing.
There are some common mistakes worth knowing about before you get started. Sending from a free email address like Gmail or Outlook is one of them. Marketing emails sent from free providers are more likely to land in spam. Use an email address on your own domain instead.
Not including an unsubscribe link is another. This is a legal requirement under PECR, not optional. Any reputable email marketing platform will include one automatically, but if you are sending emails manually, you need to include a way for recipients to opt out.
Failing to test your emails before sending them is a third. Send yourself a test. Check how it looks on your phone. Check that all links work. It takes five minutes and it will save you the embarrassment of sending a broken email to your entire list.
At b:web, email marketing is one of the services we offer alongside web design and SEO. If you would like to talk about setting up a simple, effective email strategy for your business, or if you want to connect your website to an email platform, get in touch and we will help you get started.
