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Email marketing is when an organisation uses email to promote their products or services. It is a form of direct marketing. It can be used to build customer relationships. It is one tool in the online marketing mix, alongside other channels such as social media and pay-per-click advertising.

Why use email marketing?

Email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach your audience. It can have a high conversion rate, encouraging users to take action on your website, eg make an online purchase.

Email marketing allows you to connect with your audience directly. You don't need to rely on them coming across your ad. You have complete control over the format and content of your messages.

You can use success metrics to compare and optimise email marketing campaigns. It is easy to target and personalise email marketing messages.

It is best to send your promotional emails from a specialist email marketing service as they are designed to send emails in bulk. There are a number of email marketing platforms available including some free options.

Types of email marketing

Your business can send different kinds of email communications to promote products or services. This could include:

Welcome

Introduce your business to new customers or users who have registered on your website.

Newsletters

You could have a monthly or weekly email that round-ups the latest news from your business.

Seasonal

Suggest products, services and promotions relating to events such as Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.

New product launches

Inform customers about new products and services. 

Special offers

Make your audience about discounts and price promotions.

Abandoned cart

When a customer adds a product to their online shopping cart and does not complete the purchase, you can send them an email reminder. You could automate this through your e-commerce platform.

Re-engagement

A reminder to a customer who hasn't made a purchase in a while or has cancelled a subscription. You could use customer relationship management (CRM) software to send these automatically. This could include a special discount to entice the customer back.

Event invitations

Boost attendance at events with email marketing. You could link to an online registration page. See organising events in Northern Ireland.

Marketing your products or services by email can be a fast, flexible and cost-effective way of reaching new customers and retaining existing customers by encouraging repeat website visits.

It is important not to overuse email marketing. Receiving marketing emails can irritate people if it is irrelevant, too frequent or unwanted.

Advantages of email marketing

The benefits of email marketing include:

Cost-effective

The costs of email marketing can be much lower than many other forms of marketing. There are no advertising fees, printing or media space costs.

Permission-based

Your marketing list will be made up of people who have actively chosen to receive email communications from you. Customers who are genuinely interested in your products and/or services are more likely to engage with your business.

Flexible design

You can send plain text, graphics or attach files - whichever suits your message best. A choice of design options gives you scope to convey your business branding and make your email visually appealing.

Scalable

Email marketing can be used to reach large audiences or smaller targeted lists.

Personalisation and segmentation

You can integrate your email marketing with your customer relationship management (CRM) system to help you personalise messages. You can include your customer's name or past purchases to build meaningful relationships. You can also segment your marketing list so that your customers receive messages from you that they are interested in to help boost their engagement with you.

Shareable

It's easy for people to forward and share your email content, building your reputation by word-of-mouth or viral marketing. This may help influence new customers to become followers of your brand.

Conversions and increased sales

If you have a new promotion people can click on links and follow your call-to-action immediately. Email marketing is also effective at every stage of the buying process. For example, you can influence someone to choose your product, nurture the customer relationship post-transaction and also encourage future purchases.

Measurable

You can evaluate the success of a campaign by tracking bounced emails, open rates, and click-through-rates. You can easily test different copy, subject lines and designs to see which is most effective. This allows you to optimise future campaigns.

Benchmark

You can compare your results against others in your industry. There are many free email marketing benchmarking reports available - you will find these by searching online. Benchmarking data can help you to evaluate and prioritise improvement opportunities.

Test before you send

A/B testing of subject lines, calls-to-action, personalisation, email copy, images or messages ensure your email content is as effective as it can be before you send it.

Less intrusive

Unlike telephone marketing, recipients can read your message at a time that suits them. Customers can also update their preferences if they would like to receive different messages from you or unsubscribe if they feel they no longer want to receive your email communications.

Environmentally-friendly

Email marketing is better for the environment than direct marketing by postal mail because nothing is printed.

Time-saving

Through automation you can trigger emails to be sent to customers based on an action they have performed on your website - eg. send a welcome email when a user signs up to your website, or issue an email offering a discount incentive if the user abandons an online shopping cart. Once you have developed a template you can reuse it for numerous email campaigns.

See what email data should I monitor?

Real-time marketing

Through email marketing you can connect with customers in real time. Using automated triggers, such as website activity, recent purchases or shopping cart abandonment, you can reach the right audience, at the right time, in the right place and with the right offer.

