Good design is as little design as possible.

― Dieter Rams (German industrial designer)

Open your last campaign. Now open a more from your favourite brands and writers. Look at them side by side for ten seconds.

What are the differences?

Colour? Fonts? Fancy graphics? Maybe.

Or is it something harder to pin down? A sense of restraint, hierarchy, and care.

Good email design is often hard to explicitly describe. As the kids might say… it’s sometimes just a vibe.

But how do you give your email a vibe? And a good one at that?

Many marketers treat design as decoration: some polish you add at the end. But design is often what determines whether someone reads your email at all. It can be the difference between an email that gets binned and one that sells.

Now, there are many ugly emails that do well too, thanks to their exceptionally good content.

But even if your content is Godin-level, it won’t hurt to package it up in an email that enticed the recipient to actually read it.

If ugly emails do well, does design really matter?

Three reasons it matters more than people think:

Design is the first read. Before anyone parses a sentence, they often scan the shape of the email. Headers, spacing, image placement — these tell the reader “this is worth my time” or “this is junk.” That judgement can happens in less than a second.

Design carries your brand. Your visual choices say as much about who you are as your copy does. A cluttered email signals a cluttered company. A calm one can signal confidence.

Design drives clicks. Hierarchy is the difference between one obvious next step and a wall of links the reader gives up on.

Five things you can do next week

1. Establish a hierarchy

Most emails should have one thing that’s biggest. And if there is more, ensure you make the second thing the second-biggest, and so on. If everything is the same size and prominence, it’s hard for the reader to know where to land.

2. Use white space generously

Cramming more in doesn’t get usually more across — it gets skipped. Give each section room to breathe.

3. Limit yourself to two fonts (maximum!)

A heading font and a body font is plenty. Three or more starts to look like a ransom note.

4. Pick 2-3 colours, not seven

A primary, an accent, and a neutral. Anything beyond that and you’re competing with yourself, and rainbows.

5. Squint at it

Pull up a test email in your actual inbox. Lean back, and squint until the text blurs. The shapes and contrast that remain are what your reader sees first. If those shapes don’t help to guide the reader, the design isn’t doing its job.

A small challenge

Take your next email and remove one thing. A divider, a button, a section, a colour. See if it actually gets worse. Most of the time, it doesn’t.

Sometimes in life, the solution to a problem is to take something away, rather than to add.

Until next week,

James

P.S. Accessibility, CTAs, email weight, and design. Our most recent issues are all on the theme of creating better emails, something we’re rather obsessed with. We’re working on a completely new way to craft emails in EcoSend that enables you to master all of these areas effortlessly. If you’d like to try it out, let us know.

The EcoSend team are no strangers to The Paddock, a wetlands conservation site near Tottenham Hale.

We first visited back in 2023, when we’d just launched EcoSend(!). Then again in 2024, when the team planted exactly 106 trees (JT counted).

And so we were delighted to return this year. But this time, armed to the teeth with shears, pitchforks, and rakes.

Why?

Our brute force and violence was needed to save our still-budding tree babies from an invasive overgrowth of nettles and other pesky weeds.

Back to Izzy

We were re-united with Izzy, the wonderful site manager who has been our patient and welcoming guide ever since we first visited The Paddock.

We were also joined by a team of dedicated (and diligent!) local volunteers.

After a quick intro and Health & Safety speech, we were shown to the armoury and picked out our weapons for the day.

Moving a hedge

Before we were allowed to save our tree babies however, we had to move a dead hedge, to widen the verge and create a new boundary.

This involved a lot of heavy lifting and wheelbarrow moving, and after just an hour our 30-something (apart from Amira) bodies were already starting to complain!

Alongside our fellow volunteers, we made short work of the hedge. And soon enough, it was comfortably settled into its new position.

The battle begins

After finishing off the hedge and a few other odd-jobs, we broke for a quick lunch then regathered for the main task of the day. Defending our trees!

Izzy guided us to the plot where we had planted the tree babies back in 2024. But due to the massive weed overgrowth, it was clear to see they were struggling.

Weeds, nettles, all growing at turbo-speed and competing with our poor little ones for sunlight and nutrients.

After a quick talk by Izzy on best practice for felling the weeds, we eagerly got to work!

And so for the next few hours the battle raged…

We hacked, sheared, and uprooted all the weeds we could lay our hands on.

Leaving a battlefield strewn with dead weeds, and our baby trees finally standing proudly; able to breathe and access the sunlight and soil once again.

Weary but victorious warriors

And so the day drew to an end. Our little trees now rescued from the scourge of weeds, and standing proud. Ready once again to grow and prosper.

We had a lot of fun with Izzy and the team, and it was wonderful as always to have a brief break from the laptop screen and get out & about in our local community.

TCV, who run The Paddock, are a lovely organisation who do great work across many conservation sites in the UK.

You can get involved with volunteering at a site near you from the link here.

Stay tuned for our next volunteer day in Q3!

Chris

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (French writer, poet, journalist, and aviator)

Most email advice focuses on what to put in your emails.

Today, let’s talk about what to take out.

The average marketing email is often over 100KB. Add a hero image, a few product shots, embedded fonts and tracking pixels, and it’s easy to hit 500KB. Send that to 10,000 subscribers and you’ve just moved 5GB of data through the internet — for a single campaign.

That has multiple costs:

• Deliverability cost. Gmail clips anything over 102KB, cutting your footer, your unsubscribe link, and sometimes your main CTA. Heavy emails also load slowly on mobile — and slow-loading emails get deleted faster.
• Attention cost. An inbox is a fragile place. The reader who waits three seconds for your header image to load is the reader who closes the email before reading it.
• Energy cost. As we often, say — email isn’t free. Every byte × every recipient = real energy, real emissions. Trimming 200KB off a campaign to 50,000 subscribers saves 10GB of transfer. With millions of campaigns sent every day, it adds up.

The good news is that the fix for all three is the same.

Five things you can do this week

1. Audit your last send

Take a look at your last email and check the file size. Anything over 100KB is worth a second look. You can paste in the HTML to our CSS Inliner to see its file size.

2. Compress your images

Most images in emails are uploaded at 2–3× the resolution they actually need to display at. Ensure they’re the right size, and then run them through an optimiser like Squoosh, TinyPNG, or ImageOptim (if you’re on a Mac) before uploading. You’ll often drop 70% of the file size with no visible difference.

3. Question every image

Does that hero banner earn its place, or is it decoration? Some of the best indie operators and brands are dropping them altogether.

4. Drop embedded fonts

They bloat the email and fall back to system fonts on many clients anyway. Use a system font stack.

5. Try a plain-text send

Just one. A quick update, a Friday note, a personal question to your list. You’ll might be surprised how well it performs. Plain text feels personal, stands a higher chance of landing in the primary tab, and gets read.

A small challenge

Send one email next week without a header image. See what happens to your open, click, and reply rates. We’ve been doing this more at EcoSend — we’ve seen more clicks, more replies, and no one has complained that they’re missing an image!

Lighter emails aren’t worse emails. They’re often better — for your reader, your deliverability, and everything downstream.

Heck, they’re often faster to create too…

P.S. The last three weeks — accessibility, CTAs, and now email weight — all point to the same thing: you will make an impact by respecting your reader’s time and attention. That’s the whole job, and it’s what we’re obsessed about with EcoSend.

Your offer might be strong. Your template might be beautiful. But somewhere along the way, your call to action has become a pressure point.

You see it all the time: urgency timers, buttons screaming “CLAIM YOUR SPOT NOW!”, and three competing links jostling for attention in the same email.

The result of these efforts is that the reader feels pushed. And when people feel pushed, they tend to push back (or most likely: archive and delete your message).

A way to frame it is to think of a CTA less like a sell, and instead as a door.

Don’t try to shove someone through it. Instead, make it obvious it’s there and worth walking through.

Five ways to write CTAs that invite rather than pressurise

1. One door (CTA) per email

Multiple buttons create decision paralysis.

“Read the post,” “Book a demo,” and “Follow us on Instagram” are a jumble of options for the reader to decide between.

