Right, let’s have a chat about email marketing best practices, shall we?
You know those “proven strategies” everyone parrots at networking events? The ones that make you feel like you’re doing everything wrong because you sent an email on a Friday afternoon instead of the sacred Tuesday at 10am?
Yeah, most of them are complete and utter bollocks.
After years of writing emails that get 50%+ open rates and generate four-figure sales from lists smaller than your average WhatsApp group, I’ve learned something crucial: the “rules” keeping everyone else’s emails boring are exactly what’s making them ineffective.
So grab a cuppa and let’s tear down some of these sacred cows, shall we?
The Tuesday/Thursday at 10am Myth (AKA The Lemming Effect)
Why Everyone Believes It
Early vendor studies more than a decade ago helped popularise the idea that Tuesday and Thursday mornings were the ‘magic’ send times, based on large but very broad datasets. The internet promptly lost its mind, and now every business owner and their dog schedules emails for 10am on these days.
Brilliant strategy, that. Let’s all send our emails at exactly the same time so they can compete with everyone else doing the same thing.
The Actual Truth
Your inbox doesn’t give a toss about aggregated data from millions of businesses that aren’t yours. The best send time for your list is when YOUR audience actually reads their emails.
I’ve got clients getting brilliant open rates, sending emails at 6pm on a Friday. Others are crushing it with Sunday morning sends. One recruitment client’s sweet spot? Wednesday at 2pm, because that’s when their hiring managers are procrastinating after lunch.
The only way to find your optimal send time is to actually test it with your real humans on your real list. Revolutionary concept, I know.
What to Do Instead
Pick 3-4 different days and times that make sense for your audience’s lifestyle. Send the same email each time over a few weeks, and track which version performs best. Then test again in three months because people’s habits change.
And please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop sending emails at 10am on Tuesday just because some blog post from a decade ago told you to.
The “Keep It Short” Brigade
Why This ‘Rule’ Exists
Apparently, everyone’s got the attention span of a goldfish on Red Bull, so you need to keep emails under 200 words or people will spontaneously combust from the effort of reading.
Spoiler alert: that’s rubbish.
Why Long Emails Actually Work
Some of my highest-converting emails are 800-1,000 words. Want to know why? Because when someone’s interested in what you’re saying, they’ll read it. And when you’re actually solving a problem they have, length becomes irrelevant.
The issue isn’t that emails are too long. The issue is they’re too boring.
Nobody wants to read three paragraphs of corporate waffle about your “innovative solutions” and “client-centric approach.” But tell them a story about how you helped someone go from drowning in admin to having their weekends back? They’ll read every word.
The Real Rule
Write as long as it needs to be to make your point effectively. No more, no less. If you’re waffling to hit a word count, cut it. If you need 600 words to properly explain why their current approach is knackered, use them.
The Template Obsession
The Theory
Use professionally designed templates with perfect layouts, colour-coded sections, and image-heavy designs to “look professional” and “build brand recognition.”
The Reality Check
Plain text emails consistently outperform designed templates. Not sometimes. Consistently. HubSpot’s multi‑test analysis found that plain‑text versions had higher open rates and that adding more HTML consistently reduced both opens and click‑throughs, with HTML emails sometimes getting around 50% fewer clicks than their plain‑text counterparts.
Why? Because designed emails scream “MARKETING EMAIL” from fifty paces. Your brain immediately puts them in the same category as promotional flyers and sponsored posts. But a plain text email that looks like it came from an actual human? That gets read.
I’ve tested this exhaustively. The same email content sent as a fancy template versus plain text, with maybe one image? Plain text wins on open rates and click-throughs every single time.
What Actually Works
Write emails that look like they came from a person, not a marketing department. Use simple formatting. Add personality. Make it conversational. Save the fancy designs for your website where they actually matter.
The “Never Use All Caps or Exclamation Marks!!!” Paranoia
Where This Came From
Back in the spam filter dark ages (we’re talking early 2000s), certain formatting triggered spam filters. So everyone started tiptoeing around, like using caps lock would send their email straight to digital hell.
The Current Situation
Modern spam filters are sophisticated enough to know the difference between “CLICK HERE FOR VIAGRA!!!” and you emphasising a point in an otherwise normal email. They’re looking at engagement metrics, sender reputation, and content context.
Using strategic caps or exclamation marks for emphasis won’t tank your deliverability. Writing boring emails that nobody engages with absolutely will.
The Balance
Don’t write like you’re shouting at someone. But don’t sanitise your writing so much that it loses all personality either. If you’d naturally say “What the actual hell were they thinking?!” in conversation, write it that way. Your spam filter will cope.
The Segmentation Paralysis
The ‘Best Practice’ Version
Segment your list into 53 different micro-audiences based on every possible data point. Send hyper-personalised content to each segment. Spend three days planning one email campaign.
Why This Is Nonsense (For Most Businesses)
Unless you’re running a massive e-commerce operation, over-segmentation is just procrastination with a fancy name. You end up spending so much time planning the perfect segmentation strategy that you barely send any emails.
I’ve seen business owners tie themselves in knots trying to segment their list of 200 people into eight different groups. Meanwhile, they’re sending one email a month because the planning is so complex.
The Actually Useful Approach
Start with basic segmentation that matters: customers versus prospects. Engaged versus not engaged. That’s it for most small businesses.
As your list grows past 1,000 and you have actual data showing different groups respond to different content, add segments strategically. But a well-written email sent to your whole list beats a perfectly segmented email you never actually send.
What Actually Matters in Email Marketing
Alright, enough tearing down the sacred cows. Here’s what actually moves the needle:
- Consistency – Sending regular emails (even imperfect ones) beats sporadic “perfect” emails every time. Your list forgets you exist if you only email them when Mercury’s in retrograde and you’ve got the perfect template designed.
- Personality – Write like a human talking to another human. If it wouldn’t pass the pub test (would you say this after two pints?), rewrite it.
- Value – Every email should give them something useful, entertaining, or thought-provoking. Even your sales emails. Especially your sales emails.
- Subject Lines That Don’t Suck – This matters more than send time, template design, or whether you used an exclamation mark. If they don’t open it, nothing else matters.
- Actually Knowing Your Audience – Generic best practices can’t tell you what YOUR people respond to. Only testing and paying attention can do that.
The Bottom Line
Email marketing best practices should be called “email marketing suggestions that worked for someone else that one time.” They’re starting points, not commandments.
The real best practice? Test things with your actual audience, pay attention to what works, and stop sanitising your emails to follow rules that are keeping everyone else’s marketing forgettable.
Your list signed up to hear from YOU, not from some committee-approved version of you that sounds like every other boring business email they get.
So write like you give a toss. Send when your people read. Make emails long enough to be useful, short enough to stay interesting. And please, no more defaulting to 10am Tuesday just because that’s what others do.
Hey, I’m Em…
I’m an email marketing strategist who escaped the soul-crushing world of recruitment to build a business on my own terms. After rage-quitting 6 years ago with no plan (and somehow making it work), I now help service-based businesses get their email marketing and content sorted without the corporate bullshit.
I write emails that actually get opened, blogs that rank, and funnels that convert—all while sounding like you, not like every other boring voice in your industry.
Ready to stop getting ghosted and start converting?
If you’re tired of prospects going silent and want email marketing that actually makes people respond, let’s talk. My done-for-you services handle your entire email strategy, list building, funnels, and blog content so you can focus on running your business instead of stressing about marketing.
Book a call, and let’s get your emails making you more money.