Disadvantages of email marketing

Some of the potential problems of email marketing include:

Spam

Commercial email or 'spam' irritates consumers. If your messages aren't targeted to the right people, the recipient may delete your email or unsubscribe. You need to make sure that your email marketing complies with privacy and data protection rules, and that it is properly targeted at people who want to receive it. The 'click through rate' for untargeted emails is likely to be very low. See email marketing and privacy law.

Undelivered emails

Poorly designed emails may not get delivered. Emails that use certain spam keywords or characters in the subject heading or content of the email are likely to be filtered out by email software and internet service providers. If you don't keep your marketing lists up to date, you will find incorrect email addresses mean your messages won't reach the right person.

Design problems

Your email must be designed so that it appears as it should across multiple devices and email providers.  You may encounter a trade-off between design and functionality. Some people opt to receive text-only emails, consider how your message will look if this is the case.

Size issues

Files need to be small enough to download quickly. Emails containing many images may take too long to load, frustrating your audience and losing their interest.

Resources and skills

For a successful email campaign you must ensure that you have the right copy, design and marketing list. If you don't have the time or skills in-house, consider outsourcing some of these elements. 

If you want to use email to carry out direct marketing, you need to comply with the rules in the  (PECR) 2003. These rules include specific things you must say in your marketing messages - eg disclosing your identity and providing a valid email address to all recipients - as well as legal responsibilities you have as a marketer.

What is electronic mail and direct marketing?

Under the regulations, electronic mail is any electronic message that consists of text, voice, sound or images - ie email, text, picture, video, voicemail and answer phone messages. Direct marketing is defined as a message that is trying to sell goods or services, or is promoting the values or beliefs of a particular organisation.

You need to consider email marketing list opt-ins and opt-outs. You can only carry out marketing by email if the individual you are sending the message to has given you their consent and you follow  contained in PECR and data protection principles under the GDPR.

Sending email marketing to other businesses

Opt-in requirements don't apply to marketing sent to companies or limited-liability partnerships, where you are not targeting a named individual. However, it's not good business sense to continue to send marketing to businesses that don't want you to. You still need to give your identity and provide a valid opt-out address or unsubscribe option in your communications.

Complaints and breaches of privacy regulations

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is responsible for dealing with any complaints and breaches of the regulations. If you breach these rules when you carry out electronic marketing, the ICO will contact you to resolve the problem. 

If you infringe any of the basic data protection principles you may be subject to administrative fines of up to €20,000,000 or 4% of your business' total worldwide annual turnover.

The Data Protection Act

If you send direct marketing messages electronically to individuals whose personal details come from a bought database, you must also comply with the  2018. In addition, there are also certain rules about buying email databases you need to consider.

There are two types of procedure that can be used when signing up a new subscriber to receive your email marketing messages - single or double opt-in.

Single opt-in for email marketing

Single opt-in is when a person provides their email address and simply indicates that they would like to receive future emails from your business eg when a customer signs up to your email communications. 

Double opt-in for email marketing

Double opt-in involves following up on the previous step by also sending the subscriber an email with a confirmation link they must click to complete their sign-up to your email marketing list.

Double opt-in is not a legal requirement but is often considered best practice - as it eliminates the risk of someone having their email address registered by a third party. Also, instructing a subscriber that they need to respond to your confirmation email should prompt them to retrieve your email - which may have been redirected to a 'junk' folder by their spam filter.

Pre-ticked opt-in boxes are banned under the GDPR. You also cannot rely on silence, inactivity, default settings, or your general terms and conditions, or seek to take advantage of inertia, inattention or default bias in any other way. The best practice is to provide an unticked opt-in box and invite the person to confirm their agreement by ticking. This is the safest way of demonstrating consent, as it requires affirmative action and positive choice by the individual to give clear and explicit consent.

Soft opt-in for email marketing

Soft opt-in can apply in certain circumstances as an exception to the consent rule for direct marketing. This applies where:

• you have obtained an individual's email address and details during a previous sale or during negotiations for a previous sale of a product or service to them
• your messages are only marketing your similar products or services
• you have given the individual opportunities to refuse marketing messages when their details are collected and with every future message, and they do not opt-out

Unsubscribe or opt-out option

The opt-out or unsubscribe option should allow the individual to take a positive step to refuse or unsubscribe from your marketing by replying directly and easily to your message in order to stop any future marketing. If you use text messages, you could allow an individual to opt-out by sending a stop message to a short code number - eg text 'STOP' to 12345. If you use email, include an 'unsubscribe' link in your message.

