How to Do Email Marketing: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide

TL;DR

• Email marketing delivers an average ROI of £36 for every £1 spent - higher than any other digital channel.
• The foundation is a permission-based list of people who actually want to hear from you. Bought lists waste money and damage deliverability.
• Start with three automated flows: welcome series, abandoned basket (if ecommerce), and post-purchase. These alone drive 30-40% of email revenue with zero ongoing effort.
• Segmentation is the single biggest lever for improving results. Even basic segmentation by purchase history or engagement level lifts revenue per email by 50-100%.

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Email marketing gets dismissed by people who have never done it properly. "Isn't email dead?" they ask, usually while opening a promotional email from a brand they love. The reality: email remains the highest-ROI marketing channel available, and it is not particularly close.

The challenge is not the channel. It is that most businesses set up email marketing badly - buying lists, sending generic broadcasts, and wondering why it does not work. This guide fixes that. Step by step, from zero.

Step 1: Choose the Right Platform

Before you send a single email, you need a platform to manage your list, create campaigns, and handle deliverability. The right choice depends on your business type.

For ecommerce businesses (especially Shopify): Klaviyo is the gold standard. It syncs directly with your store, gives you rich behavioural data (browsed but did not buy, purchased X but not Y), and powers the automated flows that drive serious revenue. Omnisend is a solid alternative at a lower price point.

For service businesses and SaaS: Mailchimp works well at small scale. ActiveCampaign is more powerful for complex automation. ConvertKit is excellent for creator-style businesses.

Platform features to prioritise:

• Solid deliverability reputation
• Visual automation builder
• Segmentation by behaviour, not just demographics
• Decent analytics (open rate, click rate, revenue per email)
• Clean unsubscribe and GDPR compliance tools

For Shopify merchants, OpenHelm's Personal Marketing integrates directly with your store and automates personalised email flows using your actual customer purchase data - without needing to set up Klaviyo from scratch.

Step 2: Build Your List the Right Way

The biggest mistake new email marketers make: trying to shortcut list growth. Buying a list, scraping contacts, or adding people without permission. All of these will damage your sender reputation, trigger spam complaints, and potentially breach GDPR. They also just do not work.

List building is simpler than people think. You need two things: a compelling reason for someone to subscribe, and a visible place to subscribe.

Effective email capture methods:

Lead magnets - Offer something genuinely useful in exchange for an email address. A discount code works for ecommerce (10-15% off first order is the standard). For service businesses, a useful guide, template, calculator, or checklist works well. The key word is "genuinely useful" - a lead magnet no one wants will not convert.

Pop-ups - Yes, people find them annoying. They also convert at 3-8% of visitors on average, which is significant. Exit-intent pop-ups (triggered when a user moves their cursor towards the browser tab to leave) are less disruptive and still effective.

Checkout capture - For ecommerce, the checkout is your highest-intent moment. A simple opt-in checkbox ("Email me about my order and future offers") captures subscribers who are already customers.

Content upgrades - On your most-read blog posts, offer a related download. Someone reading a guide on content planning might happily exchange their email for a content calendar template.

Do not chase volume. A list of 500 people who genuinely want to hear from you will outperform a list of 5,000 who do not every single time.

Step 3: Set Up Your Core Automated Flows

Automated flows are emails sent automatically based on a trigger - someone subscribes, makes a purchase, abandons a basket. They are the highest-ROI emails you will ever send, because they reach people at exactly the right moment without any ongoing effort from you.

Set these up first, before you worry about campaigns.

Welcome Series (All Businesses)

The welcome email has the highest open rate of any email you will ever send - often 50-70%. That is because subscribers are at peak interest. Do not waste it with a generic "thanks for subscribing" message.

A solid welcome series looks like this:

• Email 1 (immediate): Deliver the lead magnet if you promised one. Introduce your brand warmly. Tell people what to expect from your emails.
• Email 2 (day 2-3): Your best content or most popular product. Something that immediately demonstrates your value.
• Email 3 (day 5-7): Social proof - testimonials, case studies, or reviews that build trust.
• Email 4 (day 10): Soft sell. Your primary product or service with a genuine reason to act.

Abandoned Basket (Ecommerce)

Cart abandonment rates average around 70%. That is seven in ten people who expressed genuine purchase intent and then left. A three-email abandoned basket flow recovers 5-15% of those - which for most stores represents thousands of pounds in otherwise lost revenue.

• Email 1 (1 hour after abandonment): Gentle reminder. "You left something behind." No pressure.
• Email 2 (24 hours): Handle objections. Address common reasons people do not complete purchase.
• Email 3 (72 hours): Incentive. A small discount or free shipping often closes the deal.

