Email Marketing is the Odoo application for sending marketing emails to a business's contacts and measuring how those emails perform. This piece explains what the Odoo Email Marketing application does.
Building the email
At the centre of Odoo Email Marketing is the email builder. It is a drag-and-drop builder: a marketer assembles an email from blocks, headings, text, images, columns, buttons, rather than writing code. There are email themes that give a branded, designed starting point. The aim is that a good-looking, on-brand marketing email can be built by a marketer without technical help, and that it renders well, including a mobile preview so the marketer can check how the email looks on a phone before sending.
Mailing lists
Email marketing is sent to mailing lists, and Odoo manages them: lists of contacts, with subscription tracked per list, and the ability to import contacts in bulk. Contacts can manage their own subscriptions through a portal, and when someone opts out, the reason can be captured. Odoo also enforces a blacklist across all mailings, so a contact who should not be emailed is not emailed, regardless of which list a campaign targets. This list and subscription management is not glamorous, but it is what keeps email marketing both effective and responsible.
Dynamic recipients
Beyond fixed mailing lists, Odoo Email Marketing can target recipients dynamically, by defining a set of records that match a condition. Because Odoo holds the business's customers, leads, and contacts, a campaign can be aimed at a precise segment, and the targeting can be saved and reused. This is more powerful than a static list, because the segment is defined by criteria and reflects current data.
A/B testing
Odoo Email Marketing supports A/B testing: sending variant versions of an email to portions of the audience, measuring which performs better, and then sending the winning version to the rest. This lets a marketer make sending decisions based on evidence, what actually got opened and clicked, rather than on guesswork about subject lines and content.
Measuring what works
Sending an email is only half of email marketing; the other half is knowing what it did. Odoo Email Marketing provides statistics on every mailing: how many recipients opened it, how many clicked, how many bounced, how many opted out. With reporting across mailings, a marketer can see which campaigns work and which do not, and improve over time. Email marketing without measurement is guessing; the statistics are what make it a discipline.
Campaign tracking and the connected advantage
Odoo Email Marketing uses campaign tracking, tagging the links in emails so that what happens after the click can be attributed back to the campaign. This is where the connection to the rest of Odoo becomes valuable. Because Odoo also holds the CRM and the sales, a business can begin to see not just that an email was opened and clicked, but that a campaign contributed to leads and, ultimately, to sales. Email marketing in an isolated tool can measure opens and clicks; email marketing connected to the CRM and sales can be measured against what it actually generated for the business.
The takeaway
The Odoo Email Marketing application provides a drag-and-drop email builder with themes, mailing list and subscription management, dynamic recipient targeting, A/B testing, and full statistics on every send. Connected to the CRM and sales, it can be measured not just on opens and clicks but on what it contributed to the business. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.