I wasted hundreds of hours on these email marketing tactics

Writing a direct response newsletter is easy… and hard.

All you have to do is… tell a story about your business, make an offer, and press send. And yet, email marketing gurus and software providers overcomplicate it with shiny objects.

I ran after a few of these objects over the years.

Here are some fancy email marketing tactics you’ll find gurus preaching about. I no longer use them. They cost me time, creative energy, and moolah. I tell clients to avoid them, too.

Fancy Branded Templates
​I’ve spent a few hundred dollars on fancy email templates. I’ve also tested and customized templates inside of Kit, MailChimp, and other email marketing tools.

Templates are helpful if you want to share a lot of content as part of a weekly digest, such as a series of blog posts, YouTube videos, and podcasts. They’re de rigueur if you’re running a fancy ecomm newsletter with strict brand guidelines.

For most creators, it’s overkill. Your time is better spent writing an email than trying to shoehorn content and links into a design. Substack doesn’t offer template customization and for good reason. Simplification wins.

Writing a plain text email is easier and faster. It looks good in an inbox, kind of like a letter to a friend. I’ve yet to meet the reader who wants me to put my emails into a design..

Excessive List Segmentation
​I spent dozens of hours segmenting my email list based on opt-ins and traffic sources. I even set up a complex tagging system. So much time and creative energy…wasted.

Unless you’ve lots of juicy web traffic, tens of thousands of subs, or a suite of high-converting products, segmentation is a tantalizing distraction. I get why creators do it. It offers up the promise of earning more money by presenting the right offer to the right buyer at the right time.

But, I’d rather write another email or create an offer than agonize over who gets what and when. Now, I allow for one exception. I still segment my list between content for customers and non-customers.

Complex auto-responder sequences
​Guess how long my auto-responder welcome sequence is? One email. I ran a lengthy auto-responder sequence for a year or two. Yes, I saved time with this approach, but my content dated every few weeks.

A lengthy auto-responder sequence lacks immediacy and freshness. It’s a boring way to approach marketing. You can’t reference what’s trending, like Trump’s tariffs, or how many eggs you scoffed on Easter Sunday (2). If you do, expect to log in and update the sequence regularly.

A/B Subject Line Testing
​I geeked out on this tactic for a few years. It’s fun logging in and seeing subject line A-“This $5 Million Mistake Came Down to a Missing Comma” got a few more opens than subject line B-“The $5M Typo: When Punctuation Costs Millions”

(These were actual emails I wrote a few months ago.)

But what can you do with this info after pressing send? You’ll always get more opens… by writing another email. So, here’s what I did instead. I keep a list of my subject lines and open rates. I plugged the top 50 or so into a Claude Project.

I also added around 150 more subject lines from my copywriting swipe file. I wrote a custom prompt. And now Claude gives me a few subject lines to pick from before I press send.

Every complex email tactic you adopt acts like a tax collector, taking a percentage of your most valuable assets: time, creative energy, and focus. Simplifying your approach is like getting a massive tax break, letting you keep more of your resources for what generates revenue.

Imagine instead having a streamlined, simple email system that takes minutes to maintain, not hours—one where your focus stays on creating content that resonates and making offers that sell.

I can help you create an email marketing strategy that adds $3–5k to your business this month. It’s part of my Easter Weekend bundle. It’s only available until midnight tomorrow, though…

​Check out the deets​