Newsletter marketing: basics, forms and process

Last reviewed: 2 November 2026

Translated from German; if the versions differ, the German version applies.

Not legal advice: Legal content on this page appears only as verbatim quotations from statutes, court rulings or authority papers, with their source; quotations from German texts are our working translations. We do not assess them ourselves, and no lawyer has reviewed this page. It is no substitute for legal advice in your individual case.

Newsletter marketing means regularly informing people who have signed up for it by email – about offers, news or specialist topics. It is part of email marketing and thus of online and direct marketing: the message does not go to “everyone”, as with an advertisement, but to individual, known recipients.

Terms clearly distinguished

Term	Meaning
Newsletter	email sent regularly to subscribed recipients, usually covering several topics
Email campaign	a single, time-limited mailing for a particular occasion (e.g. a promotion, an invitation)
Mailing	originally a personally addressed advertising letter sent in large numbers; in German today also used for promotional emails
Transactional email	a message triggered by an action (order confirmation, password link) – not a newsletter
Direct marketing	advertising that addresses recipients individually (letter, email, telephone) and allows them to respond

Sign-up: The person enters their address and confirms the sign-up, commonly via double opt-in. Quotations from German laws and authority papers on this page are our working translations; only the German wording is authoritative (see the German version of this page). The German Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) names as a case in which an unacceptable nuisance is always to be assumed: “in the case of advertising using […] electronic mail without the prior express consent of the addressee” (Section 7(2) no. 2 UWG, our translation). The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides: “Where processing is based on consent, the controller shall be able to demonstrate that the data subject has consented to processing of his or her personal data.” (Art. 7(1) GDPR)
Planning: Define the target group, topic and frequency. Less, but reliably, is better than a lot and irregularly. (Based on experience, not a study.)
Content and design: Subject line, preview text, content, one clear next step. The Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG, the German act on digital services) provides: “Where commercial communications are sent by electronic mail, neither the sender nor the commercial nature of the message may be disguised or concealed in the header and in the subject line.” (Section 6(2) sentence 1 DDG, our translation)
Sending: via a sending platform that processes unsubscribes and bounces automatically. On unsubscribing, Section 7(2) UWG names the case of advertising with a message “in which there is no valid address to which the recipient can send a request to stop such messages without incurring any costs other than the transmission costs at the basic rates” (Section 7(2) no. 3(c) UWG, our translation).
Evaluation: Watch delivery, click and unsubscribe rates – with caution regarding the open rate (see Metrics).
Maintenance: Process unsubscribes and remove undeliverable addresses. On objecting to direct marketing, the GDPR provides: “Where the data subject objects to processing for direct marketing purposes, the personal data shall no longer be processed for such purposes.” (Art. 21(3) GDPR).

Sources

§ 7 UWG – Unzumutbare Belästigungen, Bundesministerium der Justiz / Bundesamt für Justiz, § 7 Abs. 2 Nr. 2, Abs. 2 Nr. 3, Abs. 3 UWG (in German) (accessed on 2 November 2026)
Verordnung (EU) 2016/679 (Datenschutz-Grundverordnung), Erwägungsgründe 32, 43, 47, Art. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 21, 25 und 28, Europäische Union (EUR-Lex), Erwägungsgründe 32, 43 und 47; Art. 4 Nr. 4 und 11, Art. 5 Abs. 1 lit. c, Art. 6 Abs. 1 (lit. a, b und f), Art. 7 Abs. 1 bis 4, Art. 8 Abs. 1, Art. 9, Art. 13 Abs. 1 und 2, Art. 21 Abs. 2 bis 4, Art. 25 Abs. 2, Art. 28 Abs. 3 DSGVO; zusätzlich Art. 4 Nr. 7, Art. 13 Abs. 1 lit. d, Art. 28 Abs. 1 und 9, Erwägungsgrund 47 Sätze 1, 2 und 4 (in German) (accessed on 2 November 2026)
§ 6 DDG – Besondere Pflichten bei kommerziellen Kommunikationen, Bundesministerium der Justiz / Bundesamt für Justiz, § 6 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 und 2, Abs. 2 DDG (in German) (accessed on 2 November 2026)

An example: the monthly club newsletter

How the six steps fit together is shown by an invented but typical example: a club wants to inform its members and other interested people about its events once a month.

