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Join for freePosted: Mon 20th Jul 2026
What separates an email that people open, read and click from one that they just delete?
Constant Contact is here to help you find the answer!
In this session, we break down the building blocks of high-performing emails and share a five-step framework for successful email marketing.
Essential tactics small business marketers need to get started
Simple ways to move your email strategy to the next level
The five steps to take to make your email marketing successful
Take your learning one step further with a 30-day Constant Contact free trial, allowing you to test new ideas and follow along from day one as you learn.
Both speakers are employees at Constant Contact, the AI-powered marketing platform that has helped millions of small businesses and nonprofits grow for over 30 years.
Berit Block is the senior director of international marketing at Constant Contact. Based in London, she leads Constant Contact's global marketing.
Her work centres on removing the complexity from marketing for small business owners, startups and sole traders so they can find new customers, communicate effectively and grow without needing to be a marketing specialist themselves.
Berit has extensive experience in other companies such as Meta and WeTransfer. Beyond her corporate career, she is co-founder of Planet Thanet Locations, a Kent-based agency serving the film, photographic and events sector and serves as non-executive director and advisor to Girl Hike CIC.
Sophie Dunlea is the UK marketing lead at Constant Contact. Also based in London, she works closely with communities and partners across the UK who share a passion for helping small businesses get seen, connect with customers and grow through smarter marketing.
With a background in events and large-scale partnerships, Sophie specialises in helping businesses turn simple marketing ideas into meaningful results.
Constant Contact offers email and digital marketing tools that make it easy for your small business or nonprofit to get the attention and revenue it deserves. Constant Contact has joined Lunch and Learn to share its extensive marketing expertise.
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Lightly edited for clarity.
Caitriona: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn as part of Marketing Mondays. My name is Caitriona, and I'll be your host today.
Marketing Mondays is a free five-week webinar series from Constant Contact and Enterprise Nation designed to help small business owners improve their email marketing with practical, easy-to-implement advice.
Whether you're looking to improve open rates, avoid spam folders, grow your subscriber list, or use AI more effectively, each session offers actionable insights to help you market smarter and achieve better results.
Today, we will break down the building blocks of high-performing emails and share a five-step framework for successful email marketing. We are joined by Berit Block, who is senior director of international marketing at Constant Contact, and Sophie Dunlea, who is UK marketing lead at Constant Contact.
Both Berit and Sophie are employees at Constant Contact, the AI-powered marketing platform that has helped millions of small businesses and nonprofits grow for over 30 years.
In this session, Berit and Sophie will cover essential tactics small business marketers need to get started, simple ways to move your email strategy to the next level, and five steps to take to make your email marketing successful.
You can also take your learning one step further with a 30-day Constant Contact free trial, allowing you to test new ideas and follow along as you learn. We'll be sharing a link to the trial in the chat.
Please add any questions to the Q&A as we go. The session is being recorded, and we will share the recording and further resources afterwards. Over to you, Sophie and Berit.
Berit Block: Thanks so much for that intro, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Happy Monday – another summer week coming up.
Before we get into the session and the content of the session, we're just going to do some quick intros so you know a little bit about us and our background. I'm Berit, and I've worked in various tech roles and companies over the past 18 years or so, from very small advertising technology start-ups and scale-ups to very large companies like Meta and WeTransfer.
I joined Constant Contact in January this year and led the marketing outside the US. I'm also a director in a small CIC – a community interest company in the UK – and also run my neglected side hustle alongside my day job.
Over to you, Sophie.
Sophie Dunlea: Thank you so much, Berit. So lovely to meet you all. My name is Sophie, and I lead marketing in the UK for Constant Contact.
I focus particularly on our go-to-market strategy. That includes any partnerships we have with communities and different brands, any events we attend and also run ourselves, and specifically anything to do with our content marketing strategy, too, and how we connect with our current customer base and our potential customers as well.
Really looking forward to this session today. Thank you all for joining.
Berit: You probably are interested in email, given that you've all joined this session, but it's important to highlight that even though the landscape has changed significantly, email marketing is still a really powerful channel. Let's take a look at some of the stats.
53% of small businesses are using email marketing today, primarily to find new customers but also to retain their existing customer base.
Email marketing is actually a very effective channel: research showed that on average, for every pound you spend on email marketing – for example, with a platform – you get 38 pounds back.
