Darren Jamieson: On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I want to talk about email marketing. Now, don’t switch off—because email marketing is actually very interesting! And yes, it still works.
The issue with email marketing is that most people do it really badly. It’s often synonymous with spam. We all receive a lot of emails daily—I probably get more than most—and the vast majority of them, I never even open. But don’t let that fool you into thinking email marketing doesn’t work. It does, and it can be very effective when done properly.
[00:52]
Darren Jamieson: One of the biggest mistakes businesses make with email marketing is using it just to sell, sell, sell—”Buy my product! Click here! It’s amazing! You need this!” That kind of approach doesn’t work. It doesn’t build trust, and it causes people to unsubscribe.
What you need to do instead is nurture your email list. Build a relationship with your audience so they see you as a useful, helpful resource. You want them to trust you and look forward to your emails. Then, when you have something valuable to offer, they’ll be far more likely to engage with it.
Of course, if you run an e-commerce store and your subscribers signed up specifically for product updates, then yes—by all means, send them promotions. But for most businesses, email marketing should be about more than just selling.
[01:45]
Darren Jamieson: This is where most businesses go wrong with email marketing. If this sounds familiar, here’s why it’s not working.
Let’s say you have a couple of hundred subscribers on your mailing list. Over the years, maybe you’ve had a “Subscribe to our newsletter” button on your website, and people have signed up. Maybe you’ve even added customers’ emails to your list without necessarily asking (which isn’t GDPR-compliant, by the way). You send out newsletters once a month, maybe every two months. Over time, your list grows to around a thousand subscribers.
But every time you send out an email, only about 100–150 people open it, and you get 10–20 unsubscribes. This is common, and it’s a sign that you’re doing email marketing the wrong way.
[02:58]
Darren Jamieson: Here’s the issue: you’re sending emails too infrequently, and you’re sending them to people who aren’t interested.
If you send out emails to everyone on your list, and most of them don’t open them, your overall email deliverability rate will drop. Email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo track how many of your emails get opened. If too many of them go unopened, your emails will start landing in spam folders or not being delivered at all.
[04:09]
Darren Jamieson: So, what should you do? This might sound counterintuitive, but you need to send fewer emails—to fewer people.
If you have 1,000 subscribers, don’t send your emails to all 1,000 of them. Most of them aren’t engaged. Instead, send emails only to the people who are likely to open them. The more emails you send that get opened, the better your overall deliverability will be.
[05:10]
Darren Jamieson: Most email marketing platforms—MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Keap, Constant Contact, MailerLite, etc.—offer tagging and segmentation tools. You should use these to ensure that only engaged subscribers receive your emails.
At Engage Web, we have around 5,000 people on our mailing list. But we don’t send emails to all 5,000 each week. Instead, we tag our subscribers based on engagement.
[06:18]
Darren Jamieson:
Here’s how it works:
- If someone doesn’t open our emails for 14–21 days, they lose their “Engaged” tag.
- If they go another 30 days without opening, they lose their “Active” tag and get an “Inactive” tag instead.
- After about 44 days, if someone hasn’t opened any of our emails, we stop sending them our regular newsletter.
That means, out of our 5,000 subscribers, maybe only 2,000 are actively receiving our emails. The others are inactive, so we don’t send to them—because if we did, our deliverability rate would suffer.
[07:38]
Darren Jamieson: But what about the inactive subscribers? Do we just delete them? No. Instead, we put them into a re-engagement sequence.
Every three months, we send them a one-off email designed to get them to engage. The subject lines are crafted to grab attention, such as:
- “Don’t open this email!”
- “Oops! Didn’t mean to send you that.”
- “Are we breaking up?”
These kinds of subject lines encourage curiosity. If they open the email, they get re-tagged as “Active” and start receiving our emails again. If they don’t, they won’t hear from us for another three months.
[09:18]
Darren Jamieson: A clever trick I saw once was an email that had a preview text saying: “Hi [Name], how are you today?” The recipient might think it was a mistake, but when they opened it, it turned out to be intentional, saying, “Just kidding—I know who you are, [Name]!” It’s a simple way to encourage engagement.
[10:20]
Darren Jamieson: Most businesses blast their emails to everyone on their list. But doing that reduces deliverability over time. Instead, segment your audience so that only engaged people receive your emails. That way, more of your emails will land in inboxes, and your marketing efforts will be far more effective.
For the inactive ones, use a re-engagement sequence. If they don’t open anything for 9–12 months, then they’re removed.
[10:52]
Darren Jamieson: I hope this has been useful! If it has, make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Audible, or YouTube. Leave a like, drop a comment, and let me know what you think. I’ll catch you on the next episode!
