Answer in brief
Email marketing is sending letters to people who gave their address and agreed to hear from you: a welcome, a regular newsletter, an offer, a reminder. It works on people who already know the business, not on strangers. To start, a small company needs one sign-up form, a domain with SPF and DKIM set up, a welcome letter and one useful letter a fortnight, with a working unsubscribe link in each.
Email marketing means letters people agreed to receive
Ask a shop owner what is email marketing and the usual answer is advertising sent by email. Wikipedia starts in the same place: the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. The same article then names a narrower thing, opt-in email advertising or permission marketing, in which the recipient has consented to receive the message. That narrower version is the one worth building.
Two conditions carry the definition. The first is agreement: the person typed their own address into your form and knew what would arrive. The second is purpose: every letter has a job, whether to greet a subscriber, bring back a customer or confirm an order. A letter that fails the first is spam; one that fails the second is noise. The channel does not bring strangers. It serves people who already know you: the second order, the seasonal visit, the quote nobody answered.
Five kinds of letters: welcome, newsletter, offer, receipt, reminder
The welcome series is the first letter or two after someone subscribes: it delivers what the form promised and says who is writing and how often. The newsletter is the regular letter with news, advice or a new arrival. The offer has a price, a deadline and one button. The transactional letter confirms an order, a payment or a password reset; Wikipedia describes such emails as usually triggered by a customer’s action with a company. The reminder sits between the last two: an unfinished basket, a service that is due.
The line between selling and serving matters. The Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM guide sorts content into commercial, transactional or relationship, and other, and judges a mixed message by its primary purpose. Google’s Email sender guidelines advise against mixing types of content in one message, such as promotions inside a sales receipt. A receipt stays a receipt, and offers travel in their own letters.
Where the addresses come from, and why a bought list fails
An honest list grows where a person gives the address themselves: a form on the website, a tick box at checkout, a sign-up sheet at the counter. Google’s guidelines say it in three lines: make sure recipients opt in, confirm each address before subscribing it, and avoid opt-in forms that are ticked by default. Mail.ru asks for the same. The subscriber proves the mailbox is theirs by clicking a link in a confirmation letter.
Both providers close the shortcut of a bought list. Google’s page says not to purchase email addresses from other companies and warns that people who did not sign up might mark the messages as spam. Mail.ru forbids mailing to address bases bought from third parties or collected from other websites. When more than 5% of the addresses in a mailing are invalid, it adds, letters from that domain may land in the Spam folder or be blocked completely. A bought base is exactly that: dead addresses and strangers.
Consent and unsubscribing in Russian, EU and US rules
In Russia the rule sits in article 18 of the federal law on advertising, published in full on ConsultantPlus. Advertising over telecommunication networks is allowed only with the prior consent of the subscriber or addressee. The burden of proof is on the sender: the advertising counts as sent without consent unless the distributor proves that consent was obtained. The distributor must also stop immediately when the person asks.
For readers in the European Union, Your Europe, the official EU portal, is brief. Direct marketing emails that promote particular brands or products require prior consent. An existing customer may be sent direct marketing about the company’s own similar products or services. Either way the person can object at any time, and the company has to stop using the data immediately. Consent, the portal adds, is a clear action, not a box to tick in order to refuse.
The United States goes another way. The FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide covers all commercial messages, business-to-business email included, yet its list of requirements does not include asking for permission first. It asks for honest headers and subject lines, a clear statement that the message is an advertisement, a valid physical postal address and a way to opt out, honoured within 10 business days. The guide puts the penalty at up to $53,088 for each separate email in violation. None of this is legal advice: have a lawyer check the form for the countries your readers live in.
Getting delivered: what Gmail and Mail.ru ask of a sender
The law decides whether a letter may be sent; the mailbox provider decides whether it reaches the inbox. Google’s Email sender guidelines apply to mail sent to personal Gmail accounts and start with rules for everyone. Among them: set up SPF or DKIM authentication for the sending domain and keep the spam rate shown in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%. Messages that are not authenticated might be marked as spam or rejected.
The abbreviations look worse than they are. In Google’s wording, SPF prevents spammers from sending unauthorised messages that appear to be from your domain, DKIM lets the receiving server verify that the domain owner actually sent the message, and DMARC tells receiving servers what to do with messages that fail those checks. All three are records in the DNS settings of the domain. With a sending service, Google advises checking that the provider authenticates your domain’s email with SPF and DKIM.
