Email marketing · Mistakes
Why that habit cools your whole list, plus the other mistakes that cost small businesses sales and sender reputation, and a six-question check for today.
Send useful emails between sales
Never buy or rent a list
Make unsubscribing easy
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The email marketing mistakes that cost small businesses the most are buying lists, sending one blast to everyone, having no welcome series, sending emails that are a single big image, and making it hard to unsubscribe. Each one either hurts your sender reputation, so fewer emails reach the inbox, or wastes the attention of people who were ready to buy. But the worst mistake of all is quieter than those, and very common: sending only when you have a sale.
Here is why I think so. If the only time a customer hears from you is when you want money, they learn two things. Your emails are ads, and if they wait, there will be a discount. Open rates fall between sales because there is nothing in it for the reader, and the list slowly goes cold. Then, when the big promotion goes out, a cold list is exactly the kind that mailbox providers start filtering to spam. The sale-only habit damages the one email that matters to you.
What fixes it is something useful in between: how to use what they bought, what is new, what is coming in season, an honest answer to a question your staff hear every week. Once a month is enough for most small businesses. A list that hears from you regularly about things it cares about responds far better on the day you do have a sale.
It looks like a shortcut and works like a trap. People on a bought list never asked to hear from you, so they ignore you, mark you as spam, or bounce because the address is dead. Mailchimp’s acceptable use policy flatly prohibits sending to “purchased, rented, third-party, co-reg, publicly available data, or partner lists of any kind”, and other mainstream platforms have similar rules. One send can get an account suspended. Build the list yourself instead; our guide on how to build an email list has the practical options.
Since February 2024, Google has required bulk senders (more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts) to authenticate their domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, support one-click unsubscribe in marketing messages, and keep spam complaint rates in Postmaster Tools below 0.30 percent. Yahoo introduced similar requirements. Even if you send far less than 5,000 a day, these are now the baseline for reaching the inbox. We cover the details in Google and Yahoo’s sender requirements.
Sending the same email to a first-time buyer, a ten-year customer and someone who signed up yesterday wastes the message on at least two of them. You don’t need complicated segments. Start with three or four: new subscribers who haven’t bought, first-time customers, repeat customers, and people who haven’t opened in six months. Even that much makes each email more relevant, and relevance is what keeps complaint rates down.
The moment someone subscribes is when they are most interested in you. Many small businesses send nothing at all, or a single “thanks for subscribing”, and then the next email is a promotion three weeks later. A short welcome series of three to five emails, introducing who you are, what you are good at and why people buy, is one of the highest-value things you can set up once and leave running. See our welcome email series guide.
A designer makes a beautiful flyer, it gets dropped into the email as one image, and off it goes. Many email apps block images by default, so the reader sees an empty box. Screen readers can’t read it. Spam filters treat image-only emails with suspicion. And nobody can tap the phone number. Use real text for the message, images to support it, and a button with a clear link.
Some businesses make unsubscribing hard in the hope people will stay. They don’t stay, they press “report spam” instead, and that counts against you far more than an unsubscribe. The federal CAN-SPAM Act requires a clear way to opt out and requires you to honor opt-outs within 10 business days, as the FTC’s compliance guide explains. Make the link easy to find. People who want to leave are doing you a favor by leaving quietly. (This is general information, not legal advice.)
Open your email platform and look at your last six campaigns. Ask:
If you would like someone to go through this with you, book a free 30-minute call. We will look at your list, your recent campaigns and your setup, and tell you what we would change first. Book your free call.
A small business doing email well usually has a welcome series and an abandoned-cart or follow-up sequence running on their own, sends one useful newsletter a month, sends promotions that go to the people most likely to want them, and keeps the list clean by removing people who have not opened in a long time. None of it requires a large team. It does require deciding that email is a relationship rather than a megaphone.
Our email marketing service sets this up on MailChimp, Klaviyo or HubSpot, depending on what you already use. Whichever platform you choose, the first change I would make is the same: send something worth reading between the sales.
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For most small businesses, one useful email a month plus well-timed promotions and automated sequences is a good starting point. Consistency matters more than frequency.
Buying a list is not in itself banned by CAN-SPAM, but mainstream platforms such as Mailchimp prohibit sending to purchased lists, and it tends to wreck deliverability. Other laws may apply depending on where recipients are. This is general information, not legal advice.
Common causes are missing SPF, DKIM or DMARC, high spam complaints, sending to old or bought addresses, and image-only emails. Start with authentication and list hygiene.
Three to five emails: a thank-you and what to expect, who you are and what you are good at, social proof such as reviews, and then a gentle first offer.
