A Guide to Email Marketing

A lot of businesses dismiss email marketing as outdated, pouring resources into other marketing activities while what’s potentially your most profitable channel sits neglected. Here’s what we’ve found: email marketing consistently delivers the highest ROI of any digital marketing channel (a 36:1 return according to Shopify). Done right, it’s one of the most personal, effective, and scalable ways to connect with your audience.

Many companies collect customers’ contact details haphazardly, treating that list as an afterthought. Consider what your email list actually represents. It’s a direct line to people who’ve chosen to hear from you. They’ve shared their details. They’ve given you permission to appear in their inbox. It’s an invitation to build a genuine relationship – an opportunity no other marketing channel can match.

The beauty of email lies in its ownership. Social media algorithms change overnight. Search engine updates can tank your visibility. However, your email list belongs to you, and when managed properly, it’s an incredibly valuable asset.

The Cost of Email Neglect

When you nurture your list carefully and send relevant messages that subscribers want to receive, you can expect higher engagement rates, increased customer lifetime values, and sustainable revenue growth. Neglecting your email list, though, can create a cascade of negative impacts…

According to the ZeroBounce Email List Decay Report, email databases degrade yearly by at least 28%. Inactive email lists and invalid email addresses signal poor engagement to email providers, damaging your sender reputation and making future campaigns less effective. Without strategic email nurturing, customer lifetime value drops significantly because you’re missing opportunities to introduce new products or services, share helpful content, and build deeper relationships.

The result is decreased repeat purchases, lower average order values, lost engagement from audiences who once cared, and increased customer acquisition costs as you constantly chase new customers instead of building on existing relationships. This is why we always start with a free email audit – to look for opportunities to nurture and engage your existing audience before their loss costs revenue.

Building Your Email Foundation

Effective email marketing starts with understanding your customer’s journey (how someone moves from discovering your brand to becoming a repeat customer). That means auditing:

• What happens before the purchase? Are you capturing interest with strong forms, lead magnets, and welcome flows?
• During the purchase? Do you have abandoned cart emails to rescue lost sales?
• After the purchase? Are you nurturing with thank-you messages, helpful tips, and relevant product suggestions?

Every touchpoint matters; from initial awareness through to repeat purchase. At Herdl, our audit process identifies gaps where potential revenue slips away. We examine existing tools and workflows, as well as opportunities for optimisation, and with your goals in mind, map out the customer journey from the top of the funnel all the way through.

With an eCommerce brand, for example, top-of-funnel elements will focus on list growth through forms and lead magnets. Conversion flows handle welcome sequences, abandoned cart recovery, and nurture campaigns. Bottom-of-funnel retention covers post-purchase communications, loyalty programmes, and re-engagement sequences.

Metrics That Show You’re Connecting

Tracking the right metrics separates successful campaigns from vanity exercises. Four non-negotiable KPIs form the foundation of any effective email marketing strategy.

• Open Rate – Are your subject lines sparking interest? Are your emails actually reaching your audience’s inbox? This is the first signal that you’re connecting with people.
• Click-Through Rate – Does your content inspire action? Strong opens mean nothing if recipients don’t take the next step. Clicks indicate genuine engagement and that your message is relevant to their needs.
• Conversion Rate – Is interest turning into results? High engagement without sales suggests disconnected messaging or poor offers.
• Unsubscribe Rate – This is honest feedback from your audience. If it’s rising, it’s a sign your frequency, tone, or content isn’t aligning with your subscribers’ expectations.

Segmentation Drives Performance

Every customer tells you what they care about through their choices and segmentation is how you show you’ve been listening. Your customers have different needs, interests, and buying habits – your emails should reflect that. Generic emails feel transactional, whereas the right message at the right time feels personal, not promotional. Segmentation delivers targeted messages that resonate with specific audience groups. For example:

• A customer who regularly buys haircare products gets styling tips and bundle offers, not skincare promotions.
• A vegetarian shopper sees plant-based recipes, not your BBQ rib kit.

The more relevant the email, the higher the engagement and conversion rate. And yes, removing cold, unengaged contacts from your list actually improves performance by protecting deliverability (and your sender reputation). Effective segmentation categories include:

• Purchase behaviour patterns
• Product interests and preferences
• Demographics and location data
• Website browsing activity
• Engagement frequency levels.

At Herdl, we focus on creating highly relevant content for specific groups. It’s better to send fewer, more relevant emails than to blast your whole list with generic content they’re not going to read or engage with. Regular testing will reveal what resonates with your audience. Subject lines, send times, layouts, and calls-to-action all impact performance. The trick is to keep iterating based on the data.

Email Automation Flows That Convert

Smart email automations meet customers at high-intent moments. Abandoned cart flows target shoppers who showed clear purchase intent but got distracted. These sequences typically boost conversion rates through strategic, urgency-led messaging.

Welcome series introduce new subscribers gradually. Rather than pushing immediate sales, these flows warm cold audiences through value-driven content and brand storytelling. The goal is education and relationship building before commercial messaging. There are four core automation flows every eCommerce brand should have in place:

1. Welcome series – Introduce your brand, share value, set expectations, and build trust before making the first ask.
2. Abandoned cart recovery – Remind shoppers what they left behind, using urgency or social proof to bring them back and capture lost revenue. Abandoned cart flows recover up to 3.33% of lost sales.
3. Post-purchase follow-up – Say thank you, offer tips, and suggest complementary products to encourage repeat orders and maximise customer lifetime value.
4. Win-back campaigns – Re-engage customers who haven’t purchased in a while with reminders, offers, or new product updates.

These flows meet customers at high-intent moments, building relationships and driving revenue without constant manual effort. And post-purchase emails extend far beyond order confirmations. Smart brands use this high-attention moment for product education, usage tips, and complementary recommendations. For example, a health supplement purchase should trigger a one-month restock reminder, perfectly timed for replacement needs.

The Last Word

Email marketing continues evolving toward smarter personalisation and genuine relationship building. Customers expect relevant, enjoyable messages rather than blatant sales pitches. Brands that win with email marketing treat it as a relationship-building tool, using it to nurture customer relationships at scale while delivering measurable ROI.

Your email list represents customers who’ve given you permission to communicate directly with them. Unlike social platforms or search algorithms, you control this channel completely. The question isn’t whether email marketing works. It’s whether you’re making the most of its potential for your business. If you’ve been collecting contact details and are ready to turn your email list into a revenue-generating asset, reach out to our team to find out more about our email marketing services.