The short answer: no, and the UK's own 2026 numbers settle it. The DMA's Marketer Email Tracker 2026 puts UK email marketing ROI at roughly £41 for every £1 spent, up from £38 the last time the DMA measured it, in 2021. Email is not dying. It is quietly the highest-return channel most local businesses already have permission to use, because they already have a list: their own past customers. We set email up properly for £199, once. Here is what the 2026 data actually says, why it works even better for a small business than a national retailer, and the UK law that makes emailing your own customers easier than emailing anyone else.
Key takeaways
- UK email marketing ROI reached roughly £41 per £1 spent in the DMA's Marketer Email Tracker 2026 (250 UK marketers surveyed, launched 25 March 2026), up from £38 in the DMA's previous tracker in 2021.
- Since 2021, post-purchase email use is up 24 percentage points and customer service use up 22 points on the same tracker. Email now works across the whole customer relationship, not just cold acquisition.
- UK law already favours you here: PECR's "soft opt-in" lets a business email past customers about similar products or services without fresh consent, provided it collected their details while selling to them and gave them a way to opt out. That is exactly the list every local business already holds.
- Our price: £199 setup, once. Run it yourself after that, or we run campaigns at £99 a month. It is bundled into the Growth plan at £449 a month with social media and Found on Google.
- We do not promise you a return percentage. The £41 figure is an industry average from the DMA's own survey, not a guarantee for your list.
Where does the "email is dead" idea come from?
The claim usually comes from three real things blurred into one. Inboxes are more crowded than they were five years ago. Spam filters are stricter, so more mail never gets seen. A wave of headlines about software that summarises or sorts inboxes also makes it sound like a human reading a full email is now rare. All three are true in some form. None of them mean email marketing stopped working, and the same body that has tracked UK email performance since the mid-2000s, the DMA (Data & Marketing Association), published the opposite finding in March 2026.
What does the 2026 data actually show?
The DMA's Marketer Email Tracker 2026, sponsored by ActionRocket and based on 250 UK marketers surveyed across sectors, found the channel gaining ground rather than fading:
| Measure | 2021 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| ROI per £1 spent | £38 | £41 |
| Post-purchase email as a use case | baseline | up 24 percentage points |
| Customer service email as a use case | baseline | up 22 percentage points |
| Triggered sends as a share of volume | 25% | 34% |
ActionRocket's own writeup of the launch, where they sat on the panel alongside the DMA, confirms the ROI move from £38 to £41 and puts it plainly: "Email is an owned channel with staying power, and the industry knows it." The post-purchase, customer service and triggered-send figures come from Marwick Marketing's breakdown of the same tracker. The direction of travel across every one of those figures is the same: businesses are using email more, for more of the relationship, and getting more back for it.
Why does it work even better for a local business than a national retailer?
A national retailer's "past customer" is often someone who bought once online and never had another interaction. A local business's past customer is a different thing entirely: a real person who had the job done or booked the appointment, and would book again if reminded at the right moment. That is a warmer, smaller, more specific list than almost any national brand has, and it is exactly the use case the DMA's tracker found growing fastest: post-purchase reminders and ongoing customer relationships, not first-time acquisition.
A heating engineer reminding past customers that a boiler service is due, or an accountant nudging clients ahead of a filing deadline, is not competing with a stranger's cold inbox. It is talking to someone who already said yes once.
What does the soft opt-in rule mean for emailing past customers?
Most business owners assume they need a fresh opt-in from every past customer before emailing them again. UK law says otherwise, through a rule the ICO calls the "soft opt-in". Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), you can email a past customer about your own similar products or services without asking for fresh consent, as long as all of the following are true:
- You collected their contact details yourself, not from a bought-in list.
- You collected them while selling, or negotiating to sell, a product or service.
- You are only marketing your own similar products or services.
- You gave them a chance to opt out when you first collected their details.
- You give them a chance to opt out in every email since.
A dentist emailing a patient about a check-up reminder, or a window firm emailing a past customer about a seasonal offer, sits squarely inside this rule. It is not a loophole. It is the ICO's own published guidance, built for exactly this relationship.
What does a proper setup actually include?
The DMA data above only pays off if the setup underneath it is built correctly. Our £199 covers a platform on your own account (so the list is yours, not ours), a branded template that matches your site, a welcome sequence for new signups, and signup wired directly into your pages and booking flow, all with the opt-out and consent record-keeping PECR requires. After that, you can send campaigns yourself, or we run them for £99 a month, drawn from your real offers, reminders and reviews rather than generic filler. How many follow-ups to send is its own question, and the honest answer on follow-up numbers is less tidy than the figure usually quoted.
How do you check what you have now?
If your site does not currently collect an email address anywhere, that is the first gap to close. Run it through our free scanner at buildmydigital.co.uk/scan, which runs 48 checks, including a working signup path. The report shows instantly, no email required.
To see whether the emails you already send are set up to reach an inbox, type your domain into our free business email check, which reads its SPF, DKIM and DMARC records.
Common questions
Is email marketing actually dead?
No. The DMA's Marketer Email Tracker 2026, surveying 250 UK marketers, found ROI rising to roughly £41 per £1 spent, up from £38 in 2021, with post-purchase and customer service use both growing. The industry's own annual measurement shows the opposite of decline.
Do I need a big list for this to work?
No. What matters is relevance, and list size matters less. A hundred real past customers who already trust you will outperform a bought or scraped list of thousands every time, and PECR's soft opt-in only ever applies to people you dealt with directly anyway.
I don't have an email list yet. Where does one come from?
Your booking system, your till, and your website. We wire a signup box into your existing pages, so new customers can join from the page they book on, and we can import what you already hold from past bookings or invoices, with proper consent record-keeping from day one.
What does the £199 actually include?
Platform setup on your own account, a branded template, a welcome sequence written and wired in, and signup connected to your site. After that you send yourself, or we run monthly campaigns for £99.
Is this worth it if I already do social media?
Yes, and the two can run together. The Growth plan at £449 a month bundles email with social media and Found on Google in one plan. Full prices are on the pricing page.
What your missed calls cost you.
£780 a month
£180 a week, £9,360 a year, going to whoever answers first.
As an example from these numbers, £631 a month is left over after the receptionist’s £149 starting price. Illustrative only, not a promise of earnings.
These are example numbers. Change them to your own. Worked out as 5 missed calls a week, times £120, times the 30% who would have booked, then over a month (52 weeks divided by 12).
A receptionist that answers every call in seconds, day or night, is £149 to £399 a month. It has to pay for itself in the first month, or you get every penny back, setup included.
Hear it answer as your businessBoth calculators, calls and messages, on one page: the missed call cost calculator.
Want more booked jobs?
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9 things that decide whether your phone rings.
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