Email software companies always rubbed me the wrong way.
They overemphasize the importance of meaningless shyt—like email templates, open rates, click rates, segmentation, and the list goes on—at the expense of the only thing that matters when it comes to email marketing…
Revenue!
For example:
One of my clients is in the process of transitioning to Klaviyo. As such, we have a special onboarding agent who has helped us make the transition as smooth as possible.
Nothing against her as a person, she’s a fine lady. But her advice, well, it just flat-out sucks.
Again, not her fault. It’s Klaviyo’s fault if anyone.
But it hurts innocent business owners who don’t know what they’re doing, and frankly, I’ve had enough!
The truth is, there is only one metric you should track across your email campaigns:
Revenue generated from email!
Nothing else even kinda matters.
Now, I’m overexaggerating the point a little bit. It’s true things like segmentation, open rates, click rates, etc. help your email deliverability.
But the problem I have is these email software companies—who ONLY care about their email deliverability and don’t give a rat’s arse about your revenue or profitability—give you advice disguised as “email best practices” but it’s really “email deliverability best practices.”
And while it’s true that better email deliverability can result in more email revenue, that’s not always the case.
For example:
Our Klaviyo onboarding agent once told me to run a bunch of sales during onboarding to get the best possible open and click rates.
But…
Running too many promos burns out your list, tanks your impact, and devalues your brand and your products.
See what I mean?
Klaviyo is worried about their email deliverability. They’re not worried about your business, so long as you continue to pay them the monthly rate.
Another example:
Many email softwares—from Klaviyo and HubSpot to Drip and MailChimp—use email templates as one of their main selling points.
Yet, if you test a heavily designed HTML email vs a more plain-text style, the plain-text emails will perform better. Now, plain-text emails are harder to master. It requires knowing direct response marketing and using it. But they don’t want to teach you that. They want you to use their new shiny objects, i.e. templates, so you continue paying them each and every month.
Moral of the story?
Be cautious when taking advice from email software companies. They care about their own interests far more than your business’s.
Anywho:
If you need an email expert who cares about your revenue, profitability, and freedom almost as much as you do, grab a time here, and let’s see if partnering together makes sense.
John