Email newsletters remain one of a marketer’s toolkit’s most resilient and profitable channels. They offer a direct, permission-based line to your audience that’s not subject to the shifting sands of search engine algorithms or social media trends. Yet, with consumers overwhelmed by the volume of content hitting their inboxes daily, maintaining engagement requires more than pressing send. It demands thoughtful strategy, personalization, and respect for the user’s attention.
Email Is Still the King of ROI
Email marketing generates, on average, $36 for every dollar spent.
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That level of return outperforms nearly every other digital marketing channel. Whether in B2B or B2C, newsletters offer a scalable and consistent way to drive conversions, build loyalty, and keep your brand on mind.
They also serve as a low-cost vehicle for amplifying content, announcing new features or products, and re-engaging dormant leads. Because you own the audience relationship, email provides long-term value that isn’t subject to third-party platform rules or rising ad costs.
Source: Sender
This infographic illustrates the average return on investment (ROI) for email marketing across key industries. It’s important to note that these figures reflect email marketing as a whole—including promotional campaigns, transactional emails, automated workflows, and newsletters—not just newsletters alone. However, newsletters are critical in sustaining these strong ROI numbers, particularly through their role in nurturing leads, reinforcing brand value, and driving repeat engagement.
Here’s a breakdown of the ROI by sector and how newsletters contribute to each:
Retail, Ecommerce, & Consumer Goods ($45 ROI per $1 spent): In these high-volume, competitive markets, newsletters often serve as ongoing touchpoints with customers, delivering curated product recommendations, special offers, and seasonal content. Their regular cadence helps build brand familiarity and drive repeat purchases, often outperforming flash promotions by cultivating loyalty over time.
Marketing, PR, & Advertising Agencies ($42 ROI per $1 spent): For agencies, newsletters are often used to showcase thought leadership, recent client wins, industry insights, and service updates. These campaigns are critical for both client retention and new business development, positioning the agency as a trusted partner. ROI here is amplified through content-driven engagement rather than hard sales.
Media, Publishing, Events, Sports, & Entertainment ($32 ROI per $1 spent): Newsletters in this category keep audiences informed about upcoming content, event schedules, ticket releases, and subscription offerings. While the ROI is slightly lower here due to audience fragmentation and content saturation, newsletters remain a dependable way to retain subscriber bases and drive consistent traffic.
Software & Technology ($36 ROI per $1 spent): In SaaS and technology markets, newsletters often carry onboarding tips, product updates, feature announcements, and educational resources. They’re essential for customer success and upselling opportunities. Well-timed, value-driven newsletters support the long sales cycles typical in tech and encourage deeper product adoption.
While ROI stems from a blend of email tactics, newsletters are often the foundation of long-term relationship building. They deliver value without a hard sell, making them especially powerful in the early and middle stages of the customer journey. Combined with automation and personalization, newsletters play a pivotal role in keeping your brand on mind, even when the buyer isn’t ready to purchase immediately.
The Funnel Starts with an Email Address
Email marketing acquires 40 times more customers than Meta and X combined.
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Email is not just a post-conversion communication tool—it’s foundational to lead acquisition and nurturing. A subscriber is someone who has taken a soft step toward your brand. They’re not ready to buy, but they’re curious. They want more information, social proof, or insight before making a decision. That’s why savvy marketers optimize every part of the funnel—ads, blogs, lead magnets, pop-ups—to capture email addresses early.
Once captured, subscribers can be educated and guided through the buyer’s journey. This might include welcome sequences, educational content, use cases, testimonials, and curated industry insights—each building trust and nudging the prospect closer to conversion.
Newsletters Nurture the Hesitant Buyer
More than 8 out of 10 people open welcome emails, generating 4x more opens and 10x more clicks than other email types.
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A newsletter subscriber often represents a high-intent but not-yet-ready buyer. They’re researching, comparing, and evaluating your offer over time. Newsletters enable you to stay in their periphery while providing value that builds credibility. For example, in B2B, product announcements and feature updates drive the highest click-through rates—because they speak directly to informed prospects with specific needs.
