Email marketing for small businesses is one of the most effective strategies to grow your customer base and boost sales in 2025.
It’s an ideal channel for small businesses to talk to customers, promote products, and engage with people who love their brand.
To ensure you’re getting the most out of it, we’ve put this guide together to showcase small business email marketing, the best marketing tools to use, and tips so your company can grow as much as possible.
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The main benefit of email marketing is that it’s highly effective, with an average ROI of $36, but it works beyond making sales too. With email marketing, you can also collect customer feedback, keep your audience engaged even when they aren’t buying, send hyper-personalized messages to them… and the list goes on.
Enhanced customer loyalty and retention
Building customer loyalty and retention is key to growing your small business. Constantly looking for new people to buy for you requires a lot of effort and can become very expensive, so focusing on increasing the lifetime value of your current customers simply makes sense.
With email marketing, you can stay in contact with your customers by reaching out with rewards, information about new products, and special offers. You can send valuable email content that:
Showcases your brand values
Develops connections with your customers
Gathers customer feedback and reviews
Grows your brand recognition
The more touch points you have with your customers, the more prominent you’ll be in their mind. Try using marketing automation tools to assist you in sending emails at the appropriate time.
Cost-effective marketing
Email marketing costs less than traditional advertising, and you can specify exactly who receives each message. Each email is therefore relevant to the people receiving it, which can increase your engagement rates and email-generated revenue.
And because email marketing can be so cost effective with a strong ROI, even small businesses with a small budget can use it.
When choosing a platform, look for email marketing solutions for small businesses that fit your needs, expertise level, and budget. If you aren’t sure which platform to choose from all of the options, use our quick tool to compare email provider prices based on how many contacts your email list has.
Quick email provider pricing comparison
Quickly and easily compare the top email marketing providers so you can find the best platform for your ecommerce store needs.
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Klaviyo
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You can compare Omnisend and 2 more providers at once.
One of the best features of email marketing is the ability to send personalized messages.
Instead of sending the same message to every subscriber and hoping it appeals to some of them, you can create email messages personalized to different segments. For example, if you’re running an in-person promotion you can email people in the local area. If someone has recently purchased an item, you can email them follow-up details or related items they’d be interested in.
Their increased relevance makes these emails much more appealing to the recipient, resulting in higher engagement rates than generic messages.
Customers who purchased a similar or complementary product
Customers who abandon their shopping cart
Customers in a certain location
Increased brand awareness
While hard to measure at times, brand awareness is a very important aspect for your business’ success. Essentially it shows how well your brand is recognized by its name, logo, or even just its overall image.
Regular communication puts your brand’s name into your audience’s minds, helps them learn more about you, and a good email campaign can help create that brand awareness. You can increase your brand awareness with email marketing by sending:
Personalized customer messages
Helpful information about your products
Marketing promotions
Customer stories
Silver Street Jewellers started using Omnisend’s email marketing solutions and saw almost 25% of people clicked on the links.These initial email campaigns generated great results — a nearly 25% click-through rate and a $0.07 revenue-per-email (RPE).
But combining email and SMS campaigns as well as setting up a few marketing automation workflows was when the brand had a true breakthrough. Silver Street Jewellers achieved a 100% month-over-month growth and $100K generated in the first few months of selling, and $60K of that revenue came solely from email marketing.
Email marketing platforms track a variety of metrics, allowing you to see and analyze the performance of your emails. You can track:
How many people open your messages
How many people click on links
How many conversions you get
Ecommerce-focused email marketing platforms, like Omnisend, offer even more insight about the performance of your campaigns, such as revenue generated.
This data helps you understand your customers better and make data driven decisions to improve your email campaigns. For example, you can analyze which subject lines or sending times resulted in the highest open rates, or what CTA generated the most clicks. You can use these insights to test new variables and continuously optimize your campaigns.
Best email marketing services for small businesses
There are many email marketing services available and it’s essential to understand what each tool offers. You’ll want to pick the right one that fits your business needs and budget. Here are some of the best email marketing services for small businesses, with their main features and prices:
Omnisend is an all-in-one email marketing tool made specifically for online stores. You can create personalized and automatic campaigns that attract customers and increase sales through its automation tools.
G2 review:“Omnisend does everything I need for my campaigns, and I really think it’s great for any small business that wants to grow online.”
Key features
Automatic workflows
Unlimited customer segments
Customizable email templates
Global SMS marketing
Push notifications
Detailed reports
Pricing: Free plan for up to 500 contacts, paid plans start at $16/month
Ready to grow your small business with email marketing automation?
MailerLite is an easy-to-use email marketing tool that stands out because of its user-friendly drag-and-drop email builder, which is appreciated by those with less experience in the field. It’s simple to use and inexpensive, which makes it popular with companies that don’t want to spend a lot.
Key features
Drag-and-drop email builder
Automatic workflows
Landing pages
Popups
Surveys
Pricing: Free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers, paid plans start at $10/month
Sender is a powerful email marketing tool made just for small and fledgling businesses. It has features to help segment customers, along with automation tools and landing page creation.
Key features
Free templates
Integrates with popular platforms like WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, and more
A/B testing
Custom HTML editor
Pricing: Free plan for up to 2,500 contacts, paid plans start at $10/month
Mailchimp is a well-known email marketing tool designed to help small businesses grow and engage with their customers. It’s easy to use and allows you to scale past newsletters, as it includes tools for social media and SMS marketing too.
