Email Pro: Open Rate Is a Vanity Metric

Nabeel Azeez runs a Dubai-based email marketing agency with clients in ecommerce, SaaS, and more. He emphasizes engagement-based segmentation and high frequency, sending for one client eight emails per day, each to a unique segment.

In our recent conversation, he shared his methods for driving revenue from ecommerce emails, including unorthodox views such as the open rate is a vanity metric and never unsubscribe dormant recipients.

Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: What do you do?

Nabeel Azeez: I’m the co-owner of Dropkick Copy, an email marketing agency in Dubai. We work with pretty much every kind of business — ecommerce, SaaS, private equity, et cetera.

Nearly all of our clients are in the United States.

Bandholz: What is your roadmap for onboarding clients?

Azeez: Assume it’s a B2B company. The first thing we do is send a nine-word email to all the subscribers who haven’t bought anything. The aim is to get people to raise their hands. We ask them, “Are you still interested in what we’re selling?”

We typically get a few hundred responses, depending on the list.

For ecommerce clients, we check which flows they’re missing and install them. Then we up the frequency.

Most ecommerce brands send around three emails per week. We’ll increase it to daily, sometimes several per day, depending on their segments. For one ecommerce client, we send upwards of eight emails per day, each to a different segment.

We’re aggressive. Klaviyo sent us a warning the other day stating we’re emailing too many unengaged subscribers. But Klaviyo ought to know that open rate is a vanity metric. The only thing that matters is revenue.

Bandholz: How do you build the eight segments?

Azeez: So the easiest way is by engagement — the last seven days, 30 days, or 60 to 90 days. Another segment consists of folks who subscribed long ago but haven’t engaged recently.

Then we segment the “whales,” subscribers who buy often and spend a lot. “Potential whales,” another segment, buy often but don’t spend as much as the whales. Another is loyal customers, who buy frequently in smaller amounts.

We also look for whales who are about to churn or haven’t bought in a long time. We call them “churned whales” or “lapsed whales.”

In other words, you can split up your customer or subscriber list into many different segments. There’s no overlap. It’s one email per person.

The messaging and strategy depend on the segment. Take a potential whale, somebody who buys often but in lesser order sizes than a whale. We incentivize potential whales to spend more per order by offering a gift for minimum order values.

Another option is to send the exact email to all segments but personalize it. Klaviyo has a dynamic content selector to insert the message based on a segment or a custom subscriber field.

Bandholz: Say I’m a smaller brand with $10,000 in monthly email revenue. I’m sending three times per week to basic segments. I’ve set up simple flows, such as post-purchase and abandoned carts. How can I grow from $10,000 to $20,000?

Azeez: First, it depends on your products. Are they repeat, consumable items or one-offs? Second, how many subscribers are you adding every week? The more new subscribers you have, the more aggressively you can email them.

Plus, some merchants don’t care about long-term subscribers. We’re much more aggressive with those audiences than with brands seeking ongoing relationships.

But I would at least go from three times per week to daily emails, as long as the list is growing. I would also review your email automations for missed revenue opportunities.

It’s important, too, to know how your email affects performance on other channels. A solid email program can drive ROAS and MER on Meta Ads, for example. Switch email attribution from last-click to first-click for the metrics.

Bandholz: What are common email marketing mistakes of ecommerce companies?

Azeez: Merchants don’t test their opt-in pop-up offers enough. That includes removing the pop-up completely and tracking margins. Offering a 10% discount trains shoppers to expect it in other promotions.

Experiment with the best offer to entice new subscribers. Is it a discount, a free product, or free shipping? Perhaps it’s a bundle of related items.

Bandholz: What is the best way to phase out unengaged subscribers?

Azeez: Set up a sunset unengaged automation. I typically set it to 90 days. If they haven’t opened, clicked, or purchased within the past 90 days, they will receive that automated message. If they still show no signs of life, we’ll pause them for a while.

I try not to unsubscribe them. I’ll keep them and send a reactivation email every month or quarter. In my experience, around 10% of unengaged folks will come back eventually.

Our reactivation emails look like other emails, though we’ll occasionally send a plain-text version to spur a response. Sometimes we send long, educational, text-only messages that are much more likely to land in the main inbox than a promotion.

Bandholz: How do you use SMS?

Azeez: We try to send the same volume of SMS messages as email unless it’s daily. We won’t send daily SMSs, but we’ll try two or three times a week. Again, it depends on the brand. SMS usually makes a lot more money than email. So we’ll bump up SMSs if we need more revenue.

A promotional SMS should be as short as possible. It also depends on the cost. Sending SMSs is typically more expensive than emails.

Bandholz: Where can people follow you, reach out to you, buy your services?

Azeez: Our agency’s site is DropkickCopy.com. My own site is Nabeelazeez.com. I’m @NabeelAzeez on X.