Email Marketing Practices

Whenever someone says “email marketing is dead”, I quietly smile because the numbers speak for themselves. Email is still one of the highest-ROI channels in marketing. Honestly, email isn’t just alive, it’s evolving faster than ever. From static newsletters to interactive email experiences, you can click, swipe, tap, and buy without leaving the inbox. Here’s some more email marketing propaganda you shouldn’t fall for: 1. “Your emails don’t perform because they’re NOT perfectly designed.” Performance comes from relevance and engagement. An interactive quiz, poll, or embedded form will beat the prettiest static design every time because it prompts people to take action. 2. “Sending daily drives higher engagement.” Frequency means nothing without value. The best send schedule is the one where every email gives people a reason to click, explore, or buy, whether it's sent daily or once in a while 3. “Educate first, sell LATER.” If your product genuinely solves a problem, showing how it works through your email can be both teaching and selling. 4. “Warming up your domain fixes deliverability.”  Deliverability is about trust, not just expensive tools or one-off tactics. Consistent engagement, relevant content, and respecting your audience are what keep you in the inbox. 5. “Open rates are the ultimate metric.” The highest-ROI emails today don’t just get opened, they get acted on. Clicks, swipes, form fills, purchases. An open without action is just a vanity stat. The brands winning today are turning the inbox into an interactive, action-driven channel that moves revenue, not just pixels. What’s one “email rule” you’ve broken and seen better results?

10 things I stopped doing in email marketing that everyone else still does I've been doing email for nearly 13 years, long enough to do it the wrong way, work out why it was wrong, and change 1. Reporting on open rates as a performance metric (ovbs, right?!) Apple inflates them, Outlook suppresses them, people open to delete. "40% open rate" is not a result 2. Using industry benchmarks You're comparing yourself to everyone else just because they sent emails too Your benchmark is your own history 3. Using double opt-in Invented in 1993 because we couldn't validate emails. It's 2026, we can and it's not required by GDPR and it breaks the promise you made at sign-up 4. Building journeys based on time elapsed Day 5 is not a signal. What someone has DONE since they joined is 5. Adding more into your list because it feels too small For some reason we are ingrained to think that if we send to more, it will get better results 6. Trying to "capture" attention in the inbox You can't capture it - you already have it. Their brain processes your email in under 2 seconds. You're competing for a positive response, not the attention itself 7. Calling it & treating it like a welcome flow A welcome flow welcomes. An orientation flow establishes the entire relationship. The first email is the highest-engagement moment you'll ever get and sets you up for a lifetime of engagement/disengagement 8. Treating email as a performance channel measured per campaign Email is an impact channel, "did this email generate sales?" is the wrong question "What is email contributing to across the whole journey?" is the right one 9. Setting best practice as the standard Best practice is largely BS (as Jay Schwedelson says!) It's optimised for nobody in particular; instead, a principle tells you what to think about Remember a rule just tells you what to do 10. Writing subject lines to maximise opens The inbox brain isn't looking to be intrigued, it's just triaging Write the subject line that's most relevant - not the one most likely to trick an open Email works best when it's built around the real human, in their real inbox, at their real moment of encounter Measured by what it actually contributes over time, overned by principles, not rules Most of these are the DEFAULTS. What your ESP suggests, what the last team normalised, what every industry guide repeats (ERGH) Which of these are you still doing?

