Why Media Buyers Fail at Email Marketing

I've run hundreds of email account audits, and I always see the same mistakes. Here are the "5 Deadly Sins" that are killing your email performance – and how to fix them. MISTAKE #1: TOO MUCH EMAIL VOLUME When it comes to email marketing, engagement is far more important than list size. Sending too many emails can overwhelm your subscribers, leading to lower engagement rates, increased unsubscribes, and damage to your sender reputation. This turns into a “boy who cried wolf” scenario, where too much volume results in your messages getting ignored or sent to SPAM. THE FIX: Focus on quality over quantity. Prioritize sending valuable content at a steady cadence rather than hitting an arbitrary volume target. MISTAKE #2: NOT SEGMENTING YOUR AUDIENCE If you’re still sending “email blasts” in 2024, you’re gonna have a bad time. Sending the same email to your entire list without considering a subscriber’s unique needs or interests is a recipe for terrible engagements, sales, and unsubscribe rates. THE FIX: Segment your list based on demographics,interests, or behaviors. Send hyper-personalized content to maximize relevance and improve conversion rates. MISTAKE #3: WEAK OR MISLEADING SUBJECT LINES Using vague, spammy, or clickbaity subject lines is an absolute no-no. If your subject line is unclear, it’s not getting opened. If it makes a promise that your content doesn’t deliver on, your subscribers will lose trust, killing your future engagement metrics. THE FIX: Craft subject lines that are both clear and compelling. Set expectations for what’s inside and make sure the email content follows through on that claim. MISTAKE #4: IGNORING MOBILE OPTIMIZATION Current estimates suggest that around 60% of website visits take place on mobile devices. Similarly, studies have shown that around 40-60% of email opens happen on mobile. So, why do so many brands invest thousands in mobile optimization for their SITE, and almost nothing in optimizing their EMAILS? THE FIX: Use responsive email templates that adjust to any screen size, and always test how your emails look on mobile before sending. MISTAKE #5: FAILING TO ANALYZE PERFORMANCE For many brands, email marketing is an item on a to-do list that just needs checked off. If you’re not running a post-send analysis to determine what’s working and what’s not, you are absolutely leaving money on the table. THE FIX: Analyze your email marketing metrics on a monthly basis to understand what’s working and use that to drive further experimentation and optimization. I see these mistakes in every single account I audit – and it KILLS me. Get these low cost, high impact opportunities dialed in and you’ll dramatically improve your results.

I've seen every email marketing disaster. Here are the biggest ones I see and how to avoid them: Mistake #1: Training customers to expect discounts Stop conditioning your buyers to wait for sales. When you constantly discount, you teach customers that full price is a scam. Instead: Use discounts strategically. Not every email needs a coupon code. Mistake #2: Obsessing over open rates Open rates lie to you. Especially with Apple's privacy changes making "fake opens" the norm. Focus on what matters: clicks, conversions, and revenue. Mistake #3: Generic "check your email" popups Your popup says "get 10% off, check your email." Then 60% of people never find that email. Put the discount code right on the success page. Stop making customers hunt for it. Mistake #4: Sending the same message to everyone Your VIP customer who bought 5 times gets the same "20% off" as a freebie seeker. Segment your list. Treat your best customers like the gold they are. Mistake #5: Complicated abandoned cart flows I see brands with 8-email cart abandonment sequences. Most people buy in the first 48 hours or never. Keep it simple. 3-4 emails max. Mistake #6: Ignoring your email deliverability Your emails are going to spam and you don't even know it. Check your sender reputation monthly. Monitor your metrics. Fix issues fast. The biggest disaster? Thinking email marketing is just about sending more emails. It's about sending the RIGHT emails to the RIGHT people at the RIGHT time.

Why 90% of Email Marketing Campaigns Fail? Your prospects' inboxes are battlefields. Hundreds of brands compete for that coveted Primary tab spot, yet most marketers are fighting with broken weapons. Here's the reality: Email marketing is a science, not an art. Most campaigns fail because they skip the fundamentals. The #1 Mistake: Bad Targeting. Before you worry about subject lines, nail your ICP. Ask yourself: • What stage of growth is your ideal customer in? • What specific triggers create urgency for your solution? • When do they have budget availability? • Who are the real decision-makers? Generic targeting tools often aren't enough. The best campaigns use custom AI agents to identify prospects based on complex behavioral patterns and real-time triggers. Fresh, receptive leads always outperform spray-and-pray approaches. Technical Foundation (Most Skip This): ✅ Use lookalike domains (protect your main domain) ✅ Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC properly ✅ Warm up your sender reputation gradually ✅ Verify your lists (bad emails = spam folder) ✅ Test actual inbox placement Precision Over Volume: Stop sending 1,000 generic emails. Start sending 100 highly targeted ones to prospects who: Match your exact ICP Are at the right buying stage Have recent trigger events Actually need your solution NOW Bottom Line: While everyone else is being lazy with their email marketing, those who execute properly are seeing incredible results. The competition is fierce but surprisingly weak. The opportunity is massive for those willing to do the work right. Want the complete playbook? I've written a detailed guide covering everything from ICP development to technical setup. Link in the comments 👇 Found this helpful? Hit like and share to help other marketers level up their email game! 🚀

