Before I worked in SEO, I wrote a lot of email campaigns. Some performed well. A lot of them didn't. The ones that flopped weren't bad emails exactly. They were just emails nobody asked for, sent at the wrong time, with subject lines that read like spam. The lesson stuck with me: email is one of the most powerful marketing channels out there, and it's also the one most businesses get wrong.

Here are the five rules I follow now, whether I'm writing a campaign for a small business client, a newsletter, or a one-off promotional send.

1. The subject line is the entire email

Nothing else matters if the email doesn't get opened. I've seen beautifully designed emails with great offers get less than a 5% open rate because the subject line was generic. I've also seen plain text emails with no design at all hit 40% opens because the subject line was specific, curious, or personal.

Things that work: short subject lines (under 50 characters), specific numbers or names, questions that the reader actually wants answered, and lowercase casual phrasing that feels like it's from a real person. Things that don't: ALL CAPS, exclamation marks, the word "newsletter," and anything that sounds like every other marketing email in the inbox.

A real example

Subject line that flopped: "Check out our latest spring collection!"

Same email, new subject line that doubled the open rate: "the linen dress is back"

Same content. Different first impression.

2. Send to fewer people, more often

The instinct most business owners have is to email their entire list every time. That's how you train people to ignore you. Better approach: segment your list by what people have actually engaged with, and send more relevant emails to smaller groups.

Someone who clicked a link about your roofing services gets emails about roofing. Someone who only ever opens your "tips for homeowners" content gets the educational track. People who haven't opened anything in six months get a single re-engagement email and then come off the list entirely. A clean list of 1,000 engaged subscribers will out-perform a stale list of 10,000 every time.

3. Write like a person, not a brand

The most engaging marketing emails I've written read like something a friend would send. First person. Casual punctuation. Real opinions. A small story or detail that makes the reader feel like there's a human on the other end.

The least engaging emails are the ones that sound like a press release. Third person. Corporate jargon. The phrase "we are excited to announce" with an em dash and a stock photo. Nobody opens those.

Your subscribers signed up for a person, not a marketing department. Write the email you'd actually want to receive.

4. One clear action per email

Every email should ask the reader to do one thing. Read this article. Book this call. Reply to this question. Buy this thing. Most emails fail because they ask for five things at once: read the blog, follow us on Instagram, share with a friend, check out the new product, and oh by the way here's a discount code.

When you give people too many options, they pick none of them. Decide what the single most important action is for that send, and design the entire email around that one action. Everything else is decoration.

5. Pay attention to the data

Most small businesses send emails and never look at the metrics again. That's like running ads without tracking results. Open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, and reply rates all tell you what's landing and what isn't.

I check three things after every campaign: which subject line performed best, which links got the most clicks, and whether the unsubscribe rate was unusual. Over time, the patterns show you what your audience actually wants. The subject lines that work, the topics that drive replies, the day of the week that performs best. That data is more valuable than any guru's "best practices" list.

The bottom line

Email marketing isn't dead, despite what every social media expert will tell you. It's still one of the highest-ROI channels for small and local businesses. But it only works when you treat it like a relationship instead of a megaphone.

If you want help building or auditing your email strategy, that's part of what I do alongside SEO and content work. Get in touch.