Is email marketing still worth it for a small high street shop?

Yes, for one narrow reason: it reaches people who have already paid you, in full, for almost nothing. A social post reaches whatever portion of your followers the platform decides on. An email to four hundred past customers lands in four hundred inboxes, minus whatever the spam filters take. The catch is that it only works if you send something worth opening, which means a real offer with a date on it rather than a newsletter about how the shop is getting on.

Where do I find the email addresses my card machine has already collected?

In the back office of whatever system you use, usually under customers, contacts or receipts. SumUp, Zettle, Square and Dojo all store the addresses of customers who chose an emailed receipt. Booking systems like Fresha, Booksy, Phorest, Timely, OpenTable and ResDiary hold an address for every client who has ever booked. Log in on a laptop rather than on the terminal itself, and look for an export option.

Do I need permission to email customers who have already bought from me?

Not fresh permission, provided every one of the five conditions of the soft opt-in is met. It sits in regulation 22(3) of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, and any organisation can use it. You must have collected the address yourself, directly from that person. You must have collected it while selling to them or negotiating a sale, and the Information Commissioner's Office says they need not have actually bought anything, an enquiry about buying can be enough. You may only market your own similar products and services. You must have given them a clear, simple way to refuse at the moment you took the address, not later in an order confirmation, which the ICO says is too late. And every message since must have carried a way to opt out. Miss one condition and the exception does not apply. It never covers bought-in lists or details another company collected, including another company in your own group. If you are unsure how the addresses in your system were collected, ask your provider before you send.

How often should a small business email its customers?

Once a month suits a shop with a counter. Weekly is a job in itself, and it produces unsubscribes without producing custom. A month gives you time to build an offer worth sending, and it keeps you far enough from the inbox that people do not start filtering you out.

What should the offer in the email actually be?

Something specific, dated, and aimed at a session that is currently quiet. Name the day, name the discount, name the window. A standing offer with no end date gets ignored. Point it at Tuesday afternoon or the mid-afternoon lull rather than Friday, because those are the hours you actually want to fill, and the hours where a discount costs you nothing.

Is the open rate in my email software a real number?

Not any more. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection shipped with iOS 15 on 20 September 2021 and reached the Mac with macOS Monterey that October. Where a reader has it switched on, Apple Mail downloads the remote content in a message, tracking pixel included, in the background as the message arrives, whether or not anyone opens it. The open gets recorded either way. It is a setting inside the Apple Mail app, called Protect Mail Activity, so it does not touch someone reading you through the Gmail app on an iPhone. How much of your own open rate is inflated is not something anyone publishes, so take any figure from your own platform rather than from a general statistic, and judge the email on what came through the door instead.

← Notes from the street

MARKETING · 15 Jul 2026 · 4 min

Nobody reads marketing emails, do they?

'Most marketing email goes unread, which is the wrong reason to dismiss the channel. The cheapest audience an independent shop owns is the customer list its card machine has been quietly collecting, and almost no high street business has put it to work. We set out what that list is worth and how to use it without exhausting the goodwill of the people on it.'

Matthew · No11 Studio

Mostly nobody reads them. I delete more marketing emails than I open, and so do you. But that is an argument against sending the email you are picturing, not against sending anything at all.

Here is the bit that changed my mind. The cheapest advertising most shops on this High Street own is already sitting inside the card machine, and it has never once been used.

How many email addresses does my card machine already have?

More than you think. Every customer who ever tapped “email me the receipt” on a SumUp, Zettle, Square or Dojo terminal handed you an address, and it is sitting in the back office of that system right now. If you take bookings through Fresha, Booksy, Phorest or Timely, the same goes for every client you have ever booked in. Restaurants, look at OpenTable and ResDiary.

I ask about this in nearly every shop I walk into around E11. Not one owner has known the number off the top of their head. What I can tell you is that it has never yet come back as zero.

Why bother, when I already post on Instagram?

Because they are not the same trade. You spent two years collecting followers, and the platform decides how many of them see you on any given day. I am not going to quote you a percentage. The platforms do not publish an honest one, and every figure I have seen in an agency deck was written by somebody selling something. Do this instead. Open your last post, tap into the insights, and put the reach (the number of accounts that actually saw it) next to your follower count. That number is yours and it is real.

Email does not work like that. It arrives whole, in the inbox of somebody who has already paid you once, and there is nobody sitting in the middle deciding what fraction of them get it. Sending to four hundred people costs nothing: MailerLite and Mailchimp both have a free tier that covers a list of that size.

Twenty years I spent inside big businesses. Food and drink first, then technology, then financial services. In all of them the email list was the one asset nobody was allowed near, and at one of them it outlived three rebrands and two agencies. Now I walk into independents in E11 who are sitting on a small version of the same thing and have never opened it.

What should I actually send?

Four rules. That is the whole method.

One a month. Not weekly. You have a shop to run, and nobody is sitting by their phone waiting for you.

A real offer with a date on it. Not “pop in and see us soon”. More like: “Tuesday 26th, ten pounds off any cut, walk in between one and four.”

Point it at your quiet session, not Friday. Friday sells itself. It is the Tuesday afternoon and the dead hour between three and five you are trying to fill, and those are the hours where the discount costs you nothing, because the chair was empty anyway.

Write it yourself. Four lines, your own words, the way you would say it across the counter. The moment it reads like a brand it reads like everything else in the inbox, and it goes the same way.

Am I allowed to email my own customers?

Usually yes, and you do not have to go back and ask them all over again. The exception is called the soft opt-in, and it sits in regulation 22(3) of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. It is open to any organisation, the salon as much as the charity shop halfway down the parade.

