Email marketing
A list you own, and a plan for what it receives.
An email program is a list of people who agreed to hear from you, a short set of messages that go out when something happens, and a calendar for everything else. Most local businesses already hold the list, inside a booking system, and have never sent it anything.
What does an email marketing program for a local business include?
Six things. A list the business owns and built with consent. A sending domain that is properly authenticated. A small set of sequences triggered by events. A calendar of occasional sends. Segmentation, so that people only receive what applies to them. And measurement based on clicks, replies and bookings, not on opens.
The sequences that matter locally are a welcome, a follow up for enquiries that did not book, reactivation of past customers, a review request after completed work, and seasonal reminders. Everything beyond those five is optional.
The rules are part of the program. In the United States the CAN-SPAM Act sets the legal floor, Gmail and Yahoo set the delivery requirements on authentication, unsubscribing and spam complaints, and both of them say in writing not to buy a list.
Written and maintained by the VIS Mountain team. Last reviewed . The sources behind it are listed below.
A program is what gets sent, to whom, and why
The software that sends email is the easy part, and it is not what this service is. The program is the set of decisions the software carries out: who is on the list, what they receive, when, and how you will know whether it worked.
For a local business the honest scope is small. A handful of messages that go out by themselves when something happens, and a modest calendar of sends to everybody or to a segment. A dental practice, a roofer and a med spa need different words and much the same structure.
Read the full breakdown: A program is what gets sent, to whom, and whyHide the full breakdown: A program is what gets sent, to whom, and why
It is a channel for people who already know you: past customers, current customers, and people who enquired and have not decided. Whether email is worth doing at all has its own page on this site. This one assumes you have decided that it is, and covers what the work consists of.
Your part is real. The list lives in your systems, the consent was given to you, and the news worth sending comes from inside the business. We can write, build, schedule and measure. We cannot know that you now open on Saturdays unless somebody tells us.
It is not for a business with no customers yet, because there is nobody to write to. A new business is better served by being found first.
How the program is built, in order
The order matters, because each step depends on the one before it. Writing campaigns for a list nobody has checked is the usual way this goes wrong.
Audit the list and where it came from
Every address is sorted by how it arrived: booked, bought from you, enquired, signed up, or unknown. Unknown is the problem group. Addresses with no traceable consent, and anything imported from a purchased file, are set aside and not mailed.
- Source and date recorded for each group
- Bounced addresses and shared role addresses removed
- Anything bought or scraped excluded for good
Authenticate the sending domain
SPF, DKIM and DMARC records on the domain you send from, so that an inbox provider can confirm the mail is yours. It is a one-off technical job that needs access to your domain settings, and both Gmail and Yahoo ask for it.
Decide the segments
Usually three or four, drawn from what you already hold: customer or enquirer, the service somebody had, how recently they were in, and location if you have more than one. A segment exists so that a person only receives what could apply to them. In a healthcare practice, whether the list may be segmented at all is a question for your compliance lead first.
See the remaining steps: How the program is built, in orderHide the remaining steps: How the program is built, in order
Write the core sequences
Welcome, enquiry follow up, reactivation, review request and seasonal reminder. Short, plain, from a named person at your own domain, with a reply address somebody reads. They are written once, approved by you, and then they run.
Set a calendar you can keep
Occasional sends to the whole list or to a segment: a new service, a change in hours, a seasonal note, the answer to a question your front desk hears every week. Monthly is respectable for most local businesses. It is agreed in advance, so nobody is inventing a newsletter on the last day of the month.
Measure, prune, repeat
Each send is read against clicks, replies, bookings, unsubscribes and complaints. People who have not engaged for a long period are asked once whether they want to stay, then removed, which is what Google's own guidelines suggest. A small list that reads its mail is delivered better than a large one that does not.
All of this can run on the email tool you already pay for. Where nothing is in place, Dash Funnels, the VIS Mountain product for funnels, landing pages and CRM follow-up, is one option, and it works alongside the booking or practice system you already use.
