Email has the best ROI, so fix it | E83 with Beth O'Malley

Why does email marketing often feel like shouting into the void? 🤔 We’ve all been there—campaigns get built, contacts pile up, and engagement flatlines… yet somehow “just send more emails” remains the rallying cry.

In this episode, we’re joined by Beth O’Malley, self‑proclaimed Email Queen and 12‑year CRM veteran, to dismantle the biggest email myths—why your campaigns keep missing the mark, and exactly how to fix them.

We get into:
 ✅ Why borrowing B2C “best practices” and 2004 segmentation still holds you back
 ✅ The real risks of buying cold lists (and smarter ways to reach prospects)
 ✅ The three pillars of email mastery: strategy, data integrity & tech setup
 ✅ How to build subscriber‑centric journeys that deliver the right message at the right time
 ✅ Quick wins with exclusion‑based campaigns to trim the fat and boost engagement
 ✅ Why open rates lie—and which metrics actually prove email ROI
 ✅ Avoiding technical dead ends: SPF, DMARC & platform limitations to watch
 ✅ Winning leadership buy‑in with analogies (and the cost‑of‑inaction playbook)
 ✅ The unethical tricks—like fake order confirmations—that always backfire

If you’re done watching your emails underperform—or you’re ready to turn email into your highest‑ROI channel—this one’s for you.

Link to Beths course: https://www.certifiedguru.com/

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

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Welcome to Blame It On Marketing this week we are going to be talking about why your emails SUCK. She's marketing queen, email Yeah, gave myself that title. I've been doing email now for 12 years. shall we start with your deepest, darkest marketing f*ck up I sent an email out by accident. And then the whole company went into like, OVERDRIVE because there was thousands of emails, phone calls, people like I've tried this, it's not that link doesn't work. Buying lists is a DANGEROUS game. It's dangerous. So many marketers are gonna have heard that Beth and be like, yes, can I send this to my boss? go talk to Beth. Welcome to Blame It On Marketing with Emma and Ruta. And this week we are going to be talking about why your emails SUCK. And we are joined by the awesome Beth, who we will let introduce herself. I'm Beth O'Malley. I've been doing email now for 12 years. So little old me started as a little apprentice. And yes, I'm in business two years ago, going into businesses and pretty much tearing apart their email strategies and helping them rebuild them so they've got a better channel. I also love a bit of CRM as well. So yeah, I've been doing that for long time, but there's so many issues in email. So I can't wait to dig into those with you guys. Absolutely, I'm really excited. We haven't done an email specific episode and given how many people say that email's dead, we need to talk about it. So, but before we get into that, shall we start with your deepest, darkest marketing f*ck up that you wanna confess to us? Of course, I mean, there's quite a few, but I was thinking about this the other day, actually. And the one thing in my client literally did the same thing and called me up yesterday and probably back in like 2017, I sent an email out by accident. I mean, I meant to schedule it. It went to the whole, I think it was like 250 subscribers to something that hadn't launched yet. And then the whole company went into like, OVERDRIVE because there was thousands of emails, phone calls, people like I've tried this, it's not that link doesn't work. I caused a storm. And obviously at the time, like I can't think how old I was then I was still quite, I was quite senior, like at the time, you know. But yeah, it was, it was one of those like learning curves of like, well, you know, we're not saving lives, nothing really bad's happened. But I think I must have cost the organization money because everybody was on like every single team was on customer service marketing, sales, everyone. So that was my biggest, my biggest fuck up. you know. can only do it really well if you fucked it up a lot along the way. That's what I think. Totally. So onto our topic, email marketing. Why do you think email marketing? Because when you look on LinkedIn, it gets kind of a bad rap, doesn't it? It's like people are constantly bagging it out and slagging off each other's emails and all that kind of stuff. So why do you think it's so painful for marketers and maybe even especially in B2B? Because I think, feel like that's where most of the drama happens. Definitely. think one, there's so much misinformation out there about email. You've got email agencies just pulling together like image only emails and being like, we, we, we generate millions of revenue for our client. Like this is how you do it. And you've got somebody like me saying completely different things. And then you've got brands. I think there's just in B2C for a second, there's a copy and paste approach. It's like, we've just seen this big brand do it. It must work. But they then everybody just copies and pastes and doesn't question it. I think that's a huge problem. No one questions it. And actually since 2004, so in 2004, I was not doing marketing, but back then that's when segmentation became a thing. So it was like personalization and sending out nice emails. And we have not really moved since then. And when you look at an email from 2020, like 2004 to now, particularly for some brands, it's not really changed. So there's just a huge, there's a huge problem with that. also think social media is partly to blame and like shiny object syndrome. You've got all these like new channels, all these things and email just kind of got left on the back burner for a lot of businesses where they haven't evolved. So they're still using these 2004 strategies that are just it's awful. They're copying other brands, it must work because you know, Nike do that or whatever. So they just copy it and then B2B. I think they think that it doesn't work for them. So they just don't try it or I think their idea of email marketing is let's buy a list of our key decision makers, know, one of those lists that everybody's got and you pay money for it you think you're rich because you've got all these email addresses of your ideal client, which is just, again, not true. And let's send them some emails because they must care. You if they see this, they must want to engage with us. And then that's their idea of email. So I think there's just so much poor mindsets, poor approaches, copy and paste, and no one's really stuck out in the industry and been like, oh no, this is actually how you can do evolved email. This is actually what it looks like today because there's just a lot of rubbish out there. And I'm trying, really trying to be that person to try and break through all that rubbish noise essentially. