Email marketing is cheap and not taking advantage of it to connect with customers can be extremely expensive for brands. “Over a year, automations you set up one time can produce $100,000 in revenue. You have lost that if you don’t have those set up,” warns Izzy Sapien, founder and CEO of Blk Bot, a digital customer acquisition and relationship management agency that counts TMF, Gressa Skin and Citrine Beauty among its clients. Certainly, money is a big reason for brands to be email proficient, but no customer wants to be reduced to a dollar sign. “If you’re just creating emails to make money, there’s no reason to do them,” says Sapien. “You’re wasting your time and your consumers’ trust. They signed up for your email list because they wanted to shop more effectively, not to be sent crap.” She spoke with Beauty Independent about worthwhile email marketing practices, not bombarding inboxes, avoiding illegal actions and the expected results of email campaigns.

Sapien recommends MailChimp for executing email basics. “For small business owners, I have found MailChimp to be the easiest,” she says. “The hope is that, even if you’re working with an outside agency, one day you’re going to take over, and MailChimp allows you to produce emails of similar value in-house.” For an upgrade from MailChimp, Sapien singles out Drip as a powerful platform. She says it has native integration with Shopify, and supplies “powerful customer journey insights,” “advanced workflows based on the individual customer,” and “content snippet customizations.” Sapien emphasizes, “Advanced segmentation is the key to high returns. Customer choices in the past are the key to lifetime value and a good digital dialogue.” Before any email is directed to customers, she instructs brands to institute Google Analytics to measure the impact of email marketing campaigns. The first contacts with an email recipient are generally through registration on a brand’s website, social media advertising soliciting email addresses or digital coupons sent from friends requesting emails for participation.

Sapien is adamant brands be explicit when capturing email addresses lest they run afoul of the Federal Trade Commission, which governs commercial email communications that are forbidden from being deceptive. She says it’s not uncommon to run into trouble with the FTC for suspicious email habits and estimates offending brands can be dinged with penalties amounting to $5,000 per email. MailChimp also freezes accounts if complaints mount and has a threshold of stricter than one complaint per 1,000 people triggering freezes. To avoid these consequences, Sapien suggests brands stick to digital email sign-ups at trade shows to formalize records rather than rely on paper sign-ups. “If you are doing a co-branding effort, make sure people have to digitally opt into the list, and they’re not just putting their email somewhere,” she continues. “Even on social, if you are doing a giveaway, you can’t just tell everyone to DM you their email address to enter the giveaway.”

After an email address is captured, Sapien advises a brand personalize its reply email to a customer by using the customer’s name. The reply should convey the brand’s unique attributes. “Especially when it comes to indie beauty, so many people shop with many brands that could be construed as similar. You will become differentiated to the consumer if you articulate your value proposition from day one,” says Sapien. A brand can react to an email sign-up with a so-called drip campaign that serves up multiple messages. Sapien details the initial message might be a discount code, the second might be brand guidelines or pillars, and the third might highlight specific products. “There is no reason not to do them. They generate more money than just a traditional campaign,” says Sapien of drip email campaigns, emphasizing, “They should look like everything else from the brand and be cohesive.”

Sapien isn’t keen on deluging consumers with email marketing campaignss. She says stay away from sending a dozen messages a month or more. “If you’re a small brand and you have 10 products, four emails a month is plenty,” says Sapien. “You can’t talk about the same thing and bring value. Also, you can spread them out over the year. Customers don’t run out of products quickly.” She cautions against overloading emails with copy. To make emails stand out, GIFs and video content are excellent options. Sapien is a fan of changing background colors and inserting gradient footers as well. Footers can be employed to spotlight merchandise. “If someone doesn’t want to shop it, they won’t shop it. There’s no reason to miss out on potential sales,” says Sapien. She counsels brands to deliver four email campaigns she dubs value campaigns for every sales-focused email campaign. Sapien explains, “The prime function of emails is to help people understand products and not to sell, although, obviously, they do sell.”

When brand founders are new to the email marketing gamut, their customers are highly engaged because it’s likely they know the founders personally. At that early stage, Sapien divulges the email open rate may be around 60% or above. As a brand ages, she says the rate drops and 24% is an admirable open rate. Around 20% is average, and 13% indicates a brand needs to improve. Click-through rates are much lower. “If it’s filler content, 1% or 2% is decent. If you want people to shop, you need to be between 7% and 10%,” specifies Sapien. Brands make more than chump change on effectual email marketing campaigns. At an infant brand, Sapien approximates 20% to 50% of revenue or $10,000 to $30,000 can be attributed to emails. “If you are a brand that’s been around five to six years and are moving to a mature level, the revenue can hit $75,000 a month, which is really good for a brand with 10 to 12 products,” she says, adding, “If you are a mature, large retailer, email makes up 10% of your revenue max.”

Sapien suggests brands consider an outside CMO to handle email marketing. External assistance can be beneficial to optimize strategies and relieve management of responsibilities. Sapien shares the costs for an agency regularly range from $200 to $4,000 a month. Complementing an agency with an internal marketing coordinator is advantageous as well. “You can get someone out of college for $12 to $14 an hour. They’re up on digital techniques, which is important in this landscape, and they’ll organize everything,” says Sapien. If a brand feels they can’t outsource email marketing to an agency full-time, hiring a firm for Black Friday communications and returning communications to in-house control following the pivotal holiday season is a possibility. “If you send it out of the house, you might think it will take less of your time, and that’s not necessarily true,” says Sapien. “Your brand is your child. You have to be there to establish the look and feel, and articulate what’s true to your brand.”

An earlier version of this article was published on January 8, 2018.