There are a few reasons email still works so well today. It's hard to beat: 93% of people check their email daily. It's a behaviour I see in myself too – it's often one of the first things I do in the morning, whether that's my work email or my private Gmail, and I do often see a lot of companies slip into my inbox there.
So many of us, I think, can relate to this.
There are a few other things to keep in mind. Email marketing is still one of the most reliable channels.
Using the right company, for example, like Constant Contact, though there are many other large email providers, is important because working with a trusted company helps you get a really high deliverability rate; otherwise, you might end up in people's junk folders.
As a comparison, only about 2% to 6% of your fans or followers on Facebook actually see your organic posts.
Social media plays a huge part in successful marketing, but one thing to highlight is that you're basically building your business on what I sometimes call rented land: you're at the mercy of the big tech platforms to make sure your account doesn't get suspended, and you may not have control over the use of AI.
Some of that can be taken out of the equation by having email as a secondary or primary channel for your business growth.
By the end of today's session, we're going to go into more detail on how you can use email marketing and make it into a reliable tool for business growth. Sophie is going to outline some of the key steps for success here.
Sophie: Thank you, Berit. As you can see from the stats Berit just shared, email marketing is still very much an effective and important channel that businesses should include in their marketing strategy.
Our mission today is to give you tips for email marketing success that you can take away and implement in your own strategy.
For this, we have five steps for email marketing success: one, planning for success; two, designing for today's audience; three, creating emails that actually drive action; four, measuring the impact of your emails; and five, growing your current list, which will effectively help grow your business.
So, without further ado, we'll start with number one: planning for success.
A couple of tips that are good to take away: number one, using a content calendar.
This is very helpful for organising and scheduling what emails you want to send to your current base, bringing together your email strategy and planning in advance, and there are many different tools available to help you do this.
Number two is all about consistency. Consistency is definitely key when it comes to email marketing, so you should aim to send at least one email per month when you're starting out on your email marketing journey. As your business grows, you can then increase the number of emails you send.
Number three is selecting a single theme or topic to focus on. With your email marketing, and with one email in particular, you don't want a couple of different themes or topics – you want each email to focus on one core theme so that it's easily digestible for your audience.
Number four: you should align these key themes and topics with different monthly themes happening either within your business or within the world, whether that's seasonal events, promotions you're planning to run, or key business milestones. For example, your one-year anniversary or the Black Friday sale – you can align your email marketing strategy around these key themes and topics.
A simple, effective exercise you can do – not now, but maybe after the call – is to take a sheet of paper, list out the different months of the year, and set yourself the goal of having at least one thing to communicate to your customers about each month.
Write down any major holidays coming up that relate to your business or organisation, including events specific to your business, such as your one-year anniversary, and identify other days to communicate to your market.
This could be about upcoming promotions you're hosting, for maybe Christmas time or summertime, and any events you're planning – for example, for that one-year anniversary, maybe you want to do something in person for your customers, aligning your email marketing strategy around that too.
Once you have those key dates written out in a clear plan, you can simply go into your calendar and highlight those dates.
Once you know what you need to communicate about and when an event or promotion is happening, you can start to build out your plan.
It's important to remember that when you're communicating about something with time sensitivity – for example, a promotion ending in three weeks, or an upcoming event – you'll likely want to send more than one email.
You'll want multiple touch points, multiple opportunities for your audience to act on the information you're providing.
This is where we talk about that three-email series for time-sensitive promotions or events. As we all know, people are busy, and it's likely they're receiving hundreds of emails in their inbox each week or month, so to get the most impactful email strategy, you want to give them multiple opportunities to interact and act on the call to action you're promoting.
So, number one, you could announce what you're hosting – for example, if it's an offer, you'd want one email announcing what the offer is and explaining it.
Your second email can be a reminder about the offer, and number three is that last-chance email. You can put each of these emails into your calendar.
Once you have this, it might look something like this: your announcement about three weeks out from when the offer closes, a reminder email about two weeks out, and your last-chance email about two to three days before the offer ends.
As you can see, once you have a plan set out like this, it's likely you'll have multiple emails per month rather than just one, so it's a good way to plan your strategy for specific events or promotions coming up.