By law, you must allow individuals to opt out or unsubscribe to receive email marketing messages from you at any time they wish and in the same manner in which they provided you with their consent. You must comply with any opt-out or unsubscribe requests as quickly as possible.

Organisations must not disguise or conceal their identity in any marketing texts or emails and must provide a valid contact address for individuals to opt-out or unsubscribe (which would mean consent was withdrawn). It is good practice to allow individuals to reply directly to the message and opt out that way, to provide a clear and operational unsubscribe link in emails or at least to provide a freephone number.

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Email marketing is more successful if it focuses on people you know who are interested in what you're offering. Customers who have willingly signed up for your email marketing list are more likely to want to read your email messages. People are likely to delete marketing messages without reading them if they find them irrelevant to them. They could also decide to unsubscribe from all your marketing email communications. 

For example, if you're running a special offer on computer hardware, it will be more effective if you promote it only to people responsible for buying IT.

Segmenting your email marketing list

Once you have built up a database with customer details, preferences and interests you can then segment your email marketing list to targeted groups of customers. Segment your customers based on the target markets in your marketing strategy. This makes your messaging more relevant and can increase open and click rates which in turn can lead to increased sales.

For example, you could segment your email marketing list on postcodes or areas of interest if you are promoting an event in a particular area. You could also segment your contacts into 'persona' groups based on their demographics and send targeted messages about products that may be of particular interest. 

However, to process the data in this way you must ensure that you comply with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), namely that you have a lawful basis for processing the data in this way and have complied with all other data protection compliance requirements.

It is illegal to send unsolicited email messages except in limited circumstances. If customers have consented to receiving information from you in the past, ie opted in or signed up to your email marketing list, you can send them information on other things you think they might be interested in.

However, you must give these people the option to opt out of or unsubscribe from receiving any further messages from you. Read more about email marketing list opt-ins and opt-outs.

Using incentives to get email sign ups

People are more likely to sign up to your email marketing list if you give them a useful incentive. For example, you can offer special services or discounts on selected products to customers who sign up for your email updates.

You can also offer things like exclusive online content, eg access to downloads or entry to competitions, in exchange for email sign ups. 

Capturing customer data for email marketing

There are a number of ways, both online and offline, to capture customer data to be used for your email marketing lists. A common method is to encourage email sign-up through your website and social media channels. It's always worth highlighting the benefits of subscribing to your email service and providing an online form to register.

You should make this process as quick and as easy as possible for the customer by capturing only a small amount of essential data initially eg name and email address. You can then follow this up with an email where a customer can inform you of other preferences or areas of interest. It is also best practice to inform customers what they will receive by email and how often they should expect to receive your emails.

Using overlays to encourage customer signups

Website overlays are a type of pop-up that appear on the user's screen. They can be configured to appear after a certain amount of time, once a customer looks at a set number of pages, lands on high-value pages or when they exit your website.

Website overlays can be very effective in helping you to capture customer data. They interrupt the customer's web browsing to present a message that you can use to outline the benefits of signing up for your mailing list.

Best practice advice for using overlays on your website are:

Don't annoy the customer

Think carefully about how you can best use overlays. Don't have them appearing on every page of your website. Ensure the user can easily cancel the overlay and make sure it won't reappear for the same user for a set period of time afterwards.

Highlight the benefits

Make it clear and brief in your overlay what you are offering the customer in return for their data, for example, a newsletter, discounts or access to premium content.

Capture only essential data

Capture only the data you need such as an email address and name. You can always build up details of their preferences afterwards.

Use triggers

Consider using different types of overlays that will be triggered depending on the customer's action:

• Entry overlay once they appear on a certain page.
• Timed overlay once they have been browsing your website for a defined period of time or number of pages.
• Scroll overlay once they have scrolled through a certain point on a page.
• Exit intent overlay once they go to exit your website.

Cross selling

If you sell products or services on your website and a customer is browsing particular ones you can use overlays to cross-sell other popular products or services eg customers viewing this product also view.