Step	Setting in the example	Background
Sign-up	form with a box that is not pre-ticked; confirmation email; the system stores the time, the wording of the sign-up text and the confirmation	wording on boxes and proof (Recital 32 GDPR, Art. 7(1) GDPR): Double opt-in
Sender	name of the club, address under the club’s own domain; SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up, DMARC initially with `p=none` and a report address	Recognition and deliverability (Deliverability)
Frequency	every month on the same weekday	Based on experience: reliable rather than frequent
Unsubscribe	link in the text of every issue and one-click unsubscribe in the email header; the system acts on unsubscribes immediately	wording of Section 7(2) no. 3(c) UWG: Unsubscribing; technically, one-click procedure according to RFC 8058; Yahoo requires unsubscribes to be honoured within two days
Evaluation	after each issue, note the click, unsubscribe and complaint rates and compare them with previous months	Gmail names a spam rate below 0.3% for bulk senders (Metrics)
List care	remove addresses with permanent delivery errors (hard bounces) from the list	fewer returned emails, better deliverability

The values come from the sources and pages named; the frequency is an assumption for the example, not a recommendation for every case.

Sources

Verordnung (EU) 2016/679 (Datenschutz-Grundverordnung), Erwägungsgründe 32, 43, 47, Art. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 21, 25 und 28, Europäische Union (EUR-Lex), Erwägungsgründe 32, 43 und 47; Art. 4 Nr. 4 und 11, Art. 5 Abs. 1 lit. c, Art. 6 Abs. 1 (lit. a, b und f), Art. 7 Abs. 1 bis 4, Art. 8 Abs. 1, Art. 9, Art. 13 Abs. 1 und 2, Art. 21 Abs. 2 bis 4, Art. 25 Abs. 2, Art. 28 Abs. 3 DSGVO; zusätzlich Art. 4 Nr. 7, Art. 13 Abs. 1 lit. d, Art. 28 Abs. 1 und 9, Erwägungsgrund 47 Sätze 1, 2 und 4 (in German) (accessed on 2 November 2026)
RFC 8058 – Signaling One-Click Functionality for List Email Headers, IETF / RFC Editor, Abschnitt 1 (Anti-Spam-Software ruft Adressen in Kopfzeilen automatisch ab), Abschnitt 3 (List-Unsubscribe-Post), Abschnitt 4 (DKIM-Signatur) (accessed on 25 October 2026)
Sender Best Practices (Yahoo Sender Hub), Yahoo, Abschnitt Bulk Senders (accessed on 2 November 2026)
Richtlinien für E-Mail-Absender (Gmail-Hilfe), Google, Abschnitte „Anforderungen an alle Absender“, „Anforderungen beim Senden von 5.000 oder mehr Nachrichten pro Tag“, „Sendevolumen langsam erhöhen“ (in German) (accessed on 2 November 2026)

What newsletters are good for – and what not

Well suited: recurring information for people who explicitly want it – customers, members, a specialist audience. Unsuitable: first contact with bought addresses or addresses found somewhere. It damages deliverability. On addresses taken from a legal notice (Impressum), the German Data Protection Conference (Datenschutzkonferenz, DSK) writes: “By contrast, reading out the data from an online legal notice for the purpose of advertising use is not permitted.” (guidance on direct marketing, Section 4.2, p. 15, our translation)

Sources

Orientierungshilfe der Aufsichtsbehörden zur Verarbeitung von personenbezogenen Daten für Zwecke der Direktwerbung unter Geltung der DSGVO (Februar 2022), Datenschutzkonferenz (DSK), Abschnitt 1.1 (Begriff der Werbung, S. 3), 1.3.2 (Praxisfälle Interessenabwägung, Profiling, S. 5), 1.4.1 (Bestandskunden, S. 6), 2.1 (Informationspflichten, S. 7–8), 3.1 (Gestaltung der Einwilligung, S. 10–11), 3.2 (Visitenkarten, S. 11), 3.3 (Double-Opt-In-Verfahren, S. 11–12), 3.4 (Koppelungsverbot, S. 12), 3.5 (Gültigkeitsdauer, S. 13), 3.6 (besondere Kategorien, S. 14), 3.7 (Widerruf, Nachweis, S. 14–15), 4.2 (Impressumsdaten, S. 15), 4.3 (Beipack-Werbung, S. 15), 5.1–5.4 (Werbewiderspruch, S. 17–20); 1.3.1 (Grundsätzliches zur Interessenabwägung, S. 4) (in German) (accessed on 2 November 2026)

Newsletter marketing: the basics

Terms clearly distinguished

How a newsletter works

An example: the monthly club newsletter

What newsletters are good for – and what not

Further reading