Once you've planned out when you want to send emails, you want to look at what you actually want those emails to say. This leads us on to step two: designing that email for today's audience.
As everyone knows, in today's world, people tend to skim over information they receive in their emails. Research actually shows that 61% of people spend between two and eight seconds scanning an email once they've opened it.
Around the two-second mark is quite quick, so you want to make sure the most prominent information is easily digestible and catches the audience's attention.
Your emails, in most cases, as I've mentioned, should be about one thing – they should have one focus, one theme. When you're planning it out, all you really need is a picture, a paragraph, and a call to action: a simple three-step process.
Your goal is to pull people in and give them the information they need to take the next step, and how you design your emails plays a big part in the effectiveness of this.
I'm going to discuss seven elements you should include in every email. Number one is your header – the first thing people see in your inbox.
It's your first impression on your audience, so it's a very important design element. You'll also want to make sure you're sending your email from someone recognisable, whether that's your business name, your company name, or maybe your own name.
Number two is your preheader – a sort of second subject line that further entices people to open the email. Keeping it short and to the point is important if you want to make the most of it.
Number three is very important: it's all about your audience being able to recognise your brand – your logos and your colours – and these should support what you have on your website.
It's important to keep that cohesiveness throughout your website and into your email marketing strategy too, so having your logos and colours is key to making your brand recognisable.
Number four is your image. We would always suggest including an image in your email – it breaks up the amount of words and makes the email easier to digest, since not everyone likes a long, wordy email.
An important thing to remember is that the image should add to the message you're trying to portray, rather than being included just for the sake of it – make sure it's cohesive with your message and what you want your audience to know.
Number five is all about your text, your message body. Your headline should pull people in and entice them to open your email, and the body of the email should give them enough information to lead them to the call to action that comes later.
You want to make sure you're providing value with each email, so it's important that it's clear, concise, and easily digestible – including paragraphs, and sometimes even bullet points, to make it as clear as possible.
Another thing to remember when planning your text is font size: the recommended size is around 21 for your headline and 14 for your text.
Number six is your call to action – what you want your audience or viewers to actually do after reading your email.
This can often be a button that highlights the action you want someone to take. For example, you might see "view new models of bicycles" with a clear red button that's easily clickable and links out to a page, making it easy for the reader to know what this email wants them to do next.
Finally, you have your footer. This contains important information you want your reader to know, such as how they can get in contact with you and other information that connects you with the reader.
With these seven elements, you can create reusable templates that each have these layouts, and once you've created those templates, you can populate each one with the information you want your email to say – so you can use the same email template for various different emails.
So, once you have that layout of how your email's going to look, you want to create emails that actually drive action.
Once we look at this, similar to what we've mentioned, we have something called your email content cluster – these are things you're going to change in your master template each time you create an email.
Your subject line should entice people to open the email, as mentioned, and we suggest this be around four to seven words. If you're ever in doubt about what to say, keeping it simple and clear – a clear instruction of what the email is about – is always a good way to go.
Your preheader then helps move people into the body of your email – this can be around six to eleven words. Again, it's that second chance to hook your reader in and have them open your email and read it in full.
Then you have your image, which should complement the message you're trying to say, so make sure it supports what your message is about and is cohesive with your theme or topic, rather than being put in just for the sake of it.
Your text, then, includes your headline and your message body. Again, it's important that the headline entices people to open the email, and that your message body explains what you want them to know – I'll talk a little more about this in a minute with our three-step persuasive strategy.
And then, finally, that call to action. This should focus on a benefit for the reader – one compelling command you want them to follow. For example, you can use "get yours now", "save your seat" if you're hosting an event, "watch what happens next", or for your promotion, a clickable link that leads out to your website.
When it comes to writing the text and that message body – what you want people to know – you're essentially going to try to answer three questions. Your headline, for example, should answer what you're actually offering your audience or the reader.
Number two is your message body, which should explain why they should care about what you're offering – maybe going into a bit more detail about what you're offering and how it benefits your readers.
Number three is that call-to-action button – again, what they should do next is important to include within your message body.
If you look at the example on the screen, you can see clearly that they have the headline, which is the offer of a chance to get winter savings. It helps the reader by providing them 30% off, and then the next step they should take is to shop now, so it's very clearly displayed what you want your audience to know.