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions, especially in B2B when it comes to email? Because you see a lot of these like, and I've commented on them and I stand by what I said, but you might have a different opinion where it's like, here's how to do cold emailing. Set up 360 alternative domains, start warming them up six months beforehand, get a list off of Apollo and da da. And I'm like, dude, if you're having to do this for email, something went wrong. Yeah, I, I take the approach with my clients as if you're going to do that. Let me try and show you the safer way to do it. And I'm very much I am I'm not a preacher. I'm not a cold emailer. So I do not offer cold emailing as a service. What I will do is I have a couple of clients where they're going to go do it regardless, they're going to pay for these lists because I hear a lot. My business was built on this years ago. It used to work years ago. We add and I'm like, yeah, we're not we're not we're not years ago, like we're doing kind of like, it's not, it's not working. So I completely agree. I think there's fundamentally an issue if you are burning through domains and just buying lists and just literally like hammering people and then you'll get a few replies. You think, great, okay, the more I send the more replies and then you get in this vicious cycle. And honestly, I've seen some really just awful cases of this where like businesses are actually losing so much money because they rely so much on these like lists. So I totally agree. think cold email. is you can do it, but it takes so much more time. It's why do you think these lists don't work? If everybody's got access to these Apollo leads, what do you think's happening? Do you know what mean? it's, it's like, it's a real, I'm like, if you're to do it, let me at least help and help you do a bit more safely, a bit more ethically. If you can listen to that. If not, I don't want to get involved because you, I just think Buying lists is a DANGEROUS game. It's dangerous. it's like that mentality, isn't it, that people have about lead generation where it's like, if I took poor X number of leads in the top, it's gonna shake out at this number of customers, but your conversion rate is probably shit, right? Because you're like, you've had to pour thousands and thousands of names from those crappy Apollo lists, sorry Apollo, into crap. into, I mean, it's, it's the combination, right? It's not the Apollo list that's the problem. It's the combination of the terrible emails and the just slap, know, like it's, it's, it's the equivalent of the LinkedIn pitch slap, isn't it? Like pitch slapping people with your product. I jokingly commented on your post the other day, Beth saying, can I please attach a brochure? And it just, and the emails just be about your product, please. And it's like, it's so that, isn't it? frustrating and it's also funny because I think a lot of the mindsets I see this in are kind of like more leaders in email, like not even in email, just in businesses. They feel for some reason, if they've got somebody's email address, they feel like it's their golden ticket. They go, yeah, like we have got a massive database. We have got all this data. And then I'm like, okay, so what you're gonna email them all. So do you think they're all gonna see it? for one, they don't even know about deliverability. So they're just like, we'll send an email out and everybody will see it. And then I'm like, two, do you really think they care what you're saying? Like, do you really think they care? And then they're like, well, they must because this will help them. And I'm like, okay, get out the way, let marketing do their thing. And then it's like three, do really want to be that brand or that business that puts yourself in a place? that isn't welcomed or expected. There's a I think there's definitely a way to do it to acknowledge that I'm here in your inbox, I'm in your space. No, you don't know me. But I'm really trying to help businesses with this. But people don't want to do that. They're like, I can help you. You want this? So yeah, but yeah, it's a it's an interest game. Yeah. many marketers are gonna have heard that Beth and be like, yes, can I send this to my boss? This clip. I have arguments. get paid to argue with CEOs and leadership teams. And I love, I do love my job. I love what I do. But ultimately people do just bring me in marketers to be like, can you just reiterate what I've been saying for two years, please? And somehow, because they're paying somebody external, they're like, okay, well, we'll take it on board. But yeah, it's, I think if anyone's listening to this, they're gonna buy on a list or their manager's like, we're gonna buy a list. Just stop, get some help. And also for big like cold outreach agencies approaching you and it's like, we'll get you all the demos and la la la la. And they're charging like 15 grand a month or something that it probably won't work. Like test your own cold outreach first. There's nothing magical they're gonna do that is beyond your marketing team's probably capability. So if you've tried cold email in like the most honest and wholesome way and it still doesn't work. they're probably not gonna deliver anything as magical. 100%, they just do it on a wilder scale. They literally will just, oh, it's awful. It's awful. I've seen those setups, but I agree. 