Course description

If you sell online and your emails are mostly an occasional newsletter, this course shows you how to build the emails that do the most for a small shop: a welcome flow for new subscribers, basket reminders, helpful emails after an order, and a kind way to win back customers who've gone quiet. It also covers the money and the law, so every email is one you're allowed to send and one that's worth sending.

The course is tool-neutral. It talks about "your email platform" and "your shop platform" throughout, so it works whichever ones you use, and it explains the UK rules from the Information Commission (still known as the ICO), the CMA and the CAP Code in plain English.

There are 10 sections and 50 written lessons, and each one ends with a short, practical exercise. You follow Gurleen, who makes candles in Slough, through a year of building her shop's emails: the 1,108 customers she had to set aside, the pop-up that guilt-tripped visitors, the basket reminder she nearly filled with discounts, the "was" price she nearly invented, and the split send she judged on 60 people. Every figure is made up and clearly labelled, and every sum adds up. Every section has a practice pack with a worksheet, example answers and a cheat sheet, plus tools such as an email map, a permissions checklist, flow diagrams, a basket reminder planner, spreadsheets for your margin, lapse point, discount costs and email results, and a 90-day calendar.

What you'll learn

• Shop email foundations: how shop email differs from a newsletter, your email map, average order value, margin and repeat purchase rate, and connecting your shop platform to your email platform.
• The law: PECR and UK GDPR, the soft opt-in for customers, consent for everyone else, service and marketing emails, marketplace buyers, tracking, and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 changes.
• Growing your list: honest checkout wording, pop-ups without dark patterns, sign-up offers you've costed, other places to collect sign-ups, and a clean list from day one.
• The welcome flow: what it's for, planning it, writing every email, honest urgency, and welcoming new customers on the soft opt-in.
• Basket and browse emails: who can lawfully get a basket reminder, writing and timing reminders without a discount habit, and browse emails handled with care.
• After the order: service emails, consumer rights, how-to-use guides, review requests within the CMA's fake reviews rules, cross-sell, replenishment and the second order.
• Win-back and segments: working out when a customer has lapsed from your own orders, a win-back flow, sunsetting quiet subscribers, purchase-based segments and a weekly email limit.
• Campaigns, seasons and discounts: planning back from posting deadlines, what a discount really costs, honest 'was' prices and urgency, subject lines and product emails.
• Design, deliverability and results: emails that work on phones and for everyone, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, revenue per recipient, honest attribution and fair A/B comparisons.
• Your 90-day plan: a 90-day email calendar, a weekly routine, an honest review of the year and a final project for your own shop.

Who it's for

Small online sellers in the UK: people running their own shop website, selling on a marketplace, or both. You'll need access to your shop platform and an email platform, but no experience of email flows. If you already know the basics of email marketing, this course goes further into the flows, money and rules that are specific to selling products online.

What this course is, and isn't

This is a practical course for small shops. The legal sections give general information about UK law, checked in October 2026, and point you to the regulators' own guidance. They aren't legal advice. The course doesn't teach any particular email platform.

What will I learn?

• Map every email your shop sends and work out what an order, a discount and a repeat customer are worth to you
• Apply the UK rules on marketing emails: the soft opt-in for customers, consent for everyone else, and service emails kept free of promotion
• Grow your list at checkout and with pop-ups, without dark patterns or sign-up offers that lose you money
• Plan and write a welcome flow, and basket reminders that go only to people you're allowed to email
• Send after-order emails, honest review requests, cross-sell and replenishment emails timed from your own products
• Work out when a customer has lapsed from your own orders, and write a kind win-back flow
• Plan seasonal campaigns and a discount calendar with true prices, real ‘was’ prices and honest urgency
• Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC, design for phones and accessibility, and report revenue per recipient and repeat purchase rate honestly
• Compare two versions of an email fairly and build a 90-day email calendar for your shop

Frequently asked questions