Email marketing fundamentals

Email is still the highest-ROI marketing channel. Most stores leave 80% of their email revenue on the table. Here's how not to.

The four flows every store needs

1. Welcome series (3 emails over 7 days for new signups) 2. Abandoned cart (3 emails: 1h, 24h, 72h after abandon) 3. Post-purchase (thank you + cross-sell at day 7, review request at day 21) 4. Win-back (single email at day 90 of inactivity, before churn)

These four cover ~70% of email revenue. Get them live before any campaign work.

Marketing → Email → Automations

Each flow ships as a template. Click Customise → adjust copy, timing, product picks → Activate. The trigger conditions are pre-set; you don't build the flow logic.

The defaults are calibrated to typical SellStein stores. Override timing only if you have specific data. A 1-hour abandoned-cart trigger for a B2B store is too fast; that buyer's "cart" is a quote, not an impulse.

Cadence

For ongoing newsletter sends:

• Weekly. Sustainable for active brands with content (blog, new arrivals, drops)
• Bi-weekly. Most stores' sweet spot
• Monthly. Too rare; engagement decays before next send

More than weekly without strong content burns the list. Open rates drop, complaints rise.

List segmentation

Marketing → Email → Audiences. Segment on:

• Engagement. Opened in the last 30 days vs not (always send to engaged first)
• Purchase recency. Bought in the last 60 days vs lapsed
• Lifetime value. Top 20% gets early access; bottom 50% gets the discount
• Geography. Different sends per region (currency, regional sales)
• Source. Signup-via-popup vs signup-via-checkout often have very different intents

Metrics that matter

Open rate is mostly noise post-iOS-15 (Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates it). The metrics that actually predict revenue:

• Click rate: % of recipients who clicked any link (target: 2-3% on broadcasts, 5-10% on automations)
• Conversion rate: % who clicked AND bought within 7 days (1-2% is solid)
• Revenue per email. Total revenue ÷ emails sent (target: $0.30+)
• Unsubscribe rate. Should be <0.5% per send. Above 1% means the list is misaligned

What kills lists

• Buying or scraping emails (instant deliverability damage)
• Adding people without explicit opt-in (CAN-SPAM and GDPR violations)
• Mass-importing a 5-year-old list (engagement is dead, complaint rate spikes)
• Sending the same content to everyone (no segmentation = relevance decay)

Re-permissioning

If you have a list that's been quiet for over a year, run a re-permission campaign first. One email asking "still want to hear from us? click here." Anyone who doesn't click gets removed from the active list. Painful (you'll lose 60-80%) but necessary. Sending to a stale list damages your reputation forever.