100 % does a really good way to put it. Hi. email, Beth, is like a bit of an afterthought for a lot of marketers? Because I feel like that's part of the problem here. know, like all jokes aside, you know, obviously the senior leaders are the naughty ones who do do the like, we need to just send a list email to everybody because it's going to be fine. But also, and I know this from having, think Ruta, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but when we worked together, I feel like sometimes email was the thing that kept sipping down the list for us because... We were like, we know we need to do it. I like to think when we did do emails, we wrote good emails, like, hello, did we sauna together? Did we sauna together? Subject line. But it was something that just kept falling down the priority list in terms of setting up decent nurtures. that as a communication channel. We didn't use it as a promotion or lead channel, if that makes sense. I think that's the best way I could describe it. So when there was something to be said, we would use it and then otherwise we'd just be like, no, just let them be. Yeah, I think that's probably I think there's a few nuances that I think one I don't think people fully marketers don't fully understand how to use email or like, it's that kind of like, like, if I if you throw to a general market, like, scrap what you're doing, come up with a whole new plan, they often more often than not, like, I don't know, this was handed down to me. This was handed down. So I work a lot with with marketing teams and majority of the time they have never ever changed what somebody else their old, you know, predecessor has given then they gave to them and it's this feeling of yes, it becomes it becomes an afterthought and I think it becomes a quick job. It's like, yeah, we'll just send an email or just hang on. I'll just write that now done. Okay, bitch, bash, bash, pull the list and it goes and I think it's just become this this channel that won people take for granted because I do genuinely think a lot of businesses, it's gonna, it's gonna become completely obsolete for them. And they're not gonna know because they don't do enough digging into the stats, but they're just gonna keep doing what they do. And no one's seeing it. Most of them go spam. No one cares. You might as well just stop bothering and wasting your effort there. But I think, yeah, after thought for some businesses or businesses that think they're kind of like a bit too proud for that. well, no, we can't get fast sales off that. We're not going to use it. but I think there's a real lack of education as well. So something I found in the industry, it's like there's no proper, there's no proper training. And then when there is, it's very, very different. There's, there's a lot of people throw around the words best practice I have in the past. I definitely have. Then you're like, what is that? And I've come to the conclusion that there isn't, there isn't like best practice. There's just, there's fundamental principles of email that you kind of do and don't do. And it's like common sense, most of them. But I think there's a lot of... There's a lot of spiel out there, a lot of people saying a lot of stuff and not a lot of people explaining it. So it's just this copy and paste approach. It's been handed down. Marketers don't know how to do it. And then when you throw it in the deep end, like how are you gonna, how are you gonna achieve this with email? They're like, oh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't know. Or they have really outdated tech. So of course it's an afterthought. Cause it's like, we don't need to invest in email. When have you ever seen an email budget in a business? It's very, very rare. Yeah. lists, right? Like that's... Yeah. Yeah. you know, so I'm doing a big, big businesses, you know, somebody like Nando's, they have a whole CRM and email team and you know, they do have budget, but they don't necessarily a lot of businesses would never say, okay, how can we, how can we invest in email in a way to like optimize or strategy or, you know, be able to measure email, measuring email is the hardest thing to do. It's like, it's not opens, it's not clicks. Like, can you actually tell me what the impact was? How much? revenue has impacted what you actually got from it and and I honestly disown any businesses that are just like what I don't know so it's just a huge bit of a mess some things with email can be fairly technical and some marketers just skip right by setting up their DMARC's and all of SPF's and all of that shit, which is a thing, but also some platforms aren't made for email marketing. like, I know Beth, you're a fan of HubSpot, for me, HubSpot's not really an email marketing platform. If you look at what the features are, you can email. but you can also email a hundred thousand people one pop. And if you wanna fuck your domain up right to Christmas, like go for it. So yeah, I feel like you're so right. Like there's best practice, there's a technical bit, and then there's like platform specific stuff, which you might just have HubSpot and you might not have any other options. So like, what do you do then? But so that's all the things that could go wrong. So you were talking about some of those fundamentals and I assume those fundamentals are What leads you to seeing success with your clients? So what are they like? What's if, is there five, is there something? Can we have a little list? I have so one of the things through my years of auditing, like I can't tell you how many emails I've audited and accounts and setups is a lot of people focus on like copy design, kind of like the last things in their journey on email and all the little things. And what I see the most successful strategies have is they have first of all, have a strategy, like, you know, everyone bangs around that word, but literally this is, this is what email serves as a business for us when it comes to engagement or customer success or lead gen. And there's that real overarching strategy that everybody follows. So it's not just email marketing, it's like comms as a whole from that business. So we have a really successful, well built, well thought out strategy and a plan. they have the right systems in place. you will always hit, I call it like the glass ceiling in email marketing, you will always hit a glass ceiling if you haven't got the right tech in place, like the amount of times that we want to do this flow and we want people to go down this route when they do this, this and this. And then you look at the tech set up and you're like, yeah, you've got a bespoke CRM. That's been literally created for you by developers, where if you want the smallest change, you have to have that and the integration is so limited with your email platform, that's never gonna happen. So there's always, they hit this glass ceiling of like what they wanna do. So you have to have the right systems. And then finally, you