How to do email marketing

Do not start with a tool

People search 'how to do email marketing' and get a stack diagram. You need four decisions that fit on one page: who is allowed to hear from you, what you are allowed to offer them, which address you will send from, and what you will count as success. Software cannot invent those. If you cannot write them in plain sentences, you are not ready to pick an ESP.

Success for a first program is usually 'people who asked for this reply or click through to one page.' It is not a revenue number you copied from a vendor webinar. Pick a window, often six weeks, and write down what would make you stop.

Collect names on purpose

Put one form on a page that already has a reason to exist: a guide, a waitlist, a store checkout, a webinar. Say what they will get and how often. Store the timestamp, the form, and the URL. That record is how you defend the list later under CAN-SPAM in the US and consent rules in the EU. A spreadsheet of conference badges is not a list.

Until you have a few hundred people who opted in, do not buy lookalikes or scrape. A small clean file beats a large dirty one because mailbox providers watch complaint rates, not your ambition.

Pick a sender and authenticate it

Use a domain you control, not a free @gmail From address, once you are sending campaigns. Create a mailbox like hello@ or news@ that a human reads. In DNS, add the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records your ESP prints for you. Send a test to Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail before the first real send. If the test lands in spam, fix that before you schedule anything.

Connect the ESP to your site analytics so clicks have a destination you can see. You do not need a customer data platform on week one.

Write four emails, then stop inventing

Email one is the welcome you promised on the form. Email two is the useful thing (how-to, sample, or shipping note). Email three is the ask (buy, book, or reply with a question). Email four is a simple 'still want this?' with an honest unsubscribe. That is a program. A twelve-step funnel is a delay tactic.

Keep layout boring: one column, real text, one link, a plain-text part. Save the fancy template for later. Send to yourself and to two people who will tell you if it sounds like a stranger.

• Welcome: deliver what the form promised within a day
• Useful: one specific page or file, not a digest of your whole site
• Ask: one action, written like a person
• Check-in: permission to keep mailing, plus a working unsubscribe

Read the numbers that can fire you

Watch bounces, spam complaints, and unsubscribes after every send. If complaints spike, pause and look at how you got those addresses. Clicks and replies tell you if the offer is real. Opens are noisy since Apple started prefetching mail. Do not rebuild the program around open rate.

After six weeks, keep the cadence that produced replies. Kill the rest. Expanding to segments and automation comes after a plain program works, not before.