Issue #247 All About Email

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #247 of All About Email!

Last week was one of my favourite newsletters of the year, and it only comes out twice a year as we look back at your Top 10 issues over the last six months and what we can learn and apply.

This week, I have my second guest author of the summer as we take a look at “Why Being In The Right Room Changes Everything You Know About Email.”

Let’s go! 👇

There's a version of email marketing advice that goes something like this:

Yeah, if you’ve been sending emails for a while, you’ll likely realise this sounds familiar. And, yes, some of it is even true.

🧠 But there’s a word that crops up in our game that we hate to love, but it’s true…it “depends”.

It depends on your audience, your sending context, your list health, your ESP, your goals, and your philosophy, too.

💡 The problem isn't the advice itself, but that most email advice is written for everyone (which means it's really written for no one in particular). And yet, people follow it religiously.

But you don’t know what you don’t know…and I get that.

When you're starting out (or even when you're a few years in), you want that playbook, don’t you? You want someone to tell you the rules and what “works”. And yes, the internet is very willing to oblige.

Heck, there are a million blog posts, YouTube videos, LinkedIn carousels, and now, AI tools that will confidently generate a "complete email marketing strategy" in approximately 11 seconds.

💡 The confidence of advice, however, has nothing to do with its relevance to YOUR situation.

I've spent a fair share of time in email (giving away my age here, too). Over that time, one thing has become increasingly clear: the divide between people who are genuinely good at email and people who “think” they're good at email is wider than most realise.

…And it only gets wider.

💡 Not because email is getting harder (though it is, in some ways), but because the volume of advice has exploded, and most people have no real framework for assessing whether what they're reading applies to them (thanks, AI).

Think about it. You ask AI to write your re-engagement sequence, and it'll produce something technically coherent. But it won't:

🚨 That fancy MCP also can’t tell the difference between a bot click and a real person (or those lurkers who care but don’t click). It can't. So it defaults to the pattern it's seen most often.

That's not a knock on AI (heck, I use my fair share for various aspects of my email strategy), but it's a knock on using it without the literacy to evaluate what comes out.

The same applies to blogs and LinkedIn advice (guilty, occasionally), and industry reports. A screenshot of success may not be success for YOU. 

🧠 Context is almost always missing. And without context, even correct advice can be the wrong advice for you.

Email literacy isn't about knowing every technical detail of DKIM or being able to recite inbox provider guidelines from memory. That develops over time and with experience.

🧠 The ability to hear a piece of advice and ask: “Does this apply to me, and how would I know?” That’s where email literacy comes in.

🚨 That last one is tougher. And it's where community comes in.

I run a newsletter called Email Advice in Your Inbox, a community newsletter for email senders who are actually trying to win at email, not just send it. 

🚨 One of the things I've noticed over the years of building that community is that the people who grow fastest as email practitioners aren't necessarily the ones reading the most content:

💡 When you're around people who genuinely know what they're doing, there’s a lightbulb that suddenly switches on:

🧠 Things just start to click.

Being in the right room calibrates that instinct of what “is” right (not just what feels right), and knowledge is a byproduct.

✅ That's the real value of community in this space.

If you're looking to sharpen your email literacy and surround yourself with people who actually know what they're doing, this is by no means a comprehensive list (and sorry to any friends I’ve left out here, but that’s an email’s worth of names alone).

🧠 Here are a few worth following and engaging with:

(Simon's newsletter is, obviously, a good starting point. You're already here, and that's a point in your favour 😉 because he’s definitely on this list.)

💡 Beyond individual follows, communities like Email Geeks on Slack are worth your time. The volume of learning, engagement, and the ability to hear from the right folks about the right stuff is a serious boon to anyone’s email learning.

🚨 Here's what I'd encourage you to ponder as we close this off: when you last decided on your email programme, strategy, or even a tactic, where did that decision come from?

If that was a blog post, a tool recommendation, an AI output or even a gut feel based on something you half-remember reading six months ago, none of those is necessarily wrong. 

💡 But if you can't articulate “why” that advice applies to your context, that's something you need to note internally.

No expert will ever truly know everything about email, but we all need to:

✅ That's what email literacy looks like in practice.

And the good news is, you’re not alone in this. True email literacy is something you build by being in the right rooms, reading the right things, connecting with the right people, and asking better questions.

You're clearly already trying to do that, {{first_name|friend}}.

Des 💌

There is a lot in Des’s guest post that lines up with how I think about email.

🚨 Most email advice is not necessarily wrong. It is just often missing the context that tells you whether it is right for you.

That is the problem with many email “best practices”. A useful observation gradually gets repeated, simplified and stripped of all its original context until it becomes a rule that everyone is apparently expected to follow.

And, as Des points out, AI can make that problem worse.

It can produce a perfectly convincing strategy, sequence or answer without knowing enough about your audience, your sending history, your reputation, your goals or what has previously worked for you.

That does not make AI useless. Far from it.

💡 But you still need enough knowledge to question what it gives you rather than assuming a confident answer must be the correct one.

I also liked Des’s point about being in the “right rooms”.

🎉 The value of a good community is not simply having more people available to give you answers:

So, the next time you encounter a definitive piece of email advice, do not just ask whether it sounds sensible.

🧠 Ask why it should apply to your audience, what context might be missing and how you would know whether it was actually helping.

You may still decide to follow it, but you will be doing so for a better reason.

See you next week, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Every week, as I write this newsletter, I'll share the track of the moment to create an unbelievably eclectic playlist just for your inbox.

🚨 If you’re interested in sponsoring the “All About Email” newsletter, you can find all the details in this Google Doc.

This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:

If you have any questions about this email or email marketing, please reply, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

I hope you have a great week! 👋