Almost all advice about email marketing is written by companies that earn more when you send more. It is not dishonest, but it has a consistent direction: more messages, more segments, more features, a bigger plan.
For a small business the useful question is usually the opposite. Which few messages are worth sending, to whom, and how do you make sure they actually reach an inbox?
Meet the editor
Marcela Tran — Editor. Marcela spent nine years running lifecycle email for direct-to-consumer brands and a business-services firm. She has built the welcome series, watched it underperform, and rebuilt it more times than she would like to admit, and she has learned that the biggest gains almost always come from sending to fewer, better-matched people. She writes InboxLoop for owners who send a modest number of emails and want each one to be worth the unsubscribe risk.
Who this is for
Small business owners, solo marketers and operations managers who run the email program themselves, usually next to three other jobs, usually on a list of a few hundred to a few tens of thousands of people.
Everything here lives in one category, Email Marketing: building a list that stays healthy, getting messages delivered, the automations worth building first, writing subject lines without tricks, and choosing a platform.
Our approach
- We explain the mechanism before the tactic. Knowing why mailbox providers distrust a brand-new sending domain tells you how to warm one up. A list of tips does not.
- We give ranges and name the variables. Open rates, click rates and deliverability depend on your list, your offer and your industry. We do not publish benchmarks we cannot source, and we distrust anyone who does.
- We recommend sending less. Every message has a cost in attention and in unsubscribes. We would rather help you cut a campaign than add one.
- We name the failure mode. Every tactic here fails in some situation. Each article says which.
- We update rather than repost. Mailbox provider requirements change. When they do, the original article is revised and the change noted.
What you will not find here
Legal compliance. Commercial email is regulated, in the United States by the CAN-SPAM Act and elsewhere by laws such as GDPR and CASL, and several states add rules of their own. We explain that these laws exist and what they generally address, then point you to the FTC and to counsel. We do not tell you what your program must do to comply.
Privacy and consent decisions. How you collect, store and use customer data is a legal and policy decision for your business and its advisors, not something a guide can settle.
Results. We do not promise open rates, revenue or return on investment, because nobody can see your list from here.
Where the money comes from
Nobody pays to be featured here. Income comes from advertising that outside networks place automatically and from some affiliate links, which may earn us a commission when you buy, at no cost to you. Neither shapes what we write: a good deal of our advice is to clean a list or send one message fewer, which earns us nothing. Our Editorial Policy and Disclaimer spell it out.
If we get something wrong
Platform requirements change and we make our own mistakes. If you spot an error, tell us through the contact form and, if you can, include a source. Fixes are made on the page itself with a dated note, as described in our Editorial Policy.
Say hello
Questions, disagreements and topic suggestions are welcome through our Contact page. We cannot audit your list or your sending domain remotely, but we can usually tell you what to check first.