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Join for freePosted: Mon 17th Aug 2026
Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to build relationships with customers, but getting results takes more than sending the occasional newsletter.
In this panel discussion, marketing experts from Constant Contact, Canva and Chelsea FC Women share practical advice on creating emails people actually want to receive.
Watch the session to learn how to make better use of segmentation and automation, balance promotional messages with useful content and build stronger relationships with your audience over time.
How to use segmentation and automation to make your emails more relevant
How design, content and personalisation can improve engagement
How to balance promotional emails with useful, engaging content
Practical ways to grow your email list and encourage people to sign up
How to use testing and email data to improve your marketing over time
Don't miss your last chance to sign up for 30-day Constant Contact free trial, so you can put your learnings from Marketing Mondays into action and begin to grow your business straight away.
Berit Block is senior director of international marketing at Constant Contact
Lorna Bladen is small business community manager at Canva
Edward Stephens is marketing lead at Chelsea Football Club Womens
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.
Polly: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn, which is part of our Marketing Mondays series. I'm Polly Dhaliwal, COO at Enterprise Nation, and I'll be your host today.
Marketing Mondays is a free five-week webinar series from Constant Contact and Enterprise Nation. It's 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 with your end users.
Today, we have a very exciting panel of marketing professionals. We have Berit Block, senior director of international marketing at Constant Contact; Lorna Bladen, ex-Enterprise Nation, for those of you who know her, and now small business community manager at Canva; and Edward Stephens, marketing lead at Chelsea Football Club Women.
You can take your learning one step further with a 30-day Constant Contact free trial as well. That will give you the opportunity to test some new ideas and follow along with what you've learned throughout the series and what you pick up today. We'll share a link to the trial in the chat.
I really urge you to share any questions you have throughout the session. We'll make this as conversational as possible. I know we're all virtual, but we really want to hear from you, the people doing your marketing day in and day out.
This session is being recorded, so sit back and relax. We will share this once we wrap up, probably by end of play today, and we'll also share the resources with you.
Let's jump straight in. Before we get into the discussion, I'd love to ask each of our panellists to briefly introduce themselves and tell us a little bit more about their role.
Berit, let's start with you.
Could you briefly introduce yourself, tell us a bit about your role at Constant Contact and share how your work connects with small businesses?
Berit: Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here today.
Just a bit of background about myself. I've spent my career in marketing, mainly in the tech sector. I started working at smaller start-ups and scale-ups, so I've done the very small companies before transferring to very large companies.
I spent six years at Meta, and then I led the B2B marketing at WeTransfer.
One of the things I always look for in my roles, and that's a little bit of a red thread for me, is the community aspect. I love helping build communities through marketing.
At Meta, for example, I led their marketing campaign for small businesses in Europe. That was throughout the pandemic, and we really tried to educate small businesses on how they could keep their doors open, at least virtually, even though their businesses often had to close their physical stores.
At WeTransfer, the mission of the company is really about creating community and helping creators share their work.
That's also why I joined Constant Contact. I joined in January, and I love the idea that there's a really affordable software solution that's also super simple to use.
If you're a marketer, or if you are your own small business owner, a coffee shop owner or a florist, you haven't necessarily studied to be a marketer. I love that this solution helps small business owners get into marketing.
That's one of the key reasons I joined, and I lead the international team. So that's all the markets outside the US, but I'm based in the UK.
That's a quick intro on me.
One other thing, Polly, is this partnership between Constant Contact and Enterprise Nation. The other partnerships we have are actually with Canva, so we have an integration where you can design in Canva and then send in Constant Contact.
And we're also super proud to be one of the official partners for Chelsea Women.
Polly: I love how it's all come together. Thanks so much, Berit. I appreciate that.
Let's turn to Lorna. Lorna, could you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your role at Canva and share a little bit about the work you do with small business owners?
Lorna: Brilliant. Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.
I've been working in the start-up and small business space for well over a decade now, and I'm super passionate about all things start-ups and marketing.
