basicsThe newsletter is still the marketing tool with the best cost-benefit factor. No wonder then that email marketing remains one of the most popular digital marketing methods. Company newsletters clearly offer many options for customer loyalty and increased sales, if a clear strategy is in place that considers unique KPIs.

Besides legal regulations, there are a lot of simple but very important rules of etiquette for this instrument that are decisive if you make it or break it. And you should keep in mind the following to support your sales and marketing activities:

  • Avoid "silos" by perceiving email marketing as a process and replacing Excel with a CRM system.
  • Use specialized email marketing tools that comply with data protection and can be linked to CRM for data exchange using open interfaces (APIs).
  • Link the email marketing tool to your CRM, as this avoids duplicate data and unnecessary costs.
  • Use content multiple times as part of the content marketing strategy.
  • Use the more accurate personas to personalize your newsletter, instead of using the (rough) target group.
  • Commit yourself to your customers and build trust by regularly publishing your newsletter. Therefore, make sure that there is a person responsible for email marketing in your company, who can implement the strategy for your email marketing.
  • Analyze the data provided by the email marketing tool used to make the email marketing more successful.
  • Invest in the subject line of every email sent, since it determines the opening rate.
  • Use the text version in email marketing in addition to the HTML version.
  • Be aware that emails are increasingly being consumed on mobile devices.
  • Use at least one call-to-action per newsletter.
  • Remember the legal restrictions, such as e.g. unsubscribing from the newsletter.
  • Increase the awareness of your own newsletter.
  • Be experimental and make use of A / B tests.


The mission critical points in email marketing are different. On one hand, the characteristics of an email and its multiple uses as well as the legal restrictions must be observed. On the other hand, professional email marketing requires interlinked processes for customer loyalty and increased sales within the company.

Obstacles to the success in email marketing therefore seem to be:
1. A lack of strategy and no or too little use of email marketing in marketing and sales;
2. Not to be keen to experiment and optimize the newsletter (design, subject, content, rhythm);
3. Lack of time or strategy to win new subscribers;
4. No use of tools to make work easier in email marketing or lack of integration with CRM;
5. No collection of data or data gained gets ignored;
6. Missing theme and editorial plan for email marketing.

Professional email marketing allows to address prospects targeted and to measure activities. As a result, the success of email marketing can quickly be demonstrated when the right tools are used and processes are optimized properly. Constant creation of hypotheses, and checking of them through A / B testing, promotes the success of your email marketing.

By Daniela La Marca