Did you know?

Emails Done Right was born out of my need for a safe space to say the stuff no one else seemed to be saying about email marketing.

Things like:

• Abandoned cart emails are creepy AF
• Offering discounts as an opt-in offer in lazy
• Payment reminder emails are just good business
• Businesses need to be proactive about churn (and not reactive)
• Onboarding and retention go hand in hand — so onboard with long-term retention in mind!

I was just too green and too scared to say them publicly back then.

And so I created my own safe space to "say it like I saw it".

I figured if someone decided to scream at me and say "You don't know what you're talking about!" or "Who are you to mock our industry standards?!" they'd do it in the privacy of my inbox.

(Let's observe a moment of silence for the timid Samar of 2018 😆)

Since then, I've:

Told Hubspot the problem wasn't their onboarding, it was their pricing (and that the emails I was creating for them were a short-term solution to a bigger problem.)

Helped Pinterest revamp their in-app and email notification strategy.

Worked with Drip to improve their customer experience — as well as reduce the time between sign-up and first email "send".

Wowed the socks off Workamajig by helping them migrate 100% of their paying customers to the new version of their app.

That's a taaaalllll order.

2025 Samar is no longer afraid of rocking the boat, or picking email fights or getting blocked by industry folks because they disagreed with me or simply didn't like what I was saying.

Today, I'm going to say something that you'll either vehemently agree with or passionately disagree with.

Ready?

Email best practices have no business being called "best"

We tend to cling to them like lifelines.

• Don't send more than two emails a week
• Keep your subject lines short
• Always personalize
• Test everything

Ummm, why?

Just because some industry report said that these are best practices and get brands the best results?

What we fail to realize is that these reports are sharing the "average" of the data they collected.

What they're calling "best" is actually "mid" — because if you follow all these supposed best practices, you're going to do what every other brand is doing.

You're going to drown in the sea of sameness.

• Your subject lines will look the same (and be the same length)
• You'll send emails at around the same time
• You'll personalize your emails the same way
• And you'll run the same, typical, email tests

The antithesis of following email best practices

I've said it before, and I will say it again — pay attention to your subscribers, users, and customers.

Study your audience.

If your audience is busy moms, they won't be opening emails during the day. They're opening them after 7 pm when dinner's over and the kids are in bed.

But don't take my word for it.

Send emails at different times. Do it for 3 months. Study the data. Find the answer.

Your customers and subscribers will tell you everything you need to know about them. You just have to pay attention.

Got an email best practice that backfired?

Hit reply and tell me all about it.

I love a good email gossip session :D

Cheers,

— Samar

P.S. I'm trying something new. For the past year, I've been using AI to help me write a crap ton of my content. It's been going great. I've produced more content, and my productivity has been through the roof.

​But then I noticed something weird.​

Suffice it to say, this email is 100% written by me. No AI helped or reviewed this email.

It also means, all typos are mine 😆