have to have the data. And I mean, data for me is like the biggest thing that underpins email marketing. And it's not just having like an opted in list, it's collecting the right data at the right time. So you can understand where people are in their journey, what their needs and wants are. So then you can send the right com at the right time. So for me, when I see businesses just kind of like spraying lots of emails about products or services, I'm like, you have started with what you want to talk about. You look at any email plan in any business and it's like, we're to talk about this on this day. Then we're going to talk about that on that day. But it's never, let's start with the subscriber. Let's look at where they are, where they've came in. what they've interacted with that's made them become a subscriber and what would be really valuable to send them and take them on a journey down. And no one does it really like that. There's only a few kind of B2C brands, think, really struggle with this because it's very much like just get the sale. B2B have no idea where to start. So to make a successful email strategy, you need your three pillars. So your strategy, your data and your systems. And then you need a subscriber focused strategy. So you've got to think right. This person's here in their journey. How can we influence it? How can we get them to feel or make a decision or take them through based on where they are, not on what you've got on your email calendar that you want to talk about basically. So there's a lot of big stuff before then you get to the little stuff. So I won't even look at copy right until I've gone, have we got the right setup to achieve our strategy? Have we got the right data? Are we cleaning it, looking after it? Are we caring for it? Are we collecting the right stuff? Because I don't know about you. I don't know what your thoughts on this are, but... Some guru like years ago, I don't know who it was, put out into the worldwide web that the less data you collect on a form, the higher conversions on that form, which they aren't, they might not be wrong, but they're like, right, you know, you don't need to take all this off. Just get first name, last name, email. That's how you get people through. And that's just ruined email because now you have a part of those people you don't know anything about. You literally don't know anything about. And in B2B, collecting that right data is going to be the thing that makes it so successful because it takes an invisible person that you don't really know anything about to a personified subscriber that you know so much about. So they're the big things, get the big things right and then you can work your way down and get the small things right, like copy and stuff like that. And I assume that's all working together as well with like, personas and different stages of ICP and different stages of the journey. All of that kind of comes together to actually send a good email at some point. 100 % your big things are obviously your pillars. And then it's, I think I see so many businesses don't even have personas. So I'm just like, but you can create subscriber personas. And as they move through the lifecycle, how does that change? And then what are you going to talk to them about? How can you align your content? Because lots of people... get stuck in that bit as well. They're like, oh, well, I don't really know what they'd want at this stage. Well, if they've just downloaded a white paper, yeah, they're not going to want to have a chat with you, to be honest. They don't want to book a Like, let's look at what topics they're interested in. What does that mean that they're thinking about? And then you can start to create your content. yeah, it's a whole job. Email is a whole person job, but it's just taken for granted massively. So it's easier just to carry on doing what you do, right? Like, changing. And it's so difficult when you're in a small company and it's, you're a one person marketer or there's like maybe a couple of you and you haven't necessarily got the systems. Like I'm thinking about some of, some of the experiences I've had with clients over the years and that inability to segment. And then I've got, you know, you, we come in as a fractional CMO Yeah. And then what happens is you've got, you've got that founder kind of breathing down your neck saying, you need to send these emails out. need emails. And I'm going, I don't know what to send this person because we've got a system here. And like you said, Beth, all I've got is a name, email address. I maybe have a company if I'm lucky, let alone I, know, like if I don't have a CRM that gives me industry information or anything else, I can't segment that person. No, it's... with it, so I can't email them anything other than very generic marketing content. And then on the flip side, we've got founders saying, you know, then you've got a marketing team crying out for a better system and you've got a founder saying, no, there's absolutely no way that we can, you know, like what's the ROI going to be if you get, if you buy a HubSpot over or something else. And you're like, this is it. Yeah, I always approach that question. like, I always come back and I'm like, right, well, what's the cost of not doing it? Because I think it's really easy for them to see the cost of a new system. So I would always put together something using their data to disable this is the cost of if you don't do it, like this is the cost of the opportunity you're losing. simple as if you don't want that then don't invest but yeah I think it's really hard to get investment for email for systems and yeah there'll be a glass ceiling somewhere it'll be your data that you're falling short on it'll be your tech it will be your strategy and it will also probably be the skills the time the resource in-house as well so keep it simple like it doesn't need to be you don't need to be like an Ando's or you don't need to be a big b2b agency that's got a whole team it's just having that like how can we improve the data how we can we improve the system slightly with what we've got and then how can we just know the audience? That's my literary case, it's not even a secret, it's just know your audience. If you know them, you can talk to them about the right things at the right time. And that's what you've to do really. to do when I know that a company emails a