Email Campaign Optimization

Welp, Gmail’s done it again. More new updates to make the inbox experience better *for recipients*, much to the chagrin of some senders. The Promotions tab is getting ranked by relevance (hell yeah), post-purchase mail is getting its own swim lane with a dedicated Purchases tab (just in time for the holiday email season!), and Manage Subscriptions makes pruning senders you no longer want to hear from effortless. Why does *this* change matter, given all the new features they’ve been rolling out recently? Because it means delivery ≠ visibility… even if you send at the “perfect” time for your subscribers. In this new reality, two people can open at the same time and see different stacks. If you’re not in their regular rotation, you’re headed to the Promotions basement (or shuffled to page two)… send-time optimization be damned. Tabs are optional, but the consequences of not sending it right are universal. Ranked visibility rewards usefulness and consistency, not hacks or send-time optimization. Here are some things you can do right meowww… 1️⃣ Separate (and de-glam) your transactional. This one’s all about business up front and (promotions) party in the back. Dedicated subdomain/IPs, and kill the promo pixie dust that might make your business-critical mail seem promotional: upsell CTAs, cross-sell banners, and “while you’re here” copy. 2️⃣ Lean into easier unsubscribes Allowing users to easily “Manage Subscriptions” will accelerate list churn, whether you like it or not. But they don’t hurt deliverability (unless there are a TON), and there are ways you can encourage would-be unsubscribers to stay with you by getting in front of it, like offering a preference center where subscribers can opt-down instead of out. 3️⃣ Adjust your Promotions presentation for “Most Relevant” You can’t force… really anything in your recipients these days. But you can encourage them to engage by making it super clear what your message is about and why they need it in their lives with very little effort. For example, instead of: “Our Fall Drop is Here”, get specific! Say the outcome: “24-hr restock on [X] you favorited” 4️⃣ Update your scorecard to match how Gmail ranks mail Unlike the “Most Recent” view, where your visibility’s been mostly about timing, getting mail delivered under a “Most Relevant” reality doesn’t equate to a fair shot at being seen (even if you land in the inbox). 💌 Optimize for speed of engagement, reach (how many engage), and stickiness (how often they engage). Metrics like Time-to-First-Open, First-6-Hour Click Share, Active Gmail Reach (30d), Click Reach (30/60/90), Replies/“helpful” signals, and Persistence (opened 2+ of last 4) will help you figure out how your mail’s really landing. 5️⃣ Stop blasting to everyone. No, seriously. Stop it. I wrote all about this in my recent Send It Right blog post (and newsletter). Get the full scoop: https://lnkd.in/gSP5GtgE

40% open rate. 0 replies. If that’s your campaign, I guarantee that you’ve got a deliverability problem, not a messaging one. Let me know if this sounds familiar 👇 You write the perfect message. The ICP is spot on. The targeting is clean. But the replies? Silence.   It's not because they ignored it, but because they never saw it. In 2025, getting seen is half the battle.   Here’s a quick 3 step checklist we use before anything goes out:   #1: Check the content Run every message through a spam checker (we built a free one for you, link in the comments). Watch for: risky phrases, shouty formatting, aggressive CTAs. If it screams “promo blast,” Gmail buries it.   #2: Verify your email lists We use ZeroBounce to clean and validate contacts, before a single message is sent. Why? Because a few bad emails can tank your sender reputation. Hard bounces, invalid domains, and catch-alls kill deliverability. Clean lists mean safe sends.   #3: Test where your emails actually land A 42% open rate doesn’t mean Primary tab. We use various tools to test inbox placement before we launch, across 20+ seed inboxes, 100+ checks (headers, no links on email #1, DMARC, DNS, content, all of it).   Because Primary vs. Promotion can be the difference between pipeline and nowhere.   Top GTM teams test deliverability like it’s part of their Outbound motion (because it is).   P.S. I’m breaking this down in a live webinar with Jack Boulter from ZeroBounce on June 30. Link is in the first comment 👇

Tired of low response rates to your recruiting emails? You’re not alone, but the solution may be simpler than you think: having the right email sequence strategy. Our analysis of 4M+ email sequences uncovered some interesting insights: 1. 4 is the magic number Sending 4 emails in a sequence doubles replies and boosts “interested” rates by 68% compared to one-off emails. 2. Timing matters 50% of candidates open emails within the first hour. Tuesday and Wednesday are prime days. Schedule your emails to go out at 8 AM, 4 PM, or 10 AM. 3. Space follow-ups out Allow 6 days between emails 1-2 and 2-3. This gives candidates breathing room to evaluate the role. 4. Don’t sleep on weekends For both tech and non-tech roles, weekends see peak open rates as candidates have more downtime. 5. Tailor to the role Following the general rule of thumb is good, but you should adapt timing to your audience. For example: - Marketing roles shine on Wednesdays and Fridays - Product roles get the most opens on Fridays and Tuesdays Want the complete playbook for high-performing recruiting sequences? Download our free eBook: https://bit.ly/4ffcn5B