I promise I'm not just saying this for the purpose of this call, but email marketing actually is one of my favourite marketing tactics. So I'm really excited to get stuck into it.
It is my favourite, but I also know that it comes with its challenges as well.
My job at Canva, and what I've been doing for the last 10 or 15 years, is really supporting small businesses when it comes to education, distilling down what can be quite complex and making it practical and fun as well.
I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into this conversation. Thank you so much for having me.
Polly: Amazing. Thank you, Lorna.
You're exactly right. Business owners often find this really challenging, but actually it's such an exciting element of your business.
So how can we change that attitude towards email marketing, hopefully after today?
Edward, finally, could you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your role at Chelsea Football Club Women and share a little bit about your experience in marketing as well?
Edward: Absolutely. Afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for having me. My name's Edward. I'm the marketing lead for Chelsea Football Club Women.
I've been at the club for coming up to five years now, going into my fifth season, which starts very soon and which we're all very excited about.
It's the first season that our women's team are playing all of their home league games at Stamford Bridge, which is very exciting.
I joined Chelsea back in 2021. I did two and a half years leading the performance marketing team for the men's side of the club, and then spent the last two and a half years leading the marketing team for the women's side of the club.
So I've had both sides of the coin in terms of experience.
I love working for the women's team. I think it's a really amazing team to be a part of, both from the club point of view and with our amazing partners as well.
It's growing incredibly quickly, which is really exciting, and I guess that's where my role comes into it.
My job ultimately is to try to grow the fanbase of Chelsea FC Women, whether that's across the people coming to the stadiums on matchday, whether that's merchandise or all the other consumer products that we sell.
It's a really interesting space to be in within women's football, particularly when you work for such a massive brand like Chelsea. To be in a part of the business that ultimately is still a little bit in its start-up phase, despite having a very well-known badge on our chest, is a really interesting space to be in.
I'm really excited to dive into how we view email marketing within that.
Polly: Amazing. Thanks so much, Edward. We've got a few football fans in the chat. I'm sure they're all Chelsea fans. Let's not start that debate.
Let's get straight into the marketing conversation. Berit, I'd like to begin with the foundations of marketing.
What would you say separates the organisations that get real results from email versus those who just send a weekly newsletter, for example?
Berit: I think it's actually similar across marketing overall and then email.
I always think of everything that we do as: is this going to provide value to our audience?
I love that as a framing because you don't just want to push out your product or your message. You want to ask yourself whether this is valuable for the people who are going to receive it.
When it comes to email, you can think of it as more of a channel to build relationships rather than a broadcast.
If it's just one to many, it's probably not going to be as effective as if you think about the audience, what they're interested in and how you can help them.
There are three specific things that I would say usually separate those who really get value from email marketing versus the ones who are just sending a quarterly update.
The first one is segmentation.
That can be super simple. Segmentation is such a marketing term, but what it really means is that you could, for example, look at who's clicked on the link in my email to buy a T-shirt versus a pair of shoes.
Then, in your next email, you can automatically start creating that list for people who might be interested in T-shirts, and automatically you're going to see better results.
The second thing I already touched on. It's about leading with what's in it for the reader, not just what your business wants to say.
The third thing is automation. Again, same as segmentation, this doesn't need to be difficult.
Automation could literally be as simple as starting with the customer's birthday. Do you know the customer's birthday? Maybe you could automate a really easy email that sends them a happy birthday message with perhaps a 20% off code that they can use for their next haircut or their next visit into your store.
Some of those things can be easily set up.
The nice thing is that, as a small business owner, sometimes things take over, and email marketing and marketing aren't the highest priority on your list.
So if you set them up in advance, you can just let them run in the background, and you will communicate with your customers even though you're not hands-on, or you might want to take a week off in summer.
Polly: Thanks so much, Berit.
I think that personalisation is really key. I personally like it when the brand I'm shopping with knows a little bit more about me, and it makes their email stand out just a little bit more than the others.
That leads me on to design. I love a beautiful newsletter when I read through it. So, Lorna, I'm coming to you on this one.