lot of people is when you look at open rates, but you're like, okay, whatever. Like they're fine. They're not that indicative anymore. It's complicated. But my favorite thing is to, especially in HubSpot, you know, can do like, has opened an email in the last blah, blah. And it's like, we've got a hundred thousand people in our contact database. and 80 % of them haven't opened an email in last six months, even though we've been sending them and I'm like. Why are they in the database? Yeah, just say goodbye now or do something very specific to get them to re-engage. But yeah, it's one of my favorite little things to look at. People get upset. Like, oh, they're not opening. And I'm or it's like, it's like, I always say it my rule is really like, I could probably go into a business's database. And I'm already like, we could cut 20 % of that. I haven't even seen it. I'm kind of like, could probably cut. I don't want to cut it. And then it's like, got one client at the minute that they've just found out there's like a list of people that between their website and CRM that's got stuck in this middle that haven't been pushed into CRM from years ago. Okay, so how can we get this into CRM and start emailing them? And I'm like, I'm off. I'm off guys. Like, I thought I've been through this. But yeah, it's I don't know what it is. There's, think the biggest thing is the mindset that we talked about is this mindset of like, we have a group of people in our database. So it must be good, right? They must care, they must open, they must see it. But how many times do you actually open your emails from brands and businesses? Delete. Yeah, and well, this is your thing, like opens, just hands down, I will say it, like just get rid. I would probably say group them with other stuff. Don't even bother people. I think it's like around, I did a big research piece with like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. and 89 % of them said they open to delete. So they just have a habit where they just open the email on like desktop or whatever and they just like delete, delete. And I'm like, you think open is a positive thing? It's not, it's really not. It's neutral and it could mean a bad thing. It could mean a good, it could be a good thing, but it's funny. I do that. I open my emails and I just, I'm like, open, delete. I don't mean to. Yeah. I just, are you a... Yeah. Yeah. And also, yeah, at the beginning of every year, like on January 1st, I'll inbox zero myself, even though I'm not anywhere near inbox zero. And I'm like, listen, if I haven't got back to you this long, it's never gonna happen. So. I did? So this was quite a few years ago. So I've gone through a few email addresses, like personal email addresses over the years, you know, because as you do, as you get older, you think to yourself, Fanny underscore Adams, 98182, at Hotmail, people are going to email that now. She needs to go for professional reasons. But what I did is I set up a forward on all my old inboxes. to a shit inbox that I have never logged into ever. So all of my crap goes somewhere that I have never seen ever. I don't know. never wanna open that email inbox because that is where all the crap goes. So now everything's gone there and I don't know. honestly love that. think you're on to something. I did seem like my email address got my personal one. It was called a subscription scam. So a bot on the internet got my email, signed me up to 100,000 things. And then I got all the emails. So I just switched everything to junk and now I just pull out the ones. And I'm like, I think everyone needs to operate like this because junk clears after 30 days. You don't even have to worry about it. Yeah, bye. this is exactly it, right? Like brands just don't seem to, and honestly, I spoke to a founder of a very successful B2C brand, mean like seven figure brand, and he said, well, we just said more than, we're now sending three a day. We just said more, the more we send, the more we get. And I'm like, but there's something morally. for me and ethically wrong with that you are literally the cause of the issue that we have which is oversaturated in boxes where people are getting really sick of it and sick of businesses not sticking to their promise even said even if they don't sign up on checkout and tick the tick box where it says opt me in because under a legitimate interest they've purchased we just opt them in anyway and i'm like it's mental domains are they getting through though? Like they, what's... these big companies, unfortunately, they do some of them do have relationships with like Microsoft and Google and they do get away with certain stuff. And it's usually the big businesses that do with the money. Yeah, gossip right there. You should have kept that for the end. So we're all busy, we're all marketers, lots of us are usually generalists, so we're doing a bit of everything. What would you say is, if we were to go away after listening to this today, what is the one thing you would do to help improve and kind of prioritize how you're delivering email to your subscribers? So I would start, I did a little self audit exercise. So if you've just got a couple of hours, grab them and start to look at the three, the book things like systems. Do you know there's gonna be some fundamental problems with your systems? Write down what they are, data again, write down what they are. know, with data as well, it's like not just have you got the right data. Are you sending to people like do clean it? I send it to people that are just completely outdated. Have a look through that. Have a look through strategy. If you've got a strategy, the first things and start to audit and self audit I do like a nice exercise, which is like put yourself in the subscriber shoes, like take someone from your database that maybe signed up like a year ago and take like a customer as well. So kind of have your core audience groups and actually go through their history of like what you sent, what's what they've interacted with based on the amount of data that you've got and just do like a bit of a drawing exercise. You can put it on a whiteboard, put it on Miro, whatever, and be like, these are all the touch points. These are all the things we send in. And that alone in itself as an exercise will be really revolutionary because you'll be like, oh, okay, right. I see how we've gone a bit wrong here or how we