I can't believe I'm saying this. For years I've been telling nonprofits: 📧 Email returns $36 on every $1 spent 📧 It's the cheapest fundraising channel 📧 It's where donors convert 📧 Just send more appeals! Well, I'm calling my own bluff... It's complete nonsense. Want to know what's destroying nonprofit fundraising right now? It's these three dangerous myths: ❌ Email is your donation machine ❌ More emails = more money ❌ That magical $36 ROI applies to your organization I've been guilty of spreading these myths. Every fundraising consultant repeats them. They're plastered across every "nonprofit email marketing" blog post. After a decade working with organizations from Amnesty International to the Cancer Research Institute, I need to tell you the truth. We're measuring email success all wrong. Most nonprofits treat email like a slot machine: Send urgent appeal → Donor clicks → Money flows in Yes, you'll get some immediate donations. But that's maybe 2-5% of your list on a good day. When 95% don't donate immediately, we panic. We send more urgent appeals. We increase frequency. We add more red text and countdown timers. We're missing the entire point. Here's what's actually happening with that "failed" email: → Your story about housing insecurity doesn't get a donation → But it gets someone thinking differently about homelessness → They mention your work to their book club → Someone else starts volunteering → Your mission gets brought up during family holiday planning → A major donor remembers your impact when writing their will → A board member thinks of you when their company asks about charitable partnerships Email isn't supposed to be a fundraising ATM. Every message you send moves someone along their journey from stranger to advocate. Most of that journey is invisible to your analytics. That famous $36 return statistic? It's from 2009 research that has nothing to do with modern donor behavior or nonprofit reality. Email builds trust, not transactions. It creates the conditions for generosity. That's what you should measure. Stop obsessing over open rates and click-through rates. Start asking: Are we building deeper relationships? Are we helping people understand our impact? Are we creating emotional connection to our cause? Real nonprofit email strategy requires investment - skilled storytellers who understand donor psychology, tools that segment properly, and patience to build relationships instead of chasing quick wins. The organizations raising serious money through email? They stopped treating it like a donation channel years ago. They use it like the relationship-building powerhouse it actually is.

Your customers have 1474 unread emails right now. But sure, you can keep believing that your email is really getting “read”. Most customer emails suck. Here's the uncomfortable truth: Customers don't want to build a relationship with your company. They want to build a relationship with your team. And your customer emails are failing at this most basic mission. Here are 5 ways to immediately improve your customer emails: 1. Kill the corporate templates Those beautiful HTML templates with your perfect branding? They're screaming "MARKETING EMAIL" and training customers to ignore you. Simple text-based emails from a real person get 2-3x more responses. Save the design work for your website. 2. Abandon the donotreply@ address When you send from donotreply@company.com, you're literally telling customers "We don't want to hear from you." Send from a real human's email address that accepts replies. Yes, it creates more work. That's the point. 3. Fight for attention with personality Your customer's inbox is a battlefield of corporate monotony. Would YOU be excited to open your own emails? Include an unexpected GIF. Reference something timely. Show you're a human writing to a human. 4. Write like you actually talk Record yourself explaining something to a customer. Then transcribe it. That's how your emails should sound. Professional doesn't mean robotic. Your legal team might not love it, but your customers will. 5. Make CTAs about THEIR goals, not yours "Click here to complete your onboarding" is about YOUR process. "Take 3 minutes to unlock [specific outcome they care about]" is about THEIR success. Every CTA should connect directly to a customer outcome, not your internal checklist. These aren't just "best practices" - they're survival tactics in an era where the average person receives 120+ emails daily and your competitors are a click away. What's one change you've made to your customer emails that dramatically improved engagement?

What I learned about email marketing that I wish I could unlearn: That the entire industry is built on assumptions nobody questions. After 8 years and $100M+ generated for DTC brands, I've realized we're all following playbooks written by people who never tested anything. The frequency fallacy: Every course teaches the same welcome flow timing. Email 1, wait a day. Email 2, wait a day. But here's what nobody asks: WHY? When we dug into the data, we found 90% of post-signup purchases happen within 48 hours. High intent customers are making buying decisions RIGHT NOW. So while you're "being polite" with your spacing, competitors sending more emails are getting more impressions and staying top of mind. We tested aggressive frequency. More emails, more sales, zero negative impact. The attribution trap: Everyone obsesses over "email drove 30% of revenue." But attribution isn't causation. When we analyzed actual purchase behavior, 80-90% of campaign buyers were existing customers who already knew the brand. The email didn't convince them to buy - it reminded them to buy. This changes everything about how you measure success. The conversion theater: Brands celebrate signup rates like they matter. "We got 1,000 new emails this month!" Cool. How many became customers? You can manipulate signup rates with sketchy popups and giveaways. But if none convert, you just have expensive spam. The real metric: signup-to-customer rate. The personalization paradox: Everyone talks about "personalized experiences" but then sends the same welcome flow to everyone. Meanwhile, they're sitting on zero-party data they never collected and customer insights they never analyzed. True personalization starts with actually knowing why people buy. The bottom line: Most email marketing is cargo cult behavior. We copy what others do without understanding why it worked for them (if it even did). The brands winning aren't following best practices. They're creating their own based on their data, their customers, their business. Stop learning email marketing. Start learning your customers.