Regular newsletters can help maintain this momentum without relying on urgency or gimmicks. Over time, you’re creating recall, familiarity, and readiness.
But Inbox Fatigue Is Real
67% of buyers say they’ve created junk email accounts to avoid brand emails.
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Despite email’s impressive ROI, fatigue is a mounting and measurable threat. Consumers and business buyers alike are growing more defensive of their inboxes. The flood of irrelevant, repetitive, or overly frequent emails erodes engagement and drives opt-outs, spam reports, and lost trust. And once a high-value subscriber leaves, they often don’t come back.
B2B marketers are already grappling with the complexity of production: 41% cite building emails as a challenge, 40% cite design, and 39% cite testing. These operational hurdles frequently result in rushed, templated campaigns that feel transactional rather than meaningful. In a saturated inbox, that’s a fast path to irrelevance.
But fatigue isn’t just an engagement issue—it’s a revenue issue.
Marketers must rigorously analyze list churn, engagement decline, long-term revenue loss, and short-term campaign performance. That means asking hard questions: Are the incremental gains from sending more newsletters offset by the attrition of long-term, high-value customers who get burned out? Does your audience want more email, or just better email?
The bottom line: don’t sacrifice future revenue for a temporary lift. Sending more emails might generate a small spike in clicks or orders, but the long-term damage may outweigh the gain if it leads to opt-outs from loyal or high-LTV customers. Smarter frequency, driven by data and subscriber preferences, preserves the relationship and the revenue it brings.
Smart email programs strike a balance between consistency and consideration. The best ones give subscribers control, prioritize relevance, and respect the privilege of the inbox.
How to Improve Your Newsletter Strategy
The path forward isn’t to send more or less. It’s to send smarter: with user-defined preferences, tailored content, and a clear respect for the inbox.
Analyze and Adapt: Look beyond open rates to understand the actual business impact of your newsletters. Are subscribers converting? How long is the path from first email to purchase? Use data to guide content strategy, subject line testing, and segmentation logic. The goal is a feedback loop where each campaign helps refine the next.
Periodicity: Instead of guessing how often to send, give subscribers the ability to tell you. A custom email preference center lets users choose the frequency that suits them—daily, weekly, monthly, or just for special announcements. This not only respects their inbox but can improve retention and reduce unsubscribes. Research shows open and click rates drop when B2C brands exceed five emails per week, so offering a frequency opt-in is both courteous and strategic.
Personalization: Move beyond surface-level personalization like name tokens. Use declared preferences, purchase history, or browsing behavior to deliver targeted, helpful messages rather than intrusive ones. For example, recommend products based on past actions, deliver content aligned to lifecycle stage, or tailor subject lines to reflect known interests. When done well, personalization makes emails feel like they were written for one—not sent to many.
Respect the Inbox: Every email must earn its spot. Ensure each message informs, educates, or entertains. Accessibility matters too—64% of B2C marketers now design with screen readers, mobile responsiveness, and inclusive visuals in mind. Give subscribers control over what they receive and always include a straightforward way to adjust preferences or unsubscribe.
Segmentation: Interest-based segmentation consistently outperforms generic blasts. But rather than relying solely on behavioral data or guesswork, ask your subscribers what they care about. A preference center can include topics, product categories, or content types (e.g., tips, case studies, promotions), empowering users to customize their experience. This transparency improves engagement and builds trust by showing that you respect their time and choices.
Email newsletters remain a powerhouse for ROI and customer nurturing—but only when they evolve alongside the audience. By giving subscribers control over what they receive and when, marketers can reduce fatigue, boost engagement, and extend the lifetime value of every contact.
©2025 DK New Media, LLC, All rights reserved | DisclosureOriginally Published on Martech Zone: The Ongoing Value of Email Newsletters—And How to Keep Them Engaging in 2025