Here are some changes we saw with email deliverability this past year. I still hold that the more things change, the more things stay the same. More important than anything when sending cold emails is the rate at which people are marking you as spam. You could send cold emails from mail chimp with 0 warm up. If no one marks you as spam you’d probably be fine barring automated Google flags on text etc. This year we saw some changes around email sending volume, domain warmup, and reusing domains. 1) We reduced our emails sent from 50 to 30 per day per inbox. Still 2 inboxes per domain. I don’t really have full evidence that 2 inboxes is better than 3 but it’s definitely better than 10. 2) We have seen campaigns that get are getting good response rates be able to push the inboxes past even 50 per day. 30 is just our starting point. We used to be able to also set up our inboxes and in a pinch launch low volume without waiting 3 weeks for them to warm up. These days we are staying prepared for even inboxes not being ready after a full 3 weeks. Again, this comes down to the campaign but we can’t pull the trigger as fast as we could in the past. 4) In the past, we also could see inboxes reduce on inboxes. Then we would warm them up for 2-4 weeks and relaunch on those domains. This year, we have been seeing if reply rates go down, we can’t recycle those inboxes. This past May/June/July was crazy for email delivery. We had customers we would warm domains for 3 weeks and then get absolutely no responses on the inboxes. It was very difficult to onboard new customers reliably and we started setting up far more inboxes than we though we needed for everyone as an insurance policy. 5) Towards the end of the year, outlook inbox spam filters became unbelievably strict to the point it became popular to just not send to outlook. I don’t expect it to stay that way forever but it is something to be watching. 6) Fundamentally, our strategy for email deliverability has stayed broadly the same. Sometimes people ask to pay me for coaching on our strategy and it’s so simple I really can’t take their money. Still 2 inboxes per domain. Google or outlook inboxes Alphoric is my main partner for Google Inboxes. 30 emails sent per day 15 minutes between sends. Warmup for 3 weeks. We keep enough inboxes so we can send our client’s goal send volume in 3 batches. So if they want to send 1000 emails per day. I keep the ability to send 3000 emails per day on hand and we just split the inboxes into batches. If you are running your own outbound, I’d still recommend keeping 50% of your necessary volume warming at all times in case anything goes wrong.

𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆: 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 $𝟰𝟵𝗞 𝘁𝗼 $𝟯𝟬𝟬𝗞 𝗶𝗻 𝟵𝟬 𝗗𝗮𝘆𝘀 Initial Situation and Challenges: The client was struggling with a stagnant email marketing performance: Open Rates: 7% Click Rates: Less than 0.2% Inbox Placement: Around 60% across major ISPs Spam Rates: Above 0.4% at Gmail, and 0.1% - 0.5% at other ISPs These figures highlighted significant deliverability issues, with a considerable portion of emails not reaching the inbox, affecting engagement and revenue. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟭: 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗲𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲. 𝗧𝗼 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘀, 𝘄𝗲: 1. Studied Unsubscribes and Soft Bounces: Determined that certain segments and content types had higher unsubscribes and soft bounces. 2. Content Performance Review: Found that concise content (no more than 2 scrolls) with a CTA within the first scroll had higher engagement rates. Actionable Insights: Shorter emails with prominent early CTAs drove better conversions. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟮: 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 We executed multiple tests to refine content: 1. Layout and Image Alterations: Changed email layouts and image-to-text ratios to see their impact on deliverability. 2. Footer Disclaimers and Content Changes: Tweaked footer disclaimers which led to better inbox placement, especially in Gmail. Results: Improved Gmail inboxing rates and engagement. However, these changes did not significantly impact Yahoo and Hotmail. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟯: 𝗜𝗦𝗣-𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 1. Revenue and Click Analysis by ISP: Discovered Yahoo and Hotmail had better conversion rates than Gmail, indicating higher engagement from these ISPs. 2. Hotmail Focus: Despite low inboxing (45%), Hotmail drove more revenue than Yahoo. We liaised with Microsoft for three weeks to resolve IP blocking issues, doubling the volume sent to Hotmail. 3. Yahoo Adjustments: Improved inboxing to 80% by targeting users who had engaged (opened emails at least 10 times and clicked once) in the last 60 days. 4. Gmail Strategy: Implemented content changes and special segmentation strategies, boosting inboxing to 70% and reducing spam rates below 0.2%. Outcome: ISP-specific strategies led to improved inbox placement and engagement across the board. Step 4: Results and Impact Inboxing Improvements: Gmail: Increased to 70% Yahoo: Improved to 80% Hotmail: Resolved IP issues and doubled volume. Open Rates: Grew to an average of 15% in 90 days Revenue: Increased from $49K to $300K per month within 90 days. Continued in the comment section... #email #emailmarketing