I was talking to my husband, who’s building his startup, Talowiz. His marketing approach? Find contacts via some martech tools, launch email or LinkedIn campaigns, and hope for conversions. Sounds familiar? Unfortunately, this is where most startup founders go wrong, especially when their deal size is low. They burn dollars on tools and campaigns with little to no return. Let’s talk about why this approach often fails: 1️⃣ Targeting the Wrong Companies Most of the time, these contacts are not from accounts that may be interested in your offerings. This is not a research-driven approach. 2️⃣ Generic Messaging Multiple industries have their specific pain points. Addressing these pain points should be the first step. It is imperative to research the accounts before starting any outreach. 3️⃣ Spray and Pray Doesn’t Work Only 5% of buyers are actively in-market. Sending generic campaigns to everyone is wasteful, especially in B2B, where personalized outreach is important. 4️⃣ Email Challenges Many emails never reach inboxes. According to studies, 20% of emails fail to land in inboxes due to spam filters, poor domain reputation, and unverified lists. Average open rates in B2B? 21.33% for general emails, which means most efforts go unnoticed. Even if you manage to land in the inbox of someone not ready to buy, they might mark your email as spam, killing future opportunities with them. 🚨 Bottom line: Relying on random lists, generic campaigns, and drip emails without research only wastes efforts and dollars. 🚨 So, what’s the solution? The key is to stop the spray-and-pray approach and focus on Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to prioritize research, personalization, and targeting in-market accounts. Want to know how ABM can transform your startup’s marketing? Stay tuned for my next post or drop me a message! #ABM #accountbasedmarketing #B2B #B2BMarketing #ABMers #AccountBasedMarketers

If you're running email marketing for a DTC brand, these 2 statistics should shock you to the core. 1. Around 70% of buyers will never repurchase from you 2. Roughly 95% of your target customers at any time are not in the market for your product (95:5 rule) Armed with these statistics, how would that reshape your approach to retention? Most of the emails & SMS these days are an endless stream of spam completely oblivious to these 2 pieces of data. They completely neglect that most customers have no desire to purchase again at any given time and we can only erode their experience by plastering them with thoughtless offers. Because it doesn't matter (most of the time) how many discounts you send, the majority of your customers will NOT bite and those that do may have converted anyway (at higher margin). So what should we do? In a word: better. We need to be more customer-centric. What would make YOU more likely to open and engage with an email after receiving the same mind-numbing discount for the 20th time in a month? For most customers, it's a balance of entertainment & education. It's media assets that help pass the time and keep your brand on top of the consideration set so that when they ARE in the market, you have the opportunity to sell to them. That's why I think campaigns need to be a balance of: 🧲 Product education/tutorials 🧲 Partnerships with creators & content assets 🧲 Quiz's & gamified experiences 🧲 Story-based content All of these emails provide a welcome break from the avalanche of sales emails and tend to have high click rates (sending more traffic back to your site), lower unsubscribe rates and quite frankly, they're highly differentiated compared to the stream of trash clogging up most customers inboxes. ________ There will ALWAYS be a time & a place for a good offer, discount or promotion. I am not naive -- this is eCommerce and we need to sell. But selling needs to be more tailored based on data and not a carpet bombing strategy that's utterly devoid of meaning for most customers and loses the opportunity to engage them at a later stage. That's why over 80% of your general campaign sends should be email strategy beyond short-term revenue thinking. P.S. I’m offering a few FREE Klaviyo audits this month ($3K value). Book yours here 👉 https://lnkd.in/ebkXT27G #emailmarketing #klaviyo #shopify

If you're sending 100+ cold emails per day and NOT signing clients, here's your fix: 1. Your Targeting is Off Are the people you're emailing actually within your ICP (ideal client profile)? There's a lot of times where you scrape a list off some platform, and a large percentage of them aren't actually relevant leads. It's useful to take a random sample of 40-50 of the leads you downloaded and make sure they're actually relevant. If they're not the right target audience then you obviously will not get clients. 2. Your Offer Might Not be Cold Traffic Ready The thing you're trying to sell might not make sense as a front-end cold traffic offer. This is normally the case for high-commitment type offers. As an example: you're asking to immediately take over the advertising of an entire business. Media buying, creative, all front-end sales, etc. It's too much of an ask for cold traffic. Another mistake is when you lack a promise of a specific, quantifiable result. These are all required to sell to COLD traffic specifically. Yes, you can get away with not doing this to warm traffic or referrals. But if you're trying to scale, you by definition have to sell to cold traffic, so you do in fact have to do this if you want to scale. 3. Your Messaging is Confusing Sometimes what you write makes no sense. You use abbreviations, use random word jumble, make your scripts too long, and say things that don't make sense to a 10 year old. You need to be extremely clear about what you're saying. This is why I like one sentence scripts. Imagine you're an accountant and you sell bookkeeping. The FIRST script you write should be as simple as this: "Hey [name]. Do you need an accountant to manage your books?" That is the entire email script. 4. You're Not Following Up There's two halves to understanding this. There's the initial cold email & the follow ups WITHOUT having received a response, and then there are the follow ups AFTER receiving a response. Generally, your first COLD email is going to generate 80% of the responses. But what happens here, after you get the response, is where people screw up. You have permission to follow up with these people forever until they say to stop. People ghost all the time. They get busy with things. You likely need to be substantially more aggressive with your sales processes. 5. Your Volume Might be Too Low 100 emails per day is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. You can send like 10,000 cold emails per month, automated, ~$600/mo all-in cost. If you were under the impression that you'd be signing multiple clients for only $600, you are out of your mind. At scale, your cost to acquire a customer with cold outreach will hover somewhere around $600-$1500. With ads it'll be $2,000-$3,500 at scale. You're not getting results because you have unreasonable expectations about what the average result it. You just need to send more emails.