Create a sense of urgency

You could use overlays to highlight special offers, discounts, product availability or access to premium content. To encourage immediate action from the customer to signup you could highlight in your overlay that a special offer is only available until a specific date.

Collecting data offline

Methods in which you can build your database offline include asking customers for their email addresses when they are at an event you are running or in-store. For example, some retail businesses capture customer email addresses by offering to email electronic receipts when a purchase is made in-store. You can also offer a small discount or free gift as an incentive.

Email can be a very cheap and effective marketing tool if you can get customers and potential customers to request updates from you by email.

Before you begin planning your email marketing campaigns it is worth taking the time to consider your target audience, what your objective is and how you will measure your results. There are a number of important elements that contribute to a successful email marketing campaign.

Cleanse your marketing lists

The quality of your marketing lists is much more important than quantity. To maximise the quality of your email marketing lists it is best practice to cleanse your marketing lists on a regular basis. For example, to ensure that only people that engage with your emails continue to receive them you could look at your list every 12 months and remove those people in your list that haven't opened your emails in the last year.

This would also help you comply with the retention principle of UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), namely that you retain the individual's personal data for no longer than necessary.

Email deliverability

You should take steps to ensure your email message will be accepted by email service providers such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. If you notice problems with your deliverability, check that you are not on a blacklist. You should prompt your customers to add you to their safe senders list or address book within your email message. 

Your email marketing software provider is responsible for making sure its email technology is up-to date and compliant with today's legal requirements. A responsible email provider will also be able to handle bounce codes, feedback loops and connection optimisation.

Email from-address

To increase deliverability and consistency with branding consider using a sub-domain of your website to send your emails from eg if your web domain is johnscafe.com your email sub-domain could be email.johnscafe@internet.com. It is advisable to use a from-address alias so the customer immediately recognises who your email is from eg John's Café. Avoid 'no reply' prefixes, it is good customer service to monitor the inbox for responses from your email marketing campaigns.

As part of the you must not disguise or conceal your identity.

Avoid spam words

For each email marketing campaign there should be a process to check the spam score for your email message eg you should avoid words and characters like free, cash, £££s or exclamation marks. You should avoid writing in capital letters. Ensure there are no spelling mistakes in your subject lines and the main body of your email messages.

A quick search on the internet for 'spam words to avoid in email marketing' should give you an up-to-date list of spam words that it is best practice to avoid in your email communications. Most email marketing software will enable you to scan your email template prior to sending, giving your email a spam rating and flagging spam issues that should be rectified before you send.

Effective email subject lines

The subject line will determine the open rate for your email marketing campaign. It is useful to think of the subject line as the shop window trying to encourage the customer to enter the shop. If your subject line is engaging and relevant to your customer, they will be encouraged to open your email. Try to invoke the customer's curiosity eg exclusive deal inside for you.

Keep your subject lines short ie around 50 characters or less. Avoid the temptation to include details of everything that is in your email within your subject line. Subject lines that are too long will be truncated so the recipient won't see all the added detail anyway. It is best practice to highlight content that will pique the interest of the recipient and entice them to open your email. Get to the point by front-loading your subject line with important words that you think will attract the customer's attention.

You could personalise your subject line by including the recipient's name, organisation or details of a previous purchase, but don't overdo it. You can also increase open rates by creating a sense of urgency and offering an incentive eg "Your 20% discount on perfume midnight tonight".

It is a good idea to test your subject line to see what works best for your email campaigns eg split testing two different subject lines. Good email marketing software will easily enable you to A/B test two different subject lines on a proportion of your marketing list. The subject line that gets the most opens over a set period will be sent to the remainder of your marketing list.

Preheader text

Customer opens can also be encouraged by adding preheader text to your email, something that can often be underused by email marketers. This is the text that appears just below the subject line in the email inbox. It should elaborate on the subject line and not repeat it. Keep your preheader text short so that it displays across different devices and is not cut off - something between 50 and 100 characters is ideal.

Example of subject line and preheader text

From Subject
John's Café Waffle Wednesdays - Buy 1 Get 1 Free
Treat a friend or family member to a waffle on us when you buy one every Wednesday

When should I send my email?

When customers sign up to your email marketing be upfront as to the type and frequency of your email messages so they know what to expect and when. You should aim to send your emails at a time that they are likely to open them.