In terms of the quality and presentation of the emails being sent, what is a design fix that someone could make to their next email today? What are you seeing trending at the moment?
Lorna: Absolutely. There's a fine line between having design that excites, is on brand and looks compelling, and overdesigning. That balance is really important.
What I mean by that is, once you have designed your email template, there are a couple of things that you need to check.
One is your mobile optimisation, and you can look at your data for this. How many of your readers are looking at your emails on mobile?
You could be really surprised. It might heavily skew to mobile.
What I mean by that is, please don't overstuff your email with lots of singing, dancing GIFs and emojis because that might impact readability, and it might also impact delivery.
Now, this is not me saying please do not design your email. Absolutely not. But it's really important that your email lands.
Another thing is making sure that brand cohesion is there as well.
When someone looks at your email, can they immediately say: "Oh yes, I recognise this email. This is a Canva email", because of the brand look and feel and the colour palette?
I always believe that you should take your customers on a journey. If someone signs up for your newsletter on your social media, what does that newsletter sign-up look like? Is there cohesion there?
When someone receives your email, is there cohesion with what someone clicks on to then go through to your website? So you're taking people on a really neat and tidy journey.
In terms of a 10-minute fix, I think what a lot of people don't do, which I always urge, is share it with someone.
Share it with someone to make that email work harder. Just make sure that it's working in the way you want it to work.
Sometimes we'll see that you'll get a newsletter, and there'll be so many CTAs that it can be a little bit overwhelming for the reader. It will create decision paralysis, where there are so many calls to action that actually people then won't do anything.
So my top tip is, before you send your next email, run it past someone. Just get them to look over it for a couple of minutes and give you that sanity check.
When you're in the business, you can have tunnel vision around what a good email looks like versus what doesn't. So that's a little takeaway there.
Polly: Thanks so much, Lorna. One thing I would say is that you'll get some incredible bits of advice on today's session, but we all know this is 1% of what you do every single day.
So even if you take one piece of advice today and take action while you're on the call, that's absolutely fine.
Don't put too much pressure on yourself to try and get a whole email automation set up today. Enterprise Nation has been doing it for 10 years, and we still haven't got it completely right now. So don't stress at all.
I'm going to go over to Edward now.
Edward, you are looking at touch points and fan journeys every single day. It's such an important part of your end user's relationship with your brand.
How does the club think about the customer or fan journey, from someone's first touch point to a loyal fan? And where does email fit into that journey strategically?
Edward: I think it's really interesting coming at it from the lens of women's football.
One of the biggest things that I've experienced and learned in my five years at the club, also being a massive football fan, is that you go into building your fan journeys thinking there's a lot of assumed knowledge within your customer base or fanbase.
Particularly with women's football, we find that a lot of people entering the space haven't necessarily been football fans in the past.
They've either been inspired by the England national team, who have done so well recently, or by all of these inspiring female athletes. That's their gateway into coming to see Chelsea or other teams play, rather than that heritage of football fandom.
When I started, I thought of things through the lens of a football fan, where you assume that everyone has the same level of knowledge as you do.
Actually, you need to think about what you need to introduce your customers or fans to that you might not necessarily be thinking about.
Particularly from those earlier touch points, I think about things like the pre-match emails we send ahead of every game, the day before or two days before a game.
A lot of the principles that Berit touched on earlier come into play here.
If this is your first time coming to a game, and for a high proportion of people it is, do they know where the stadium is?
Do they know where they can buy their food and drink? Do they know what time they can arrive at the stadium from?
You have to really think about who your audience is, what information you're trying to tell them, and whether that matches the expectations they probably have rather than your own assumed knowledge. That's where I've found the challenge.
Once you've got those principles in place, and how that varies between someone who is brand new to your world versus someone who is a little bit more mature down the line, you start to tailor your messaging.
That's where, as I said, a lot of the principles that Berit touched on can come into play.
