# What is email marketing?
> Permission, lists, and the split between campaigns and transactional mail. What counts as email marketing, and what sits in the email aisle instead.
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*Permission, a list, a send. Transactional mail is a different pile.*

## Permission is the line

Email marketing is sending commercial messages to people who gave you a way to do that, on an address they control. The permission can be a checkbox on a form, a checkout opt-in, an event registration, or a clear existing business relationship under the law that applies to you. It is not a scraped spreadsheet. If you cannot explain how each address got on the list, you are not doing email marketing. You are doing unsolicited bulk mail, and inbox providers treat those as different jobs.

In the United States, the [CAN-SPAM Act](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business) still requires an honest from-line, a working unsubscribe, and a physical postal address on commercial mail. In the EU and UK, consent and legitimate-interest rules under GDPR are stricter about how you collect and store that permission. Neither statute is a growth hack. They are the floor.

## A list is a record of consent, not a CSV

The list is the asset: email, source, date of opt-in, and usually a few fields that decide what you send (product, region, role). A healthy list is smaller than a purchased file and quieter than a webinar scrape. People leave. Hard bounces should come off the same day. Soft bounces get a short leash. Complaints (the spam button) are more expensive than unsubscribes, because mailbox providers watch complaint rate at the domain.

Buying lists is still sold. It is also the fastest way to train Gmail and Microsoft to distrust the domain you just paid to set up. If a vendor's pitch is 'we have 40,000 CMOs,' ask how those people opted in to hear from you, not from the vendor.

## Campaigns versus transactional mail

Campaign mail is the newsletter, the launch, the promo, the event invite. You chose the audience and the time. Transactional mail is the receipt, password reset, shipping notice, 'you were mentioned' alert. The person did something, and the message is expected. Mixing them in one stream is how a password reset ends up wearing a 20% off banner, or how a promo inherits the trust of a shipping email and then burns it.

Most teams put campaigns in an ESP (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, HubSpot) and transactional mail in a specialist such as [Postmark](https://postmarkapp.com) or [Amazon SES](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/). That split is operational, not fashionable. Transactional mail has a higher expectation of arrival. Campaign mail has a higher expectation of being ignored. You do not want one reputation score covering both.

## Warmup and domains live in the email aisle

New sending domains, dedicated IPs, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, and inbox warmup are email-aisle work. They exist because mailbox providers score the domain and the IP, not your brand deck. This is not LinkedIn account warmup. If a product talks about warming a profile, that is a different channel with different risk. For email, the work is DNS records, a gradual send ramp, and keeping complaint rates low. Skip it and even a permitted list will land in spam.

## Related

- [Email marketing templates](https://omentir.com/email-marketing-templates.md)
- [Email marketing news](https://omentir.com/email-marketing-news.md)
- [Email marketing system](https://omentir.com/email-marketing-system.md)

## Common questions

**Is a cold outbound sequence email marketing?**

Sales teams call it outbound. Inbox providers still see bulk commercial mail. If the person never asked for it, you are outside the usual meaning of email marketing even when the copy is polite. Some jurisdictions allow B2B mail with an opt-out. That is a legal question for counsel, not a loophole in Gmail.

**Does a newsletter count if I never sell in it?**

Yes. Editorial mail to opted-in readers is still email marketing. The offer can be attention, a habit, or a later product. The list and the permission are the same machinery.

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