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Email is a Mirror of Your Organisation: Fix the Foundations First
Email doesn’t lie!
Your email marketing/emails sent from your business or organisation are a mirror.
It reflects the state of your business, how well your CRM and operations are aligned, how much you actually understand your customers (and audience), and how much you really value email as a channel.
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RE:markable is the weekly email about emails. Dropping the latest email marketing news, updates, insights, free resources, upcoming masterclasses, webinars, and of course, a little inbox mischief.
If your emails are chaotic, passive, irrelevant, or underperforming, that usually means one of three things:
- Your data is messy or incomplete
- Your systems aren’t talking to each other
- You don’t have a clear strategy (or internal buy-in) for how email should work
And if you think you can hide those cracks behind a ‘great’ new email design, you can’t. Because email is brutally honest.
It will expose the gaps in your systems, your data, your people, and your processes every single time.
Email has evolved
The email marketing ecosystem is lagging.
Human habits and inbox behaviour have changed. People are intentional with their inbox and more so, their time. Nobody scrolls through their email like it’s Instagram. They scan, evaluate, and make a split-second decision. Most of the time, people go in to check to see if there is something they need to know, searching for something specific, have missed or an important email they are waiting for.
If it looks (or more importantly, feels) like spam, it is spam to THEM.
Marketers need to evolve to meet people where they are, not simply send more and hope for the best.
That means building a structured, strategic email ecosystem that works as part of your wider business function, not just a “campaigns channel.”
The PPPP™ Email Ecosystem Framework
This is where my PPPP™ Framework comes in.
Unlike another template, it’s a systemic, layered approach to email that looks at the entire ecosystem, the hidden foundations as well as the day to day campaigns.
Let’s start with the Pillars, because if you don’t get these right, nothing else matters.
1. Systems: The Engine Room
Your tech stack is the engine of your email marketing. CRM, ESP, website forms, e-commerce integrations, APIs, third-party tools, this is how your strategy is actually executed.
But here’s the real reality I see in almost every audit I do:
- Systems aren’t integrated properly (data gets stuck) or they are totally rubbish and seem like they are from 1999
- Teams are still doing endless imports/exports just to send one email
- ESPs or CRMs aren’t fit for purpose
- Workarounds and duct-tape fixes hold everything together (barely)
This is what I call the 'glass ceiling of email marketing'.
No matter how brilliant your ideas, segmentation, or automation plans are, you’ll always hit that ceiling if your systems aren’t connected. You just will never be able to do certain things!
Practical insight:
→ Audit your tech stack. List out every system that touches customer data. Then map how (or if) they talk to each other. If the answer is “manually,” you’ve found your ceiling.
2. Strategy: The Reason for Email
A lot of businesses think they have an email strategy. What they usually have is a content calendar.
That’s not a strategy.
Strategy is your email’s reason for existing. It’s how you align the channel with your business goals, other marketing channels, and the customer journey. It’s also about how leadership perceives email:
- Is it seen as a sales tool, a brand channel, or just a “cheap way to get clicks”?
- Do you treat it as a free-for-all, or do you invest in the skills and people needed to run it properly?
- Do your sales, service, and marketing teams actually align on what goes out and when?
Without strategy, you risk more than poor performance. You risk irrelevance in the inbox and therefore deliverability and therefore, no more emails in front of your audience, so you might as well stop.
Practical insight:
→ If you’re stuck, start by mapping the customer journey. From the moment someone hears about you to becoming a customer, list every touchpoint. What sales say. What service send. The questions people ask. Then ask yourself: where does email help or hinder that journey?
A great example I saw was when I took my trip to San Francisco. Virgin Atlantic who I was flying, sent the right email at the right time and excluded me from anything else but important details and nice-to-haves about my flight and journey - it was the best email experience I’ve ever had. I felt informed and cared about.
3. Data: The Foundation of Everything
Data is both your greatest asset and your greatest weakness.
Most businesses I audit fall into one of two camps:
- They’re collecting too little (just an email address and maybe a name).
- They’re collecting the wrong stuff (random notes or irrelevant fields that can’t be used).
You can’t segment on free text data and unreliable data.
You can’t personalise if your fields are blank.
You can’t trust insights if you don’t trust the data source.
And if your data is trapped in disconnected systems, you’ll always be on the hamster wheel of exporting/importing.
Practical insight:
→ Create a data collection strategy. Define:
- What data you actually need (demographics, behaviours, preferences, lifecycle stage).
- Why you need it (what decisions or segmentation it will drive).
- Where and when you’ll collect it (forms, sign-up flows, post-purchase, service interactions).
Stop asking for “more data.” Start asking for the right data. And don’t even worry about asking for more at intentional points - if someone wants something, they will fill it out. It just needs to feel valuable and relevant.
Why the pillars matter
Because they’re invisible until they’re not.
Your audience doesn’t see your messy CRM, but they feel it in irrelevant messages.
They don’t know you’re working in disconnected systems, but they notice when your emails contradict what sales told them.
They can’t see your lack of strategy, but they can tell when your content feels scattergun or pointless.
That’s why the pillars matter. They are the foundations of your email ecosystem.
Get them right, and everything else - from design to deliverability to automation - gets easier, smarter, and more effective.
So, where do you start?
Here’s my advice if you’re feeling stuck:
- Audit the entire experience from your audience perspective, not just your emails. Look at the full customer journey and map out every touchpoint. You’ll be shocked at how many teams are sending uncoordinated messages.
- Check your systems. If you’re still exporting/importing lists every week, that’s your red flag. Fix the pipes before you try to optimise campaigns.
- Review your data collection. Ask if the data you’re gathering is usable. If the answer is no, stop collecting it and redesign your forms/flows.
- Align on purpose. Get sales, marketing, service, and leadership in the same room. Agree what role email should play in the business (growth, retention, awareness, all of the above).
Final thoughts
Email is not “just email.”
It’s a reflection of how your business sees customers, how much you value strategy over shortcuts, and how well your systems and data are aligned.
If you want your email marketing to evolve, you need to fix the foundations first. Because no subject line test, flashy design, or “quick win” campaign can save an ecosystem that’s broken underneath.
And that’s exactly why I built the PPPP™ Email Ecosystem Framework — to help businesses align systems, strategy, and data into something that actually works.
So next time you’re staring at a disappointing campaign report, don’t just ask “what subject line should we try next?”
Ask: what is our email telling us about our business?
Want to dig into your own ecosystem?
Book an audit or join the next free PPPP™ Masterclass.
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RE:markable is the weekly email about emails. Dropping the latest email marketing news, updates, insights, free resources, upcoming masterclasses, webinars, and of course, a little inbox mischief.