Hi, I’m Beth 👋 (see below, but I'm defo due an update on my headshot!) Not the “perfect email...
From someone who’s shipped a lot of emails, made a lot of mistakes, had a lot of wins and done this for now what feels like a very long time...I hope this helps!
Confession number one:
I’m a rubbish email marketer.
I don't follow best practice, I make mistakes, I do not know 'everything' (who does?!), I'm still learning, too.
My own newsletters aren’t some cinematic masterpiece (they work but I'm not doing anything out of this world you've never seen before).
I still make mistakes (hi typos, my old friends).
I’m not here to sell you “secrets.” I’m here because I’ve spent nearly 12 years doing this, studying email obsessively, working across B2B, B2C and D2C, building strategies that drive amazing impact and teaching thousands of marketers what works in the real world.
I also built RE:markable to show my own process: the wins, the flops, the pivots, the way you actually evolve a channel over time. And along the way, I’ve collected a long list of myths that hold marketers back. Some of these I used to believe myself. Not anymore.
Below are the ones I see most, and what to do instead.
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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.
Myth 1: “Best practice” guarantees results
Why it’s wrong:
“Best practice” has become internet wallpaper.
It used to mean “useful guidance" and stuff you 'should' do to make sure you're not failing.
Now it’s a muddle of recycled tips (“send at 10am Tuesdays!”) presented as gospel.
Following a list of generic rules won’t save a weak strategy, a messy CRM system, or an off-balance message.
And half the “rules” conflict with each other anyway.
Plus, who decides on 'best practice' anyways, the email gods?
Do this instead:
Replace “best practice” with guiding principles.
Mine change as email changes, but they always ladder up to strategy and audience reality.
Use principles as a lens (e.g., clarity, accessibility, relevance, minimal friction), not a rigid checklist.
If a “rule” conflicts with your audience's reality or data, your audience wins.
Create your own list of guiding principles!
Please never Google 'Email Marketing Best Practices' ever again.
Myth 2: Your ESP is the authority on email
Why it’s wrong:
ESPs (Email Service Providers like HubSpot, Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Klaviyo) are great at product.
They’re not your strategist.
Features like “resend to non-openers with the same subject line” look helpful on a slide deck and dreadful in practice.
Roadmaps are driven by sales priorities, not what your audience needs.
A lot of information they churn out is bland, generic, inaccurate and not challenged.
Also, they lie to us, you can read my blog on that here.
Do this instead:
Use your ESP as a toolbox, not a teacher.
Build strategy separately (outside the platform), then implement with the features that make sense.
Pressure-test every feature against deliverability, data hygiene, and audience experience before you adopt it.
Also, you CANNOT track email deliverability in your ESP!!
Myth 3: “We know how spam filters work”
Why it’s wrong:
Outside of Gmail/Microsoft/Yahoo, nobody has the actual inside blueprint.
We have patterns and strong signals, not certainties. Filters evolve weekly. Anyone promising an exact recipe is guessing.
I wrote a blog on what I know here, but it's still not enough and they update weekly!
Unless you work for the big dogs like Google Outlook, Yahoo and their wonderful spam filters and houses they use, you're never going to know the in's and out's.
Plus spam filters are SO complex, and they change and evolve, and it's a bit like when you put a prompt into ChatGPT, one day it spits out X and then you do the same prompt a week later and totally different response.
They keep me on my toes though!
Do this instead:
Work with what’s observable: consistent sending behaviour, clean data, relevant content, strong engagement signals (especially replies), and ongoing inbox placement testing. Assume you’re steering a moving car, because you are.
Also I have my email circle of control in my mind whenever I'm working on email and spam filters, you can't control. But you can educate yourself more about them - knowledge is power!
Myth 4: ESP “deliverability dashboards” are truth
Why it’s wrong:
Most ESPs report delivery, not deliverability. Delivery = accepted by the mailbox provider. Deliverability = where it actually lands (inbox, spam, quarantine). Those are not the same thing.
