Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify why, when and how e-mail marketing can be used to
empower consumers and to give ideas for future scholarly research.

Design/methodology/approach – Systematic literature review studies 41 e-mail marketing and 54
consumer empowerment articles published in variety of academic journals between 1998 and 2014.

Findings – E-mail allows an active, interactive and personalized communication fulfilling the
preferences of an empowered consumer. E-mail marketing can be used to empower consumers by
sending e-mails based on permission, by making consumers active participants in the communication
process and by making e-mails relevant for the recipients. However, current e-mail marketing strategies
need to be updated to get the maximum benefit out of the channel.

Research limitations/implications – The limitation of the study is the broad domain of
research, which hampered the in-depth analysis. However, the study was able to synthesize the
scattered literature and create an overall picture of the topic as planned.

Practical implications – The paper encourages managers to use empowering e-mail marketing
strategies and presents several suggestions for future e-mail marketing research.

Originality/value – The paper uses a new perspective, consumer empowerment as a lens for
understanding e-mail marketing. Because e-mail marketing is currently very popular among marketers
but is threatened by its negative image among consumers, it is important to understand how e-mail
marketing can be developed so that it can also survive in the future.