probably shouldn't have sent that then. And that is the best way then to start mapping out. If you haven't already got your first of the journeys, map out like a subscriber journey. So. I understand all the other touch points as well, not just marketing email. This is where marketers get it like really wrong as well. They're not working with sales or service because you'll often find that like a marketing team will just sit in silo and be like, we're sending our marketing emails out and then, know, poor Bob on the other side of the screen. He's just got off the phone to custom service. You have really tough time about it and you've just asked him to buy again and giving him a 10 % off code. So it's like have a do an audit of all the different things that that person, could be externally, that business could be externally communicating with that person. Do that first. That will itself, load a load of things. You'll be like, okay, I'll really see here when we've got a new subscriber, we probably shouldn't really send them anything out apart from maybe this welcome journey. So then you can start to build exclusions because as general marketers, we get really overwhelmed with, we should have this flow. We need to build this flow and this. So I just say, don't think of all the things you need to do. Think of all the things you want to stop doing. I think all the things that, actually you would want to exclude somebody from based on the time of their journey that they are. So if you are a B2B business and you know that subscriber is actually now an active sales deal and the sales pipeline, what are you going to exclude them from and build your email strategy around exclusions. And that for me as a general marketer is just a quick win because you're not thinking of like the million things you need to do and all the journeys. They're already you are taking away some of the crap. basically that they don't need to get. So that would be like a quick thing that you can do. The other thing is like looking at your data, looking at your forms, all the data collection around the site. I believe marketing should own all data collection for every single business in the world. But that's just my opinion. Have a look, are you actually collecting, yeah, like are you actually collecting data that is gonna be able to give you enough to either personify that person or tell you where they are, what they're thinking about, what their needs are. And that's not just data that they're giving you, that's indirect data too. So, you know, if they've downloaded a piece of content on like how to, how to improve email deliverability tells me you are interested in that topic. So then what kind of things can you talk to them about? But then if I also ask them what best describes your role, I'm an expert email marketer who's trying to learn about email deliverability, or I'm a general marketer. I've been given email. I know exactly what to target them about. So don't be afraid to add stuff in those forms. that are gonna get to know people, like what best describes you? What best describes why you're here? What best describes why you need this piece of content? People don't mind filling it out. It's like, I don't know why people got this stick up their bums about not asking like minimal things. I'm like, no, somebody wants something and you word it right, they'll tell you. So that's another quick win and that will help you be able to like personalize your content basically in those first few emails. But yeah, I think for me, like general marketers, I work with a lot of them and they usually are very time poor. and all the stuff they want to do with email, they've got great ideas, but they just can't do it because it's so much. So start with the start trimming the fat, take out the things, do an exclusion strategy, self audit, find your big blockers, and then your smaller ones, smaller improvements. And I think the thing to touch on, and I will shut it up, is knowledge. Knowledge is power. There is so there's so much out there, honestly, that there is. There's a there's a free certification program, but I've helped with together literally anyone can literally access and learn about. all the different things about email, just stuff that you need to know. So there is good information out there. I love that idea of starting something from the point of trimming the fat and excluding stuff, because we so often go the other way where we're like, shove it all in, shove it all in. Like, let's do everything. So yeah, I love that. Top tip. It's so easy. It's just like if somebody's had a call with customer service in the last 24 hours, get them out, get them out of the next campaign. Just don't email them. If you know, it's so, it's so simple. And then suddenly I think people start to get it because then they're like, all right, yeah, we're sending the right message at the right time. We were not causing like friction. And it's like, yeah, that's exactly what you got to do with email. It's not about trying to do everything and set up all these flows. Just think about where people don't need to get emails is probably a good place to start. Yeah. And then everyone likes you more and they don't send you those, you know, it's that whole thing in businesses where you've sent an email campaign and then you get one person come back going, this really annoyed me. And everybody has a massive freak out and you're like, well, we sent it to 6,000 people and it was only one person who said it was annoying. I love it. I really want to start a new series where I like go into like head offices be like, you just sent me this email, like I want to talk to someone about it. But I always email back. I'm like, I don't like those shoes. And I've never viewed them on your website. And I've never ever ordered men shoes. Why you sending them to me? And I'm not going to name the brand, but they're very popular brand and they send me awful emails all the time. I did a sassy email reply yesterday. It was from Buzzsprout. We're not Buzzsprout, we use Buzzsprout for our podi. But they were like, of the top 50 most successful podcasts in the world, only 37 use video. And I responded, I was like, that's 75%, like, what do you mean only? And they're like, oh, well, you we want to say you don't have to use video. And I'm like, yeah, but it's disingenuous for you to say that video is not correlated to successful