For example, in my HubSpot, this is delivery:
100% of the emails I sent (120) got delivered, but how many landed in spam? Or in promotions? Well that's something HubSpot and other ESP's are NOT able to tell you.
Also, sorry HubSpot (I do love you) but this is not deliverability either:
Although these 'scores' and 'excellents' really boost my email ego, you have to know that these are NOT deliverability metrics.
I track my deliverability using ZeroBounce and other similar tools.
Do this instead:
Track deliverability with inbox placement tests and seed lists across providers, compare over time, and correlate with engagement signals. Treat ESP “deliverability” widgets as directional at best.
Myth 5: Plug-and-play templates and “steal this flow” frameworks are great
Why it’s wrong:
Your offer, data, lifecycle, resources, brand voice, messaging, and audience motivations are unique. Lifting someone else’s journey is how you end up with expensive automations that don’t move anything.
So the LinkedIn creators that make you comment 'FLOW' or something really soul sucking to get access to a flow template or whatever is NOT going to work for your audience.
Use it for inspiration, idea creation - but if you do the same as a competitor or another business, how can that possibly work for you?
Also, 100s of people comment and therefore 100s of people may implement it, and therefore your emails become numb like everyone else.
Do this instead:
Borrow the approach, not the assets.
Start with a proper audit, map your lifecycle, write your jobs-to-be-done, then build your flows.
Templates can inspire structure; they cannot substitute thinking!
Myth 6: AI can write the whole email (so you don’t have to)
Why it’s wrong:
You can smell unedited AI copy a mile off lol. Soulless, samey, frictionless in the worst way. It flattens voice, ignores nuance, and often invents claims you can’t stand over.
AI is not really 'taking over' anything, apart from our ability to think for ourselves.
I am guilty of it too - but I just can't let copy out that's so heavily AI generated it sucks the life out of it.
ChatGPT will never be your brand, it will never be YOU.
Do this instead:
Use AI as a researcher and first-draft helper (cluster themes, outline structures, generate variants), then human-edit hard.
Keep your tone, your stories, your specificity. People read people.
Myth 7: Email success = opens and clicks
Why it’s wrong:
Opens and clicks are indicators, not outcomes.
They tell you someone interacted, not whether the email 'worked'.
Opens are a classic; we historically thought of them as a good indicator, like "YAY someone opened my email", but opens can be positive, negative and neutral:
- You open an email to check who sent it to you and why they sent it
- You open to delete
- You open to unsubscribe
- You open to be curious
- You open by mistake
It's really hard not to let them boost your ego, I do not look at them at all apart from overtime and top tip, the more people you get on your list, the lower your open rates - it's VERY hard to consistently hit high when you're growing your list - your list will churn.
Do this instead:
Measure Return on Impact (ROI²): subscriber-to-customer rate, time to first action, email-assisted conversions, search uplift after sends, pipeline sourced/influenced, list growth quality, engagement longevity, revenue per engaged subscriber, and channel-level trends quarter over quarter. Campaigns are episodes; the programme and strategy is the show.
Find out what I track aside from opens and clicks here
.
Myth 8: “Never email disengaged contacts. Remove them all.”
Why it’s wrong:
Context matters. Email isn’t only a conversion tool; it’s also an awareness channel. Unopened ≠ unseen. Inboxes function like feeds and billboards—visibility compounds. If you only ever send to your most engaged 20%, you risk starving the rest of your list of the repetition needed to remember you when they are ready.
I also wrote a blog here on why I send to disengaged people - 'bad practice' you might think, but maybe not.
Do this instead:
Balance reach and reputation.
Maintain a healthy engagement safety net (people who consistently open/click/reply).
Use smart exclusions (recent complainers, fresh purchasers, conflict states).
Keep pattern-interrupts and re-engagement series for the quieter cohort.
And yes, keep a portion of “quiet but qualified” subscribers in play if your engaged core is strong enough to carry the signals. (I’ve written more on using email as an awareness channel.)
Myth 9: A/B testing subject lines is how you “innovate”
Why it’s wrong:
One-off subject line tests tell you almost nothing.
