In this edition:

→ The Ultimate Checklist for a Healthy Email Ecosystem

→ GUIDE: How to successfully migrate ESPs

→ The square bracket trick and layering from Klaviyo (scroll)

→ Things you’re told online about email that just aren’t true (scroll)

→ Priming your sends - when your clicks are super low (scroll) 

Hey you, I hope you’re finding a minute to breathe? 

It’s that time of year when we should be winding down, yet somehow everything feels busier than ever.

Same here... this has been my busiest year to date.

Black Friday wrapped, Q1 is already fully booked with email audits, workshops, projects and Astral is growing into a 'proper' HubSpot agency.

I’m just SO excited for what 2026 is going to hold for you and for me. 

But first, I’ve pulled together something important for you 👇

The Ultimate Checklist for a Healthy Email Ecosystem

And it's not what you think 

If you’ve been here a while, you know I do not do “10 subject lines that will change your life” energy.

Email is an ecosystem - bigger, deeper, and far more consequential than design tweaks or clever copy tricks.

So this edition is the ultimate checklist for a healthy ecosystem:

→ Quick wins you can apply now
→ Advanced optimisation for mature programmes
→ The foundational stuff you simply cannot skip

Because none of the surface level tactics matter unless this groundwork is sorted first.

How to successfully migrate ESPs

Without tanking deliverability and performance 

Planning (or being “volunteered”) to move ESP next year?

Please do not let anyone flick the switch from Old ESP → New ESP and hope for the best.

I’ve put together an 11-point, step-by-step guide that covers:

• Why you cannot just “lift and shift” without wrecking deliverability
• What actually changes under the bonnet when you migrate
• How warmup really works (per inbox provider, not just per list)
• The deliverability audit you must do before you move
• Exactly how to explain all of this to leadership so you get time, budget, and support

It’s the guide you send to your manager when they say: “Can’t we just move everything over by the end of the month?”

From the Vault

A blog a day keeps the spam filter away 

⌚ 5 min read:

→  Email Marketing Predictions For 2026: What’s Really Coming Next

⌚ 4 min read:

→  Your B2B Email Marketing Strategy Needs More Reassurance, Not Offers… Here’s Why

⌚ 8 min read:

→  How to Re-Engage Your Email List (Properly and Without Destroying Deliverability)

From the Queen’s Court

Voiceover video verdicts 

The square bracket trick and layering from Klaviyo

How not to use FOMO and curiosity in your emails 

The Inbox Drop

Things you’re told online about email that just aren’t true

Every major ESP blog (and some awful email gurus) love to recycle the same “best practice” content. Even HubSpot, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, the lot.

They all copy each other, and half of it simply is not true.

Here are the big ones worth unlearning:

1) “Unsubscribes are bad for deliverability”

No. Absolutely not.  Microsoft and Google do not track or penalise unsubscribes,  they literally do not care.

Unsubscribing is the healthy, expected exit route.

Spam complaints, not unsubscribes, are the signal inbox providers use.

2) “Double opt-in is always the right approach”

Double opt-in was a sticky plaster from the days before validation tools existed.
That first touchpoint is golden, wasting it on “please confirm” is poor strategy.

And if the DOI email bounces? You still take the reputation hit. Use validation + a strong welcome. We do not need to ask for permission twice.

3) “Your ESP’s ‘deliverability score’ tells you how healthy you are”

No ESP can see your deliverability. They can only see delivery, whether the receiving server accepted the message.

Inbox placement lives with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and corporate filters.
So when your platform claims it’s tracking “deliverability”, it’s really tracking internal proxies.

4) “Spam words trigger spam filters”

Another evergreen myth.Modern filters don’t care about isolated words, they care about behavioural patterns:

→ engagement signals
→ user actions (complaints, deletions, “this is spam”)
→ sender history

It does look at your content, but doesn't have 'trigger words' on a blacklist. 

5) “You just need a re-engagement campaign”

This one causes more damage than almost anything else. Re-engaging long-dormant subscribers is a full strategy.

It is one of the worst things you can do for deliverability if you’re not ready.

Most people fixate on the cold end of their list because it feels like “lost potential”, but really:

→ These people contribute the least revenue
→ They create the biggest risk
→ They’re the quickest way to spike complaints and tank inbox placement

Re-engagement belongs at the end of a full email transformation, after your deliverability is stable, your strategy is embedded, and you’re consistently feeding the funnel with new, engaged humans.

Otherwise, you’re pouring time into the people who do not matter and punishing the people who do.

Quick win for you

Priming your sends - when your clicks are super low 

If your opens look healthy but your clicks are on the floor (e.g. 32% open, 0.5–1% click) and your email has a clear, single call to action (webinar, sale, product launch…) something is off.

For value-heavy emails like this newsletter, low-ish clicks are normal - people sit, read, digest.

For hard-working, goal-based emails, a big gap between opens and clicks usually points to:

• a deliverability problem, or
• a content/strategy alignment problem

Step 1 → Rule out deliverability

Before you touch content, you need to know whether people are even seeing the email properly. Run a deliverability audit PLEASE 

If that sentence made your brain hurt: come to one of my Deliverability Masterclasses.

• I walk you through how to audit, test, diagnose and fix this properly
• I’ve now had a couple of hundred people go through them and call it “game-changing”
• I’ve just released the new dates for 2026

Once you’re confident that deliverability is in a good place, you can move to priming.

Step 2 → Use priming for big sends

Priming = sending first to the people most likely to engage, before you hit the rest of the list.

Use it for big, important sends (webinars, big promos, major product announcements) where you’d normally blast “everyone”.

How to do it:

1. Split your audience
2. Segment people who have clicked in the last 30–60 days
3. Make sure the content is actually relevant to them (no random spray)
4. Send to your engaged segment first
5. Send the campaign to that highly engaged segment
6. Wait 1 hour
7. Then send to the rest
8. After that 1–2 hour window, send to the broader, less engaged audience

What you’re doing here:

“Priming” inbox providers with positive signals first (opens, clicks, low complaints)

Reducing the risk that a single massive blast to 20k+ mixed-quality addresses triggers throttling, complaints and negative engagement that hurt everyone - including your best subscribers

You’ll need to test this more than once. One primed send won’t tell you much. But:

if you’ve done a proper deliverability audit

and you consistently prime your sends

and your click-to-open ratio still looks sad…

…you don’t have a deliverability problem.

You have a content and strategy problem.

That’s the point of getting help. This is the work I do with teams all the time - if you’re seeing that pattern, please reply to this email or get in touch.

It’s probably time to rethink your overall email strategy, how you’re sending, and what you’re asking people to do.

Email is changing, fast. You have to get a lot smarter about how you earn those clicks.

Want help with this?

Plug of the week

If you’ve got marketing budget you need to use before year-end or you’re looking to really improve and grow email next year - this is exactly the work I do with marketers.

I help teams with:
→ Email, deliverability and strategy audits
→ Training + workshops
→ Full transformations (including data, CRM, strategy and content) 
→ Strategy, segmentation, and “what should we actually be doing?” clarity

If you want to improve email, build confidence, or finally get a grip on your ecosystem… let’s chat.

Until next time, may your emails land and your boss finally understand deliverability.

See you soon,

Beth ✌️

I have ADHD (IFYKYK) so please excuse any typos and spelling errors in this email.

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