Email Marketing Strategies That Still Work

Email remains the highest-margin channel most brands own, and the most commonly wasted. The pattern is predictable: heavy campaign calendar, thin automation, no segmentation, and a list being slowly poisoned by sending to people who stopped opening two years ago.

Build flows first

• Welcome: 3–5 emails establishing the argument, not just a discount.
• Browse and cart abandonment: timely, specific, with the objection answered.
• Post-purchase: setting expectations, reducing returns, prompting the second order.
• Win-back: segmented by what they bought and how long ago.
• VIP and replenishment where the product supports it.

Flows run without your team's attention and typically produce the majority of email revenue. Get them right before you add another campaign to the calendar.

Segment by behaviour, not demographics

Engagement recency, purchase history, category affinity and price sensitivity are the segments that change results. Sending your full list the same message is what trains people to ignore you.

Protect deliverability

1. Authenticate properly: SPF, DKIM and DMARC, with a monitored DMARC policy.
2. Sunset unengaged subscribers on a schedule. A smaller list that opens is worth more.
3. Warm new domains and IPs gradually.
4. Watch complaint and bounce rates per send, not just opens — which are now unreliable.

Write like a person with a reason

One idea per email, a subject line that states it, and a single primary action. The best-performing commerce emails are often plain-text-feeling notes with one link, because they read as information rather than inventory.