The issue with multiple options like this is that the effort of picking one is too much, so it’s easier to pick none. Not what we want!

Pick one thing you want the reader to do next and make that the only option. If everything is a priority, nothing is.

2. Lead with the outcome, not the action

“Click here” tells the reader what to do. “See how it works” tells them what they’ll get. Readers don’t want to click — they want what’s on the other side of the click.

Write your CTA from their perspective, not yours.

3. Match the temperature of the relationship

If someone signed up three days ago, asking them to book a call might be moving too fast. If they’ve been with you for a year, a quiet nudge could be all it takes. The ask should feel proportional to how well you know each other.

And this also begs the question: how well do you know your reader? One for another day…

4. Read it out loud

Would you say your CTA to someone face-to-face?

“ACT NOW — LIMITED AVAILABILITY” is what a market stall vendor shouts. While appropriate for some, it’s not what a thoughtful, respectful, ethical brand says.

If it sounds aggressive spoken aloud, it’ll feel aggressive in an inbox.

5. Reduce friction after the click

This is such an easy one, but I am shocked at how rarely it’s done.

Click your own button and count the steps between the CTA and the promised outcome. Go on, do it!

Every unnecessary hop loses people. Where you can, send readers somewhere that delivers on the promise immediately.

Good (and bad) CTAs are everywhere

Whether it’s in your emails, on your website, or even in your physical store, CTAs are everywhere.

An effective CTA often feels more like a friend saying: “you’d probably find this useful.” That’s a standard worth aiming for.

If you try any of these tips, let us know how it goes.

It’s often overlooked as a “nice to have” — in website design, application building, and in email.

It’s usually the first thing to go when a deadline looms, and it’s rarely considered a requirement when budgets are cut.

A big misconception is that accessibility is just for a few people’s benefit. When done right, it benefits everyone.

To us, accessibility means everyone can read, understand, and act on what you send.

You might work with councils, in the public sector, in a government department, or in the charity sector. In these roles especially, sending accessible emails is not just good practice — it’s essential.

What is accessibility (in email)?

At its simplest:

Can everyone — including people with disabilities — use the emails you send?

That includes people who:

• Use screen readers
• Have visual impairments
• Have cognitive or learning differences
• Rely on keyboard navigation

Accessible emails are:

• Easy to read
• Easy to navigate
• Clear in meaning

That’s it — we’re not talking about doing anything super special or clever. We’re just talking about making your emails usable.

Accessibility is more important than ever

Accessibility expectations have been rising for years, but 2026 marks a shift.

The European Accessibility Act is now coming into force across the EU.

While it doesn’t explicitly call out “email newsletters”, it does cover digital services and communications.

The implication is clear:

If your emails are part of delivering a service, they need to be accessible.

For those in other parts of the world, this builds on existing obligations around WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).

In short, accessibility is moving from being a recommended best practice to being an expected standard.

What does this mean for your emails?

We think about this less as a compliance checklist and more about removing friction for your readers.

If someone:

• Can’t read your text
• Can’t understand your structure
• Can’t click your buttons

Then the email has failed — regardless of how snazzy it looks.

5 simple things you can improve today

Chances are you’re doing some of these already, but it’s surprising how often these core principles are overlooked or unknown.

1. Use real text (not images of text)

Screen readers often struggle to interpret images properly. It may seem tempting to put a title in a custom typeface or to embed text into an enticing visual, but doing so in email means putting your text in an image.

Put visuals in as images and put copy in as real text. Avoid combining the two in images if you want to make your emails accessible.

2. Add alt text to images

Describe what the image is for, not just what it is.

• Bad: No alt text
• Better: “An image of the park”
• Best: “A photo of the local park reopening on Saturday”

Without alt text, screen readers will either skip the image entirely or try to interpret the image as best they can — potentially misleading the reader.

3. Check your colour contrast

Light grey text on white might look nice, but it’s unreadable for many.

Aim for strong contrast. When in doubt: make the text darker and the background lighter.

This is a good example where accessibility benefits everyone — not everyone’s devices and screens are the same. What may look good on your brand-new MacBook’s retina display may not show up as you expect on a second-hand, dim, low resolution monitor in the local library.

4. Use clear, descriptive links

Avoid:

• “Click here”
• “Read more”

Instead:

• “Donate to the initiative today”
• “View bin collection dates”

Links should make sense out of context.

And yet again, this is a change that benefits everyone — it makes the email easier to scan, saves every reader time, and even helps search engines understand your content if you also share your email on the web.

5. Keep structure simple

Use:

• Short paragraphs
• Clear headings
• Logical flow

This helps both humans and assistive technologies navigate your email.

When you structure your emails with clarity, it’s like giving the reader a good map to navigate. When planning a journey you don’t want to see every single road and turn before you start, you just need the key direction and main roads — the subject line and second level headings.

Then the reader can jump in to specifics based on what they need to see more of.

Accessibility is for everyone

Accessibility isn’t about improving your emails for a few — it helps everyone with clearer writing, better structure, and stronger outcomes.

For you and your team, accessibility means making your email communications work for all.

I hope you found this helpful, and if you are doing anything more to improve the accessibility of your emails, we’d love to hear about it!

The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.

— Carl Jung (Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist)

It’s never been easier to produce content that looks good.

A few prompts, a few clicks, and you have something that (on the surface) is publishable.

But most of it has the same problem.

It’s ultraprocessed.

Ultraprocessed content: a definition

Content that is engineered to be consumed quickly. Designed to tick the right boxes. Built from combing through millions of articles, boiling them down, crushing them into infinitesimally small tokenised bits, mashing them together, then squirting them out into new words and sentences for your mild, fleeting dopamine spike.

It might look good on the surface, but it doesn’t nourish anyone. It doesn’t stay with your readers and customers. It doesn’t mean much of anything to anyone.

And that’s why, despite producing more than ever, it’s getting harder to be remembered.

We’re not running out of content ideas. We’re not even struggling to execute on ideas so much any more. We’re drowning in what’s been produced — and most of it leaves absolutely no mark.

Provide nutrition in a world of ultraprocessed content

Average thoughts, average practices, and formulaic structures.

Scroll through any feed. Open your inbox. Most of what you see isn’t bad. In fact, it’s often technically excellent, but it rarely leaves a mark.

It has similar impact for me as eating an ultraprocessed nutrition bar. A quick hit that immediately wears off. Unsustaining. Forgettable.

No wonder it’s getting harder to be noticed and remembered.

As the volume of content has exploded, attention has done the opposite. It’s more fragmented, more fleeting, more selective than ever.

You can (ultra) produce all the content you want, but if you don’t share and articulate an opinion, the chances are it’s going to get lost.

We’re in a world where “good enough” is abundant. Where competent, acceptably-written, inoffensively-designed content is the baseline, not the differentiator.

And when everything looks OK, the bar to stand out gets a lot higher.

Understand the appetite of your audience

I believe there are essentially three paths available right now for producing good content:

• You have a genuinely interesting opinion on something.
• You have a unique, owned dataset that you can pull insights and news from.
• You can create work that is truly, noticeably, of a higher quality bar than what is possible with AI.
• It’s great if you can have all three, but let’s assume you have just one: an opinion.

Your opinion is one of the few things that will make your content stick.

Your job is to take your opinion and translate it into something people care about. To distill it down and make it clear — to you first, and then your audience.

This is the hard work now.

Some questions that might be worth asking:

• In your space, do you actually have an opinion?
• What do you believe that most people are overlooking?
• Does your team or organisation align with that opinion?
• Is that opinion really an opinion or is it just common sense?
• Do your customers and prospects know what your opinion is?

You have the kitchen, now work on the recipe

AI has accelerated the production of content into the stratosphere.

But it isn’t accelerating taste, judgment, or the ability to decide what’s worth saying in the first place. Those things still take time and come from people. That’s on you.

The natural temptation is to keep up, publish more, faster, across more channels. That may not be completely wrong, but it’s worthless unless you also take a moment to slow down enough to find something interesting to say.

Because in a world where the default is ultraprocessed content, your opinion might be the only nutrition your audience gets.

