Start with customers, not subscribers
Most businesses have a list they have never used: everyone who bought, booked or enquired. These people know you. An email to them costs nothing and lands with trust a cold ad cannot buy.
Export that list from your store, your booking tool or your invoicing software. Remove anyone who asked not to be contacted. That is your starting point.
The three emails to set up first
- A welcome email, sent the day someone signs up or buys, that says who you are and what to expect.
- A follow-up after a purchase or a job, asking how it went and pointing to the next useful thing.
- A reminder to anyone who has not bought or booked in a while, with a reason to come back.
Each of these runs on its own once it is built. They do the work every day without anyone pressing send.
What to write
Write the way you talk to a customer at the counter. One subject, one point, one link. A plain email from the owner with a photo of this week's work gets read; a designed newsletter with six sections gets skimmed and closed.
Subject lines should say what is inside. People open email from businesses they know when the subject tells them why.
How often to send
Send when you have something to say, and no less than once a month, so the list stays warm. A store with new products can send weekly. A service business with a seasonal calendar can send before each season.
Watch the unsubscribe count more than the open count. When it climbs, you are sending too often or saying too little.
Measure orders, not opens
Connect your email tool to your store or booking system so each email reports the orders it produced. Opens are unreliable and clicks are a step short. Revenue per email, over a few months, tells you which messages to keep.