How do you start to automate a lot of those things to make your life easier across those fan journeys? Again, you're probably going to have to think about that in a little bit more detail once you've got those key principles in place.
Polly: Amazing. Thanks so much, Edward.
We had someone ask a question around how often emails should be sent out, and I think you answered it there.
I suppose it's about the information you're sending. During off-season periods, you probably wouldn't be emailing your end user base that much. But during matchdays and pre-matchdays, you'd be contacting them.
If you're a jewellery brand and you've got a particular sale coming up, then you probably should be in a bit more contact with your end users compared to a normal day of the week, for example.
As Lorna said, just think about how often you think your audience wants to hear from you. Always make sure that you're sending a message of value and giving them an action in that email.
If there's no action, then probably refrain from sending the email because it can get a bit overwhelming if there's nothing you're asking them to do.
I'm going to turn to Berit. There are so many channels: social media, online media, and we're all competing for the attention of our end user.
What makes email marketing particularly valuable for small businesses today?
Berit: I've been a marketer for many years and usually activate across all the channels.
But I would offer a little bit of caution. When you're building a new business or you're still a smaller business, if you only rely on one channel, which is often social media because it's the channel people go to first, there can be a risk.
I think social is a super important channel as you build up awareness and want to get reach.
The one bit of caution I'd say is that I sometimes refer to it as rented land.
You don't own that audience, and there is a bit of a risk with algorithms, AI and what they're going to show to which people. Sadly, sometimes accounts have issues. They get deactivated. Things happen.
So I would always advise businesses also to invest in building a list. A list is really just your audience, but you really want their details.
If someone comes into your shop every other day, and you might know their first name, you still don't really have a way to communicate with them.
So if you start building your list, that is something you own. That is a really effective way to get that attention.
Also, people have to opt in to email and to lists. They've already given you a signal that they are interested in your business or interested in what you have to say.
That's important when you talk about competing for attention.
The other thing I'd say is that email is one of those channels that brings a very direct return on investment.
In the data that we have analysed over the past few years, it shows that it's about £36 for every £1 spent that people can see as a return from email marketing. That is across international markets where we've analysed that.
Even though it's maybe not the trendiest channel anymore, I would still say it's really the backbone of a lot of marketing that businesses run.
Polly: I couldn't agree more. There are definitely some questions coming in about email automation, which we'll cover in a second.
So just a reminder to everyone who's listening, we're coming up to the Q&A in a few minutes. Please drop your questions into the Q&A section.
Lorna, I would love to turn to you in terms of what type of email content tends to work best for building a genuine relationship with an audience, rather than shouting about your products or services all the time.
Lorna: Totally. I could talk about this for a long time. Maybe I'll ask everyone a question on the line.
What is that one newsletter that you signed up to that you just love to read, that lands maybe at a specific time in the week?
I have an example of one, and it lands typically every Monday morning. It's by a small business based in the UK called Raia.
They do handwash and hand cream. Their newsletters aren't necessarily about, "Here's our latest product range." It's very intentional. It thinks: what do my audience want and need from us as a brand?
Every Monday, sometimes they share a poem or maybe a beautiful image with a quote. It really sets the scene for the week. So that's one example.
You might have a product or service within this kind of industry or vertical, but really, what does my audience want from me?
There's another company where I love their emails, called Mustard Made, and they do fun lockers and stationery.
They do lots of emails that are more educational for parents, for example around back to school, sharing top tips on keeping your children's bedroom tidy.
What I'm gathering here is: show the person or the pain point behind the brand, not just the offer.
It could be that you share some behind-the-scenes content or a genuine point of view or opinion. Maybe you've got some really interesting stories.
Really personalise the email to make it feel like a person is speaking to a person, rather than a brand speaking to a person.
Hopefully, we all have those newsletters that we love. I see Jessica has shared one in the chat, which I've not read, David Richard's Sunday Signal.
And that's another point. When people read good newsletters, they will advocate for them in the way that Jessica has just done, which is a much cheaper way of acquiring newsletter subscribers than relying on paid methods, for example.