James

Co-founder, EcoSend

P.S. We are just reaching the end of B Corp Month — if you’re a B Corp, use BCORP26 to get 15% off any paid plan. Just make sure you sign up before the end of March!

And check out our social channels to see all the amazing B Corps we’ve featured so far — there are some absolute gems here.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (French writer, poet, and aviator)

It’s starting to feel like spring… at least here in London.

The days are a little longer. The sun has made an appearance. And it’s a good moment to reset a few things — including your email marketing.

If you’re like almost any marketer I speak to, your setup has probably become a bit… messy.

• Perhaps you have more templates than you need (with some really stuffy old ones still lingering around).
• Maybe you have some automations running that you forgot about… that are still sending… to… some people.
• Or it could be that you’ve just been trying to do too much in your newsletter template — too many sections, buttons, stories, images, and all else.

I have good news for you: you’re already making progress. Yes, right now. Because (in the words of our good friend Frances Fogel) you are now problem aware. Which means you’re on a path to being able to solve it.

My job today is to make you solution aware.

So here’s a handful of simple ways to spring clean your email marketing in 30 minutes.

1. Delete one thing

Start with subtraction.

An old template, an unused segment, an automation you’re not confident in.

You don’t need to optimise everything — just remove one thing that’s adding complexity.

Complexity has a habit of creeping up on you until it paralyses you. Prevent it at all costs!

2. Simplify your next email

Before you send your next campaign, ask: “Can this say one thing instead of three?”

One idea. One message. One clear outcome.

Clarity tends to outperform complexity.

This isn’t always the case, but it tends to be increasingly true for automated messages. Even a long form newsletter can be improved with restraint and reduction.

3. Check your CTA

Look at your last email.

Was it obvious what the reader should do next?

If there are multiple buttons or competing links, there might be a chance to simplify your next email.

One clear next step is usually enough. Five is probably too many.

4. Skim your last email like a reader

Open your most recent campaign. Go to your inbox, find it in the list, see it how the recipient sees it — the subject line, the preview text. Open it and scroll it quickly.

• Was the subject line tempting?
• Was the preview text compelling, or even set?
• Does it feel easy to read?
• Are the paragraphs too long? Too short?
• Does anything feel sloppy, robotic, or unnecessary?

I find so many improvements (in so many areas of business!) come from experiencing your offering in the shoes of the customer.

5. Give yourself permission to send sooner

A lot of emails get delayed in the name of perfection.

This might seem contrary to what I’ve said so far, but please hear me out!

Instead, aim for:

• Be clear rather than clever.
• An imperfect email sent today rather than a “perfect” email sent in the future.

It’s so easy to delay. But delays are contagious, and can be unpredictable. Don’t be too hard on yourself — consistency over perfection wins my vote.

That’s it (but don’t stop there…)

You don’t always need to do a big overhaul. Just a few small changes can make your email marketing feel simpler, easier to maintain, and potentially more impactful.

And consistency is where the real results come from — if you want one extra tip for free: pop a recurring event in your calendar to go through these steps once a month.

Go on, do it now — I’ll wait…

Done? Nice one.

Enjoy the sunshine ☀️

James

Co-founder, EcoSend

P.S. It’s B Corp Month — if you’re a B Corp, use BCORP26 to get 15% off any paid plan. Just make sure you sign up before the end of March.

And check out our social channels to see the amazing B Corps we’ve featured so far!

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

— James Clear (American writer, author of Atomic Habits)

One of the most common things I hear from marketers is this:

“I know email marketing works. I just don’t have time for writing.”

Writing good emails can feel like a time sink. You stare at a blank page. You overthink the opening line. You tweak sentences. Hours can go by and you’re still not happy with the result.

Over time, it’s easy to make the connection “email = time drain = don’t bother.”

I see this a lot, and it breaks my heart! Email is by far one of the most impactful channels for growing your business, and it’s one of the best ways to truly connect with your audience and customers. AND it’s incredibly cost effective compared to almost any other marketing channel out there.

I have good news for you: sending great emails regularly is possible.

But only with a solid process — one that works for you.

Here’s a simple workflow that helps me write emails much faster, without lowering quality.

I hope you find it helpful, and if you have any tips of your own you’d like to share then please let know so I can feature them in a future issue!

1. Capture ideas before you sit down to write

The hardest part of writing is starting with nothing.

Instead, keep a simple list of email ideas as they occur to you: questions customers ask, mistakes you’ve seen, small insights, stories from the week.

When it’s time to write, you’re choosing from a list — not staring at a blank screen.

I don’t have a fancy 10-step system, I have a note file in Notes on my iPhone.

2. Start with the core idea, not the introduction

Many people try to write emails from the top down.

Instead, write the point of the email first.

What’s the one thing you want the reader to learn, understand, or do? What is the purpose?

Once you’ve written that, the rest of the email often becomes much easier to structure around it.

3. Write the first draft quickly

There’s an old saying: “write drunk, edit sober”…

I’m not proposing you crack out a bottle of wine before every newsletter, but give yourself permission to write a rough (and potentially rubbish) first version.

Don’t worry about polish. Don’t worry about perfect wording. Just get the ideas out of your head and onto a page — physical or digital.

The goal of the first draft is simply to exist.

You can’t improve something that hasn’t been written yet!

4. Edit for clarity, not cleverness

Once the draft exists, the job becomes much simpler: make it easier and more enticing to read.

Shorten sentences. Remove unnecessary words. Break long paragraphs. Make the structure clearer.

Good emails, especially in the marketing world, rarely come from long prose, and definitely don’t tend to pop out of one’s brain on a first draft.

They come from editing well, and breaking things down into bitesized chunks.

5. Write the subject line last

Many people start with the subject line and get stuck immediately.

The subject line is critical — as we’ve discussed previously, it’s even more important than the content of the email itself.

But the subject line’s job is to represent the email honestly — to entice the reader into opening to learn more.

Once the email exists, writing the subject line often becomes a lot easier. I tend to write 4-5 subject lines down as I’m editing my draft.

You can also use the EcoSend Subject Line Generator (for free, no sign up needed) to help you craft a great subject line in a pinch!

Simple steps, no heroics

A good email doesn’t always need hours of effort or a groundbreaking, profound idea.

It needs a clear idea, a simple structure, and a short editing pass.

Done well, an marketing email can be written in an hour.

And as I have found, when writing feels lighter and less time consuming, you’re much more likely to hit send on a consistent schedule.

P.S. It’s B Corp Month — be sure to check out our social channels to see the amazing B Corps we’ve featured so far!

The details are not the details. They make the design.

— Charles Eames (American designer, architect and filmmaker)

As we explored last week: ethical marketing doesn’t mean ineffective marketing.

A great email gets opened, read, and acted on. The difference is how you achieve that.

No messing about this week — we’ve covered a lot on values and philosophy, so I felt it was time for a practical issue.

Here are five principles we’ve seen consistently work, with examples for each.

Reply to let me know what you think!

1. Write for one person, not a list

The fastest way to make an email feel generic is to imagine thousands of readers. Instead, picture one real person — someone you know. Someone like your ideal customer.

Write the email to them.

Your tone becomes clearer, warmer, and far more human.

2. Make the first line earn the second

Getting an open is only half the job.

The first sentence decides whether someone keeps reading or closes the email. Avoid long intros and corporate language.

Start with something concrete, surprising, or relatable.

And then watch as people read on, driven by curiosity.

3. Say one thing well

Many marketing emails try to do too much.

One announcement. Three updates. A product launch. A webinar. A blog post.

The result is usually that nothing lands. Or if the email is received positively, it’s hard to know why. We tend to find the best emails focus on a single idea and make it easy to act on.

One idea. One outcome. One CTA.

4. Respect your reader’s time

People don’t resent marketing emails. They resent wasted time.

Edit ruthlessly.

Shorter sentences. Fewer paragraphs. Make the most of headings to signpost the reader. Remove anything that doesn’t help the reader understand or act.

Good emails are scannable and feel light to read.

