Why the state of email will continue its sharp decline

Welp, news recently broke that Klaviyo (once revered by agencies for their Partners program) will be pivoting to offering an implementation service for brands using their platform. 

I don’t know how much this will cost—I’ve seen various levels of financial commitment for working with them. 

But I do know this:

The state of email marketing will decline. 

First, AI popped up. 

Now, tech companies are LARPing as copywriters. (Tech companies historically have always had the absolute WORST copy - just look at the homepage for your favorite startup.) 

Next, tech companies will use AI to do their LARPing for them. While designers replace copywriters to create more and more pretty templates without understanding the psychological principles of why someone buys. 

And it won’t be long until every email gets a near 0% open rate because it’s the same regurgitated nonsense and “flash sales” from company A all the way down to company Z. 

Of course, this also presents us with a massive opportunity:

By fixing your email strategy today, you will stand out even more from your peers. 

By implementing a plain-text, copy-heavy approach, your emails could take the last stand against global 0% open rates. 

By focusing on your audience, your product, and your copy instead of all the vanity “metrics” of email (and I’m including HTML designs as a vanity “metric” here), you will actually form a relationship with your email list while everyone else on planet earth treats their email list like their sidechick’s sidechick. 

While email is a great way to make money in a hurry—in fact, after factoring in the costs to “send” an email, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more effective growth strategy—it’s an even better long-term marketing  strategy than it is a short-term one. 

But the AI bots and ESPs of the world like Klaviyo will only focus on the short-term, which has devastating consequences over the long term. 

Don’t believe me? Doesn’t bother me in the slightest… But lemme share a quick client story with you to see if I can get you to change your tune: 

One of my clients started his online business in 2002, when the internet was a much younger place. We started working together in 2019—and if I hadn’t reached out to him, it’s hard to say whether his business would still be around today. And it certainly wouldn't be doing over 200k per month total revenue (or 100k per month from email alone). 

Why?

Well, in the early days of the internet, he could manipulate Google. He ranked #1 (or at least on Google’s first page) for a variety of important keywords. 

But then Google updated their algorithm, took money from Big Pharma, and nuked the effectiveness of SEO for alternative health brands especially, but also for everyone. 

When we chatted in 2019… He had over 100k people on his email list, but never saw above 10% open rates and barely made 5 figures from email in a year, let alone 6 figures every month like clockwork. 

(As you can imagine, his email strategy relied on sending “newsletter” style emails that were filled with pretty images, but the copy made people run away.) 

That’s when I stepped in, axed his list from 100k down to about 10k, and implemented my plain-text, copy-driven strategy. 

Almost five years later, our engaged list sits between 28-40k. We make at least 100k every single month. And every email I send out, regardless of subject line I use, boasts at least 35% open rates (and sometimes goes as high as 50%). 

Why?

Because I’ve built trust with our audience. 

They like my client (who I ghostwrite as). 

And they actively look forward to receiving emails from us, opening them, reading them, and then buying from them. 

But I’m in the minority. 

Most agencies, email copywriters, AI bots, and people working at Klaviyo take the easy way out: 

They run non-stop promos, meticulously design every template (which can take up to 8 hours for a single email!), and spam their lists. 

This will only get worse as time ticks on. 

The good news, for you at least, is that you’ve somehow stumbled into the world of El John-o. 

If you heed my advice, you’ll be leagues ahead of every copywriter on earth in just a few short years. And if you need someone to handle your email, then, well, there’s nobody on the planet you could trust more than Your Humble Narrator here (in my obviously biased, yet correct opinion). 

Anywho: 

If you want to implement an email strategy that can grow your email revenue from 5 figures per year to 6 figures per month, hit reply, and let’s set up a quick call. 

John