The five sequences that matter locally
Each of these is triggered by something that happened, so it arrives when it is relevant. The automation service is the plumbing that fires them. This is what they say, and to whom.
| Item | Sent when | What it has to do |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome | Somebody joins the list or becomes a customer | Say who you are, what they will receive and how often, and include one useful thing |
| Enquiry follow up | An enquiry has gone quiet without booking | Answer the likely hesitation and make booking one step. Two messages, then stop |
| Reactivation | A past customer is overdue by the normal interval for your category | Remind without pressure, and make coming back easy |
| Review request | A job or a visit is completed | Ask everybody, link straight to the review form, offer nothing in exchange |
| Seasonal reminder | The calendar says the need is about to arrive | Get ahead of the rush: servicing before winter, check-ups before term, gutters before autumn |
Every sequence stops the moment the person replies, books or unsubscribes. A message chasing somebody who has already booked is the commonest way these programs embarrass the sender.
A sequence, not a blast
The difference between a list that is worth something and a list that gets you blocked is visible in one drawing.
The practical point is the cadence and the tag. Somebody who called about a quote and somebody who joined the list at the front desk should not receive the same sequence, and what they are sent next depends on what they did with the last one.
What Gmail asks of anyone who sends to it
Google publishes its requirements for mail sent to personal Gmail accounts. Some apply to every sender, and a stricter set applies to bulk senders, defined by daily volume.
SourceEmail sender guidelines, Google Workspace Admin Help
A local business will rarely send five thousand messages in a day. The complaint ceiling and basic authentication apply to every sender regardless, and Yahoo publishes near identical requirements, including honouring an unsubscribe within two days. We build to the bulk standard from the start, because the work is the same.
The law, the inbox rules, and healthcare
Three sets of rules apply, and they are not the same rules. The law is the CAN-SPAM Act. It requires accurate header information, a subject line that reflects the content, a clear statement that the message is an advertisement, a valid physical postal address, and a clear way to opt out that is honoured within ten business days. The Federal Trade Commission's guide puts the penalty at up to $53,088 for each separate email in violation, and states that hiring another company to send for you does not move the legal responsibility. That includes hiring us.
What the Act does not require is permission. A commercial email can lawfully be sent to somebody who never asked for it, provided the rest is complied with. The inbox providers take a different view: Google's guidelines say to make sure recipients opt in and not to purchase email addresses from other companies, and Yahoo says the same in its own words. They decide whether your mail is delivered, so in practice theirs is the rule that governs.
Read the full breakdown: The law, the inbox rules, and healthcareHide the full breakdown: The law, the inbox rules, and healthcare
A message that only confirms something a person already agreed to, such as a booking confirmation, is treated by the Act as transactional or relationship content and is exempt from most of its provisions. Add promotion and the primary purpose test applies. We keep the two kinds separate, so that unsubscribing from marketing never stops an appointment confirmation.
Healthcare adds a layer that is not ours to interpret. The HIPAA Privacy Rule, as the Department of Health and Human Services describes it, requires written authorisation before protected health information is used for marketing, with limited exceptions. Our working rule is that marketing email carries no patient information at all: no treatment, no condition, no appointment history, and nothing in a subject line that reveals the recipient is a patient. The practice remains responsible for its own compliance, and anything near the line goes to your own counsel first.
What gets a local list filtered or ignored
Almost none of these are technical. They are decisions, usually made in a hurry.
- Mailing a list that has sat untouched for years, so the first send collects the bounces and the complaints together.
- A from address of no-reply, which throws away replies, the most valuable thing a send produces.
- One newsletter to everybody, so the customer whose roof was replaced last month is offered a roof inspection.
- An unsubscribe link that is hidden, broken or asks for a login. People who cannot leave press the spam button instead, which costs more.
- All the content inside one image, which arrives as a blank rectangle wherever images are blocked and says nothing to a screen reader.
- Sending from a free mailbox address when you have your own domain, which means the mail cannot be authenticated as yours.
- Nothing left to say by the third month, because the calendar was never agreed and nobody inside the business was asked for news.
This is why the program starts with the list and the calendar, and the template comes last.
How an email program is measured
Open rate used to be the headline number and it no longer means much. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, as Apple itself describes it, downloads the remote content of a message in the background by default, whether or not the person engages with it, and prevents the sender from seeing whether it was opened. An open recorded from Apple Mail therefore tells you nothing about whether anybody read it.
