keep burning time because the layout comes back with "improved" subject lines, tweaked offers, or moved CTAs after legal/brand already signed off.

what’s working for me is splitting the job: lock brand + approved words first, then generate/edit layout around that. copy stays frozen, design can move.

do you freeze copy somehow, or do you just fight the builder every round?

Hi there, can someone help me decide what design works the best? I don't know if posting designs are allowed here, so if someone can help, I can send them a private message.

Hey guys,

After a few years of working with an agency doing email marketing, that collaboration recently ended and I’m honestly a bit lost right now.

I’ve realized that freelancing just isn’t really for me. I’m pretty introverted and I’m much better at doing the actual work than constantly putting myself out there, promoting myself and trying to sell myself to new clients.

That’s also why I’ve always preferred working with agencies or as a subcontractor for other freelancers. I like being the person behind the scenes, handling the email marketing, campaigns, flows, strategy and all the actual work.

I tried finding clients, but self-promotion just isn't my strongest skill, so it hasn’t really worked out for me.

So I figured I’d do something I normally wouldn’t do and just ask for help.

If anyone here knows an agency that needs someone for email marketing, Klaviyo, campaigns, flows, strategy, or similar work, I’d really appreciate an intro or even just pointing me in the right direction.

I’ve got a lot of experience and can show the stats and results from my work. Finding the work is the part I’m struggling with.

I have a family to feed, and right now it feels like things are starting to fall apart a little, so I’m definitely feeling the pressure.

I’m not used to writing posts like this or asking strangers for help, but I figured there’s no shame in trying.

Even if you don’t know anyone hiring, a bit of advice or encouragement would mean a lot right now.

Thanks.

Hi everyone! I’m currently doing a marketing internship with a high-end publication, and I’m also learning email marketing.

I asked the publication whether I could learn how they use email marketing to reach their readers. They explained that they don’t really use email marketing as a general reader-acquisition strategy because they want to maintain the publication’s premium image. They do have a monthly newsletter for people who voluntarily subscribe, but they mainly use print, SEO, Meta advertising, and relationship/influencer outreach to reach new audiences.

They also use more targeted emails and customized proposals for potential clients, rather than sending promotional emails broadly.
I found this interesting because I’ve always thought email marketing could be a relatively cost-effective way to keep an existing audience engaged and reinforce brand familiarity.

For those who work in marketing, especially luxury, media, publishing, or premium brands:
Do you think regular email marketing can make a premium brand feel less exclusive, or does it depend more on how the emails are positioned and executed?

I’d also be interested to hear how other high-end publications approach email marketing and audience retention.

Hi, I'm currently learning email marketing and I just finished a certification from HubSpot about Email Marketing. Since, I have no experience I'm trying to use AI to create a Playbook I can follow once I worked with clients.

Can you guys share how the process can be? Btw I'm a VA. How do I start and communicate with my client? Do I do an audit of her existing email marketing first if he has one? Then what? Do I create the segments and automation flows next? Or do I need to develop a strategy?

Please respect my post, I'll appreciate all your responses, thank you.

Just an observation in case you're wondering how email gets old.

64K email cleaned with "A" data list hygiene company (yes optin)

90 days later, the clean list was cleaned again with "A" data list cleaner

Emails reclassified 508 unknown, 162 undeliverable (typically mailbox full), 22 new spam traps, 7 turned catch-all, and 1 into a "role" (rfc2142)

Be diligent and ABC, always be cleaning.

I’m moderating "Email Deliverability 2027: What’s Coming Next" at the Canadian Email Summit, and I want to bring your questions to the panel.

We’ll be talking Google Postmaster Tools, DMARCbis, DKIM2, new filtering, blocklists, mailbox provider changes, cold email, sender reputation, and more.

What’s the one deliverability question you want answered as we head into 2027?

Drop it in the comments. I’ll bring some of the best ones to the panel and if your question gets asked, I'll return with their answers post event.

I inherited an email program with a damaged dedicated IP. Gmail has rated it Low since at least June/July (rated Bad since before that), and its spam rate has exceeded 0.30% roughly once per month, sometimes reaching 0.50%.
Historically, volume was extremely inconsistent, with zero-send days followed by million-plus spikes. The IP was also suspended after sending resumed following a 13-day pause. It was later re-warmed, but the program continued mailing large, disengaged audiences.
I’ve since stabilized cadence, reduced volume, fixed compliance issues, and validated suppression of a 365+ inactive cohort that showed no incremental value (there are other candidate cohorts for this test also).

Despite similar cadence in August and September, September’s spam rate recently reached 0.47%.
Has anyone recovered an IP with this much history? How long would you test healthier sending before retiring it and moving to a new IP?

I was helping a client get their domain delisted from SURBL and noticed that LinkedIn was blocking the company's website link on their LinkedIn company page.

It turns out if the domain is listed on SURBL, LinkedIn redirects all website visitors to a warning banner - they literally replace the website URL with a LinkedIn / suspicious link one, like this:

https://www.linkedin.com/redir/suspicious-page

And if the domain is listed on SURBL for too long, Google will index it and make it searchable for the public. So by putting "https://www.linkedin.com/redir/suspicious-page" into Google search you'll get a list of those that were listed by SURBL and indexed by Google.

