Should Your Small Business Be Doing Email Marketing?

Email marketing has a marketing problem of its own: it sounds dated. Social media is shinier, paid ads feel more measurable, and "build an email list" comes across like advice from 2008. But the numbers are stubborn — for most small businesses, email is still the highest-converting marketing channel that exists. Here's an honest look at whether it's worth your time.

What email marketing actually does

In its simplest form, email marketing is the discipline of staying in touch with people who have already shown interest in your business. It's not cold outreach. It's not spam. It's an email landing in the inbox of someone who said "yes, send me stuff" — and that's why conversion rates dwarf every other channel.

A small business with 500 engaged subscribers will, on average, get more sales from one well-written campaign than from six months of social posting.

When it's worth setting up

Email marketing isn't right for every business. It works best when:

• You have something interesting to say more than once a quarter
• Your customers have a reason to come back (recurring purchases, ongoing services, seasonal offers)
• You can collect email addresses honestly — at point of sale, on your website, at events

If you can't think of more than one thing you'd email people about over a year, don't bother. An email list you don't email becomes a stale list, and a stale list converts worse than no list at all.

What a platform actually does

Once you decide to start, you can't just blast emails from your normal inbox — Gmail and Outlook will mark you as spam within days and your messages will quietly stop landing. That's where dedicated email marketing platforms come in. They handle:

• Sending email at scale through properly authenticated mail servers, so your emails actually arrive
• Letting people unsubscribe easily — a legal requirement in Australia under the Spam Act
• Tracking what gets opened and clicked, so you can see what works
• Storing subscriber data and segmenting lists (e.g. "everyone who bought in the last 6 months")
• Templated email design so each campaign looks polished without a designer on hand

The platforms worth considering

There's no one right answer. The platforms most small businesses end up on:

• EmailOctopus — Simple, focused purely on campaigns, generous free tier. Good fit for businesses that just want to send a newsletter.
• MailerLite — Similar simplicity to EmailOctopus, with a bit more on the automation side.
• Mailchimp — The big name. Powerful, but pricing climbs fast as your list grows.
• Campaign Monitor — Australian-built, polished editor, popular with agencies.
• Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) — Pay per email sent rather than list size. Good if you have a big list but email infrequently.
• Kit (formerly ConvertKit) — Built for creators, course sellers, and content-driven businesses.

The right choice depends on your list size, how often you send, and how much automation you need. Free tiers are common — there's no excuse not to try one or two before paying.

Where the website fits in

Your website is where most email signups will actually happen. A good signup form is visible without being annoying — think footer or a polite popup after a few seconds, not a "give me your email or you can't read this" wall. Wiring one up to feed directly into your chosen platform takes about an hour and is something I do as part of any new build.

The bottom line

If you have an existing customer base and something genuinely useful to say, email marketing is one of the highest-return uses of your time. If you don't, no platform will fix that. Start by working out what you'd write before worrying about where to send it from.

Get in touch if you'd like a hand wiring up a signup form on your existing site, or thinking through whether email is worth the effort for your business.