Yesterday, I kicked off 2026 by doing one of my all-time favorite things.

I reviewed *cough*roast*cough* emails live — in front of 200+ people, along with my friend, Lianna Patch.

Customer.io does a virtual email conference called Unpacked, and they have a session called “Inbox on the Rocks”.

The premise is simple:

Show up with your beverage of choice and review a bunch of emails live.

What I love about "Inbox on the Rocks" is that they don’t want us to filter our feedback, and they walk the talk by including their own emails for review.

Events like these remind me why I say “I haven’t met an email I couldn’t optimize.”

Because yesterday’s crop of emails were good.

We judged them on data, lifecycle journey, and accessibility — they were all solid emails, and they checked most of the email QA boxes.

But despite that, there were a couple of recurring issues in those emails (all by different companies) that reminded me that the reason I haven’t met an email I couldn’t optimize is because…

There’s no such thing as a perfect email.

Despite how good those emails were, they still had:

→ Too many CTAs

If you’re asking your subscriber to take a specific action, you cannot, should not, MUST NOT include other types of CTAs.

If you want people to sign up for your virtual event, you shouldn’t be linking to your social networks.

And if you want people to spread the word about your event, send out a separate email encouraging them to do so. Give them snippet copy, graphics and images so they can easily share on different social networks.

Make it easy for them to take action.

→ Email copy that didn't match the customer journey

Most emails either talk like everyone is their customer or no one is.

If the email assumes everyone is their customer, then you lose non-buyers (which are the vast majority of your subscribers, btw.)

And if you write an email to non-buyers, then you alienate the segment you should be treating like VIPs — your paying customers.

The solution is simple.

Use conditional content if you want to send the same email to everyone.

Or you can create two versions of the email. One for buyers and the other for non-buyers, and send those out to the segments.

A good email strategist and copywriter knows how to do both without creating a ton of additional work.

It’s one of my favorite ways to look like a genius to my clients when, in reality, all I’m doing is adapting the same email for another audience 🤫

To be fair, this is as much a copywriting skill as it is a strategy skill. It just helps that I’m both, which makes it easier to execute for my clients.

→ Too much focus on themselves and not enough on the customer

Those “Look at us, we’re so awesome!” emails have loooooong been a pet peeve of mine. And it grates on my nerves that this is still happening.

Your customers do 👏🏽 not 👏🏽 care 👏🏽 about 👏🏽 you 👏🏽

They only care about themselves.

So promising them a surprise feature, announcement, etc., without telling them why they should care or how it’ll make their life easy is a waste of email real estate.

"Inbox on the Rocks" reminded me that email perfection isn’t the goal.

The goal is to create emails that move your customers and subscribers forward in their journey.

The goal is to send the right email to the right person at the right time with the right message.

And that, my email friend, is why email strategy matters more than great copy or good design.

If you ever want me to take a red pen to your email and show you where it can be optimized, you know where to find me.

Until next time

— Samar

Life Outside the Inbox My daughter coined a new term the other day — FOBI — Fear of Being Included (I’ve never felt more seen 😂) ​ Ramadan started this week. It’s the month I say “Not even water” about 47 times a week. ​ If you read the first sentence of the email and wondered why I started my work year in February instead of January… that story doesn’t belong in a marketing newsletter. ​ It belongs in my new column called “Footnotes from the Margins”. ​ I’m starting a personal column on faith, freelancing, and the unspoken experiences that shape my life and work as a brown, Muslim, hijab-wearing entrepreneur from Pakistan. ​ Just a heads up — this isn’t going to be for everyone. ​ I’ll be sharing stories, thoughts, and insights that might make you deeply uncomfortable. But as the world becomes a darker and darker place, stories are what will carry our legacies forward and shape our future generations. ​ This Friday, I’ll be sharing my hijab story. (Every hijabi girl has one =)) ​ It involves my mom, a trip to Iran, teenage angst, and being escorted out of an examination hall — all the hallmarks of a riveting tale 😆 ​ If that sounds like something you want to read — click here to sign up.​