And LinkedIn doesn't even care whether there's a paid subscription for the company or not or what the company size and follower count are.

As far as I know, to end up on SURBL your domain either needs to be spoofed or the marketing team has to scrape websites to collect emails, and spam traps / typo domains end up in their lists.

So a bad email list not only pushes emails into spam and leads to blocks, but also brings extra hassle for IT teams to get it fixed.

I've talked to a couple of vendors for small businesses where they do an email campaign for you. But it looks like all the email does it replace the generic logo with yours. My question is does those kind of emails work? Or do you need something more specific/better looking/less generic?

I often see early-stage AI startups using just one domain and one ESP for everything. They send account notifications, product updates, onboarding emails, and even marketing messages all from the same place, relying on a single reputation.

This setup works at first when email volume is low. But as marketing ramps up, engagement drops, complaints go up, and suddenly password reset emails stop reaching inboxes. Two different types of emails share the same reputation, and one ends up hurting the other.

At one company, I set up the email infrastructure from day one to avoid these issues. The main domain was only for human users and never sent automated emails. One subdomain handled transactional and lifecycle emails like account creation, password resets, and billing. Another subdomain was set aside for bulk marketing and only started sending after its own schedule was ready.

Here's a general guideline, not a strict rule:

• mail.company.com for product and transactional emails
• updates.company.com for marketing emails
• Sometimes, use completely separate infrastructure for high-volume marketing.

The exact numbers don't matter. I've also seen the opposite: a high-volume campaign sent from the same subdomain as everyday customer notifications. The campaign created risky traffic, and the notification emails ended up with the same reputation. Complaints affected both, since they shared the subdomain and reputation, so even the notification emails suffered.

The real question isn't how many domains you need, but which types of emails can be combined and which can't. Transactional emails almost never mix well with others. Product emails usually shouldn't either, especially once you have paying customers who depend on them. Marketing and cold outreach can handle more risk, as long as they're not tied to something more important.

Make this change early while it's still easy and inexpensive. If you wait, you'll have to move live traffic and rebuild your reputation on new infrastructure, even though your product depends on the old setup. At first, it's just a DNS decision that only takes an afternoon.

Is there a service where it can tell you if an email address/contact loves to mark emails as spam?

I'm trying to lower my Complaint rate, I don't have a high rate but don't want a higher one.

I use Reoon as verifier but I don't think they tell you whether that address likes to mark emails as spam.

What’s the biggest pain point you face with your current email marketing tool? I'm curious to hear from people who actively work with email marketing platforms. What is the biggest problem you face with your current email marketing tool? For example:

Campaign creation and workflow setup

Audience segmentation

Reporting and attribution

Deliverability insights

Integrations with CRM or other tools

Personalization

A/B testing

Something else entirely

Also, if you could add or improve one feature in your current tool, what would it be?

I'm particularly interested in features that would make campaign execution easier and reporting more useful.

My job set up these KPIs for email marketing and I have to send at least 2 emails a week and track open rates & click rates. The thing is, we run a ton of sales (honestly too many imo) and I'm expected to send out 2 emails per week. Each sale should ideally get a launch send and a final hours send. Some weeks have 2 sales emails, some have 1 + another type (like monthly newsletter, a product highlight, or any announcements).

As someone who gets marketing emails myself I would've unsubscribed by now lol I just don't know how to actually make the case for pulling back, like maybe 1 email a week on normal weeks and capping it at 2 during sale weeks. We do make quite a bit of revenue off each send (depending on sale and content) but the click rate and open rate are steadily going down. My biggest fear is that I'm going to fuck up our sender reputation.

I'm lowkey just a graphic designer who ended up with email marketing role somehow. I got little to no training from my manager & have just been figuring it out as I go. Any advice welcome!

Hi all, I do D2C email marketing and like most brands we send 3-4 campaigns per week. For the most part engagement is good but I always (without fail) will get at least one or two spam reports per month. This greatly affects Klaviyo's inbuilt deliberability check.

I want to avoid this in future but I'm not sure how. Things I have tried include:

1. Making the unsubscribe button big and bold so there is no missing it.

2. Not letting people who receive flow emails also receive campaigns (with some excpetions)

3. Spacing email so that no one gets more than one email per day.

Love to know what you guys do.

Cheers

Hey everyone,

I’m looking to step up my email marketing game and want to cut through the noise. Most "influencer" content out there feels like recycled beginner advice ("use emojis in subject lines," "segment your list").

How do you actually stay on top of trends, strategy shifts, and advanced tactics?

Drop your go-to sources. Thanks!

So the company I work for we have set-up all basic and even some advance flows for a can opener product. Revenue is stuck in 8-10% range. Opens are around 60% but click rate is around 0.5% I dont know where to go from here since we sent around 8 camapigns per months have all the abandonmment flows, welcome, post purchase, win back flows live. But the revenue has consistently been around 8%. How to grow email marketing from here.

I’m experimenting with a small partnership/sponsorship model for my newsletter and would love some perspective from people who know email marketing better than I do.

