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title: Edition 63
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Plus, in this edition: the email footer, the three skills every email marketer needs and finding your forced opt ins.  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­    ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­  

| > View all past editions here If this email looks weird click here In this edition: →  8 email marketing updates you NEED to know →  The email footer: valuable real estate, and why the unsubscribe belongs at the top (scroll to blogs) → The three skills every email marketer needs, and none of them are email skills (scroll to inbox drop) → Find your forced opt-ins (scroll to end) STRAP IN, we have 8 email marketing updates you need to know first and foremost.    Hi, hello, howdy btw - please rate this email (go to footer - this is clipped on Gmail so click view entire message) so I know if I'm talking to the void or it's helpful - TYSM  8 email updates you NEED to know 1️⃣ Is Substack changing email marketing?  No. If anything, it's leaving. Substack's own line is that it's for editorial content, not conventional email marketing. Believe them!  So many creators are using Substack's own domain to send and whilst you can add a custom domain, you can't fully configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC. You're on shared infrastructure, which means your inbox placement is partly a function of what every other Substack writer is doing. If that sending reputation dips, yours does too, and there's nothing you can audit or fix. You can export your list, so you're not locked in. Great for publishing, shit for email marketing.    2️⃣ AI is now the FIRST reader of your emails In January, Google rolled Gemini AI summaries across ~3 billion Gmail inboxes. That means before a human reads your email, an AI often summarises it for them. Also, Apple Intelligence now generates its own summaries in some views - overriding the preheader you wrote.   3️⃣ The inbox is becoming a relevance feed Gmail, Apple and Outlook are increasingly sorting by AI-driven relevance, not chronological order. They're learning which senders each person engages with and burying the rest. Low engagement is a KILLER    4️⃣ Klaviyo went headless First of all, wtf does headless mean?  What: 260+ MCP tools and 490+ APIs, now callable from Claude, ChatGPT or whatever AI your team already uses. Meaning: you can run Klaviyo without opening Klaviyo. An agent can read, write and go live, with nobody logging in.   I personally just hate that everything is so AI-driven. Most people don't want it, but no one says. Keep doing what you're doing. Don't be tricked into thinking you're working smarter because something went 'headless'.  5️⃣ Open rates are officially finished as a metric Between Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflating opens, AI pre-scanning firing pixels, and grouped/untrackable interactions - the open rate now measures almost nothing tangible. Every serious team is moving to downstream email metrics.    6️⃣ Gmail built a "wall of shame" for over-senders Gmail's "Manage subscriptions" feature sorts the senders you can unsubscribe from by VOLUME - highest first. So if you're blasting your list daily, you're sitting right at the top of that list, first in line to be unsubscribed. Frequency without value is now actively punished by the interface itself (remember give more than you ask)  7️⃣ Google Postmaster Tools killed the Reputation dashboard The old High/Medium/Low domain and IP reputation scores? GONE, retired with v1.    8️⃣ Spam placement is rising globally  Across sends right now, the average spam placement rate is sitting anywhere from 0-15%. That means for a huge number of senders, a meaningful chunk of every campaign never reaches a human and their ESP dashboard tells them everything's fine. Most people have NO idea it's happening (if you want to know your deliverability enrol onto my deliverability certification here). From the Vault A blog a day keeps the spam filter away  ⌚ 4 min read: → The email footer: valuable real estate, and why the unsubscribe belongs at the top ⌚ 3 min read: → The three skills every email marketer needs, and none of them are email skills ⌚ 6 min read: → Using the data you already have for better email marketing Learn and develop your skills Get better results from your email marketing with:  Upcoming masterclasses Email Psychology Masterclass Understand the human, get better results We'll cover how people think, behave, decide and act in the inbox. What makes them notice you, what makes them trust you, what makes them ignore you, and what makes them act. Get your ticket → Email Design Masterclass Over 350+ attendees & 100% positive feedback The ONLY online training that teaches you the psychology behind email design, structure and hierarchy. Get your ticket → Deliverability training Online Email Deliverability Certification Enrolments close SOON Practical email deliverability training for marketers who want to understand, measure, and fix email deliverability - and clearly communicate issues using data-backed audits and testing. Enrol today → 60 min FREE training Getting Email Deliverability Right Learn how to get email deliverability right and the metrics you should be tracking in just 60 minutes  Sign up for a session → The Inbox Drop The three skills every email marketer needs, and none of them are email skills 1. Learn to sell Having sales as a discipline.    Selling teaches you that price usually means risk, and not now usually means not convinced. You only learn to hear that by being told no by someone in front of you.   Do this: sit in on three sales calls this month. Write down every question asked in the first ten minutes. That list is worth more than any keyword research you'll do this year.   2. Be all right with getting it wrong Email punishes perfectionism harder than any other channel.   Going quiet for six weeks to perfect a template costs more than sending something okay on Tuesday. Also Gmail starts cooling on you after about four weeks of silence.   And you will make a mistake at scale. I once sent a product launch to 500,000 people three weeks early because I clicked send instead of schedule. Tears, panic, certainty I'd be sacked. Then we spotted 10,000 people who wanted the thing immediately, opened pre-orders, and made a pile of money before launch.   Perfectionism in email isn't high standards it's just silly!    3. Understand people well enough to write as them Not personas. Knowing your audience, understanding human psychology, how we make decisions and behave - this is SO juicy and will change your approach.    Attention, habituation, association, memory etc (learn more here)   Understand the mechanism, and you can look at any tactic and work out whether it applies to your audience. Know only tactics and you're following instructions written for someone else's business. READ: The three skills you need → Quick win for you Find your forced opt-ins List every route someone can take onto your marketing list.   Gated content, checkout boxes, pop-ups, wifi logins, competition entries, webinar sign-ups, discount codes.   Against each one, answer one question: Could they have got the thing they came for without joining the list?   Every no is a forced opt-in (and it doens't mean that's a bad thing BTW)   Most people find at least two they'd forgotten about, and usually one somebody switched on years ago that nobody's looked at since.   Someone who ticked a box for 10% off made a small trade. They're indifferent to you, which is a neutral start and perfectly workable.   Someone who couldn't get what they came for until they handed over an address didn't trade - they paid a toll.   Your list is now associated with a potential irritation rather than a benefit, before your first email arrives (if you don't position opt in routes and magnets very well)    And people route around a toll. Throwaway addresses, deliberate typos, dormant mailboxes.   You NEED to understand the different between: Forced opt ins Consequential opt-ins Intentional opt ins  View the forced opt in guide Intentional vs Consequential 2027 open for business  Interested in working together? Bring me on to help you with your email function.   I run workshops, bespoke training, consultancy and 1-1's on everything email and deliverability.  Get in touch to explore Everything got harder to measure and easier to get wrong. Understand people anyway.   See you next week (or sooner!)   Beth ✌️ I have ADHD (IFYKYK) so please excuse any typos and spelling errors in this email. What did you think about this email? Know someone who needs this in their inbox? Send them here. Astral Digital, 85 Great Portland Street, First Floor, London, Central London, W1W 7LT  Unsubscribe from RE:markable here |
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