Email marketing

Email campaigns people actually read and buy from. It is the cheapest channel for repeat sales — the list is already yours and you do not pay for each contact again. But it only works on consent: sending to a purchased list is not a channel, it is a fine.

What I do

• Build the list legally. A subscription form on the site, address confirmation by email, an honest consent text. People who know what they signed up for open the emails instead of reporting them.
• Set up deliverability. SPF, DKIM and DMARC records in your domain, warm-up for a new sending domain, one-click unsubscribe. Without this, emails land in spam regardless of what they say.
• Build sequences. A welcome series for new subscribers, follow-ups after an enquiry, reactivation for people who stopped opening. Set up once, runs by itself.
• Run the regular campaign. Topic plan, copy, layout, sending, and a review of what happened.
• Segment the list. New, active, dormant, previous buyers. One identical email to everyone is the main reason people unsubscribe.
• Connect analytics. Tagged links and goals, so you see enquiries and sales from email — not just opens.

Why emails land in spam

This is the main question in email marketing, and it is almost never about the text.

• The domain is not verified. No SPF or DKIM means the mail provider cannot confirm the email is really from you.
• A sudden start. A domain that sent nothing yesterday and a thousand emails today looks compromised. Volume has to grow gradually.
• An old list. Addresses collected three years ago and never used produce a spike of bounces and complaints. Such a list is cleaned and reactivated, not blasted.
• No visible unsubscribe. When people cannot find the link, they press «spam» — and that damages delivery for everyone on the list, including those waiting for you.

What is specific to Russia

• Advertising emails without prior consent are prohibited by article 18 of the Russian advertising law, and the fine falls on the sender.
• Subscriber data falls under the personal data law (152-FZ), which affects where the list may be stored.
• Mail.ru and Yandex Mail hold a large share of Russian inboxes and have their own delivery rules — an email that passes Gmail can still be filtered there. Test sends go to all of them.
• Russian sending platforms are simpler for payment and closing documents; foreign ones are often better for complex scenarios. We choose before the start, not after.

Whose account, whose list

The sending platform account is registered to you, and the list stays yours. That is a matter of principle: a subscriber base is a company asset, not a contractor’s leverage.

When campaigns are not the answer

• There is no list and no way to collect one. Traffic and subscription come first; otherwise there is nobody to write to.
• The purchase is one-off. If a customer buys once in a lifetime, there are no repeat sales to win — put the budget into ads.
• Nobody has anything to say. Campaigns live on regularity. Three emails a year produce nothing but unsubscribes.

Cost

Depends on whether you need a one-off technical setup, a sequence, or ongoing management. I quote after reviewing the list — any number before that would be invented. The platform is paid directly from your account; that money does not pass through me.