Digital Marketing
Email Marketing
The only channel where you own the list. Everything else is rented from a platform that can change the terms on a Tuesday.
Email marketing is the campaigns you send to a list you own: segmentation, writing, deliverability and the arithmetic underneath. The Nexclick measures it on revenue per recipient rather than open rate, which stopped being a reliable number once Apple began pre-loading images in 2021.
Is this you?
What usually prompts the call
- You send the same email to everybody on the list.
- Open rates jumped in 2021 and nobody has quite trusted them since.
- Emails have started landing in Promotions, or somewhere worse.
- The list has not been cleaned since it was imported from the old system.
What we do
The actual deliverables
Things that appear on an invoice, not adjectives.
- Fix deliverability before sending anything at all
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC, plus the Gmail and Yahoo bulk sender requirements that became mandatory in 2024. Sending to a neglected list from an unauthenticated domain damages a reputation that is slow and tedious to repair.
- Clean the list, then defend the decision
- Removing people who have not opened anything in a year improves delivery to the ones who do. It is counter-intuitive and it is the single most reliable improvement available in this channel.
- Segment on behaviour rather than demographics
- What somebody bought, browsed or ignored predicts the next email’s performance far better than the industry box they ticked at signup two years ago.
- Write emails that survive a phone screen
- One idea, one action, legible in the preview pane. Most B2B email is designed on a large monitor and read one-handed on a train.
- Test only the things that move
- Subject line, send time and offer, one at a time, with enough list behind it to mean something. Below a few thousand recipients most email split tests are noise presented as insight.
- Report revenue per recipient
- Rather than open rate. It makes a small engaged list and a large dormant one directly comparable, and it almost always flatters the small one.
- Handle consent and preferences properly
- Frequency options, a genuinely easy unsubscribe, and a lawful basis you could evidence if asked. PECR applies, and the soft opt-in has conditions people routinely misremember in their own favour.
Checklist
The deliverability checklist that decides whether anyone sees it
Every item affects whether your email reaches an inbox at all. The first four became mandatory for bulk senders to Gmail and Yahoo in February 2024, and a surprising number of UK businesses still fail at least one of them.
- 01Is SPF published, and does it list every service that sends on your behalf?
- 02Is DKIM signing enabled on your sending domain?
- 03Is a DMARC record published, at minimum p=none with a reporting address?
- 04Is your unsubscribe a one-click header, not only a link in the footer?
- 05Are you sending from your own domain rather than a free mailbox address?
- 06Is your spam complaint rate below 0.3%?
- 07Have you removed subscribers who have opened nothing in twelve months?
- 08Is the sending domain a subdomain, so one bad campaign cannot damage your main one?
- 09Was a new sending domain warmed gradually rather than used at full volume on day one?
- 10Do you have a lawful basis for every address, and could you evidence it?
- 11Does the email render correctly in Outlook, not only in Gmail?
- 12Is a plain-text alternative included?
- 13Is anyone reading the DMARC reports, or was the record simply published?
- 14Does anyone check whether the sending domain has landed on a blocklist?
How it works
Step by step, with timeframes
Timeframes are typical rather than guaranteed, and they assume we get account access and approvals when we ask.
- 01Week 1–2
Deliverability and list audit
Authentication records, domain reputation, list health and engagement decay. Ends with a list that is smaller and performs measurably better.
- 02Week 2–3
Segmentation and template
Segments defined on behaviour, plus a template tested to render correctly in Outlook, which remains the awkward one and always will.
- 03Week 3–4
Campaign calendar
Planned against your commercial calendar rather than dropped into a fixed weekly slot that nothing in the business is driving.
- 04Ongoing, monthly
Send, measure, refine
Campaigns out, revenue per recipient reported, segments adjusted on what actually happened rather than on what was expected.
What you get
Reporting and ownership
- Authentication configured to current bulk sender requirements, with DMARC reporting switched on.
- A cleaned list, and a written explanation of why it is smaller and performing better.
- Segments defined on behaviour and documented so anyone can use them.
- Reporting on revenue per recipient rather than open rate.
- The list, the templates and the sending account in your own name.
Tools and platforms
- Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor or ActiveCampaign
- Postmaster tools and DMARC reporting
- Litmus or Email on Acid for rendering
- GA4 with tagged campaigns
- Ecommerce or CRM revenue data
Timeline
How long this actually takes
Two to four weeks to fix deliverability and clean the list, then campaigns run monthly. Results arrive quickly compared with almost anything else in marketing — a well-segmented send to a warm list produces revenue the same week. One thing will feel wrong at the start. The first thing we do is make your list smaller, occasionally by a third. Sending to people who have ignored you for a year damages delivery to everybody else, so the headline number falls and the revenue rises. An agency unwilling to do that is protecting a vanity figure at the expense of the channel it is being paid to run.
Pricing model
Monthly retainer
Monthly retainer covering strategy, production and sending. The deliverability and list audit is available as a standalone piece, and for some clients that is genuinely all they need.
Questions
Email Marketing questions
Are open rates still meaningful?
Only as a rough trend, and never as a target. Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images, which registers as an open whether or not anyone read it. Clicks, replies and revenue per recipient survived that change intact, so decisions should rest on those instead.
Why would you make our list smaller?
Because inbox providers judge you on engagement. Continuing to send to people who have ignored you for a year drags down delivery for everybody else on the list, including your customers. Removing them raises the proportion that lands in inboxes, and revenue typically rises as the headline number falls.
How often should we email our list?
As often as you have something worth sending, which for most UK businesses is fortnightly to monthly. Frequency itself is not the problem — irrelevance is. A weekly email people want beats a quarterly one they have forgotten signing up for.
What changed for bulk senders in 2024?
Gmail and Yahoo made SPF, DKIM, DMARC and one-click unsubscribe mandatory for anyone sending in volume, with a spam complaint threshold of 0.3%. Senders who ignored it saw delivery collapse rather than degrade. It is the first thing we check on any inherited account.
Can we email people who gave us a business card?
Under PECR the soft opt-in covers people who gave you details in the course of a sale or negotiation, for similar products, with an unsubscribe on every message. A card collected at an exhibition stand is a weaker basis than people assume. Where it is doubtful, ask for consent.
Which email platform should we use?
For ecommerce, Klaviyo, because its purchase-behaviour segmentation is genuinely ahead. For most service businesses, whichever your team will use — Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor are entirely adequate. The platform is rarely the constraint; the list and the segmentation almost always are.
How does this differ from email automation?
This is broadcast: campaigns you decide to send, to a segment, at a time you choose. Automation is triggered — sequences that fire because somebody did something. Most businesses need both, and automation usually returns more per hour of setup.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026.
Tell us what you are trying to fix
A 20-minute call, no pitch deck. The Nexclick will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.