Email can support both direct sales and longer nurture journeys, but its value depends on the audience, offer, data quality, sales cycle, and how results are measured.
Programmes that underperform often have problems in one of three areas.
Mistake 1: Sending to the entire list every time
Segmentation is the single biggest lever in email marketing. A customer who bought once two years ago should not receive the same email as a customer who bought last week.
Segment by: recency of purchase, product category interest, stage in the funnel, and engagement level.
Mistake 2: Optimising for opens, not revenue
Open rate is a vanity metric. A 40% open rate with 0.1% click-to-purchase is worse than a 15% open rate with 2% click-to-purchase.
Optimise your email marketing for revenue per email sent.
Mistake 3: No automated sequences
The highest-value emails are automated: welcome sequences, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back. These are set up once and run indefinitely.
A good welcome sequence alone typically generates 20–30% of total email revenue.
What works in 2026
Plain-text emails from a named person outperform designed newsletters for most B2B use cases. Personalisation beyond first name — product recommendations, location, purchase history — dramatically improves conversion. And mobile optimisation is non-negotiable: over 70% of email is read on mobile.