email marketing
Email marketing is using email as a direct line to an audience: building the relationship, guiding people toward a purchase, and bringing past customers back. In practice it’s two things, broadcast messages like newsletters and announcements sent to your whole list, and automated sequences triggered by what someone does, like a welcome series or a post-purchase follow-up. It consistently returns more per dollar than any other digital channel, for two structural reasons: the audience already chose to hear from you, and you own the channel outright, so no algorithm can throttle your reach overnight the way social platforms can. The results still depend on a healthy list, strong subject lines, mobile-friendly design, and staying compliant with CAN-SPAM, CASL, and GDPR.
How I use this
I steer clients toward email over chasing reach on social, because the list is the one audience they own outright and no algorithm can throttle overnight. The mistake I watch for is treating the list as a megaphone rather than a relationship; the moment every send is an ask, the unsubscribes start, and a list you've burned is hard to rebuild.
Also known as: email campaigns, email newsletter, email list marketing, newsletter marketing
Where this term comes up
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CAN-SPAM compliance: what the act actually requires of you
CAN-SPAM has seven requirements. The most violated one is the easiest to fix: a physical postal address in every commercial email. Here is the 10-minute audit.
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Public Relations that Really Work
From the archive. I wrote this back in 2006 and I’m leaving it published because the thinking still has value, but on 2 May 2026 I cleaned up some imported page chrome (old menus, sidebars, ad blocks from a previous CMS) so it renders properly, and I removed outbound links and old contact emails to…
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