What it is not is a standing permission that comes free with being a customer. There are five conditions and every one of them has to hold. Here they are, because you are going to be relying on them.

You collected the address yourself, directly from that person. Not bought in, not handed over by somebody else, not even by another company in your own group. The Information Commissioner’s Office is blunt about that last one.

You collected it while selling to them, or while negotiating a sale. They did not have to go through with it. Somebody who rang up asking about a price, or signed up for a free trial, counts.

You are only marketing your own similar products and services. Yours, and near enough to what brought them to you in the first place. The ICO’s test is whether, going on what has already passed between the two of you, that person would reasonably expect to hear from you about it. Which is why a charity cannot use this to fundraise, even to people who have supported it for years: fundraising is not a similar product or service. Charities did get a second, separate soft opt-in for messages that further their charitable purposes, in force from 5 February 2026, and it only covers addresses collected on or after that date.

You gave them a clear, simple way to say no at the moment you took the address. This is the one everybody trips over. An opt-out that turns up for the first time in the order confirmation email is too late.

And every message you have sent since carries a way out as well. Free, obvious, not buried in a privacy policy, and not something that makes them create an account or log in before it will work.

Miss one and you are outside the exception. If somebody opts out, that is the end of it, and you can only email them again if they later give you consent. Worth knowing too: these rules cover text messages exactly as they cover email, because what the regulations govern is electronic mail rather than email alone.

Do not know how the addresses in your till were collected? Ask whoever supplies the system before you send a thing.

What if people unsubscribe?

Some will. Let them. An unsubscribe is a customer telling you for free something you would otherwise pay to find out.

The number I would ignore is the open rate, the percentage your email software claims opened the message. It stopped meaning anything on 20 September 2021, the day Apple shipped Mail Privacy Protection with iOS 15. It arrived on the Mac that October with macOS Monterey. Where the reader has it switched on, Apple Mail goes and fetches the remote content in your message, tracking pixel and all, in the background as the message lands. Not when it is opened. Whether it is opened. The pixel fires, your software writes down an open, and not one word has been read. The fetch also goes through two relays, so the location and the device in your report are not the reader’s either.

It is a setting inside the Apple Mail app, called Protect Mail Activity, so it does not touch somebody reading you through the Gmail app on their iPhone. As for what share of your opens are now phantom, nobody can honestly tell you. Apple does not publish it and neither does anyone else who would know, so any figure you get quoted is an estimate in a suit. If you want a number, take it from your own platform and treat it as a rough one. Then count the people who came through the door on the Tuesday. That is the measurement.

The job to do before Saturday

Ten minutes, and you can do it between customers. Log into the back office of your card machine or your booking system on a laptop, find the customer list, and read the count of email addresses on it.

Do not send anything yet. Just find out how big the list is that you already own, before you spend a penny going after strangers.

Matthew

Questions people ask

Is email marketing still worth it for a small high street shop?: Yes, for one narrow reason: it reaches people who have already paid you, in full, for almost nothing. A social post reaches whatever portion of your followers the platform decides on. An email to four hundred past customers lands in four hundred inboxes, minus whatever the spam filters take. The catch is that it only works if you send something worth opening, which means a real offer with a date on it rather than a newsletter about how the shop is getting on.
Where do I find the email addresses my card machine has already collected?: In the back office of whatever system you use, usually under customers, contacts or receipts. SumUp, Zettle, Square and Dojo all store the addresses of customers who chose an emailed receipt. Booking systems like Fresha, Booksy, Phorest, Timely, OpenTable and ResDiary hold an address for every client who has ever booked. Log in on a laptop rather than on the terminal itself, and look for an export option.
Do I need permission to email customers who have already bought from me?: Not fresh permission, provided every one of the five conditions of the soft opt-in is met. It sits in regulation 22(3) of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, and any organisation can use it. You must have collected the address yourself, directly from that person. You must have collected it while selling to them or negotiating a sale, and the Information Commissioner's Office says they need not have actually bought anything, an enquiry about buying can be enough. You may only market your own similar products and services. You must have given them a clear, simple way to refuse at the moment you took the address, not later in an order confirmation, which the ICO says is too late. And every message since must have carried a way to opt out. Miss one condition and the exception does not apply. It never covers bought-in lists or details another company collected, including another company in your own group. If you are unsure how the addresses in your system were collected, ask your provider before you send.
How often should a small business email its customers?: Once a month suits a shop with a counter. Weekly is a job in itself, and it produces unsubscribes without producing custom. A month gives you time to build an offer worth sending, and it keeps you far enough from the inbox that people do not start filtering you out.
What should the offer in the email actually be?: Something specific, dated, and aimed at a session that is currently quiet. Name the day, name the discount, name the window. A standing offer with no end date gets ignored. Point it at Tuesday afternoon or the mid-afternoon lull rather than Friday, because those are the hours you actually want to fill, and the hours where a discount costs you nothing.
Is the open rate in my email software a real number?: Not any more. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection shipped with iOS 15 on 20 September 2021 and reached the Mac with macOS Monterey that October. Where a reader has it switched on, Apple Mail downloads the remote content in a message, tracking pixel included, in the background as the message arrives, whether or not anyone opens it. The open gets recorded either way. It is a setting inside the Apple Mail app, called Protect Mail Activity, so it does not touch someone reading you through the Gmail app on an iPhone. How much of your own open rate is inflated is not something anyone publishes, so take any figure from your own platform rather than from a general statistic, and judge the email on what came through the door instead.