This is unique to all businesses so the only way to work out the best time of day and best day of the week to send your emails is to test, analyse the results and test again eg you could A/B split test your email by sending out on a Monday and a Wednesday and see which generates more engagement. When doing this be sure to send the same email and use the exact same subject line so that you are only testing the effectiveness of the day sent and not the email copy.

Test your emails to get it right

There is no magic bullet for getting email marketing right. The best way to make your email marketing successful is to test and analyse the results and retest. By using A/B testing, you can determine the most effective email subject lines, best design elements, email copy and best time of the day or day of the week to send your email.

However make sure you are only testing one element at a time as changing too many factors at once will skew your test results and you will not know which factor or factors made the impact. See measure performance and improve your email marketing campaigns

Once a customer has opened your email whether they are compelled to click on your links will be determined by the quality of your message, content in your email and relevancy to them. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer - understanding your audience will help you generate emails that are more highly tuned to their needs and expectations.

Email header

Include a header with your company logo so that a customer can identify who the email is from as soon as they open it. This also adds to brand recognition and consistency. A link from your logo to your website homepage is also advisable. Keep it simple and don't let your header dominate your email template. Be careful not to add too many distractions into the header such as your website navigation. Remember the aim of your email is to get the customer to click on the important message or messages in the main body of your email.

Amount of content

Too many messages in one email will confuse the customer and may lead them to delete your email or unsubscribe. Before constructing your email establish a clear idea of exactly what you want your message to convey to the customer and what you want them to do once they have opened your email eg if you have a number of products or services you want to promote it might be more effective having one email focusing on one specific product/service or a related collection of products/services.

Email template layout

A successful email layout will not only look good, but it will also present your content in a way which guides your readers through your message and encourages them onwards to your objective, ie to click a link or links. You need to get the right balance between the email being practical and attractive. Aim to use a layout that makes the content easy to understand, navigate and engage with.

Call-to-action

This is the most important aspect of your email and is what you want the customer to do once they have opened your email. Before you construct your email template be clear as to the end goal of your email - do you want the customer to buy something, read an article, book an appointment or view a video? A single call-to-action that aligns with your end goal can be very effective as it is very clear to the recipient what you want them to do. Too many calls-to-action in one email will dilute your message, confuse your customer and discourage them from interacting with your message.

You should provide a clear call-to-action in your email by using words that encourage action eg buy this product, subscribe to our service, read our review and book an appointment. You could also create a sense of urgency with your call-to-action eg emphasising the limit on an offer: money off offer lasts until Tuesday.

Images in your email template

You should use a combination of images and text within your email. The images should complement the text to help you get your message across. Ensure to hyperlink your image and add alt text as some internet service providers (ISPs) block images appearing as a default. This is especially important to remember if you are using images as call-to-action buttons. Optimise the size of your images so that they scale appropriately when opening on a mobile device.

Text in your email template

Think of your email as a teaser aiming to encourage the customer to perform an action such as read more on your website or purchase a product or service - don't try to include everything in your email. It is highly likely that a customer will skim read your email so keep text to a minimum, use headings and include key words which will 91Ï㽶»ÆÉ«ÊÓƵ this process. Write your email copy as if you are communicating directly to an individual rather than to a large audience. You can do this by replacing words like 'we and our' with 'you and your' eg "Do you ever dream of beach holidays? Get a 20% discount off your next trip".

Social media buttons

To align your email marketing with your social media you could include social sharing buttons so customers can post specific content from your email to their social media accounts. Adding recognisable social media icons will invite your customers to spread your message for you. In addition you could highlight on social media that your latest email communication is about to issue a day or two before your email is sent out. This could encourage people to sign up to receive it.

Email footer

As a legal requirement you must include details of your company name and address. You should include other methods that a customer can contact you on such as your email address or phone number. Legally you must also include an unsubscribe link. Most email marketers place these details and the unsubscribe link in the footer.

Mobile optimised

With more customers accessing email through their mobile than desktop it is imperative you optimise your emails for mobile devices. Emails will render differently depending on the device accessed and the internet service provider (ISP) used. Perform an inbox check across different mobile devices and platforms to ensure your design will work. Most email marketing software providers will enable you to view your email template across various email platforms prior to sending.