One of the fastest-growing Substack creators (100k+ subs) asked me to review their funnel to help them monetize faster. Here’s what I found: This creator is absolutely crushing it. They’re getting thousands of free subscribers both from Substack and LinkedIn every month. Their problem? Most of those free subs aren’t upgrading to paid. And after looking at their welcome flow, I could see why. They are not leveraging their welcome email—the single most important touchpoint in their entire funnel—to drive paid conversions. So with that in mind, I came up with 2 potential strategies to help them fix this bottleneck: Strategy 1: Free Trial (Lowest Effort, Lower Potential Upside) Since they only offer yearly subscriptions, I suggested offering a 30-day trial - but adding some urgency to the mix: “Start your free trial by end of day and reply to this email—I’ll send you [bonus 1, bonus 2, and bonus 3] as a thank you for upgrading today.” The key: Only mention the price of the yearly membership *after* breaking down everything they’d unlock as a paid member. Ideally, too, you want to find a wat to “quantify” the value they’d be getting from each thing included in the subscription and compare it to the actual price they’d pay for it. Strategy 2: Personalized Onboarding Funnel (Highest Effort, Highest Potential Upside) When you have a huge resource library, you can run into an unexpected problem: People don’t know where to start and feel overwhelmed as a result. (This is definitely the case for this creator.) But this can also be an opportunity to turn free users into paid readers. How? By adding a simple survey to your welcome email you can identify where subscribers are in their journey as well as their biggest challenges. Then, you can use this data to send personalized drip sequences with specific resource recommendations based on their individual responses. So instead of just saying “Here’s my paid newsletter, go subscribe!” you create a personalized roadmap for each subscriber to get the most out of your paid newsletter resources. The key takeaway for you (whether you run a free or a paid newsletter): Your welcome email gets the highest open rates—make it count. Hope this is helpful!

Hey email marketers, guess what? Apple has made a few changes (again) 🤨 Want to find out how the new iOS 17 impacts your email links? It's not all doom and gloom for email links yet, so that's a start! 😅 But you still need to note these changes. Why should you care? Allow this statistic to percolate: Almost three out of every five emails are opened on Apple Mail (58%). That’s more than twice of Gmail (28%), and over seven times that of Outlook (4.2%)... Do you see why keeping an eye on Apple's changes needs to be done? 👀 Midway through September this year, Apple released their new operating system update for iPhone - iOS 17. Many email marketers panicked, expecting some spectacular changes like those impacted by the release of Apple's Mail Privacy Protection which impacted the tracking of open rates in a big way on Apple devices. You may have heard of iOS 17's Link Tracking Protection (LTP), which is one of the privacy enhancements that Apple has released with this update. This enhancement is the main cause for concern amongst email marketers. Allow me to explain and allay your concern, and give a a pointer or two on how this update could impact your email efforts: → 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: Apple's LTP essentially strips some variables and parameters from shared URLs 🔗 This means removing certain tracking information from links that users share in Messages and Mail, as well as removing the same tracking information from links when these are accessed in Safari in Private Browsing mode. The good news is that UTM parameters aren't being impacted (for now). That doesn't, however, mean that this is good news for conversion tracking... → 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: If you're using custom tracking parameters, you may have a problem getting an accurate depiction of your conversions 📉 Sometimes these tracking parameters in URLs are used to understand who clicked on links and to measure campaign success. Because these are now removed, it becomes tough to attribute website visits or conversions back to specific campaigns. This is your major concern, however, if you use UTM parameters, you can mitigate some of the impact this has on your conversion tracking. With Apple, no email marketer is ever really out of the woods. What do you need to do? ☝️ Monitor any future changes or updates ✌️ Test and adapt your emails as a constant practice 👌 Find smart ways to obtain data directly from your audience You'll make things far easier for yourself by keeping a close eye on this. There are links to great resources by Litmus and Bloomreach in the comments for deep dives into iOS 17 and how this impacts marketers. And there's the (Apple) tea ☕ Have you seen any impact of iOS 17 on your email strategy yet? Happy November 💌

