Email Marketing Channels

Demi Moore proved the best marketing channel of 2026 is a cardboard box. I hosted a workshop at my house this week with a group of multi-million-pound founders, and we got onto the marketing channel almost everyone has abandoned: the post. Think about it. Your customers delete fifty emails before breakfast and every marketer in your sector is fighting for the same crowded inbox, while the doormat sits quiet. And the numbers genuinely surprised the table: Email response rate: 0.12%. Direct mail: 4.4%. Your budget is in the wrong place. Post is outperforming email by roughly 36 times. A piece of mail also hangs around the home for nearly eight days and gets 141 seconds of attention. Your email gets a thumb-swipe. The junk mail of today is in your inbox. Here is the one nobody at the table saw coming: Harvard Business Review published research on a luxury online retailer that added a printed catalogue to its email campaigns. Sales rose 15%. Catalogues were opened 90% of the time, against 26% for email. Take Checkatrade, which we bought at HomeServe. Today in 2026, an A4 folded leaflet goes out six times a year and generates millions of online clicks. It is the biggest user of Royal Mail in the country. Trade businesses pay around tens of millions a year to advertise in it, and it only costs 6 to 7p a household to deliver. And the audience most enthusiastic about post? Millennials. That is paper driving digital, not competing with it. The latest JICMAIL data backs it up 56% of purchases prompted by mail are now completed online, the highest ever recorded. Now go one step beyond paper: packages. One B2B founder at the table once sent pumpkins to business prospects to make sure he was remembered. At HomeServe, we sent spanners to potential partners, with the message ‘If your customers were able to buy plumbing cover under your brand they wouldn’t need one of these’. Nobody forwards a pumpkin or spanner to their junk folder. And the biggest brands have recognised this. In April, Lancôme "accidentally" sent around a thousand PR packages addressed to Demi Moore and Zoe Saldaña to influencers and editors. Recipients filmed themselves unboxing parcels meant for A-listers, the internet did the rest, and the mix-up turned out to be an orchestrated stunt to launch a new skincare range. Moore then commented on the videos saying “finders keepers”. A cardboard box generated the kind of attention most ad budgets can only dream about. Yes, packages are costly per unit. That is partly the point. You are not paying for impressions nobody sees. You are paying to be the only thing on someone's doorstep or desk that day. So do not rule out post just because it feels outdated. Attention moves, and right now it has moved out of the letterbox. That is your opportunity. We compare notes like these at my founder workshops. Small rooms, experienced founders, real numbers. If you would like a seat at the next one, the link to apply is: https://bit.ly/42DSFMv

Founders ask me all the time: “Which channel should we double down on?”   SEO? Google Ads? LinkedIn Ads? Social? Cold Email?   After working with 60+ B2B teams at SalesCaptain, here’s the reality: 👉 Most channels work. 👉 Not all channels work for your stage, deal size, and urgency.   So instead of opinions, let’s benchmark 👇 Cost • Targeting Precision • Scalability • ROI • Time to Results   📬 Cold Email / Outbound • Very low cost (tools + time) • Extremely precise targeting • Highly scalable • Very high ROI when done right • Fast results (1–2 weeks, if you have warmed up inboxes)   💰 Google Ads (Search) • High CPCs • Great for bottom-funnel intent • Moderate scalability • Fast if demand already exists   📈 SEO / Content • High upfront investment • Long-term scalability • Massive ROI over time • Slow to impact (3–6+ months)   🎯 LinkedIn Ads • Surgical B2B targeting • Expensive • Moderate scalability • Strong for awareness + nurture   🎥 Social Ads (Meta / TikTok) • Scalable • Interest-based targeting • Better for DTC than niche B2B   🤝 Referrals / Partnerships • Highest conversion rates • Hard to scale • Not predictable on their own   Cold Outreach wins when: ✅ You know your ICP ✅ Your offer is clear ✅ You want speed and control ✅ You’re building a repeatable engine, not betting on algorithms   📊 Save this. Share it with your Marketing Lead.   Use it to decide where your next $$$ actually goes.   And if you want help designing an Outbound system that scales without burning cash, you know where to find me.   #coldemail #outbound #b2bsales #gtm #demandgeneration #saasgrowth #revenuegrowth

Nobody gets fired for putting Meta on the media plan… …but you might be made redundant if that’s the only lever you’re pulling. Just ask Siblings, the DTC candle brand. News shared yesterday that their CAC jumped from $25 to $60 between 2022 and 2025 — and that single increase pushed them into the red; if they didn't change their strategy, they would go bust, so they cut 56% of their Meta spend. (Modern Retail) They tried everything: - Testing creative - Optimising landing pages - Refining audiences But the costs kept climbing — while conversions flatlined. And this seems to be the norm for many brands at the moment. Why? - Meta’s ecosystem is changing fast: - Signal loss from iOS changes - Auction saturation from every brand competing in the same pond - And Meta’s heavy AI investment is diverting focus — leaving ad tools less stable, more unpredictable, and harder to optimise And let’s be honest — this isn’t a blip. It’s the new normal and only set to get worse. So what’s the move? Diversify your acquisition strategy. Siblings looked at community and partnership, launching a partnership with Nordstrom and offering candle-making classes. But while this was great, it lacked the scale of Social. So what are the other options? Well it’s time to stop treating email as “retention-only” channel. Email can be a top-of-funnel growth engine when powered by fresh, opted-in data. Email is often lumped into affiliates as an acquisition tool, but it's a channel in its own right that puts your brand front and centre in a consumer's most personal feed. What can it do as an acquisition tool: ✅ Mirror your most effective CRM emails to a completely new audience (no wasting spend on targeting your current customer) ✅ Build first-party audiences for actual ownership ✅ Upload those audiences back into Meta and Google for omnichannel retargeting with higher match rates and stronger ROAS This isn’t about abandoning Meta — it’s about using it smarter. Siblings learned the hard way. Don’t wait until your CAC makes the business model collapse. Explore new channels today. https://lnkd.in/eEM9qXW5

Most marketers are sleeping on the highest-ROI channel available to them. Email returns $36–$42 for every $1 spent. That beats paid search ($2), social ads ($2.80), and display ($1.35) by miles. Yet most brands treat it like a backup plan. Here's what separates the top performers: Automated emails are just 2% of total sends but drive 37% of all email revenue. Welcome sequences. Cart abandonment flows. Post-purchase journeys. Build those first before sending another broadcast campaign. Email isn't underperforming. It's just underbuilt.

April 23, 2026 Thursday Thoughts on AI: Artificial Intelligence and Direct Mail Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a digital tool. Direct Mail is a physical tool. Savvy marketers are combining these tools to create impactful campaigns. While there are many posts about using generative AI tools to create images and content, that’s not where the true power lies. Marketing firms and leading print-mail service providers are using AI for: 1. Targeting and audience segmentation 2. Deep personalization 3. Programmatic direct mail 4. Omnichannel coordination 5. Campaign performance tracking Marketers have access to an abundance of information about their prospects. Buying habits, income levels, housing, ages, and the list goes on. In some ways, it can be too much information. Now AI tools can pinpoint preferences, including when to mail. That same information can be used to create a hyper-personalized mail piece. The mailing not only has my name, but facts and images that relate directly to me and my interests. Add the power of inkjet printing, and direct mail is produced with mass customization. When a prospect visits a website, but doesn’t buy, companies can trigger a direct mail piece. Or, if a user doesn’t renew a subscription to a software or service, a postcard can be mailed. These programmatic direct mail campaigns can then be combined with digital campaigns. AI can be used to track delivery through USPS Informed Visibility data, and launch messages in a coordinated manner. As noted in an earlier post, we are creating more data than ever before. This is especially true with marketing campaigns. With omnichannel campaigns, there are multiple factors that impact a conversion from prospect to customer. AI provides the power to analyze that data, and make better future decisions. The US Postal Service has a saying that when creating a successful marketing campaign, it’s not digital OR physical, it’s digital PLUS physical. Now a successful campaign is digital PLUS physical PLUS AI. Amazing Astronomical Fact: This week is the peak for the Lyrid meteor shower. The meteors are remnants from the comet designated C/1861(it last reached its perihelion in 1861). It’s a long-period comet that orbits the sun once every 415 years. Amateur astronomer A. E. Thatcher discovered this comet from New York City on April 5, 1861. It is now officially designated C/1861 G1 (Thatcher), honoring his name. #artificialintelligence #ai #marketing #directmail #theberkshirecompany

Was on a brand audit call last week. Founder asked what he should add to push past a 12% cart recovery rate. Every answer that came to mind had the same shape. Another email sequence, better segmentation, add more SMS to your flow… And of course, those still work. They're the foundation of every retention program I build. I'm not telling anyone to send fewer emails. But every one of those channels lives on a screen. And the channel his customers actually pick up in real life… the phone, kept getting skipped because it used to mean a $100K/year call center. A tool I discovered recently simplifies all that. Outcraft AI calls the shoppers who literally tried to give you money within minutes of dropping off, in their language, with full context. Same scale as your email flow. Works at $30 AOV now. Email works best in combination with all your other channels. This one included. Hear it for yourself and activate this channel before your competitors do: https://lnkd.in/gWvJBe3c

We've tested 3 cold outbound channels in the last 4 weeks and the highest converting channel took us all by surprise InMail Yup, the channel that everyone deems the ugly duckling But for the 330 target accounts I tested in the MM 201-500 employee range all within the same segmentation, targeting the same VP+ persona That channel out performed cold email and DM's by 3:1 Now, we didn't send 10,000 emails or blast DM's What we did: Tiered accounts by connection's we had within each account 🦕 - The more connections at a high strength, the high tier the account Created a 5x3x1 DM / InMail motion - 5 companies x 3 buyers x 1 message each (shout out Darren McKee) Was tactical a deliberate based on research and shared experiences - Why we where reaching out, how its relevant, and where we hypothesis a solve/fit based on market trends and current customer successes InMail came in with a 22% response rate - 12% of it being positive - 8% of it converting to pipeline Don't write off a channel just because people say its decimated They eb and flow based on people's over zealous attempts

I had a client ask me yesterday: "Why should I care about email marketing when social media gets more visibility?" My answer: "Because email is the only channel you actually own." Think about it: Instagram algorithm changes? Your reach drops overnight. TikTok gets banned? Your audience vanishes. Facebook ad costs spike? Your CAC doubles. But your email list? You control who sees it You own the relationship You decide the content You set the schedule You build equity The average ROI on email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent. Yet most brands treat it as an afterthought. They pour thousands into platforms they don't control, while neglecting the channel they do.