Consider mobile users when designing your email template by increasing the font size and line spacing. Make your call-to-action(s) stand out and easily accessible eg The call-to-action button may need to be bigger than those displayed on the desktop to compensate for the customer clicking with their finger on a mobile screen. Single-column content will work best for mobile as most people are happy to scroll through content but less content to pinch and zoom. Ensure your website is mobile friendly too as a perfect mobile-friendly email experience can easily be ruined by inviting customers to click through to a non-responsive website.

You should monitor the effectiveness of your email marketing to make sure you're getting value from the time and effort you're spending on it. This will help you to improve future email marketing campaigns.

What email data should I monitor?

Most email marketing providers offer data tracking for email marketing campaigns highlighting:

• Email delivery success including details of bounce types whether a soft bounce, which might occur when a customer's email inbox is full, or a hard bounce, which might occur when the customer has closed an email account. Effective email marketing software will automatically assist with key deliverability issues removing those accounts that no longer exist from your marketing lists and therefore not adversely affecting your credibility.
• Opens - total and unique.
• Open rate - this is the number of people who opened your email divided by the total email delivered. Factors that impact open rate are sender recognition, subject line and when you send your email.
• Clicks - total clicks include multiple clicks by individuals and unique are clicks by a single individual eg if a single user clicks a specific link five times the server will record five total clicks and one unique click. It is insightful to look at total clicks for specific calls-to-action especially where there are multiple links within an email. This will help you determine the most popular links. A heat map can also highlight this.
• Click-through rate - this is the number of unique clicks divided by the total emails delivered. Factors that impact click-through rate include content within your email, relevance of your email to the recipient and the effectiveness of the call to action.
• Click-to-open rate - this is the total of unique clicks divided by emails opened. Click-to-open rate gives a deeper insight into email campaign performance because it looks at post-open interactions in relation to opens rather than the total delivered. This puts the focus of the metric on the performance of the actual email content and removes factors which influenced the recipient to open the email.
• Unsubscribes - keep an eye on your unsubscribe rate. This should be fairly low but if it starts to increase you should ask yourself whether your content is relevant, if your message is confusing or if you are maybe sending emails too frequently. To identify the reasons why customers are unsubscribing you could ask them as part of the unsubscribe process.

This email marketing data will help you identify what works in your email and what doesn't e.g. if your open rates are low then there must be something wrong with your subject line and if your unsubscribes are high then your message might be too general and you should think about the relevancy of message. It also gives you the opportunity to test your email campaigns to fine-tune your email messages and maximise success.

By focusing on the number of clicks for content within your email you can determine which type of content is popular with your audience. If you have multiple links within your email campaigns then a heat map can be an effective way to determine the effectiveness of content and positioning of content within the email.

Segmenting your customers

This performance data can also make it easier for you to segment your customers based on their actions in your email. For example a sports store could compile a marketing list of all the customers who clicked on a link to a swimming article in a previous email campaign and send a targeted email on swimming accessories in a follow-up email campaign.

Benchmark your email marketing

You can benchmark your email marketing efforts to gauge how well you are doing in comparison with industry standards. There are reports published by different email marketing providers each year showing average results for opens, clicks and unsubscribes for different sectors. You'll be able to find these with a simple search on the internet.

Prepare to respond to your email campaign

It's important to consider how you're going to handle the response from an email marketing campaign. Does your website have the ability to cope with a large spike in traffic? Have you got enough capacity to answer the phones and respond to emails if you get a 5% response rate? Will you be able to offer your product or service to recipients within the promised time?

Email marketing may give you valuable contact with new customers, as well as reinforcing your contact with existing ones, so spend some time planning how you will handle the response, to ensure you don't let anyone down.

Email automation

You can set up your email marketing software to automatically send a customer an email based on an action they have performed on your website or in an earlier email. For example you could set up a series of automated welcome emails to go at specific intervals when a user has signed up to your website.

Another effective email automation is when a user abandons a shopping cart on your website an automatic email is sent to prompt them to complete the purchase, perhaps even offering money off incentive to do this.

These email automations can take a bit of time and planning at the start but once they are up and running can save you a lot of time and can be effective in increasing web visits and sales.

If you buy (or rent) a mailing list, you need to check with the supplier what rights you must use the list for email marketing purposes.

