Issue #261 All About Email

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #261 of All About Email!

Last week we started a two-part guest special with my buddy Lauren Meyer.

This week, we conclude our two-part special by looking at the final two skills in “Five Skills That Separate Good Email Practitioners from Great Ones”.

Let’s go! 👇

Last week, we looked at three non-technical skills that help you get really good at email:

Asking one more question. Looking beyond the email dashboard. Recognising the warning signs before they become a much bigger problem.

🚨 But once you think you understand what’s happening, you’ve still got two jobs ahead of you:

That’s where the final two skills come in. 👇

Recognising what you might be looking at is one thing. Judgment is knowing what to do about it... including whether you should do anything at all just yet.

💡 One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that reacting quickly isn’t the same as reacting well.

When people start asking questions, it’s easy to get nervous. And when you’re nervous, you start tweaking things: the content, the cadence, the segments, the platform.

Maybe all of ’em, before lunch.

I get it.

Sitting still feels irresponsible when there’s a dashboard (or a person) screaming at you.

But then you wonder why you can’t figure out what actually fixed the problem. Go figure.

🚨 Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is... nothing. Or at least, nothing yet. Slow down long enough to separate facts from your assumptions. Cuz we all know what they say about assumptions...

And don’t just look in the mirror. Check if anything may have changed around you:

🧠 Your job isn’t to have the fastest answer. It’s to make as few unforced errors as possible while you figure out what’s actually goin’ on.

💡 Knowing the answer isn’t enough if you’re unable to communicate it in a way that resonates with others.

I learned this one the fun way.

Years ago, when I worked at Mailjet, I was presenting at a leadership offsite. I had slide after slide showing trends in open rates by mailbox provider (including AOL, for a French email provider 🥴), all intended to demonstrate something I thought was very important to prove:

I distinctly remember the point when our CTO and Head of Sales’ eyes started to glaze over. Our CEO started pacing. Two people pulled out their laptops.

And, yeah. Fair.

I was giving them a (very long-winded) answer in my language.

🚨 They didn’t need a tour of open-rate trends by mailbox provider. They needed to understand what healthy deliverability meant for the business.

Happy to report I’ve gotten much better at that since then.

The point here is that translation isn’t just about replacing technical words with simpler ones.

🧠 It’s understanding what the person across from you cares about and connecting what you know to something meaningful for them.

A few ways to do that:

It’s amazing how much easier it becomes to get people on board once you understand what keeps them awake at night, rather than only talking about what keeps you awake.

I learned this with Sales, too. “We need to vet prospective senders for compliance” sounded a whole lot like a Compliance cop adding speed bumps and detours in front of their deals.

Whereas “Let’s identify questionable senders earlier so you don’t spend weeks closing and onboarding someone who gets rejected... or ends up churning before you ever see your commission” introduced the same compliance problem in a language they understood much more quickly.

🧠 Same goal. Very different reasons to care.

In fact, I’d argue that the companies that solve email problems the fastest usually aren’t the ones with the smartest email teams. They’re the ones whose email team knows how to collaborate with everyone else.

You don’t need a formal cross-functional task force with seventeen meetings and a shared Slack channel nobody reads to make this happen, either. Just have a few conversations. Ask questions. Learn what success, pain, and risk look like from where they sit.

Because the recommendation that seems obviously urgent inside your comfy little email bubble may be competing with ten genuinely more urgent priorities you didn’t even know existed.

💡 I went deeper on this in a blog about why proving email’s value internally feels like screaming into the void (and how to overcome it).

“Inbox placement dropped” may feel perfectly clear (and plenty urgent) to you, but it leaves a pretty important question unanswered for everyone else:

🚨 That’s the story you need to tell.

Not because email metrics don’t matter. I love ’em just as much as you do. But most stakeholders need you to connect those metrics to something they’re responsible for protecting, improving, or explaining before they’ll understand why they should care.

💡 So, flip the script from “deliverability optimisation” to customer reach, revenue protection (or generation), operational efficiency, risk management, or whatever the actual business impact is.

When the subject itself is complicated, find a simpler way in.

Just make sure the analogy fits the audience.

A football analogy is no help if the person’s a theatre geek. And a ’90s movie reference may delight exactly three of us while everyone else wonders what we’re giggling about.

The goal isn’t to make everyone else an email expert. I mean, how long you got, amiright??

✅ But helping people understand why this particular email problem (or opportunity!) matters to them in their own language may just motivate them enough to do the damn thing.

💡 The next time an email problem lands on your desk, give yourself a moment to answer two questions:

🧠 Then try explaining your recommendation in three sentences:

If your recommendation is to monitor the situation for now, explain what you’re watching for and what would prompt you to act.

🧠 That gives people something they can understand and respond to, even when you don’t yet have all the answers.

Looking back, the email practitioners I’ve trusted most weren’t necessarily the smartest people in the room. (Okay, well, some of them were.)

💡 They were the curious ones. The people asking one more question, looking one layer deeper, connecting dots nobody else realised were related, and explaining complicated things in a way that got everyone else moving.

Technical expertise may have gotten them in the room.

But these are the skills that made people seek them out the next time things got complicated.

🚨 And there’s another reason I think they’re worth naming…

If you’ve worked in email for a long time, it’s easy to think your expertise is the stuff with “email” attached: authentication, deliverability, infrastructure, lifecycle, analytics.

But somewhere along the way, you’ve also learned:

Those aren’t just email skills.

🎉 They’re valuable wherever you decide to take ’em.

So yes, learn authentication, mailbox provider behaviour, infrastructure, data analysis, and strategy. The technical stuff absolutely matters.

🤚 But don’t overlook everything else email has been teaching you along the way.

Whether you use those skills to become exceptional at email or eventually take them somewhere completely different... don’t underestimate what you’ve actually learned to do.

💌 Thanks to Simon for inviting me to ramble on All About Email, and to you, dear reader, for caring enough about email to read newsletters about it. I see you. 😇

If this particular flavour of email nerdery is your thing, I write more of it over at Send It Right. Otherwise, I hope we get to meet somewhere out in the email wild one day.

What did you learn this week? Test your knowledge. 👇

The quiz will open in a new window when you choose the first answer.

Have fun! 🤩

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! 👋