Stricter rules begin above 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts: SPF, DKIM and DMARC together, plus one-click unsubscribe in marketing messages. A small business is far below that, but the complaint figures concern everyone: keep the spam rate below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%, or three complaints per thousand letters. Mail.ru asks senders to set up all three records and publishes its own complaint limits: 1.1% for up to 10,000 letters a month. Providers revise these requirements, so read the pages again before a launch.
What to measure: delivery, clicks, replies, and why opens mislead
Start with delivery: how many letters were accepted and how many bounced because the address does not exist. Mail.ru’s rules require that addresses returning a user-not-found error are removed from the list or paused. Next come the two signals of irritation, unsubscribes and spam complaints. Google shows the complaint rate for a domain in Postmaster Tools, and Mail.ru runs a similar service called Postmaster.
Opens are the first number people check and the one to trust least. An open is counted when the letter loads a tiny image from the sender’s server. Apple’s privacy page for Mail explains that with Mail Privacy Protection on, remote content is downloaded in the background by default, whether or not the person engages with the email. To the sender such a letter looks opened although nobody may have read it. Clicks, replies and orders are done by a person, which makes them the honest numbers.
The usual mistakes of a first mailing list
The first mistake is the base itself: bought, borrowed from a partner, or exported from an old system with no record of consent. The second is the consent box that is already ticked, which both Google and Mail.ru advise against. The third is silence after the sign-up. Someone who subscribed in March and hears nothing until June has forgotten the shop; Mail.ru warns that even confirmed subscribers may not recognise a mailing by its subject line and report it as spam.
The fourth is sending in jolts: months of nothing, then three letters in a week. Google advises large senders to keep a consistent rate and avoid bursts. The fifth is a hidden or broken unsubscribe link: Mail.ru states that many senders are blocked because of complaints from people who found it hard to unsubscribe. The sixth is a subject line that promises one thing and delivers another; the FTC guide requires it to reflect the content.
The first month, and what to prepare before ordering the setup
In week one, put one form on the site with an honest promise of what will arrive, an empty consent box and a confirmation of the address. In week two, write the welcome letter: who you are, what you will send and how often. After that, send one letter a fortnight, each with one useful idea and one action. The month ends with two regular letters to compare and a list where every address has a known origin.
Before ordering the setup, collect what nobody else can supply: access to the DNS settings of your domain, a note on how each group of addresses was obtained, and topics for six letters. Doing it yourself works while the list is small and someone enjoys writing. Ordering makes sense when letters must be triggered by the shop or the CRM, or when templates and DNS records need a careful hand; VITON13 Studio is one place that does this work. By then the question of what is email marketing gives way to a better one: what will these people be glad to read next.
Practical checklist
- Put one sign-up form on the site with an unticked consent box and a clear promise of what will arrive.
- Add SPF and DKIM records for your domain, then DMARC, and check that test letters pass them.
- Write a welcome letter that delivers what the form promised and says how often you will write.
- Place a visible unsubscribe link in every letter and remove people as soon as they ask.
- Record where each address came from, with the date, so consent can be shown on request.
Questions and answers
Is email marketing legal without the recipient’s consent?
It depends on the country. Article 18 of the Russian advertising law allows advertising over telecom networks only with prior consent, and the EU’s Your Europe portal says the same about direct marketing emails, with an exception for existing customers and similar products. The FTC’s guide for the USA does not list prior consent but requires a working opt-out. Check your own case with a lawyer.
Can a small business send a newsletter from a free Gmail address?
Through a mailing service it is a poor idea. Google’s guidelines tell senders not to impersonate Gmail From: headers and warn that this might affect delivery. A sender address on your own domain, with SPF and DKIM records in place, is the base the mailbox providers expect.
How often should a small company send marketing emails?
No provider sets a schedule. Google advises large senders to keep a steady rate, and Mail.ru recommends avoiding sharp growth in volume. For a first list, one letter a fortnight is a rhythm most small teams can keep: frequent enough to be remembered and rare enough that each letter has something to say.
How does a newsletter differ from a transactional email?
A newsletter goes to the whole list on the sender’s schedule and its purpose is promotional or editorial. A transactional email is triggered by one person’s action, such as an order or a password reset, and exists to confirm it. Google’s FAQ says one-click unsubscribe is required only for marketing and promotional messages; transactional ones are excluded.
Why do my marketing emails go to the spam folder?
The usual causes are named in the providers’ own rules: no SPF or DKIM on the domain, addresses that never subscribed, too many invalid addresses and complaints from readers who could not unsubscribe. Begin with authentication, then look at where the list came from, and watch the complaint rate in Google’s Postmaster Tools or in Postmaster from Mail.ru.