Key features
Email templates
Automatic workflows
Customer segmentation
Landing pages
Integrates with Wix, Shopify, WooCommerce, and other ecommerce platforms
Pricing: Free plan for up to 2,000 contacts, paid plans start at $13/month
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing solution with AI-powered content creation feature to help you draft emails faster and with ease. It pairs email marketing with sales tools like cross-selling and email drips to help your business grow.
Key features
Automated workflows
Omnichannel marketing
Customer relationship management
Customer segmentation
Over 900 integrations with apps ecommerce data analytics, payment processing, and more
Pricing: Paid plans start at $9/month
How to start email marketing for small businesses
Starting email marketing might seem daunting at first, but you’ll soon realize that the right platforms make it simple. You can follow these proven tips and strategies from Omnisend to help you get started:
If you’re not sure where to start, we’re here to give you more confidence with this step-by-step guide:
Connect your store to an email marketing platform
Linking a marketing tool to your ecommerce platform is a vital first step. This connection lets you sync customer info, track what people buy, and send automated emails based on customer events (order confirmations, abandoned cart notifications, welcome emails, and etc.), making sure each buyer gets a personal experience.
Enable your first signup form
Image viaOmnisend
Having forms around your website is crucial. These forms allow people to sign up to hear from you, building your email list and turning visitors into customers. Try adding an email signup form to your:
Homepage
Product pages
Checkout pages
Omnisend has a library of signup forms for various occasions and holidays. Easily add multi-step popups, teaser forms, and other types of signup form to your store.
Enable welcome and abandoned cart automation
Automated emails, like welcome messages and reminders about products left in shopping carts, do the work for you and are proven to drive sales. Welcome emails help start a good relationship with new subscribers, while cart reminders can get back lost sales by reminding shoppers about things they almost bought.
Once you’ve set up your email marketing tool, connected your store, and activated the essential automated emails, you can start planning and sending email marketing campaigns. Follow these steps to get your first email out:
Define a campaign goal: What you want to achieve with your email campaign
Create audience segments: Not all emails are relevant to every customers, so segment your audience into smaller groups for more personalized communication
Develop your content: Create content that is engaging and relevant to your audience
Test and review: Test your emails before sending and double check they are free of errors
Analyze the results: Review the data from your campaign against the goals you defined at the start of the campaign
Optimize your campaigns: Optimize and update your emails based on insights from past campaigns’ results
Best practices for small business email marketing
You want to send the best emails possible and grow your business, we get it. Here are some best practices that get results:
Send emails consistently
Sending emails on a regular schedule is crucial for keeping your audience interested and building trust. Whether it’s weekly newsletters, monthly deals, or seasonal campaigns, regular communication helps remind people about your brand and keeps subscribers interested in what you offer.
Maintain a clean email list
Having an up-to-date email list is essential for ensuring your emails get delivered — and to the right people. You should:
Regularly remove email addresses that don’t work or aren’t active
Make it easy for people to unsubscribe if they don’t want your emails anymore
Try to clean your email list regularly. This will help improve deliverability, sender reputation, and engagement rates so your emails can be more successful.
Segment your email list
Image viaOmnisend
Dividing your email list into segments is key to creating a personalized campaign. You can create segments based on:
Demographics
Interests
Purchase history
Shopping behavior, like ‘window shopper’ or ‘frequent buyer’
This personal approach can improve engagement and conversion rates, as subscribers only receive messages that are relevant to them.
Personalize your email content
Personalized emails that use subscriber data, like names and behavior, can improve the customer experience and increase engagement. Personalization makes your messages feel more relevant and tailored to each person, building a stronger connection with your brand.
Avoid spammy practices
Keeping a good sender reputation and making sure your emails get delivered is essential for successful email campaigns. To do this, it’s important to avoid things that could make your emails look like spam. This includes using misleading subject lines, buying email lists, or sending messages to people who haven’t opted in.
To help you avoid the spam folder and reliably land in the inbox, we’ve put together a list of helpful resources:
Engaging subject lines is a big part of why people open your emails and interact with the content. These short but powerful lines are the first hook, making people curious and encouraging them to read more of your message. Before writing your own, check out some examples of successful email subject lines for inspiration. If you get stuck, don’t worry — you can try Omnisend’s free subject line generator.
Stay updated with email marketing trends
In the fast-changing world of email marketing, keeping up with the latest trends and new ideas is crucial for staying competitive and making sure your campaigns work well. By staying up to date with marketing strategies and technologies, you can improve your engagement with audiences, increase interaction, and achieve your goals.
Wrap up
Email marketing continues to be a highly effective tool for small businesses in 2025.It allows businesses to better connect with their customers, increase trust, and make more sales by using techniques like segmentation, personalization, and automation.
Using these tips and picking an email marketing service for a small business that fits your needs will make sure that your email efforts are successful. Be consistent, clean up your email list, and always try to give your audience something of value.
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Richard is a Content Marketing Manager at Omnisend. An avid writer, he's said to have been born holding a pencil. Fascinated by all things handmade, if he's not reading or writing he can often be found practicing leathercraft.
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