What is measured instead: clicks, replies, bookings traced to a send, unsubscribes and spam complaints. Links carry campaign tags, so the visit shows up as email in your analytics and does not vanish into direct traffic.
Read the full breakdown: How an email program is measuredHide the full breakdown: How an email program is measured
Each sequence has its own honest measure: enquiries recovered, past customers who came back, reviews received against requests sent, bookings in the weeks after a seasonal reminder. A newsletter that earns neither clicks nor replies across several sends has a content problem, and frequency will not fix it.
What cannot be promised is a result. We control who is mailed, what is said and whether it is set up to be delivered. Whether a past customer needs you this month is not ours to decide.
We do not publish a price for this piece of work on its own, because the right scope depends on what already exists. What is published is the bundle pricing: 2,400, 3,600 or 4,800 dollars a month depending on which channels are running. You can read the full breakdown on the pricing page, and you will get an exact number in writing before anything starts.
How this connects to the rest
Email is the content layer on top of marketing automation. Automation decides when something fires. This work decides what it says, who receives it and whether it was worth sending.
It depends on CRM implementation more than on any email tool. Segments, triggers and reactivation lists all come from a record of who got in touch and what happened next. Without that record, every send goes to everybody.
The review request sequence belongs to review management, which sets the rules on who is asked and how. Email is only the delivery.
When a send points somewhere, it should point at a page built for it. A campaign email that drops people on a home page wastes the click, which is why this work often sits beside landing pages.
Count the addresses you have never mailed.
Most local businesses hold years of past customers in a booking system and have never written to them. Bring the number and how those addresses were collected, and we will tell you what a program built on them would look like.
Straight answers.
Can we email our existing customers without asking again?
Under the CAN-SPAM Act, yes, provided each message meets its requirements, including a working opt out and a postal address. The Act does not require prior consent.
The practical test is stricter. Google and Yahoo expect recipients to have opted in, and a customer who gave an address for a receipt years ago may not see it that way. We start with recent customers and let unsubscribes and complaints decide how far back to go.
Should we buy a list to get started?
No. Google's sender guidelines say not to purchase email addresses from other companies, and Yahoo's say not to purchase mailing lists. These are the companies that decide whether your mail is delivered.
A bought list also damages what you already have. Complaints count against your domain, and the mail that suffers is the mail your business depends on.
How often should we send?
As often as there is something a customer would be glad to have received. For most local businesses that is about monthly, with the triggered sequences running in between whenever they apply.
Unsubscribes and complaints are the feedback. If either climbs after a change in frequency, the list has answered the question.
Do we need new software?
Usually not. Most email tools can do everything described here, and the one you already pay for is normally the place to start.
What decides the result is the list, the segments and the writing. Where there is no tool at all, we will recommend one and say why.
What is wrong with the open rate?
Because Apple Mail, with Mail Privacy Protection on, loads a message in the background whether or not the person reads it. The open is recorded either way.
Clicks, replies and bookings are actions a person took. They are smaller numbers and they are true, which makes them the ones worth steering by.
We are a medical practice. Can we do this at all?
Often yes, within limits that are yours to confirm. The HIPAA Privacy Rule requires written authorisation before patient information is used for marketing, with limited exceptions, and the Department of Health and Human Services publishes guidance on where the lines sit.
Our rule is that no marketing email contains or implies anything about a person's care, and that your own compliance lead approves the list and the content first. We are not lawyers, and the responsibility stays with the practice.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- CAN-SPAM Act compliance guide, FTC (opens in a new tab)
- Email sender guidelines, Google Workspace Admin Help (opens in a new tab)Authentication, one-click unsubscribe and spam rate thresholds for mail sent to Gmail.
- Sender best practices, Yahoo Sender Hub (opens in a new tab)Yahoo's requirements for all senders and for bulk senders.
- Mail Privacy Protection and Privacy, Apple (opens in a new tab)Apple's own description of background loading, which is why opens stopped being reliable.
- HIPAA and marketing, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (opens in a new tab)
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.