I analyzed 100+ SaaS onboarding email sequences. Here's what actually works: 📊 After reviewing over a hundred onboarding email sequences across various B2B SaaS products, clear patterns emerged distinguishing what drives user activation from what gets ignored. ⏱️ Timing is as crucial as content ▪️ First email: Sent within 3 minutes of signup to capitalize on user engagement. ▪️ Key information: Delivered promptly, ideally within the first day, to guide users effectively. ▪️ Follow-up emails: Aligned with typical user behavior patterns, not arbitrary schedules. 🧠 Subject line psychology ▪️ Specific value propositions: Outperform generic welcomes. ▪️ Personalization: Including the user's name or specific goals can increase open rates. ▪️ Concise phrasing: Subject lines under 7 words tend to perform better. 📱 Content structure that converts ▪️ Single, clear CTA: Avoid multiple calls to action to reduce decision fatigue. ▪️ Bulleted action steps: Enhance readability and user engagement. ▪️ Mobile-first design: Essential, as a significant portion of users access emails on mobile devices. ▪️ Strategic placement of social proof: Position testimonials or success stories before key actions to build trust. 🔄 Effective sequence logic ▪️ Optimal sequence: 7–10 emails over 14 days. ▪️ Day 0: Immediate value and quick win. ▪️ Days 1–2: Core feature education. ▪️ Days 3–7: Use cases and success stories. ▪️ Days 8–14: Advanced features and potential upsells. 💡 Key insight: Emails that help users visualize outcomes ("Here's what you'll achieve") tend to drive more engagement than those focusing solely on product features. What strategies have you found effective in your onboarding email sequences?

Apple just made email marketing harder. Here's what you need. If you’re using Apple Mail, things are changing. Emails are now categorised—some land where they're seen, others don't. Here’s how Apple is shifting inboxes: → Primary tab → Family, friends, colleagues, urgent messages → Other tabs → Promotions, Updates, Transactions Translation? Urgency-based emails (like countdowns or deadlines) might lose visibility. Your marketing emails may get buried. But don’t panic. Here’s what I’m doing for brands I work with: 1/ Segment smart: Focus on subscribers who already engage with you. Prioritise relevance over reach. 2/ Mix up content: Blend educational content with promotions. Keep emails engaging and worth opening. 3/ Test subject lines: Move beyond urgency and try fresh approaches. 4/ Set up dummy inboxes: Learn where your urgent messages land—and adjust accordingly. Apple is also grouping emails by sender. Your subject line and opening copy now matter more than EVER. (Those first few lines? Prime real estate.) Want visibility? → Keep your sender names and branding CONSOLIDATED. → Stay consistent with your tone across all your emails. Adapt or fade away, what’s your strategy for tackling Apple’s update?

Checked my spam folder yesterday and found SO MANY DTC brands that used to be in my promotions tab. Even found double opt-in messages in there. Seems like Google/Yahoo updates are working hard to protect consumers from receiving unwanted messages 👏 For us, email marketers that means taking time to update our sending strategies and tighten the engaged segments. If segmentation was not your top priority before, it definitely should be now! Segmentation allows you to target people based on their intent, their interests, the stage of their customer journey, demographics, location and more. Some basic tips: 1. Check your flow filters. Make sure that people are not receiving your Browse, Cart and Checkout Abandonment flows all at the same time. Think about whether people in your Welcome or Thank You flows need to receive your email campaigns. 2. Make sure to send to your Engaged Segment only. And remember, Open Rates are not the true indication of engagement. 3. Send relevant content. Engaged segment is great, but imagine how many different customer personas are there! You have VIPs, prospects, one-time buyers, low AOV, high AOV, and discount shoppers - they all resonate with a different message. So take the time to really look at your audience and craft compelling offers for them. 4. Send more text-based emails. It is not a secret that text-based emails tend to land in the inboxes more frequently than the image based. So utilize that knowledge, especially if you need to fix your reputation among inbox providers. Plain text emails have the power to stand out among the other promotions tab messages and feel much more personal than the image-based sent-to-everyone flashy email. 5. Clean your list and set up proper exclusion segments. Remove spam trap accounts, unengaged, chronic bouncers, and those who have long story of not opening. What else will you add here?