Email marketing guide – tools, strategy and tips

Email marketing is communication with customers and prospects by email: newsletters, promotional campaigns and automated messages triggered by customer behaviour. It pays off for a small business because your contact list is a channel you own, independent of social media and search algorithms, and much of the work can be automated.

Email marketing in brief:

1. 1Collect contacts lawfully, with consent or under the existing-customer exception.
2. 2Set up automations first: a welcome series, abandoned cart and post-purchase emails.
3. 3Send newsletters regularly and only with content that is useful to the reader.
4. 4Authenticate your domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), or you will end up in spam.
5. 5Measure clicks, conversions and unsubscribes, not just opens.

What email marketing is and why it pays off

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing. Compared with ads and social media, it has one key advantage: the contacts belong to you. An algorithm decides the reach of a post and an auction decides the cost of a click, while an email reaches everyone who subscribed.

• Low cost: you can reach a subscriber repeatedly without paying for impressions.
• Automation: a welcome series or abandoned cart reminder runs on its own.
• Measurability: for every campaign you see clicks, orders and unsubscribes.

Email works best once customers know you: while deciding, after a purchase and for repeat purchases. How these stages connect is explained in our article on the marketing funnel.

Types of emails: campaigns and automations

Campaigns (newsletters, promotions, news) are sent manually to the whole list or a segment. Automations are sent on their own when a contact meets a condition, such as subscribing. If you are starting out, set them up first: you build them once and they keep working. See our glossary entry on marketing automation.

Email marketing tools and software

Email marketing software manages contacts, forms, templates, automations and reports. Ecomail and SmartEmailing are Czech tools; the others are used internationally. We checked the free options on the providers’ pricing pages in September 2026, and they may change.

All of these email marketing tools offer automations, but on different plans. What matters most is integration with your store or CRM, the language of support and the price at the list size you expect in a year. HubSpot makes most sense if you already use its CRM.

Email marketing strategy step by step

Your email marketing strategy should follow your overall marketing strategy: who you write to, what you offer and what you want the reader to do next.

1. Build your list

Collect contacts yourself: a website form, a checkbox at checkout, an event registration. Give people a reason to subscribe (a guide, a checklist, a discount) and say what you will send and how often. Do not buy lists: you have no valid consent and they hurt deliverability. We recommend double opt-in, where subscribers confirm by clicking a link; it is usually not legally required, but it makes consent easier to prove.

2. Segment

Send different content to different groups: customers vs. prospects, by product category and by activity. A coffee e-shop, for example, would send espresso lovers a different offer than filter coffee buyers.

3. Content: an email template

Each email has one main goal. Use this structure as a template:

• Subject line: a concrete benefit without clickbait, readable on a phone.
• Preheader: a supporting line next to the subject.
• Opening and body: why you are writing and one main offer or topic.
• Call to action: one clear button.
• Footer: company details and an unsubscribe link.

4. Frequency and testing

There is no universal frequency. For most small businesses, a newsletter every two to four weeks plus automations is a sensible start; if unsubscribes or spam complaints rise, slow down. Use A/B tests to compare two versions on part of your list, changing one variable at a time (subject, send time, call to action). With small lists, treat results with caution.

5. Measurement

Treat open rate as a rough guide. According to Apple, Mail Privacy Protection downloads remote content in the background even if the user never opens the email, and hides their IP address. Tools may count opens that never happened, so base decisions on clicks and conversions.

Consent and the law

In the EU, the GDPR governs personal data, and national laws based on the ePrivacy Directive govern marketing emails and text messages. As a rule, you need prior consent. The usual exception covers existing customers who receive offers for your own similar products and can opt out easily and free of charge, both when you collect the address and in every message. Every email must identify the sender and include a working unsubscribe option.

Details differ between countries, including whether the rules also apply to business addresses, and outside the EU they can differ a lot; the US CAN-SPAM Act, for example, is based on opt-out. Check the law where your recipients are and consult a lawyer in unclear cases.

Deliverability: SPF, DKIM, DMARC and Gmail rules

To keep your emails out of spam, authenticate the domain you send from:

• SPF defines which servers may send email for your domain.
• DKIM adds a digital signature confirming the message was not altered.
• DMARC tells receiving servers what to do with unauthenticated messages and sends you reports.

Since February 2024, Google and Yahoo require bulk senders (per Google, over 5,000 messages a day to Gmail) to use SPF, DKIM and a DMARC record, offer one-click unsubscribe and keep the spam complaint rate below 0.3%. Google also expects unsubscribes to be processed within two days. In 2025, Microsoft introduced similar rules for Outlook.com. Your domain administrator sets up the DNS records once.

B2B email marketing and SMS marketing

B2B email marketing

B2B email marketing has a longer decision cycle and more people involved. Education works better than discounts: guides, comparisons, webinar invitations, a summary after a meeting. Connect email to your CRM so sales can see what a contact has read. See the glossary entry B2B and B2C.

SMS marketing

SMS marketing costs more per message than email but suits short, time-sensitive messages: booking reminders, order status or a last-minute offer. Marketing texts are generally subject to the same consent rules. Some platforms, such as Ecomail and SmartEmailing, handle SMS alongside email.

What email marketing costs

Cost depends mainly on your list size and how much you do yourself. It consists of the tool subscription (by contacts or emails sent; a free plan often suffices at first), one-off setup (website integration, forms, domain authentication, a template), designing automations and ongoing content. Measure the return as you would with ads: orders and enquiries from email against the cost of the tool and your time.

When to bring in a specialist

You can set up a tool yourself. An email marketing specialist pays off when you want to connect your store or CRM, build automations that generate revenue on their own, or when your emails land in spam. With our email marketing service, we set up the tool, domain, templates and automations and propose a content plan. Connecting email with your CRM or invoicing is part of digitalization and automation. You can describe your situation via our contact form.