By John Eberhard
Email marketing has been one of the most effective forms of digital marketing for decades. Long before social media, smartphones, and sophisticated marketing automation, businesses were using email to communicate with customers and prospects. While the technology has changed dramatically, the basic idea remains the same: deliver a relevant message directly to people who have expressed an interest in hearing from you.
Cold vs. In-House
I want to define some terms and an important distinction in email marketing. There is what is known as a “cold email list.” This is a list of people who have had no contact with your business before. Usually these lists are purchased or rented.
On the other side there is what is called an “in-house list,” which is a list of either clients or prospects for a company.
The Beginning of Email Marketing
The origins of email marketing can be traced to 1978, when Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation, sent what is widely considered the first commercial mass email. The message was sent to several hundred people through ARPANET, the early computer network that eventually helped lead to the modern internet.
Thuerk’s email promoted Digital Equipment Corporation’s computers and reportedly generated millions of dollars in sales. Although the campaign would likely be considered extremely crude by today’s standards, it demonstrated something important: email could be an effective way to reach potential customers.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, email was still primarily used by universities, government organizations and technology professionals. As personal computers and internet access became more common, however, email began moving into the mainstream.
The Rise of the Internet
The 1990s brought explosive growth in internet usage. Businesses began creating websites, and email addresses became increasingly common. Companies quickly recognized that email could provide an inexpensive way to communicate with large numbers of customers.
Early email marketing was often simple. Businesses might send a promotional message to a list of customers or prospects, frequently using basic text and a link to a website. There were few of the sophisticated tools available today for tracking opens, clicks, conversions and customer behavior.
The arrival of HTML email made marketing messages considerably more attractive. Instead of plain text, businesses could incorporate colors, graphics, logos, photographs and formatted text.
I started using email marketing around 2001, working for a software company. We created HTML emails, and we sent to rented email lists, which were very common and extremely effective at that time. Over a two year period we built up our in-house list to several hundred thousand names.
The Emergence of Email Marketing Services
Services such as Constant Contact, AWeber and Mailchimp made it easier for businesses to create newsletters, manage subscriber lists and send mass emails. They also introduced tools for tracking campaign performance.
Businesses could now see how many recipients opened an email, clicked on a link or unsubscribed. This transformed email marketing from simply sending messages into a measurable marketing channel.
Today, for an in-house list, I strongly recommend using one of the online email services, as their deliverability is good, and they automatically remove people who opt-out. There are about a dozen services, and you don’t have to use one of the big three mentioned above, as the big three have all raised their prices significantly over the last year (Aweber nearly doubled their prices).
At the same time, governments and internet service providers began paying greater attention to unwanted commercial email, commonly known as spam. The CAN-SPAM Act was passed by Congress in December 2003, and required senders of bulk email to provide an opt out option, to include a physical business address in the email, and outlawed hiding your business identity in the email.
Backlash
In the early to mid 2000s, some marketers abused the email medium, sending millions of emails out to cold lists promoting Viagra, printer toner ink and other products. In my view this killed the effectiveness of sending email to cold lists, although I was still able to get results from cold lists up until around 2018. Today I get very little results from sending email to cold lists. Sending to an in-house list is where it’s at today.
Email Marketing Becomes More Sophisticated
Marketing automation became another major development. Businesses could automatically send a welcome email when someone joined a list, a follow-up message several days later, and additional messages based on whether the recipient opened or clicked previous emails.
This allowed relatively small businesses to create sophisticated marketing campaigns without manually sending every message.
Mobile devices also dramatically changed email marketing. As more people began reading email on smartphones and tablets, responsive email design became essential. Messages had to look good and function properly on screens of many different sizes.
Email Marketing Today
Today, email marketing is far more sophisticated than the newsletters of the past.
Businesses can create highly targeted campaigns based on individual customer behavior. For example, an online retailer can automatically send a reminder to someone who abandoned a shopping cart. A service business can send educational information to a prospect who downloaded a guide. A company can also send different messages to existing customers, new prospects and inactive subscribers.
Artificial intelligence is now adding another layer of sophistication. AI can help marketers write subject lines, create email content, analyze campaigns, segment audiences and determine which messages are likely to perform best.
Despite all these technological advances, the fundamental principle of email marketing has not changed. Success still depends on having the right audience, providing useful information, giving people a compelling reason to open and read the message, and consistently sending out email to your list.
The Future of Email Marketing
Email marketing is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Unlike many social media platforms, businesses have greater control over their email subscriber lists and do not have to depend on an algorithm to determine whether their audience sees a message or not.
The future will likely bring even greater personalization, automation and use of artificial intelligence.
From a single commercial message sent in 1978 to today’s highly automated and personalized campaigns, email marketing has undergone an extraordinary transformation. Yet its greatest advantage remains remarkably simple: it provides businesses with a direct line of communication to people who have chosen to hear from them.
Despite advances in technology, many businesses find it hard to maintain a consistent and solid email presence. A 2025 survey by InTandem of 500 small to medium business owners showed that 52% outsource some marketing actions. And the top 3 services these businesses outsourced to an agency were email marketing, social media marketing, and pay per click advertising.
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