Too many variables (day, list mix, weather, inbox competition, provider quirks). And even when you find a “winner,” you rinse it to death and train your audience to ignore you.
Without getting super scientific, you just CAN'T, run successful A/B subject lines as you can never run that exact same tests under the same conditions again.
Do this instead:
Use A/B tests for learning, not trophies, and repeat them across time with controls.
For real progress, run control segments over multiple campaigns to evaluate approaches (tone, cadence, segmentation, format), not just micro-tweaks. Innovation is a strategy shift, not swapping “👉” for “→”.
Myth 10: Double opt-in (DOI) is automatically “best” (and single is automatically “bad”)
Why it’s wrong:
This gets pushed as a moral stance when it’s an operational choice.
For some brands and businesses, DOI reduces junk signups and legal risk; for others, it throttles growth without improving list quality. Blanket rules miss nuance.
I hate it honestly, it's totally pointless especially on places where you're specifically asking them to sign up to emails.
Do this instead:
Choose opt-in method based on risk profile, acquisition sources, and validation stack.
If you go single, pair it with real-time validation, welcome friction (first-party questions), and early engagement training.
If you go double, design the confirmation experience so people actually complete it.
Myth 11: “Spam words” put you in spam
Why it’s wrong:
Filters look at patterns and behaviour far beyond keywords.
You can say “free” and hit inbox, and you can write like a saint and still land in junk if your reputation is poor or your audience ignores you.
Just remember, adult sites and naughty naughty brands send emails - you can image their content and they don't get flagged.
Words are not 'it' anymore.
Do this instead:
Focus on reputation drivers: consistent cadence, audience fit, clean data, and engagement. Keep content human, accessible, and clear. Test placement weekly. Stop chasing magic wordlists.
Read deliverability myths here
.
Myth 12: Email must be perfect (or don’t send)
Why it’s wrong:
Perfection is procrastination in fancy clothes (I am a recovering perfectionist tbh).
Growth happens by doing, measuring, and iterating.
I’d rather you send a clear, human email that moves one thing forward than sit on a pixel-perfect nothing.
Sometimes time doesn't allow us to test thoroughly, sometimes we just have to get it out
It's when you consistently do it badly that you'll see the negative effects.
Do this instead:
Adopt “minimum lovable” as a bar: useful, accessible, on-brand, and shippable.
Then learn from it.
Reserve perfection energy for systemic fixes (data, strategy, automation quality)!
Myth 13: Email ROI is “£1 in, £42 out”
Why it’s wrong:
That stat is zombie content from a narrow, ancient study!! It's also from one brand, with a different audience from you.
Sometimes my client's ROI is 6,000% sometimes it's 3% - ignore this stat please.
Real life is messier. Email touches acquisition, activation, retention, revenue protection, CX, the whole organism. Pinning value to a single send misses 90% of the impact.
Do this instead:
Report blended impact: assisted revenue, pipeline influence, retention improvements, CX deflection, time-to-value reductions, NPS/CSAT shifts tied to lifecycle programs, and cost-to-serve savings. That’s ROI².
Myth 14: “Email is hard”
Why it’s wrong:
Email isn’t hard; doing it well is a craft that needs attention, time, and cross-functional alignment.
Most teams struggle not because they’re bad at email, but because they’re trying to do it when it's just a one person team, there's not enough support, education, budgets and bad systems and data.
Do this instead:
Get the oundations right (systems, data, strategy), simplify the stack, and work in programmes (awareness, nurture, convert, retain) with clear owners. You don’t need to do everything, just the right things consistently.
So…what should you actually do next?
If you want a deeper dive on treating email as an awareness channel, I've got it covered here. If you’re ready to sanity check your whole ecosystem, my PPPP™ audit and masterclasses go into the step-by-step.
But whether you work with me or not, please, stop letting bad myths decide your strategy.
Email isn’t magic. It’s ecosystems + doing + repetition. Do that well, and the “secrets” stop being secrets.
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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.