If you are buying or renting a marketing list from a list broker or other third party you must make rigorous checks to satisfy yourself that the third party obtained the personal data fairly and lawfully and that the individuals understood their details would be passed on for marketing purposes, and that they have the necessary consent and compliance with UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). You may consider undertaking a GDPR audit of the seller of the mailing list to ensure GDPR compliance before purchasing the list. This could take the form of a compliance questionnaire.

If the list includes individuals (as opposed to companies), they must have given their consent to receiving unsolicited emails. You must also ensure that you only send emails that match the consent individuals have given. For example, they may have consented to receive emails on a particular subject.

As with other email marketing, when you send marketing emails you must give individuals the right to unsubscribe or opt out from receiving further emails.

Databases without consent

If you buy a database where the individuals have not given consent, or if you wish to use it for a different purpose, you need to get their consent.

If you make your first contact with the people on the database by telephone or email, you should make sure that you comply with the . If someone doesn't respond to your initial contact, you can't assume that this implies that they consent to your using their personal information for unsolicited marketing, or any other purpose.

Data protection

Any personal information held on a database should be adequate, relevant, not excessive and should not be kept for longer than is necessary. If you are the new owner of a database, you should decide how much of the information you need to keep, and then delete any that's unnecessary. You should not retain personal information for future use. GDPR requires that you inform the data subjects of your privacy notice information at the latest upon first contact with them.

Online selling rules

When sending sales messages by email, there are rules covering distance selling and online trading apply. See consumer contracts.

Under the Data Protection Act 2018, you must not allow a third party access to personal information kept in your database. However, you can provide personal information to a third party if:

• an individual on the database asks somebody else - eg their solicitor - to obtain personal information on their behalf
• your business outsources the processing of personal information - for example, payroll or customer mailing
• the police need it as part of an investigation

Outsourcing the processing of personal information

If you outsource certain processes that need access to your database of personal information - eg for email marketing - your business will remain liable for the information and keep full control over its use. In the event of a Data Protection Act 2018 breach, you are liable. See reporting serious breaches of personal data.

Protect customers' personal information

You must take the appropriate measures to protect the personal information you have, whether or not you process it yourself or outsource it. In order to decide what measures are appropriate, you should consider:

• what type of information you have
• what harm or damage could be caused from its misuse
• what technology is available to protect the information
• how much it would cost to ensure an appropriate level of information security

Under the Data Protection Act individuals and organisations that process personal information need to  and pay a fee, unless they are exempt. 

If you employ another business to process personal information for you, you must obtain evidence from them that they can do so in a secure manner. It is also highly recommended that you regularly check this yourself.

To ensure compliance with GDPR and information security, you must have a written contract with them, which:

• sets out the nature, duration, purposes and categories or types of personal data being processed
• ensures they are bound by a duty of confidentiality in relation to the personal information
• ensures they only use and disclose personal information in line with your instructions
• requires them to take appropriate security measures to your standards
• ensures they return or delete all the personal information upon ending the contract
• assists you in your compliance with GDPR in relation to the personal information

If you outsource processes to a business outside the European Economic Area, you will have to take further measures. 

Promoting your products or services by email can be a powerful and flexible form of direct marketing. You can tailor your message to specific types of customer and their interests. You can also build customer relationships and acquire new customers through relevant, well-targeted emails that interest recipients.

Five tips to make your email marketing campaign work

1. Subject line

Many people will choose whether to read an email by looking at the subject line in their inbox. Keep your subject line short, ideally no more than 50 characters. Front-load with keywords and use language that generates a sense of urgency and offers an incentive e.g. 'Women's Swimwear - 20% Discount - Ends Midnight'.

2. Keep it relevant, engaging and consistent

Use email marketing to tell people about things they'll be interested in. You should keep it simple, front load your sentences with keywords and consider personalising by including the recipient's name. You could segment your marketing lists based on customer preferences and interests so that they receive emails from you that are relevant to them.

3. Clear call-to-action

Identify from the start what you want the customer to do when they open your email. Maximise the chances of successful conversion by placing your call-to-action in a prominent position and using language that encourages action eg book an appointment now 

4. Opting out

You're legally required to give recipients the opportunity to stop receiving your newsletter. You must have an 'unsubscribe' option on every edition you send out.

5. Measure your campaigns

It's very important to monitor and measure the performance of your email campaigns to ensure you establish what works and what doesn't in terms of content, subject line, time of issue etc. You should track a number of metrics including open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates.