Email fatigue is real.
If your email nurture open rate is dropping, you’re not alone.
Get tips to rebound it, in this episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for go to Market Leaders.
I’m Val Riley, VP of marketing for Unbounce and Insightly.
Today I’m joined by Jack Kosakowski.
He is CEO of the U.S.
Division of the Creation Agency.
Jack, welcome to the show.
Excited to be here.
Thanks for having me.
All right, well, let’s jump right in.
Diminishing returns on email marketing nurtures.
I feel like this is the theme for 2025.
You’re seeing it with your clients.
I can tell you that. I see it with the brands that I manage.
What do you think’s going on?
Just think, like, we’re just,
flooded with emails, like AI SDRs aren’t making our life any easier, right?
I think that’s the big piece is like the AI, SDR,
you know, automated kind of things.
Now, it’s
like if you go to a website like now, you’re automatically getting an email.
So like,
not only were we getting bombarded by like cold emails from actual real SDRs,
but now, like AI is taking over and sending us emails like in abundance.
So I think what sucks for,
you know, marketing now is like that means what
we’re going to get diminishing returns.
As like, you know, the quantity is kind of bulked up.
I mean, there’s a there’s a ton of things going against us, right?
You know, tracking now the way that like, you know,
Google reads your emails, putting you in promotion tabs.
I mean, there’s a million things we could talk about, but,
yeah, diminishing returns.
There’s no way to beat it right now. Unfortunately.
So let’s talk about some practical ideas you have to be more strategic
with your marketing nurtures.
I’d like to dive in a little bit.
First you’re saying that they should be shorter
than what we may have been doing in practice.
Yeah.
I think, I just say like traditional workflows or automation,
you know, a lot of times there’s like five plus emails in a lot of cases, but
just the way things are moving,
you know, fast is like
nurture is have to kind of change, right?
They have to be a little bit more like tactical.
You know, you you need to have the right customer stories.
You just got to be so much more relevant than you’ve ever had to be before.
You’ve got to be more interesting.
You got to be more entertaining.
And, you know, there’s just, the the basic, boring drips
that most B2B SaaS companies have traditionally followed is just is dying.
I mean, you’ll see that in the numbers across the board.
I have tons of clients.
I could, yeah, show you their data like it’s just not working.
And like the the questions are always sitting in there going, okay,
our data base is deteriorating.
How do we fix it?
And more nurtures is not the answer.
Okay, so we’re no longer throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks.
We got to get more strategic.
So that, you know, just checking in email.
Right. How do you recommend
ways that we can provide value at scale in our marketing nurtures?
Is it possible?
know, this is where like, your data and understanding, you know,
your segmentation as people come through, like what is their intent?
You know, you’ve got to, like,
companies have to get better
at really understanding who’s in their database and being able
to actually be relevant to like, what are these people looking for?
There’s so many times where I’ll go in and I’ll say, okay, well, you know,
if we work with the new companies, like, okay,
how do we segment off of a job title, like how do we segment
off of, you know, different
ICP metrics?
And a lot of companies just don’t have those.
So I think more now than ever is really understanding your segments
and then understanding what’s actually relevant right now for those people.
And, you know, we spend all this time on ebooks and all these different things,
but how many, you know, email marketers or demand gen people actually spend
really good amount of time understanding, like who’s in their database
and like what’s relevant for them this month.
And this is where I think, like my whole theory on
like automation and, you know, drips and all that is kind of changed.
It’s like
less about like, setting it and forgetting it.
And now it’s more about like, okay, well this week, like
what do we have coming out that’s actually relevant?
Like, what data could we talk about that would move somebody from,
you know, stage one to stage two of this week?
What new case studies are we working on that are relevant for fintech
that we can go and, you know,
use that customer video testimonial and send that to those people.
There’s a lot and I guarantee a lot larger organizations too.
Even the mid-market is like there’s a lot of content being created,
but it’s not properly being distributed through the email list.
Which would obviously up those numbers.
That’s the problem with the set and forget it kind of,
you know, model of the automation and the, you know, email tricks is, like you
set it, forget it. But like you come out with all this new relevant stuff.
And the problem is it never gets re-implemented back into the email list.
So that’s why I’m like not against workflows,
but that’s why I just said, hey, like make them short and really
focus on like, you know, week to week, month to month.
What’s what are we creating now and what’s going to have big impact
and actually get people to open these emails and move, you know, stages.
Okay. I’m totally guilty of set it and forget it.
You know, you you work through an email nurture,
and you’re like, okay, it’s great.
And you and you launch it, and you think, okay,
I don’t have to touch that for a while, but what would you say
is the right cadence for checking in on those nurtures?
Well, I would think you would have to do it, you know, at least monthly minimum.
A lot of times two, you know, which I hate this,
but it’s like, oh, we made in the G2, you know, whatever.
We made it, Gartner, like those things.
I can’t tell you how many times. I’ve worked with companies where I’ve gone
and looked at their workflows and been like,
hey, this is like, not even like, this is dated,
you know?
But a lot of times what happens, especially in the larger orgs, is like,
they set these up and they forget about them.
And, you know, a lot of times the segments are getting emails
with dated information like dated reports like
this is in 2024, we’re in 2025.
Like, why are you still sending this?
So I think that’s where it comes down to relevance.
And you know, really understanding your, your, your segments.
So like we worked we did some stuff with like zoom
infos, demand gen on a webinar and like, you know what he said was
the hard part is like keeping the constant flow.
They have a constant flow of new content coming out.
So that means that they’ve constantly gotta refresh 20, 30 nurtures.
Think about that.
That’s like,
you know, that’s like a disaster waiting to happen in my opinion, because like,
really the customer experience, let’s say you came in through an inbound demo,
you know, you’ve you’ve connected with an SDR,
now you’re on an automated drip and you’re getting sent, like case studies
about industries that are like you’re not even interested
in, like right now you have a bad experience.
So I think you’ve really got to think
about nurtures that experience and shut them off.
Like, if you don’t know that it’s a great experience and then it’s
going to move people from point. A to point B, shut those nurtures off now.
Maybe get more relevant on like one off stuff
and really focusing on those lists, just doing one off emails.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
Yeah.
You know, it’s.
Sometimes we think of email marketing as something that maybe you give
that to a junior person on your team, or, you know, it’s so important.
It’s, it’s really being invited into the inbox
is such a compliment these days, right?
It’s the only place where the user is really in control.
You know, you’re not in control of the ads you get served on social media,
for example, but the inbox is your domain and you say what comes in and comes out.
So when someone says, hey, you can come into that inbox,
you really have to respect that relationship.
Yeah. I mean, maybe that’s true.
But at the same point,
making sure that, like, you respect the right people in their right, like,
I think a lot of companies they are so worried about, like, oh,
how many new leads did we add to our database this month?
Like, well, who cares?
Like if 90% of them are people that could never buy, you know?
So I think that’s where it comes in, is like, you got to respect the 10%
that have shown intent signals and you got to be really, really smart with those.
Also those that have engaged with sales,. I think marketing and sales,
a lot of times with the email, they have a kind of a disconnect.
Marketing is sending something out that might even be like contradicting or,
you know,
it might be a different stage of the conversation that they’re having in sales.
So that’s that’s the hard part is like there’s so much complexity.
And to your point, there’s a lot of junior people running email marketing databases
at companies, especially large companies,
where they don’t even understand what sales they don’t even,
you know, understand what sales is talking to, who they’re talking to.
It’s just like, okay, we need to we have a quota.
We need to send out an email this week.
We need to make sure we’re sending out an email each week.
What do you like that’s not maybe necessarily even true, right.
Like if you don’t have the right things to send,
why do you have to send every every week maybe be more impactful.
So if there’s just a lot of complexity,. I think that’s the hardest part about this
conversation is like every organization is different
when it comes to their email marketing database.
But what I will say is that very few companies I’ve ever worked with
have I ever
said, wow, they’re really good at email marketing.
So that’s a competitive advantage.
I mean, there’s a reason that B2B companies, I mean, you guys
probably are playing into this role is you’ll go out and spend
thousands of dollars with influencers or third party media companies.
And the reason you do that is because they have such great databases,
and the media companies
treat their databases a lot different than the SaaS companies.
And that’s why SaaS companies go out and pay the media companies
thousands of dollars, because
they’ve done such a great job with their database.
So I think, you know, B2B SaaS can be sometimes you need to start looking more
at their database as a, as a media company versus like a sales database,
which is like the way that a lot of people treat their marketing
email marketing databases, which is sad.
Like, you shouldn’t treat it like that. It’s a great point.
So beyond content, I feel like the world
is working against marketers in general with technology.
So these mass unsubscribe services like trim box
or Unroll me like they’re getting very popular.
Yeah.
Which they should. Right.
I mean, unfortunately, we’re just getting cold email after cold email.
We can’t even keep up
with cleaning our own, like, personal inboxes, so it makes sense.
Companies with good content,
you know, across the board, whether that’s, you know,
TikTok videos or blogs or whatever that is that,
you know,
blogs are kind of a thing of the past, you know, now in this new age, but
whatever you’re doing from a content perspective, if you’re doing a good job
and you really understand how your audience works
and your email marketing gets a lot easier.
So as far as content goes, like,. I don’t think that there’s like a one size
fits all strategy for like an email marketing database.
You know, depending on what your, what you’re trying to get with your outcomes.
Right?
Like, if you’re just trying to increase your open rates and your, you know,
your deliverability, your engagement, that’s like a whole different strategy
than if you’re like, okay, we’re trying to increase our conversions.
So content, you know, determined is kind of determined by that.
For example,
a lot more companies that we’re seeing a lot of the success with
is on the tactical and education side, like,
how are you engaging your users or your customers or your prospects,
and you know, you’re showing them how to do their job better,
you know, making them better personally, professionally.
Like those are the email lists people want to stay on,
you know,
if they want to do a demo with you,. I’m sorry,
but it’s not going to be usually coming from an email that you sent to them.
It’s going to be them, you know, engaging with your webinar
and reading your e-book and going and looking at, you know,
a video on how you fix the problem that they have.
And then they go to your website, they, you know, fill out the demo form.
Like you can see that in all of your journeys, I’m sure you guys have.
Yeah, you see that.
But it’s like your email list really.
You got to be a resource to them.
How are you being a resource?
How are you showing them that you’re going to, you know, make them better
personally and professionally.
And if you can nail that side, you’ll keep people on there.
But most people just want to sell you like that’s they just look at it
as like another extension of their sales team, which is
essentially why everybody’s got diminishing returns in the first place.
So as far as content goes, like I, you know, I could go on for hours
about what you can’t, what you could use, but you know, reach out to me
if you have questions on that,. I can tell you where we’re seeing success.
So I have.
You gave this one practical tip that I thought was super interesting.
It’s about how you could use your sales email software
versus your marketing automation software to send messages, you know, basically
unsubscribing from one person versus unsubscribing from your whole company.
That’s a pretty good trick to have up your sleeve.
Yeah.. I mean, that’s where outreach comes in.
You know, a lot of people are using outreach sales loft.
You obviously can’t do as much marketing at scale, right?
Like you can’t hit a 30,000 person list.
But let’s just say you want to nurture a certain, segment of your customer base
and you’re like, hey, we don’t want them to opt out.
You know, maybe that your customer success person,
you know, doing their customer success, workflows is like,
hey, I just want to check in, make sure that you’ve done this.
Hey, notice you guys haven’t done this yet.
You know, instead of having that come from your marketing database
where if they opt out, you’re just kind of screwed, right?
So once they opt out, they’re gone.
You know, you really start to think about how to use the sales engagement platforms
for especially for individual emails.
And the other thing is like, we’re even doing it for webinar invites, right?
Like having the SDR send out the webinar invite
versus like the invite coming from the marketing database,
and getting more strategic on how we use the marketing database
so that we keep people engaged and not getting them to unsubscribe.
And it’s like, okay, well, if they opt out of the SDRs, you know, no,
no offense to the SDR but or the CSM.
But if like they opt out of there like we still have them on the marketing
database. So
yeah, I think you just got to
get more strategic on how do you use other domains
so that you don’t lose these people forever,
especially like your high value, you know, targets ICP.
So question about.
Sometimes this happens to me as a consumer.
How soon is too soon to add a prospect to an email nurture?
Because sometimes I feel like we jump the gun a little bit here.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, unfortunately I don’t have like the perfect answer to that.
But what I will say is it all depends on how you define a prospect.
And, you know, prospect can be defined in different ways.
But prospect being, hey, they came to your website and they took,
you know, action and fill out a form, whether that be to go to a webinar or,
you know, download an e-book, a checklist or something like that
where they’ve self, you know, they’ve self opted in.
Well, that means they go into,
you know, your marketing database, whatever you’re using there.
But I think the the real question is like you need to separate the two.
So your marketing, your automated marketing
automation platform and then like a tool like,
you know, Insightly where you’re like, you’re sending that out 1 to 1 emails
from your, you know, and and you could make persona like, we work with,
you know, one of the largest. SaaS companies in Arizona.
And like, one of the things they do
is they have ten marketing personas that they email from inside,
like an Insightly-type tool where they send that out.
And, you know, if somebody opts out of one, okay, no big deal.
Like they didn’t opt out of your, you know, your main,
marketing automation platform.
So I think that’s where you really got to get strategic and have different
platforms with different domains so that you don’t kill your
your main marketing database, because that is really, really important.
So if it’s cold, build personas, let your marketing team
have access to a tool like Insightly so that they do push that out.
But if it’s warm in
they’re in your marketing marketing automation database, you know,
that’s a whole different story.
You have a whole different like strategy for that. Jack, I love that.
That’s a really great practical tip our audience can take away today.
So thank you so much.
And thank you for joining us on Closing. Time.
Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Jack, if folks want to find you, where should they look?
Social, your website, learn more about your agency.
Yeah. Just, hit me up on LinkedIn.
Obviously.
I’m pretty active on there, so I love to have conversations about this stuff.
So anytime. Any questions? Awesome.
And thanks to you for joining us on Closing Time.
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