Now I'm just going to hand it back to Berit for the final two steps in this five-step framework for email marketing success.
Berit: Thank you, Sophie – lots of great advice there.
The last two key tips we'd like to share are around measuring your business impact, because, of course, you do email marketing to grow your business, and the final step is about growing your contact list.
On measurement, there are a few different things people typically measure when it comes to email marketing.
The first is open: an open rate is simply the rate at which people have opened the email that's landed in their inbox. So, if your open rate is 50%, it means 50% of people have opened the email that landed in their inbox.
Opens can really help you get an idea of how interested people are, and can help determine, for example, I've already seen some questions in the chat around this – the best time of day to send an email, or even the best weekday.
There are some recent changes to be aware of, though. Sometimes you might see a metric called a proxy open – this is particularly relevant when it comes to Apple's privacy features. These are tracked automatically, so the platform assumes the email has been opened; hence, it's called a proxy open.
One thing I'd say, though, from personal experience as well as having been in marketing for a long time: an open is only a proxy.
This isn't the final thing you're going to optimise towards. Sometimes, even though emails aren't opened, they might still have been seen by your audience.
An example: you sign up to H&M, and you get lots of emails from them telling you about discount codes and special offers.
You might not open any of them, but you've still seen them, so when it comes to the day you think, "I'm going to do some sales shopping today", you'd probably think of H&M anyway.
So that's just something to keep in mind – even if an email hasn't been opened, it can still be successful.
The second thing is around clicks. Clicks are better when it comes to looking at your email marketing data, because clicks show someone's taking an action, which is what you ultimately want – you want people to click on that CTA in your email. They can really help you measure success and identify who's really engaged.
You can also begin to segment your audience on clicks, which I think is actually super interesting. We have a feature in the platform, for example, called click segmentation.
While that might sound a little technical or advanced, maybe showing an example will help bring the feature to life.
Imagine you run a dog-grooming business, and you send an email that promotes your dog-grooming services, where people can book an appointment, but it also features a section on products people can purchase from your business.
You could, for example, segment everyone who clicks on the product link into one audience, and everyone who clicks on the appointment link into another.
So, when you've launched a new product or you have a promotion running for specific items, you can start with the list that clicked on the initial product link – it helps you find a more relevant audience for specific emails, rather than sending everything to everyone.
There are a few other metrics you'd probably start looking at when you check your analytics dashboard: conversion rate, your overall ROI, and list growth.
That's one of the sections I want to jump into a bit further, because growing your email list is actually really important.
I always like to think of it this way: you want to know what you're communicating, but the second most important thing – or maybe even more important – is who you're communicating with, and you really need to grow that list to have more impact with your emails. So let's take a look at a couple of options here.
There are essentially three ways to grow your email list. One could be in person – you might have a shop on the high street, or you're at an event, or you have a stall at a community fair, and you could start in person there with a giveaway or a small contest.
You could also have printed QR codes that people can scan to join your email list and hear more from your business.
Online, you could also use social media or gated content. Gated content is something like the example on the screen: you offer a piece of content that's valuable for your audience – in this case, about buying a first home and what to look out for – and people love this content, so they enter their email address.
You'd typically also have an opt-in field for people to confirm they're willing to hear from your business in the future.
One of the things it says here in bold on the slide: avoid buying email lists. I'd always be quite cautious around it – it's not an absolute no, and you can buy lists that are GDPR compliant, but I think email marketing always works better when people have actively opted in to hear from your business.
They've heard about your business before, and it's not a completely cold audience you're reaching out to.
If you start sending marketing emails to people who haven't given you explicit permission, you also run the risk of legal trouble and ruining your reputation as a business, so I just don't think it's worth it.
There's actually a lot more to list growth, which we're going to go into much more detail on in another webinar on 10 August.
Before we finish up today, I'm just going to quickly summarise some of the key points.
You start with planning for success: using a content calendar to maintain consistency and align your themes with business milestones.
Step two is designing for today's audience: keep the design simple and scannable to allow busy people not to read your whole email. Step three is creating emails that drive action: using the email content clusters – the subject line, preheader, image, text, and CTA – to answer what you're offering, why it matters, and what to do next.
Step four is measuring business impact: looking beyond opens to understand real results, and taking into account the number of clicks, for example. And the last step is about growing your list to grow your business: building your audience authentically through actions such as QR codes, sign-up forms, and social media.
