In this edition:

→ Email Segmentation in 2026

→ How AI Is Changing Email Marketing (scroll to blogs)

→ Email & Customer journey mapping (scroll)

→ Quick win: Design for the F-pattern (scroll)

Howdy you 🤠

I hope you’re holding up - professionally and personally. Because most of us are juggling far more than our job titles suggest.

Last week, I ran the first B2B Deliverability Masterclass of 2026 & the feedback was incredible. The B2C session is next week if that’s more your world.

Behind the scenes, it’s been busy, email and deliverability audits, HubSpot projects, workshops and training sessions with my clients. 

The gloves are ON 🥊 I'm currently fighting Klaviyo about their deliverability dashboards - I'll spill the tea when the Chief Product Officer replies. 

I’m also taking things a little steadier while caring for my mum, a reminder that work and life don’t always arrive neatly separated.

Alright, enough about me, inbox hats on...

Email Segmentation in 2026

Exclusions, restraint, and inbox safety

Segmentation has been framed as a targeting problem:

"Who can we send this to? Who qualifies? How many people can we include?"

In 2026, that thinking is actively holding you back. 

Modern segmentation isn’t about smaller, more targeted lists (yep, I said it) it’s about knowing who not to email, and when.

What successful segmentation looks like:

1) Segmentation has flipped from inclusion to exclusion
The most effective email strategies are defined by how intentionally they segment out, not how cleverly they segment in.

2) Over-segmentation is usually a warning sign
If you have dozens of little segments and a constant overlap between journeys, you’re not being more relevant.

3) Relevance is contextual, not technical
Eligibility doesn’t equal appropriateness. Lifecycle stage, intent, emotional load, and inbox pressure matter more than whether someone technically meets campaign criteria.

4) Exclusions protect experience, deliverability, and trust
Over-inclusion breaks the experience first, then damages deliverability, then corrupts reporting.

And sometimes it's actually okay to send to everyone in the right context - don't be scared by all the information about "smaller, targeted lists" - it's all contextual. 

Segmentation in 2026 isn’t about control; it’s about context, restraint, and inbox safety.

From the Vault

A blog a day keeps the spam filter away 

⌚ 7 min read:

→ SIO: Search Inbox Optimisation

⌚ 4 min read:

→ How AI Is Changing Email Marketing

⌚ 9 min read:

→ What an Email Marketing Strategy Actually Needs to Look Like in 2026

Masterclass: B2C & D2C Email Deliverability

Learn how to audit, monitor and improve email deliverability

If you want to understand why your emails land where they do, and how to fix issues before they cost you sales, this 90-minute masterclass (plus live Q&A) will give you the tools, audits, and confidence to take control of deliverability.

From the Queen’s Court

Voiceover video verdicts 

Great B2B Email design but no recall

B2C wrong offering sent at the wrong time

The Inbox Drop

Customer journey mapping

I think there are two customer journeys, and most teams only look at one.

1) The journey the customer actually takes
Messy, quite non-linear, different for every person. Influenced by search, social, timing, emotion, pressure, and life.

2) The journey the business thinks it’s nurturing
The emails you send, the automations you built, the stages you designed on a whiteboard.

Customer journey mapping becomes useful when you stop trying to force #1 into neat stages and instead understand how #2 supports (or fights) reality.

Where email fits is here:
→ how people find you
→ how trust is built
→ how quickly (or slowly) someone moves to action

And the fastest gap I see, every single time? Teams don’t test their own journey.

Seriously, right now go:
→ sign up
→ download
→ follow
→ purchase
→ wait
→ experience what actually arrives in the inbox, and in what order

Over weeks and months, not days

If you want a simple place to start, do this:

Map just four stages - no more.

You can use different labels, but the idea holds for B2B and B2C:

• Problem aware 

• Exploring 

• Deciding

• After action – onboarding, reassurance, justification

Then, at each stage, apply TFDS:
→ What are they Thinking?
→ What are they Feeling?
→ What are they Doing?
→ What are they Saying?

This is where email earns its place! 

If your emails don’t match the thinking and emotional state of the stage someone is in, relevance breaks - even if the content is “good”.

You don’t need a perfect map - that doesn't exist. 

Quick win for you

Design for the F-pattern

When there are no strong visual cues (or hooks as I call them), people don’t read emails, they scan them.

Eye-tracking studies show a default F-shaped pattern:

• a horizontal scan across the top

• a shorter scan a little further down

• then a vertical skim down the left side

This means readers are hunting for somewhere to lock onto (I talk about this in the Email Design Handbook here).

Design your email so the important bits live in the F.

Do this today:
→ Put the core message in the first line
→ Front-load key words at the start of sentences or headers
→ Use short paragraphs and clear subheads
→ Make the left edge work for you 

Plug of the week 

I'm your second brain 

If you need help with email from workshops, upskilling, training, audits and 1:1 consultancy to full email transformation programmes - that’s what I do.

(And if you’re on HubSpot, I’m a HubSpot Partner.)

Send responsibly,

The inbox keeps receipts.

Beth ✌️

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

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