podcasts because 75 % of them post video. They're like, oh yeah, good luck with your podcast journey. I'm like, what? I know. Who signed that off and thought that was a good idea? like 75 % of the most successful podcasts use video. So yeah, just tell them don't use video. That's obviously the insight. Anyway, yeah, I love an email reply. Yeah, me too. I am blacklisted. I think again, just to say Beth, that was great advice. Love that. So what if you are the poor marketer that is having your senior leader be like, just send more emails, just buy those shit lists. How would you go about having that conversation? Oh, I love this. would just, just that's, that's the time to hand in, you know, get out. No, I'm joking. For me, this was a conversation I've had personally. So I've been in that position many a times. I've tried to fight it with I'm the, know, I've learned about this. I know about email, listen to me. It doesn't work. I've tried the approach of like, here's, here's, know, if we do do this, you know, we could, these could be the impacts. It doesn't really work. So I think that found that works the best couple of things. So this is first of all, one that I like to do, depending on how friendly this leader is, right? Is I just like, I like to use a bit of an analogy, and there's loads of analogies that you can come up with and make them really fun and funky. But I'm very much like, okay, if they're asking to send another email to the same people, and it's like that constant push, I'm like, all right, fine. But if we if we were doing door to door selling, right, we were sending our service doesn't matter if it's relevant for door to door selling, it does not matter. Are you going to send that that same, we're going to send the sales team out again to knock on those doors on the same day, the same week, are we gonna even if they're not in and what if they haven't been in for six months and they haven't answered the door after X amount of time when we know the perfect people are you keep saying the perfect people are inside that house, but we know that they're not answering the door, are you going to send them that you're to use their time, their effort to pay them to go knock on those doors again? Are you going to risk annoying them again? And you keep like putting stuff through their letterbox that they might not give a shit about So I to use that analogy as the first one, because they usually go, I've not really thought about it like that. And I've not really thought that, you know, that they might be getting annoyed, but then they haven't told us. So then they'll come back and say, yeah, but they were just unsubscribed. They would just unsubscribed, right? Like if they didn't want our emails. But then so I say I said, Okay, so what do you do? So can we head into your inbox for a sec? Let's have a little look. So like, what do you do? I delete all my emails. I don't get these. I don't like these. Or I move more into this folder. And then I'm like, the penny starts to drop. So I think if you can relate to them, and I always say as well, like, let's just say you get an email from a brand that maybe you did really like at a time or a business or one that you've interacted with. And they kind of keep sending stuff to you that you're not interested in. How does it was it make you feel about that business? well, I just don't really think about delete the emails and now I just don't think about them. You're not thinking about them. Are you? Are they going to be your first choice when you know you've got this issue and you know they can solve it? Well, like, no, because they don't send me anything helpful. It gets annoying. And then suddenly they are like, okay, I see your point Beth And I'm like, so you can use a bit of a storytelling thing like that, where it's like, tell me how you would feel if we are on the receiving end of that. And it seems so stupid, but it's like, you know, you got to put yourself in the person's shoes. Sometimes that works. It depends if they're a bit frosty, the best thing, right, that works is money, money talks, of course it does. And if you can work this out, this will be your best friend. So I think I mentioned cost of inaction before, but the cost of action. So the cost of us continuing our practices like this now. It's really hard to this data because you are having to like become a bit of a scientist and like pull hypotheses and back it with data. So, you know, if you have got the budget, get an audit done and ask that specialist to be able to quantify it for you. If not spend a bit of time and try and have a look at all that missed opportunity, what your average kind of leads are worth, average customers are worth and try and put in place the cost of inaction. So every time we do this, you know, we're losing engagement. The more people that are like aren't seeing our emails, the more people we're not being able to obviously communicate with what we do with less sales, if you can quantify it, and back some of your claims up with, you know, quite good data evidence. So it might be subscribed over time and subscribes coming, it could be that you can see your opens are dropping your clicks visits to the website from email, and you can start to build a bit of a picture of like, our list hasn't really grown in three years, but our engagements dipping and yeah, we're definitely seeing on our reports that emails not performing. If you can quantify it and put the money around that cost of action, they will listen to you because I think sometimes leaders will only listen if you literally give them that and say, you send this email, it's gonna cost us this or we're going to potentially lose this as well. Thank you. I love the storytelling aspect, like take them to their inbox and be like, what do you do when you get a random email? You know, probably not much. Yeah. look at your inbox like do you like this but it's funny at how many people are trying to get in touch with you and you don't even see it in your inbox, let alone anything else. Yeah. start to listen because I go, yeah, just delete those and I don't really care about them. So I'm like, Yeah. There you go. and what makes you think that people read our emails? of course. Of course, that's what it is. Because everyone says that, don't they? my God. Same. Who gives a shit? It's just... can you handle 15 more clients a month? Because yeah, no more. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. So shall we wrap up with some marketing gossip? You shared a juicy one with us earlier, so don't know if you've got anything to top that one. I do. I don't know if you've seen it yourself. So this is a B2C technique. So it's related to email. It's been happening a lot lately. So there are emails floating around in the inbox that brands are faking order confirmations. So they are actually saying, Oh, you're at your order. And some of them have even gone as far to put a fake order number on there. Am I allowed to name drop or are I going to get sued or something? I'm going to name drop. Boohoo.com disappointment. Boohoo. There was a couple of smaller like boutique ones that did it. I can't remember their names. And oddmuse jumped on it, which I was really disappointed, really disappointed that they did that. And then quite a few of the other smaller brands thought, wacky technique, like, let's do it. And for me, there are no trends in email, like, there's no trends, there's no trend that you could possibly do. Because guess what, like, once one of them's tried it, it's a new whole inbox. And actually, like, people are fuming. people are fuming about this, which you would be right. And I got one and I was like, stole my card, Shein did it. And I was like, oh my God, I did not put an order through on Shein has somebody hacked into my Shein account? I haven't been on Shane for years. And I was just fuming. I thought it's dodgy. For me, it's just unethical. It's like, can you not? think of anything else creative to get your customers in even if you it's just distasteful and it's tacky and it's rubbish no one likes it and lots of people unsubscribe and complain but people still doing it so that's my goss it's borderline fishing scam, isn't it? It's like, ugh. It's bad enough when I get one that says, you've left something in your basket and I'm like, fuck off, I just tried to exercise some self control. Yeah, it's not. It's not. I just wanted the promo code. I know you're gonna send me when I abandoned my basket. Yeah. yeah, you forgot something. No, no, I haven't love. I didn't. I didn't forget anything. Honestly. So yeah, so that's my bit of gossip because it really infuriates me and I think B2C are probably the worst culprits of them all in the inbox. That's totally fair. I don't think I've received one like that, but I think I'm pretty sure my mum does because she loves a little Temu And Temu has just the dirtiest email like ethics. I'm like, mum, this isn't a real email. And she's like, yeah, but they said that. yeah, when like Dave from head of accounts has sent it to you. He's just shared the city. He's accidentally forwarded you the promo. I'm just like, but it's funny how different ages interact with this. Cause my mom's, I like to sit, I like to sit and watch my mom go through her inbox and she engages in such a different way than millennials and all the people kind of like younger than that. I'm just like, it's, it's mad. So actually it does get some sales but you'll usually see it might be the older generation that are falling for those tricks but I think we all have human spam filters anyway in our emails don't we? So it's just like if it's not gonna get caught in spam we'll catch it in our own spam filter. Delete and unsubscribe. I like to report spam a lot as well so... Absolutely. Love that. sitting there in the evening reporting spam. I know I'm gonna be... reporter. That's my thing. don't think I spam email, but text block and spam, block and spam. mean, call of the podcast for that, but that's got, yeah, that gets it. me fucking weird shit. thing in Spain though. Like, so like your hairdresser will have a WhatsApp, like a professional WhatsApp. My dentist has a WhatsApp, like a professional one that they use to like schedule stuff. It's, it's a thing in some countries. I want to leave with one last note, what you guys think about this, if brands, I'm not talking about mainly B2B here, but B2C, if there was a law that came in place where legitimate interest basically went away and people didn't opt in on that purchase, or they knew that their email, they weren't going to get spammed, only their transactional emails, do you think that most, most humans would probably opt out of that? And it probably just not choose to have their emails? spammed to them or whatever or send. I do. I do. Yeah, I think it's a good point. And I always say to people if that's if you're having to force people into it, or you're just emailing, then you had problem. I think the way that people buy has changed, especially we, like Ruta and I had this, we were on this lovely podcast called, Stressed and well dressed with our friend Dahlia. And we were talking about that because we were talking about B2C purchasing and things that marketing are to blame for purchases that you've made maybe over the years. And I think... I think now millennials and Gen Z and, you know, even younger, Gen Alpha, I see this as my partner's kids, they're consuming stuff on YouTube and TikTok and that's how they're buying. They're not buying because they went to a website and you emailed them a hundred times. It's just not how anyone buys anymore. It's not but it does work the funny thing is if you get it right it does actually work like it actually does and it's it's funny because I think people think it's a straight line from email through to purchase but that email must start something in that person and then they've gone to tick-tock then they've gone to that so it is to be useful though, like it's got to be like we've been talking about best practice email. It's mental the results you can get but honestly it is it is really mental when you start to target people with the right stuff and just become like a really helpful brand that sends the right like it It has the highest ROI of all of the other channels. So it's not to be replaced It's not to be slept on but how people do it. It's not working. Beth's help. Yeah, go talk to Beth. Her LinkedIn will be in the comments, not in the comments, excuse me, in the podcast description. Also, Beth, if you can give us a link to that course that you created, we can put that in there as well. So I definitely want to go have a look at that because I'm not by any means like an email pro. So yeah, thank you so much for being on. Lovely, lovely to chat to you as always.