Polly: Amazing. Thanks so much, Lorna. I suppose that leads us nicely to Edward.
How do you balance promotional emails with content that the audience actually wants to receive and engage with?
Obviously, at the end of the day, small businesses are trying to promote a product or service, but how do you balance promotional versus valuable content for the audience?
Edward: It reflects a lot of what Lorna has just touched on.
I'm in a fortunate position where, obviously, I've got access to a lot of fun content, being a football club. But that is what our audiences value.
If we want to grow a fan culture, we need to make sure that we are providing our audiences, our fans and our customers with that sense of community.
The way to do that is to make them feel like they are on a journey with you.
Whether that is behind-the-scenes content of what the players are getting up to, training sessions, or off-the-pitch storytelling of who we are as a brand, our amazing partnerships with Constant Contact and our other partners, they want to feel like they are a part of the club.
I think that's why it's so important that you are able to do that element of storytelling.
Every business will have its own stories to tell and its own nuances that it can touch on to really bring it to life.
Then when your promotional emails land, you'll likely see that the conversion rates are higher because people feel more engaged.
They feel like they are buying into something that's not just the product you are pushing within the email. They understand the culture and the brand behind it, which makes them feel a part of it.
I think that's where you can really maximise your results. But you're right, it is important, and you have to hold your nerve a lot of the time.
As we touched on earlier, email is one of the ways you can show direct revenue attributable to your activity.
But you can probably track over a longer period of time that the more storytelling you do, the better your conversion activity will be, and your return on investment over time will be higher.
So you've just got to be patient with it and know that the more you put the fan or the customer first, the longer-term payoff will be.
Polly: Amazing. Thanks so much, Edward. I'm aware it's 12.24. We've literally got six minutes, so I want top tips from the panel as well.
But we've got three questions, so I'm going to turn back to our panel to shout out an answer if you can.
The first one is from Lewis. What do you find is a sweet spot for setting up email campaigns for people starting to get into automation?
For example, a new subscriber campaign might trigger one email automation versus a birthday offer might trigger another. Anyone want to take that question?
Berit: I would just say, I think the question is maybe what would you start with if you haven't done any automation?
Polly: I think so.
Berit: The first thing I'd always say is just a welcome series.
One thing is just confirming when they sign up to your newsletter or to your list, that you acknowledge they're on it and share what they asked for.
Often, there was maybe a piece of content or something. So that's part one. Part two leads them into something else that they might be interested in.
That's probably just a simple two-step welcome series, which is what I would always start with.
Then maybe just make sure that there are some exclusions set. So if you start adding more, you sequence them, so people don't get too much communication from you on the same day or within 24 hours, 48 hours and so on.
Lorna: I totally echo that answer.
Just a thought about something that you could potentially experiment with, Lewis, within that welcome series, is asking your audience a question as well, to get them to engage back with the email.
I'm not a technical expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong here, but the more you can get the user to engage back with you, I do feel that supports your deliverability and wider engagement.
Someone asked earlier, "How often should I send my newsletters?" Maybe that's something that you could put in your onboarding emails.
For example: "Thank you so much for joining my newsletter. Fill out this very quick poll. Do you want to hear from me weekly or fortnightly?" That's just a way you can spark that conversation.
Polly: Amazing. Thank you, Lorna. Thanks, Berit.
Let's move on to Debbie. She said: "How do I grow my email list? When people sign up for my workshops on Eventbrite, they very often don't want to sign up to my newsletter as well."
Any advice for Debbie there?
Lorna: I'm happy to jump in with a suggestion.
I hope you don't mind me saying, but I was the CMO of Enterprise Nation for a long time, and we certainly had this problem. So firstly, Debbie, you're absolutely not alone with this.
My top tip for you would be: what is the incentive? Maybe look at the copy that you're putting on your sign-up form, which says, "Opt in here to hear from..." or "Opt in to sign up to my newsletter."
That alone might not be enough. What you might want to do is: "Sign up or opt in today to get my newsletter and receive 50% off my first workshop", or something like that.