And that's it for today. Sophie, if you want to run us through the upcoming webinars as well.
Sophie: Thank you, Berit. As we mentioned at the start of this session, for Marketing Mondays, we're delighted to be able to provide you with a series of email marketing webinars.
These are just the dates coming up: next Monday, 27 July, we have "How to Avoid Email Jail", where we talk all about deliverability rates for email. On 3 August, we talked about how to use AI without sounding like a machine.
On 10 August, we'll talk about smarter ways to grow your contact list – something we touched on today, but we'll go into more detail then.
And the last one – a really exciting webinar – is on 17 August, all about marketing that matters, and it's actually an opportunity to learn from experts: we'll have Berit, a representative from Canva, and another representative from Chelsea Women's Football Club.
I'm really excited about that session too.
Again, I won't go into these in too much detail, but as we've mentioned, there are loads of different tools available to help you with your email marketing strategy, with your planning and with actually designing those emails.
Constant Contact is one of those we can help offer: it helps with email marketing and helps you grow your business.
So, if you do want to start out with a free trial, we have this QR code you can use to sign up. You don't need any payment details – it's a 30-day free trial, and you can go in and start using the tool and actually implementing what you've learned today. Please feel free to start that trial too.
Next, if anyone has any questions.
Caitriona: Brilliant, thank you so much, Sophie and Berit. We've had loads of really interesting questions in the chat, so let's try to take a few here.
We had a question from Tracy – Sophie or Berit, feel free to jump in on whoever wants to answer this one: how many touches do they say these days need to occur before trust is gained?
Berit: I'd just say I'm not sure it's an exact science or a number. I think it starts with, first of all, whether the people you're reaching out to have heard of you, and having a really strong, recognisable "from" name and a strong subject line that summarises the content – why you're sending an email – are probably more important than the exact number of touches.
But Sophie had already outlined at the start that a three-part series is a very impactful way, rather than just relying on one single email.
Caitriona: Thank you. Then we had a question from Tara: when meeting people, how do I decide between showing them a QR code to connect on LinkedIn versus asking them to sign up for a mailing list?
Sophie, do you want to take this one?
Sophie: Yes, I can take it. I think it depends on what message you're trying to portray, and what next step you want them to take.
If you want them to be part of your email list, I think QR codes are great, especially in person – we use them a lot at events too. They're a quick and easy thing you can do at an event.
Whereas if you wanted to share a QR code for LinkedIn, and you want to communicate with them one-to-one, that's also a great option.
It just depends on how you want to communicate with that audience member, but both are really good options.
Caitriona: Thank you. And we had loads of brilliant questions from Reese in the chat, but I'll take this one here as well: how important are formatting and wording when communicating with potential buyers?
With many audiences benefiting from content written in clear, plain English, what tips can businesses use to make sure their messaging is more accessible and effective?
Sophie: I think it also comes back to what the objective of the email is in this case – is it something where you just want to inform an audience and keep readers engaged, or are you actually trying to drive a certain outcome, like the sale of a product?
You can use things in your email, for example, a table of contents that summarises some of the key things people can find, and link out to that content.
But I'd actually say that many of these questions come down to general best practices. For example, on the platform, there's some built-in AI that lets you A/B test subject lines – you can play around with the best subject line based on the content you've written, things like this.
But I'd say most business owners, when I speak to them, know their audience best, and they know what resonates with people – they know how to speak to someone in a shop when they come in. So sometimes, I think, rather than following set best practices, it's better to test your way into it and see what resonates, keeping an eye on those opens and clicks and the metrics you can see in the platform.
Caitriona: That's great advice, thank you so much. We've come to the end of the session now, but please do check out those links we've shared in the chat. We shared a link to a free trial for Constant Contact, so please click into that and test out some of the things we've learned here today.
We're also running four more webinars that Sophie has outlined in the presentation – I've shared the link for that in the chat as well, so please do check out those events too.
Thanks so much to everyone for joining us on today's webinar. We'll be sharing the recording and further resources in a follow-up email. Thanks again to Sophie and Berit for sharing their expertise and practical insight with us – it's been a really useful session. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their day. Thank you.
Sophie and Berit: Thanks so much, everyone. Thanks, everyone.
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