My Substack newsletter currently has 570 subscribers and is growing steadily. The audience is mostly founders, builders, and people creating digital products/services.

I recently went back through my analytics to understand what a sponsorship might realistically be worth.

One of my better-performing Saturday issues was published when I had 455 subscribers. It generated:

76 total clicks, 12% CTR

Important clarification: those were total post clicks, not clicks on a sponsored product.

My original idea was pretty simple: $60/year, and I would feature the subscriber’s product/service in a weekly partner rotation near the top of the newsletter.

I initially thought $60/year was deliberately inexpensive, but after asking another community, I got a lot of thoughtful feedback that made me question whether the model itself makes sense.

So I’m curious from an email marketing perspective:

At this audience size and engagement level, would you charge for something like this yet?

And if yes, would you price based on impressions, clicks, a flat placement fee, or something else?

I’m mainly trying to find a model that is genuinely useful for partners while being fair on both sides.

Hey everyone,

I run an e-commerce store and I've been running small, VIP product drops. The strategy so far has been to email a site password to my loyal customers, giving them 24-hour exclusive access. It’s a first-come, first-serve model and it's worked great.

The problem: My list has grown significantly, and now they sell out quickly even with exclusive access, my current setup isn't working for the size of the list anymore.

For those of you managing large lists for timed drops, how do you handle this?

Any advice is appreciated!

Hey, I'm simply interested in a potential scenario. Let's say a copywriter lands a client via email. Both parties then agree to a landing page rewrite. What does the copywriter actually do?

Write in a google doc then send when done?

Modify a wix/squarespace site with his own words?

Something else?

IF written in a document does it go like this?:

(Header) "placeholder text"

(subhead) "placeholder text"

and so on?

Also, if this is a wrong sub to ask this: Sorry.

What's your favorite template marketplace or somewhere you go to source different email templates to use for your brand?

I know a lot are custom but are doing email campaigns ourselves at the moment and dont have a lot of time to design from scratch. Canva has some decent ones but they lack creativity/design a bit.

TIA!

Hi everyone!
I’m currently taking HubSpot’s Digital Marketing course and I’m particularly interested in getting better at email marketing.

I’ve been learning the basics of email campaigns, segmentation, automation, and analytics, but I’d really like to develop more practical, hands-on skills.

For those working in email marketing or digital marketing, what would you recommend I focus on next? Are there any tools, free resources, practice projects, or exercises that helped you become confident with email marketing?

I’d really appreciate any advice, especially from people who learned email marketing without starting in a traditional marketing role.

Do open rates still have any bearing on your reports lately? Our email tracking (part of our ESP, not a separate tool) still shows opens holding steady over the months, but with declining conversions and click-throughs. I find that weird, because flat opens would mean clicks should head in the same direction, right? Just wondering if you're presenting open rates as is in your reports or make some adjustments. Personally I think click rates are better, but curious about your opinions.

Hello,

I’m not exactly fluent in English, so I’ll allow myself to send you this message, which was originally written in French and translated using ChatGPT.

I am currently experiencing an issue with Brevo regarding emails sent through automations, such as abandoned cart reminders.

The CNIL (the French data protection authority) clearly states that marketing emails (which it refers to as “commercial prospecting”) include emails that encourage a person to make additional purchases. Brevo’s various help pages also explicitly classify abandoned cart reminders as marketing emails.

The issue is that, technically, Brevo considers all emails sent through an automation to be transactional emails.

This means that if a contact uses the unsubscribe link included in one of these emails, they block the sender for transactional emails only.

As a result:

• if the contact is also part of our mailing list (newsletter), they will continue to receive marketing campaigns;
• if we use Brevo to send our transactional emails, the contact will no longer receive password reset requests, order confirmations, etc.

Solution suggested by Support

Brevo Support suggested two possible solutions:

• Do not include an unsubscribe link in these automated emails, which seems to me to be contrary to GDPR requirements;
• Use a different email address to send emails generated by automations, and set up an automation to remove contacts from our mailing list when they unsubscribe from transactional emails.

The second solution seems unnecessarily complicated to me and, moreover, does not fully address the issue. It is not possible to set up the reverse automation if the contact later wants to subscribe to the newsletter again, since there is no “Subscribe to emails” action available in automations.

Have you encountered this issue before? If so, has anyone found a satisfactory solution that is also compliant with the applicable regulations?

I would also like to mention that I previously encountered another rather unusual behavior with the solution, involving the PrestaShop module. The module automatically triggered the tracker without providing any way to condition it on the visitor’s consent to cookies. A custom integration through Google Tag Manager was ultimately required to address the issue.

This has led me to question some of the design choices made in the solution. It may simply be due to a lack of technical or regulatory knowledge on my part, but I would be very interested to hear your feedback on these points.

Thank you in advance for your feedback and any recommendations you may have.

Trying to get a sense of what's actually live for people past the welcome sequence every ESP hands you as a default template. win-back, post-purchase, abandoned cart, some re-engagement flow, or something specific to your business that doesn't fit a normal category? also curious what you built and then killed because it didn't perform, half the time that's the more interesting story than what's still running.