It's that carrot that's going to really drive that conversion rate. I saw Edward was nodding.
Edward: I was pretty much going to echo what you just said.
For me, it's always about what the value exchange is for them providing their data.
Again, we're fortunate where I can say things like exclusive content because that's what people find valuable.
You need to find what people value and why they would give over their data to you.
A bit like Lorna said, if you're just pitching it as, "It would be nice if you signed up", the engagement will likely be lower.
But if you really think about how you can communicate the value of them signing up to your newsletter and what they can get in exchange for that, hopefully that will have an impact.
Polly: Amazing. Thank you, Edward.
There's one question here as well that I would love to take your tips on, though I don't know how you're going to give a short answer.
I've noticed that the scrolling and consumption of media content, newsletters or publications has shifted to needing a direct answer or simply being scrolled over.
I've not been able to communicate something without throwing 90% of value away and giving a list of outcomes or resources instead.
How can you help with that, or any ideas?
Berit: One view is what Lorna touched on earlier. We do live in a world now where a lot of people consume content on their mobile devices.
One of the things we always say is to make your content scrollable.
Imagine someone only has those few seconds. On email, typically, it's actually longer than on social, but it really needs to pop.
So if you have a lot to communicate and want to get a lot into your email, try not to have too many CTAs.
Really narrow it down so people don't have to make a lot of decisions in that short amount of time.
Also, maybe design the content in a way where it really pops out.
Maybe every month when you send that newsletter, there are the same four sections that people get used to.
They know they get the pick of the month at the top, and the second section is a customer spotlight.
Make it easier for people to quickly see where they get the value and what they want.
I think that kind of answers this a little bit.
Polly: Amazing. Thanks so much, Berit.
Let's wrap up then. We're bang on 12.30, but I would love for our panel to close with one thing they think small businesses should be paying more attention to in their marketing over the next 12 months.
Let's keep this super snappy. Lorna, I'll turn to you first.
Lorna: Goodness. I wasn't prepared for that one.
Someone's got to mention AI. I don't think it's come up on this call, which is actually surprising. So I'm going to be the one that does it.
In this world of AI, there can be a lot of slop, let's say. I'm not saying for one second don't use AI. I use it every day in my practice.
But just make sure that, within your content and your email design, it's still authentically you and it reads like a human. It reads from your voice.
Polly: Amazing. Thanks, Lorna. Berit, same question to you.
Berit: I was going to go for AI, but I think the other thing is just about getting started.
Sometimes you can sit on a really good idea.
There are these great stats. It's not just about starting a business, but also how you grow it. It will never bring you forward if you just keep that great idea to yourself because you might be afraid it doesn't land or you think it might not be the right thing.
So I would just encourage everyone to get started and try things out.
Especially with email marketing, you'll see in the data pretty quickly if something resonates or not.
Polly: 100%. Thanks so much, Berit. Just get started. Great advice. Edward, let's wrap up with you.
Edward: I think, just to touch on Berit's last sentence, I was going to say A/B testing.
Honestly, I think one of the beauties of email marketing is the amount of data available to you from the activity. So A/B test as much as you can.
It's very difficult to know from the off what works, what doesn't work or what continues to work.
So just continually test, continually use the data and navigate your way through from there.
Polly: Amazing. Thanks, Edward. That brings us to the end of today's session.
One of my grumps with Lunch and Learn is that it's never long enough. We always run over, especially when I'm hosting, so apologies.
Thank you so much to everyone who joined for today's Marketing Mondays webinar.
We'll share the recording and further resources in a follow-up email this afternoon, so please look out for those.
A huge thank you to Berit, Lorna and Edward for sharing your expertise, experiences and practical advice with us. It's been a brilliant conversation.
If you do have direct questions for anyone on the panel, they have shared their speaker links in the chat, so please do reach out.
We also shared the free trial activation with Constant Contact in the chat as well, so take a look at that.
Thank you, and see you again tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your day, everyone.
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