5. Make the next step obvious

If someone achieves the mighty task of reading your email, they shouldn’t have to think about what to do next.

One clear call to action is usually enough. Whether it’s reading more, trying a product, or replying — make the next step simple and visible.

The reader should never have to think about the next step.

Bonus tip: Write the email like you’d send it to a colleague

OK the bonus tip is to underpromise and overdeliver, so here’s another one for you… 😉

One of the easiest ways to improve your emails is this:

Write the first draft as if you’re sending it to a colleague.

Not to “your list”.

Not to “your customers”.

Just to someone you know.

You can tidy the language afterwards if you want.

But starting in human mode almost always produces better emails than starting in marketing mode.

None of these techniques rely on manipulation — they rely on clarity, empathy, and respect for the reader.

I wouldn’t be following my own advice if I didn’t give you a clear call-to-action: hit reply and let me know if you’ve got a principle you stick to that we haven’t covered here. I’m always fascinated to hear about the weird and wonderful ways people create great work.

Enjoy B Corp Month!

It’s a rather uncomfortable question to be asking, as someone who places ethics and values at the heart of everything they do.

In marketing, performance and principles frequently feel like they’re pulling in opposite directions, fighting against each other.

Any experienced marketer will tell you:

• Urgency drives clicks.
• Scarcity drives action.
• Emotional triggers drive conversions.

We all know the levers, and we all know they can work.

But just because something works, it doesn’t make it right.

And if something seems well principled, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee the desired outcome.

The lines are blurry

Given you’re reading this, I’m going to make an informed guess: you want to send great emails, you want to grow your audience, and you want to do those things without compromising on your values and ethics. If that’s not you, you have subscribed to the wrong newsletter. Please unsubscribe below.

For me, an ethical campaign starts before any copy is written.

It starts with the purpose and the intent*.

• Why are we running this?
• Who is it genuinely for? (all too often that is not answered with ”the reader”)
• Would we be comfortable explaining our mechanics and thinking publicly?

Ethical marketing isn’t about being perfect. It’s about alignment between what you say and what you do. It’s about balancing short-term results and long-term trust.

Trust compounds over time, while manipulation can erase it in an instant.

We all want the instant hit: you get a spike from urgency, or you can squeeze a few extra clicks from some artificial pressure.

But audiences are sharper than ever — they can sense when something feels engineered purely for extraction. You can sense when you’re reading something with dishonest intentions.

Last time I checked, extraction does not build loyalty.

The search for long-term trust and tangible impact

The brands that stand out aren’t just high-performing, they’re consistent and coherent.

Their campaigns make sense in the context of the company. The messaging matches the behaviour. The incentives don’t contradict the story being told.

That coherence isn’t just ethical, it’s profitable — just on a slightly longer timeline.

Learning from the best

March is B Corp Month, and we’re going to explore this properly.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be speaking to marketers inside certified B Corps — businesses legally committed to balancing profit and purpose — and asking them what makes a campaign genuinely great. What are the best performing campaigns that truly live up to B Corp values?

In the meantime, here’s something to sit with before your next campaign:

If it performs “brilliantly” but erodes trust, is it really a success?

And if it builds trust but doesn’t deliver results today, is it a failure?

More on this in March. Stay tuned to our newsletter, and our social channels.

* In EcoSend we have a field on every campaign: “Purpose”. We hate asking people to fill in extra information, but we kept this field in — it’s there to push you to think about the goal of each campaign. It’s amazing how hard that is to figure out sometimes, but the best performing campaigns always seem to have it filled in. If you haven’t tried EcoSend yet, there’s never been a better time — you can now sign up for free, and there’s no need to enter your billing details.

AI means the barrier to producing “good enough” marketing has never been lower.

Many marketers worry that this means their jobs are in danger.

I don’t think that’s true. Not any time soon, at least.

But only if you react.

Yes, AI is doing more work for us. More ads. More words. More visuals. More ideas. More code.

But when everyone has access to tools that generate competent, polished content, the internet fills up with competent, polished content. You’ve already seen it a thousand times: cookie cutter phrasing, familiar structures, and emails that feel like they could have been written by any LinkedIn influencer.

”Good enough” has already become abundant. So where does that leave us marketers?

If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, the danger is it won’t be enough.

You can have a team of patient robots. How do you lead them?

I believe we’re entering a new age where the original skills of marketing matter more than ever. There’s no hiding behind tools or budgets any more.

It’s no longer about your ability to navigate Google Ads Manager, query a CSV file, or add captions to an Instagram Reel.

The T-shaped marketer

But then, I’d argue, marketing was never really about those things anyway. Those were things many of us had to do to be able to call ourselves marketers in the digital age. I’m not saying it hurts to have those skills — I believe the “T shaped” marketer is still a great way to think about most roles. But so many of the skills (the breadth) can now be assisted by AI tooling, that many of us can go broader and deeper than ever before.

It’s becoming harder to do good marketing without… being a genuinely good marketer.

Good marketing is — and always has been — about the fundamentals:

• Can you tell a compelling story?
• Do you have a clear proposition?
• Can you create emotion?
• Can you motivate someone to care?
• And eventually, to buy?

If you have those skills, you’re now empowered to do more than ever before.

If you don’t, you now have unprecedented access to education that will help you develop those skills.

AI can give you structure. It can help you edit faster. It can suggest angles. It can even help you execute. What it can’t easily replicate is lived experience, conviction, taste, or the slightly uncomfortable honesty that makes someone feel understood.

Those still come from us — the human. The ones with a soul.

The tools are changing fast. But trust, care, emotion, and genuine relationships are becoming more valuable than ever.

And that’s something to feel optimistic about.

Footnotes

I appreciate that AI is a hugely controversial topic. I haven’t even touched on the ethical, societal, and environmental aspects this week because I felt I couldn’t do them justice without adding thousands more words to today’s email. If you’d like me to explore more on this topic, please reply and let me know. If you’d like me to never mention AI ever again, also: please reply. I’d love to hear your feedback to calibrate where we take future issues of EcoSend Weekly.

I have long been of the opinion that this writing setup would suit me far better than any AI tooling, computers, or software. One day maybe.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson (an American lecturer, poet, and essayist)

This week feels like a good excuse to talk about relationships. Not the roses-and-chocolates kind (thank goodness), but the ones that form when someone whispers those magical words:

“Subscribe me to your newsletter.”

Chances are that neither of you are looking for a quick fling. You both hope there’s a relationship that lasts.

If marketing is about building relationships then we should be thinking about them in the same way: where is the trust? The respect? Where is the consistency, and care?

The most respected brands don’t behave like pickup artists. They don’t shout. They don’t try to “win” every interaction. They’re in it for the long-haul, not a one-night send.

Instead, they’re built on the same things that make any healthy relationship work.

How to lose a subscriber in 10 days

It’s a beautiful thing when a subscriber and a marketer meet for the first time. But it’s all too easy to ruin something that could blossom before you’ve even had a chance to get to know each other.

Respect

Respect is the obvious place to start.

Ethical email begins with a genuine opt-in — not a trick, not a checkbox buried in small print, not a vague promise. Just a clear invitation and a clear yes. Anything else might grow a list faster, but it’s a shaky foundation to build on.

Trust

Trust is built from many things, but from day one, it starts with your tone.

You can usually tell within a sentence whether an email was written with respect or desperation. Fear-based CTAs, manufactured urgency, and manipulative language might convert in the short term — but they quietly erode trust.

If you wouldn’t say it to someone you actually like, should it belong in anyone’s inbox?

Consistency

Consistency matters too, but not in the “never miss a day” sense.

In healthy relationships, consistency means showing up reliably when it counts. The same is true with email.

A thoughtful message sent slightly late is far better than a perfectly scheduled one sent with slop. People rarely expect perfection — they expect honesty.

Engagement

One of the easiest traps to fall into is confusing attention with affection.

High open rates, big spikes, viral moments — they can feel great, but they’re not the same as trust.

Trust is basically impossible to measure, but it shows up in replies, in people sticking around, in someone referencing an email you sent weeks ago because it actually meant something to them.

Care

Healthy relationships also leave space.

You don’t need to be in someone’s inbox constantly to stay relevant. In fact, restraint is often a sign of confidence. Sending fewer, better emails shows respect for your reader’s time. That respect is often felt, whether you know it or not.

When email marketing goes wrong, it often looks like insecurity: over-sending, over-optimising, chasing validation through metrics that don’t tell the full story.

When it goes right, it feels calm. Intentional. Sustainable, even.

At its best, email marketing, like all good relationships, isn’t a short-term game. It’s a relationship you build over time. You earn over time. Built on clarity, care, trust, and a long-term mindset.

Pop the question

So this Valentine’s Day, it might be worth asking:

Would you want to be on your list?

Happy Valentine’s Day 💚

If you enjoyed this, please spread the love.

It’s always a delightful, albeit somewhat exhausting, experience to return for a volunteer shift with the Bow team.

We’ve got to know Andy and his team pretty well over the years, who are always incredibly welcoming. Not to mention forgiving for our collective clumsiness and all too regular mistakes! 😊

And so for our Q1 volunteer day, we were delighted to put in a full-shift last Wednesday at the Bow food-bank.

The Morning Shift

We arrived promptly for our morning shift, which involved unpacking excess ‘HelloFresh‘ deliveries, which had been kindly donated via Bow’s partner, The Felix Project.

It was kind of HelloFresh to offer the excess food, which included some lovely rice and egg noodles, as well as fresh onions. Such offerings from companies are invaluable for the food-bank’s residents in-need.

Without donations like these, Bow food-bank would be required to purchase supplies from their own budget in order to meet residents’ needs for the day.

And some of the HelloFresh condiments will hopefully be re-packaged for residents too, later down the line.

It was all going very smoothly, until James managed to scatter the entire contents of a torn rice package all over the floor… 🥴

Stomachs Rumble!

Having wrapped up the morning preparations for guests, as well as unloaded a van-load of donations from the local Whitechapel Sainsbury’s, we headed off, somewhat ravenous for lunch.

We made full use of the generous 1 hour lunch break, starting off with falafel at the unassuming but incredibly delicious, Nur Falafel 🥙

Andy’s choice recommendation, and nearly 500 five star reviews on Google lived up 100% to the hype!

Hearty and fresh falafel boxes or wraps, not much more expensive than a Starbucks Matcha..!

James and I still had room for dessert however, so we couldn’t help but make a quick pit-stop on the way back at the one and only G. Kelly pie shop 🥧

Despite the hearty falafel boxes just consumed, we managed to also polish-off sizeable Apple Crumble and ice-cream 😋

The Afternoon Shift

After that, we waddled back for our afternoon shift 🐷

Expecting a laid-back wind-down to the day, we were in for a big surprise!

Welcoming us back at the food-bank was a truck filled with 104 boxes of donations from the Bloomberg <> Felix Project collaboration.

Sorting this generous delivery involved; hauling each box from the van into the lift, hauling the boxes from the lift into the main hall, unpacking each box, sorting the contents into individual boxes, hauling the new boxes into storage, and finally… breaking down each box for recycling 😅

This was serious hard labour! Which at one point left James and I totally crumpled on the floor…

Who needs gym when you have lifting crates?! 💪

Wrapping-up, and Pub!

Mercifully, 6pm did eventually roll around, and we gladly finished off the final tasks of the shift.

To reward ourselves, a quick trip to the pub! Before rounding off the day and heading home in the typical London drizzle ☔

A big thank you as always to Andy and his team, as well as the other volunteers, for being so welcoming and patient with us 🫶

And a thank you as well to the generous donations from HelloFresh and Bloomberg 💚

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

— Linus Pauling (an American chemist and peace activist)

Throughout January I posted a short video every day.

The same video, shared across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. No fancy editing. No big strategy document. Just one idea, recorded once, and published everywhere.

I didn’t do this to chase virality. I did it because everywhere you look, someone is saying: you have to be doing short-form video. I wanted to understand why… What’s real, what’s noise, and how did any of it fit into a marketing system that actually works?

Post every day… how hard could it be?!

A month of lessons

A few things jumped out at me pretty quickly:

Distribution isn’t dictated by quality

But only up to a point. I never wanted to share anything that was utter drivel. My guiding light with every video was “do something positive for the viewer” — sometimes it was to entertain, sometimes to educate, sometimes to motivate.

Same content, different results

The same video can flop on one platform and go crazy on another, with no obvious reason. It’s exciting, but often makes you question “what did I do wrong?!” You quickly realise how little control you have, and how dangerous it is to tie your motivation to views.

Short-form attention is rented

Spikes happen. Then they disappear. Even when a video does “well”, very little carries over to the next day. You don’t really build momentum — you restart, over and over again.

Consistency beats confidence

The videos I felt best about weren’t always the ones that landed. Posting mattered more than second-guessing. That’s useful to learn — but also slightly exhausting!

Shooting video outside is fun

We’ve had a rule for a while at EcoSend: record our videos in nature.

Don’t sit at your desk all day — get out and be at one with nature whenever you can.

For me, this meant not only recording a video every day, but recording a video outside every day. In the UK in January. That is an unpredictable task. My baseball cap keeps a lot of rain off me and my microphone!

So you were mindlessly posting… or was there a system?

A huge part of this was about experimentation. A willingness to fall flat on my face (as long as someone catches it on video…)

What we wanted to find out:

• 📈 How hard is it to gain views?
• 🌍 How quickly will we expand our reach?
• 🤓 Will people choose to learn more about us after seeing a video?
• 🥵 Will this all be so time consuming we give up after two weeks?

A big realisation, though, wasn’t about video at all.

It was about where everything leads.

Short-form is brilliant for surface area. It helps people discover you. It gives you excuses to show up. It starts conversations. But without somewhere for that attention to land, it just evaporates.

By the end of January we started to realise: we need to drive a clearer call to action with our videos.

And for us, email is the perfect place:

🕵️‍♂️ Social is somewhere people find us.

🏡 Email is where they stay.

Videos introduce ideas. Our newsletter can develop them. Social sparks interest. Email builds memory and trust. One is fast and fleeting. The other compounds over time.

That’s why, even while posting everywhere else, email still forms the bedrock of our marketing.

It’s the one channel we fully own. It’s an obvious place where showing up consistently is actually rewarding.

Short-form video doesn’t replace that. It feeds it.

Crafting an ecosystem of growth

I’ve found it much healthier to think of short-form as the edges of the system — useful, optional, imperfect — and email as the centre of gravity. One clear place everything points back to. One rhythm that survives busy weeks, low energy, and changing algorithms.

If you’re experimenting with your marketing efforts and feeling behind, you’re probably not. You just need to decide what role each part plays — and where your real relationship with your audience lives.

If you’ve enjoyed any of our videos in the last month, our newsletter is where it all slows down, in a good way. This is where we go deeper, reflect more, and build something that lasts.

Did you try experimenting with anything new in January? I’d love to hear how it went!

James

Co-founder, EcoSend

P.S. The EcoSend Weekly newsletter is becoming one of my favourite projects to work on each week. My goal is to grow it to 1,000 subscribers so that we can invest even more time and energy into it. Is there anyone you think might benefit from receiving it? Please could you do me a HUGE favour? Send this on to them and encourage them to sign up. You’ll be my #1 favourite person.

The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing that you’ll make one.

— Elbert Hubbard (an American writer, artist, and philosopher)

For a long time, I assumed the problem was me.

I would read articles about email “best practices” and feel like I was constantly falling short.

We weren’t segmenting enough. We weren’t testing enough. We weren’t automating enough.

Our newsletter didn’t look like the examples everyone seemed to admire.

And yet, every time I looked more closely, the advice was quietly assuming a very different reality.

These articles assumed email was my full-time job. With time for planning, reviews, and iteration. They assumed volume — enough subscribers and sends to make a lot of additional work worthwhile.

But that just isn’t how most small, fast-growing teams operate. It’s not how we operate.

You’re not like them

If you’re like most small, nimble, fast growing teams, email sits alongside everything else that comes with building a company: product development, customer conversations, hiring, admin, team management, meetings, social posting, taking the bins out…

Some weeks you’re focused and energised. Other weeks you’re reacting, catching up, or just tired. Most “best practices” don’t seem to account for that.

They tell you to segment by industry, role, lifecycle stage, and. more. Which sounds sensible until you realise you’re now crafting multiple specific emails for segments that could be tiny. They encourage A/B testing subject lines even when you send twice a month and the results won’t be meaningful.

None of this is bad advice. It’s just advice that is often written for teams with more people, more time, more subscribers, and more margin for error.

Complexity is a curse

Getting more sophisticated with email can be exciting, but it can also come at a cost.

It can feel like progress, but it can also lead to so many downsides.

Changing your setup can start to feel heavy. You start to put off sending an email due to concerns that it doesn’t fit your original plan. And when your numbers don’t go through the roof, you second-guess everything.

You start to wonder…

😰 “Maybe I need to get some help?”

🤷 “Maybe I need to send more? Or less?”

🤔 “Maybe I need another automation to cover this other situation?”

Which only makes things harder.

Back to basics

What’s worked better for us is doing less, deliberately.

One audience instead of many.

One clear idea per email.

Writing as if we’re speaking to a single, real person — not a segment.

Many smaller and more successful teams I’ve spoken to have stopped obsessing over (often misleading) dashboards. They’ve started paying more attention to replies, conversations, and moments where someone references an email of theirs in conversation.

Those signals are harder to track, but they’re far more human. And they can be far more encouraging.

As I touched on last week, you might also want to design your email plans to expect imperfect weeks, not ideal ones.

If a system only works when everyone is motivated and well-rested, it won’t last. Sustainable systems assume you’re busy, human, and occasionally behind — and still let you show up.

Don’t be like everyone else

“Best practice” isn’t universal. It’s contextual.

The best email strategies are built to fit the people behind them, not to impress industry experts.

If this ever made you feel like you’re doing email wrong, you probably aren’t.

You’re just building something real, under real constraints.

It’s nothing personal. It’s just every campaign costs precious time, energy and ultimately money to create and send. Inactive or disengaged contacts simply won’t deliver a return on your investment. 

While nobody likes to say goodbye, having a squeaky-clean email list is in the best interest of every business. The result will mean each email campaign you send has a much higher chance of being opened and ultimately acted upon. 

Buckets/mouse buttons at the ready, here is everything you need to get started with email scrubbing to get a clean email list today.

What Is Email Scrubbing?

Have you ever seen those deeply satisfying cleaning videos on YouTube, where years of dirt and grime are removed before your very eyes?

Now it’s time to clean your email list too, in the form of email scrubbing. Namely, getting rid of disengaged contacts who never open your emails, even though it costs money to send those emails. 

Email scrubbing involves going through your list of email contacts to remove inactive contacts. Those who never open your emails, and basically never interact with your campaigns.

Generally, inactive subscribers are considered as contacts who haven’t opened at least a single email in the last six months. 

Wait, Can’t I Just Keep Everyone On My List?

Do you keep in touch with everyone you went to school with? Or, have your contacts naturally changed as you’ve moved through life?

Email marketing lists work much the same, in that unless your list of contacts is both relevant and consists of engaged prospects, it just won’t work for your business. Simply put, sending emails to people who never open them will reduce your ROI and ultimately cost more than it ever earns you. That’s because you’re targeting the wrong crowd.

After all, you can’t expect 100/100 contacts who signed up to your email newsletter 5 years ago to still read every single email you send.

Even if 20 still do, you’re still paying to send those emails to the other 80. These disengaged contacts are not only reducing your email ROI, they are clogging up your list, and preventing fresh engaged prospects from joining the party.

So in summary, email list scrubbing is about achieving a healthy, effective email marketing list by removing disengaged users so that only engaged users remain.

Discover These Benefits Of Regular Email Scrubbing

We’ve given you one analogy above, but here is another.

Think of your air vents when they haven’t been cleaned in a while. It’s impossible for them to work effectively, and soon enough, they’ll throw around more dirt than they even remove from the air. All the while, you’ll pay for the privilege in terms of running costs. 

Ironically, the thing you bought it for (air conditioning) can’t happen because the vents are clogged. This is what happens with email marketing when nobody bothers to clean out their lists. Emails are being sent, but nobody is opening them.

Before we move onto how to scrub your email list let’s look at the impact on your business of not doing so, along with the benefits you set to gain.

Improve Open Rates

The average email open rate across all industries is 21.33%. That technically means 8 out of 10 people won’t open your email even on a good day.

So it makes sense you want to do everything in your power to not only increase this figure but prevent even more users from slipping through the net.

By scrubbing your email list, you’ll leave only those who open and engage with your emails on your contact list. Your open rates will improve as a result, making for a much more effective marketing strategy and a higher ROI. 

Reduce Your Emails Being Marked As Spam

If you continually send emails which aren’t being opened (because you don’t scrub your lists), email servers will consider your communication as spam. When this happens, it can be difficult to reach active users, let alone grow your email list. 

Economical Reasons 

HubSpot found $2,600,000 is spent per day on sending emails which are never opened by the recipient. 

It’s not just the time and effort you spend on creating your email marketing, but the cost of email marketing software too. It’s no good being on a package that allows you to send emails to up to 100,000 contacts, but only 5,000 contacts are regularly opening your emails. 

Scrubbing can help fix that for you so that every penny of your email marketing budget is spent wisely. 

Clean Email Lists Are Better For The Environment 

Research by the BBC suggests every email sent emits between 4g and 50g of carbon. With 300 billion emails sent per day, that soon adds up. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons we developed our new email marketing tool EcoSend. 

Alongside our own work to reduce the carbon emissions associated with email marketing, it’s a simple fact that sending emails unnecessarily just won’t do. In fact, cleaning your email list is one of the easiest ways to become a more sustainable business today. 

Clean Your Email List With These 5 Easy Steps ✉️

Now you know the value of cleaning your email list, it’s time to get to work. Luckily, you don’t need as much elbow grease as you do for cleaning your actual home.

Instead, you can achieve a clean healthy list in just a few easy steps as we’re about to demonstrate.

Step #1 – Identify Disengaged Subscribers

Any email marketing tool worth its salt should allow you to identify disengaged subscribers in one click. 

EcoSend by makes this simple, as you can see in the above image. ⬆️

Engaged also allows you to send segmented campaigns to reach disengaged users to tempt them back, but more about this in step two.

For now, you need a clear list of who is regularly opening your emails and who isn’t. That’s because it’s no good sending an email to try to tempt them back when they are already engaged users. 

Also, take the time to understand the percentage of disengaged subscribers vs engaged. If the balance isn’t swinging in your favour, it may be time to change up your email marketing strategy. 

Step #2 – Send A Re-Engagement Email

Re-engagement emails work up to 25% of the time, so sending one to any disengaged users is definitely worth a shot.  

Sending a re-engagement email works like so: 

• The subject line should get right to the point, such as ‘Do you still want to receive our emails?’ 

• Tell subscribers you’re reaching out to check if they still want to hear from you in the body copy

• Take the opportunity to highlight the value of your emails, such as blog post recaps, company news, promotions or any other nuggets your subscribers are likely to find valuable

• Include one CTA button to allow subscribers to stay on the list, and state they will automatically be removed if they don’t click the link within 7 days

The idea of sending an email like so to disengaged users, is it gives them one last chance to remain active subscribers. This is, in contrast, to automatically removing every disengaged user, assuming they definitely don’t want to hear from you.

Re-engagement emails are the best way to determine what’s actually true so that you avoid losing potential prospects in the process of cleaning your email list. So, think of them as a safety net.

Step #3 – Remove Inactive Contacts 

As it says on the tin, now you have a definite list of disengaged contacts because you haven’t heard from them, and can’t get a response even after sending a re-engagement email, it’s time to cut them from your list. 

Removing inactive contacts will make way for new, engaged subscribers to take their place so don’t hesitate here. Going six months or more without so much as opening your email means you’re essentially talking into a paper cup. 

Once you have done this, your email list will be so clean it will sparkle. Well, it might do if your email campaigns are for a jewellery store. But even for everyone else, you’ll be looking at a clean list for the foreseeable.

Step #4 – Segment Your Email Subscribers

Would you use a duster to clean your carpets? How about dishwashing detergent to clean your windows?

Seen as we’re on the topic of cleaning your email list, it pays to mention segmentation. That’s because just like cleaning your actual home where you need different tools and detergents depending on what you happen to be cleaning, a one-size-fits approach doesn’t work for your email campaigns either.

Segmentation is the name of the game here. It means you send the right message, to the right person at the right time. Use segmentation to further clean your email list by avoiding sending emails which have a low chance of being opened or acted upon.

Don’t just take our word for it either. The Data & Marketing Association found that segmenting emails leads to a 760% increase in conversions. 

Step #5 – Repeat The Email Scrub Every 3-6 Months 

Imagine only cleaning your home once a year. Instead, we all know that deep cleans and regular general cleans are a must for your living environment. Well, your email list is much the same, in that it will only work if it’s clean. 

Depending on the size of your email list, experts recommend scrubbing your email list every 3-6 months. Considering the cost of email marketing, it pays to ensure each campaign will have the maximum impact. That can’t happen if your email list is full of cobwebs figuratively speaking. 

Clean Email List Best Practices

• Never buy email lists

• Keep an eye on unsubscribe rates

• Include a one-click email unsubscribe feature (GDPR)

• Understand your email audience

• Consider using double opt-ins

• Cleanse your list regularly

EcoSend – Not Just Clean, But Green Email Awaits!

If you’re thinking of scrubbing inactive email contacts, it might also be time to refresh your email provider.

Thinking of jumping ship from the likes of Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign? Whether you’re just starting out with email marketing, or are looking for a change from your existing tool we’ve got you covered.

EcoSend runs on renewable energy sources and we’ll plant trees on behalf of your business just for using us.

Discover our amazing features and learn how EcoSend could work for your business by signing up for your free trial.

The temperature may be dropping, but things are heating up here at EcoSend.

This December, we’re launching our very first EcoSend Advent Calendar — 25 days of fresh features, handy improvements, helpful fixes, and a few fun surprises sprinkled in along the way.

Every day from now until Christmas, we’ll reveal something new to make your EcoSend experience smoother, smarter, or simply more delightful. Think of it as a little dose of festive cheer delivered straight to your screen.

We’ve got plenty of treats lined up, and we can’t wait to share each one with you.

Stay in the loop

Follow along with our daily releases through our social channels or by joining our weekly newsletter:

• EcoSend Weekly Newsletter
• EcoSend on LinkedIn
• EcoSend on Instagram

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays from all of us at EcoSend — and thank you for being part of our journey.

Here’s to a brighter, greener year ahead.

We’re delighted to introduce the entirely new EcoSend Partner Program — to reward you with recurring income for recommending EcoSend to others.

With the new program it’s easier than ever to recommend EcoSend, and earn money from doing so.

We hugely appreciate how many people in our network regularly send customers to us.

You do it because you believe in our mission of making email more accessible, sustainable, and impactful.

The new program means we reward you for all your hard work, helping you to help us grow EcoSend to all new heights.

Together in growing the positive impact of email

Share EcoSend with your audience and clients via our new referral links, and for each subscription created, you’ll earn a share of the recurring revenue on any plan they purchase.

That’s any plan — so if a referral starts paying £15 / month, or £15,000 / year, you’ll be rewarded with a share of the revenue.

With the new EcoSend Partner Program you get a growing set of benefits:

• Earn recurring commission from new customers you send to EcoSend.
• Be the first to introduce your clients to intuitive and powerful features in EcoSend.
• Access to our team to help you and your clients succeed with email marketing — from support and setup to strategy.
• Automatically contribute to funding high-impact climate projects.
• Be part of a community championing a more sustainable web.
• Listed on our new Partner Program site.
• Access to news, resources, education, and features designed specifically for partners.

EcoSend combines powerful email marketing tools, award-winning customer service, sustainable business practices, and a dedication to climate impact.

EcoSend is uniquely positioned to sustainably and ethically help your clients grow.

What makes EcoSend a great email platform for your clients?

Beautiful, high-impact emails

Create beautiful, responsive emails with our drag-and-drop editor. No coding required, just drag, drop, and send.

Accessible, delightful, and high impact email templates

Gain access to our growing library of free, easy-to-use, accessible, and sustainably designed email templates.

Clear, affordable pricing as you grow

Some platforms penalise growth and nickel and dime you on features. EcoSend is pricing is clear, and remarkably affordable.

Automatic climate action

Just by using EcoSend, your clients build positive climate impact. Every email campaign automatically contributes to a growing range of verified climate action projects.

Human, UK-based customer service

Our passionate and dedicated team are here to help you and your clients with every step of the journey, from initial setup, migration, through to email design and campaign measurement.

Renewable-powered infrastructure

Our platform runs on renewable energy and is optimised for minimal environmental impact. We design and engineer EcoSend to minimise energy use at every layer, leading to high performance software, servers, and campaigns.

Privacy and security

EcoSend is built with subscriber trust at the core. We help your clients maintain GDPR compliance and respect subscriber privacy while driving engagement.

Rock solid deliverability

We obsess over email deliverability. We use advanced algorithms and real-time monitoring to ensure your clients’ emails reach inboxes reliably and quickly. And our team reviews and approves each and every customer to ensure they meet our strict ethical and compliance standards.

Dedication to accessibility

We believe everyone wins when email marketing tools and campaigns designed with accessibility in mind. That’s why we won’t ship new features before they’ve been thoroughly tested to meet the latest accessibility standards.

And all the features you’d expect

Smart segmentation, advanced analytics, powerful marketing automation – it’s all in EcoSend.

Your clients will enjoy highly targeted campaigns with our advanced segmentation tools, to understand their audience better and deliver personalised emails that resonate. Give your clients deep insights into campaign performance with our comprehensive analytics dashboard. Create sophisticated email workflows that nurture subscribers and drive conversions. Set it and forget it with our powerful automation tools.

World-class customer service for you and your clients

With EcoSend’s dedicated onboarding support team, you’ll have everything you and your clients need to make switching and setup a breeze.

Our team are veterans at switching clients from a range of email platforms, from ActiveCampaign to Mailchimp to Substack.

Don’t take our word for it — here are some of the customers we helped switch from their previous email platform:

From ActiveCampaign to EcoSend

From Beehiiv to EcoSend

From Brevo to EcoSend

From Campaign Monitor to EcoSend

From Constant Contact to EcoSend

From HubSpot to EcoSend

From Mailchimp to EcoSend

You might also like to check out our testimonial here, from a former Mailchimp partner who made the switch to EcoSend.

From Mailerlite to EcoSend

Apply to start earning today

Every day, we see customers switching to EcoSend in as little as an hour. With our new Partner Program, there’s never been a better time to get your clients to make the move.

If you’re a marketing agency with strong ethics, a certified B Corp, or passionate about digital sustainability, then the EcoSend Partner Program is for you.

Ready to start earning, and contributing to a better tomorrow?

Learn more and apply for the EcoSend Partner Program now

We had a busy week last week, as we attended not one but two major events: SaaStock 2025 in Dublin, and Blue Earth Summit 2025 in London.

James shares his experience at both and what he learned along the way.

SaaStock is the biggest gathering of people involved in the world of SaaS (software as a service), and Blue Earth Summit is one of the best events for the world of purpose-driven organisations driving positive change for the climate.

Two very different events, one very different attendee. For the first half of the week, I was one of the few people (along with our friends at Ticket Tailor and SquaredUp) talking about the climate, sustainability, and purpose, in a sea of thousands of people who are usually talking about growth, revenue, and profit.

For the second half of the week, I was one of the few people talking about software and technology in a sea of hundreds of people who are passionately discussing and campaigning for a more sustainable world.

I finished the week feeling incredibly inspired and motivated by both events. And admittedly a little exhausted!

A SaaStock surprise

It was truly an honour to join our friends at Ticket Tailor to represent SaaS for Good.

The Ticket Tailor team created the initiative after many years of operating a successful event ticketing platform and being one of the first software companies to gain B Corp certification.

I must admit, on my way to Dublin for SaaStock, I was skeptical.

Most people building software right now care about revenue, growth, investment, and AI.

But after just an hour on the floor at the SaaS for Good booth, I was blown away.

So many people in the software industry are already doing great things. And even more are hungry to start.

Whether it’s Founders Pledge for donating to high impact charities upon successful exit, or arranging time for your team to partake in volunteering days in their local community, you don’t have to be a B Corp to do good!

The SaaS for Good panel

I was joined by George (MD at Ticket Tailor), Kirstie (SquaredUp), and Joe (founder of Issuu) to discuss purpose and impact.

George asked us many thoughtful questions, and I learned as much from the panel as a participant as any audience member! Hearing about Ticket Tailor’s “penny for the planet” initiative, and Canva’s two part plan made me realise that our impact initiatives at EcoSend are just getting started.

Blue sky thinking at Blue Earth

Overwhelmingly, I felt a sense of hope at Blue Earth.

The wider world is not the perfect haven we might want it to be. It can be easy to feel down and frustrated when so many of the news headlines are enough to make you want to run away to a remote island and bury your head in the sand.

But so many people at Blue Earth were positive and driven. And crucially, so many people were out there, making real change.

I saw so much on show that reminded me of what is possible:

• The smartest system I’ve seen to re-use coffee cups. Every coffee cup is tagged, and you get a deposit back automatically if you recycle it in a specific bin.
• Hannah’s Project Salt Run — running 100 marathons in 100 days along a route that follows a hedge that once spanned the width of India.
• Cardamon from Root & Branch for developers to track carbon emissions from every single action their software performs.
• 30×30 — the hugely ambitious project to protect 30% of the land and sea around the UK for nature by 2030.
• Agency for Nature — giving nature a voice with creative marketing campaigns like the talking tree.
• People, Planet, Pint, who we have the pleasure of working with on the Sustainability Events Calendar. An initiative that has inspired thousands around the world to come together to talk about climate and impact.

More motivated than ever

Change is hard.

Anything anyone has put into the world has only made it there with an enormous amount of effort.

It’s extremely hard to change the status quo.

But last week really inspired me of what is possible.

Many founders and team members in the startup world are motivated to change the world for the better. Some have novel approaches. Some are prioritising differently. But there is motivation — and that’s exciting.

Many people in the world of climate and sustainability are already out there making change. But they’re often held back by budgets, resources, and sometimes by technology.

Clearly, software can be a tremendous force for good with the technologies, user bases, and often the finance we have available.

I couldn’t be more excited to be building EcoSend — software can change the world for the better. We are amplifying the voices of amazing organisations and individuals. We have the opportunity to support the growth of some incredible good causes. I couldn’t be more proud of that.

Thank you to Jonny, Emily, George, Tom, Maria, Kirstie, Adam, and Cathy for making us part of the SaaS for Good initiative.

We are just getting started.

Warming up your emails is an essential step that every sender must take. Otherwise, your campaigns might end up in the spam folder.

Learn from the email experts here at EcoSend what email warming up is and how to do it properly in just a few simple steps. 

Email warm-up explained

Email warm-up is the process of building reputation and trust with an email domain before you start sending emails at scale. 

Your sender reputation is important because email providers look out for various signs of spam.

If your account looks suspicious because it’s a new domain or due to sudden bulk sending, your emails might land in the spam folder. This seriously reduces the chances your emails will be seen by your target audience, and it can harm your sender reputation over the long term.

When you warm your emails up properly, your campaigns are more likely to be whitelisted. However, going ahead and bulk sending without warming up increases the chances of being greylisted or blacklisted. 

What’s greylisting?: A temporary rejection method used by mail servers to filter out spam. For instance, you might receive a message telling you to try again later. It works because spam bots will blast and move on, whereas genuine senders will indeed try again later. 

What’s blacklisting?: A permanent or semi-permanent block of a domain, IP address or sending service. If you’re blacklisted, your emails are rejected outright or routed to spam folders. Blacklisted domains are the worst case scenario and it can be extremely difficult to recover your sender reputation. 

What happens if you don’t warm your emails before sending?

If you want to send an email to your entire list but you don’t warm up your email domain first, you risk damaging your sender reputation. There’s also a good chance your emails will be automatically filtered as spam, meaning your recipients are unlikely to even see your emails. 

Not warming up your emails means your email domain (and therefore you) will be treated as a spammer from day one. This will ultimately result in lost revenue, since your domain will have a bad reputation. Your email provider could even ban you, since you’ll also be making their platform look bad too. 

This message couldn’t be simpler: If you want to make money from email, you need to put the effort into warming up your emails before sending. 

How to do email warm-ups

Before you send a single email, you first need to set up your account fully. This starts with getting your SPF, DKIM and DMARC in check. 

Another top tip is to create a dedicated domain and subdomain for your main email sending, ensuring you don’t use the same domain for cold outreach. 

Now comes the warm-up!

In a nutshell, to warm up your emails, you will need to start sending small quantities of emails, rather than bulk sending at once. 

For instance, say you have a list of 12,000 contacts. Warming up could involve sending emails to only 4,000 contacts per day over 3 days. 

👋 Psst: Grab a 15,000 subscriber plan to cover a list of this size from EcoSend, priced at just $124.17* per month on an Annual plan! 👀 (**Price correct at the time of writing). 

Sure, there would be a delay in when all of your contacts would receive that email. But the risk of being greylisted or blacklisted would be reduced, especially if you had also set up your domain property as mentioned above. 

To warm up your emails, you also don’t need to email every contact on your list. In fact, that can work even better to build trust. Instead, you can try sending personalised campaigns to a small number and gradually work your way up.

This is something that worked for Rightmove, which saw them gradually warm up their sender domain to be able to eventually send campaigns to 6 million recipients. Overall, Rightmove achieved a 99% deliverability rate and a 50% reduction in bounces, just by employing the right warmup techniques. 

Why you should avoid email warm-up tools

We’re always searching for shortcuts. In the world of email warm-ups, there are various tools and AI assistants which offer to do all of the work for you. 

How email warmup tools work is that they try to game the system by simulating human engagement with your emails. They fake conversations inside a controlled network to trick email providers into thinking your domain is trustworthy and engaged with.

Unfortunately, these tools actually put your email domain at greater risk of being blacklisted, and here’s why:

⛔ Violation of email provider policies: Did you check with your email provider before giving a third party tool access to manipulate your account? As you might expect, email providers frown on this and may close your account. 

🥴 The use of shared networks: Many email warm-up tools use shared pools of inboxes. If any spammers are also in the pool, their poor reputation can also impact your email domain due to association. 

🥷 Security concerns: When you hand over your email accounts to a third party tool, how trustworthy is it? Some warm-up tools require access to your mailbox via OAuth or SMTP/IMAP. In turn, this creates security and data compliance concerns. In some industries and locations, this can even create regulatory violations (i.e. GDPR or HIPAA). 

🤦‍♂️ Setting yourself up for a fall: Email warm-up tools provide artificial engagement. But, this doesn’t replicate real recipient behaviour. Initially, it might make your campaign metrics look great. But once you start sending for real, important email metrics (like open and click-through rates) will plummet.

So while it’s tempting to ‘cheat’ the system, remember that not doing things in the right way will ultimately cost you more in the long run. 

Improve your email deliverability with EcoSend

Email deliverability is our priority here at EcoSend. 

We work tirelessly to monitor signups, ensuring that only genuine users send emails from our platform.

Once you start sending email campaigns via EcoSend, you’ll also benefit from EcoSend Insights, which is our analytics dashboard. 

Start your free trial of EcoSend today to get started. 

Or, feel free to drop us a message if you have any questions about email deliverability with EcoSend, or our sustainable email platform.