Post-Purchase Series (Ecommerce)

The post-purchase period is the most under-exploited moment in ecommerce email marketing. Someone just bought from you. They trust you. They are excited.

Use this window to: confirm the order, manage delivery expectations, cross-sell related products, ask for a review, and introduce your loyalty programme if you have one.

Step 4: Send Regular Campaigns

Automated flows handle the always-on revenue. Campaigns are the intentional sends you create for specific moments - sales, launches, seasonal events, educational content.

The most common mistake: sending too infrequently because you do not want to "bother" subscribers. If your content is relevant and valuable, weekly emails are not too many. Most established ecommerce brands send 2-4 times per week during busy periods.

Campaign Types That Work

Promotional emails - Sales, discounts, limited-time offers. Effective, but use sparingly or you train subscribers to wait for discounts before buying.

Educational emails - "How to get the most out of [product]", "5 mistakes people make with [topic]". These build trust and reduce unsubscribes.

Storytelling emails - Brand story, behind-the-scenes, founder updates. These build connection and loyalty, especially for DTC brands.

Social proof emails - Customer reviews, case studies, before-and-after. Highly effective for overcoming purchase hesitation.

Re-engagement emails - For subscribers who have not opened in 90+ days. A simple "Are you still interested?" with a clear unsubscribe option. Cleans your list and protects deliverability.

Step 5: Segment Your List

Segmentation means sending different emails to different groups of subscribers based on what you know about them. It is the single biggest performance lever in email marketing.

"The days of batch-and-blast email are over. The brands winning with email are the ones treating it as a one-to-one conversation at scale, using behavioural data to make every message feel personally relevant." - Chase Dimond, email marketing consultant, 2025.

Even if your platform is basic, start with the simplest segmentation possible: customers vs. non-customers. The emails you send to each group should be entirely different.

Step 6: Measure What Matters

Most people focus on vanity metrics - open rates, subscriber counts. What actually matters is revenue generated per email sent.

Metrics to track and target:

• Open rate: 25-40% for a healthy list (though Apple Mail Privacy Protection has distorted this metric significantly since 2021)
• Click-to-open rate (CTOR): 15-25% - how many openers clicked through
• Conversion rate: Varies widely by product, but track consistently
• Revenue per email sent: For ecommerce, aim for £0.10-£0.50+ per email depending on your AOV
• List growth rate: Net new subscribers minus unsubscribes
• Unsubscribe rate: Under 0.5% per send is healthy; above 1% signals a content or list quality issue

A Realistic Timeline

Week 1: Set up your platform, import existing contacts (with their permission), create your signup form and lead magnet.

Week 2: Build and activate your welcome series.

Week 3 (ecommerce): Build and activate your abandoned basket flow and post-purchase series.

Week 4: Send your first campaign. Keep it simple - introduce your brand to those who joined via your new form.

Month 2 onwards: Send weekly, test subject lines, experiment with segmentation, analyse revenue per email.

The compound effect of doing this consistently for 6-12 months is remarkable. A list that generates £500/month in month one often generates £5,000+ by month twelve - without a proportional increase in effort.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I email my list?

For most businesses, once a week is a good starting cadence. Ecommerce brands often increase to 2-3 times per week around launches and sale periods. The key is consistency - irregular sending hurts open rates because subscribers forget who you are.

What is a good open rate?

Industry averages vary widely by sector, but 25-40% is healthy for a well-maintained list. More important than open rate is your click-to-open rate and revenue per email - these measure whether your emails are actually driving action.

How do I avoid ending up in spam?

Use a reputable platform, only email people who have opted in, authenticate your domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), maintain a clean list by removing hard bounces, and never use spam trigger words in subject lines (FREE!!!, ACT NOW!!!, etc.).

Do I need GDPR consent for email marketing?

Yes, for UK and EU subscribers. You need a clear opt-in (not pre-ticked boxes), the ability for subscribers to opt out at any time, and a clear privacy policy explaining how you use their data. Most email platforms handle the mechanics, but the responsibility for obtaining proper consent is yours.

What is the fastest way to grow an email list?

A discount code pop-up on your website converts well for ecommerce (typically 3-5% of visitors). For service businesses, a lead magnet promoted via social media or paid ads is the fastest route. Whatever you offer must be genuinely valuable - the quality of the incentive directly determines signup rates.

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Take the next step.

If you run a Shopify store, OpenHelm's Personal Marketing automates your email flows - from abandoned basket to post-purchase - using real customer data. No complex setup, no agency needed. See how it works.