Your list behaviour? Yeah, that says otherwise.

Let’s begin with words many of us email senders tend to throw around (flippantly), especially as we enter the last bit of the year:

Nurture sequence.
Win-back flow.
Re-engagement campaign.
Personalised sale.

Those are just some examples, true, but we want you to now read the specific vocabulary back.

Nurture.
Engage.
Personal.

Doesn’t it sound like something you'd say about someone you're trying to build a relationship with, and not necessarily a segment you're trying to move through a funnel?

We didn't land on that language by accident, folks.

Somewhere along the way, email marketing decided the best way to sell "the channel you own" was to borrow the language of relationships, because, well, nobody wants to be told they're renting attention by the click.

Plus, the word “relationship” sounds better. And it’s not simply because relationship sounds like something worth protecting (and it is), but it’s also what you’re building with readers and buyers if you use it well.

The caveat, and my question to you, dear gentle reader, is: are we measuring any of that like an actual relationship? You know, all those opens and clicks and revenue per send and list growth… All the fancy transaction math.

We've built an entire industry's vocabulary around reciprocity, and an entire industry's scorecard around extraction.

But those are different now, aren’t they?

Ask anyone in the email world why, for example, they haven't pruned their list in a year, and you'll often get a version of the same answer: it feels wrong because subscribers chose to sign up. Or, it feels like giving up on someone. Heck, sometimes if we’re honest, it feels a bit like cruelty.

But it isn't, though. It's hygiene. Someone who hasn't opened, clicked, or so much as glanced at your last six sends isn't in a relationship with you.

They forgot to unsubscribe because your emails vanished into a folder they probably never check, or they just don't want this anymore and haven't gotten around to telling you. Removing them isn't ending something if there's nothing there left to end.

And, instinctively, you know this.

But notice what it took for us to explain that to you just now. These same explanations wind up being what we sell ourselves.

In this case, we’re arguing our way out of "cruelty," which means somewhere in our heads, list pruning already sits right next to a word that only makes sense if the list was a relationship in the first place.

That's the vocabulary doing its job on us. And it worked.

It's not really just an email thing. Every industry that wants to be liked borrows the language of intimacy for what's actually just plain and simple distribution.

Yeah, email just carries more “receipts” than most, because we can quite literally show you the click rate that says otherwise, but the point remains.

The timing seems right, as we all start planning for the next few months when send volume spikes across pretty much every list we know of (and it's not just the retail senders amongst us).

The language gets warmest precisely when the sending gets broadest (whatever you're selling).

E-comm sends those "we saved this just for you" to the whole list at 2 am on a specific Friday dedicated to the retail gods.

B2B and SaaS teams send that "your account team wanted to check in" email, which is usually a calendar year renewal push (we see you, guys)

Nonprofits? Those "your gift changes everything" sends, timed to the one month their giving numbers absolutely need to land. Same story here (and a moral dilemma for another day - those abandoned animals need us, after all).

And no, newsletters aren't exempt either, us included. Come December, we'll be telling you how much we value you, right before we ask you to share our wrapped emails with your mates.

None of that makes anyone a villain because it’s normal. But it's worth noticing, too, that the warmest the copy ever gets is usually the exact moment the ask gets biggest, and that's not what reciprocity looks like anywhere else in life.

Look, guys, we're not telling you to strip the warmth out of your copy, and we're certainly not telling you to open with that "Dear Segment 4."

Relationship-flavoured marketing isn't the crime here.

The crime is doing it, but with none of the actual mechanics of a relationship attached. A relationship can tell you no. A relationship gets asked what it wants, not just told what you're offering. A relationship survives you occasionally sending it nothing at all…

If the relationship or automation journey or any of the stuff you intend sending isn’t practising the language you’re using…then you’re already in trouble.

And this is exacerbated, especially when those Q4-email-relationship-tropes start landing in the inbox, because then, well, you’re just lost in the noise.

If you want to keep the language, go earn it. Let people set their own frequency. Ask what they actually want before you build the next flow. If you give something away, GIVE IT AWAY. There’s nothing that kills the foundation of a relationship faster than mistrust.

And, lastly, when someone stops showing up, let them go without seeing it as a loss, because it was never a relationship if it only ever ran in one direction.

Go and open your own inbox this week. Pull five emails that use the word "you" like they mean it, and, hey, be honest with yourself about which ones were actually about you, and which ones were about somebody's quarter-end numbers simply dressing it up with your name.

Then go and check your own sends, and ask exactly the same question.

We'd love to hear what you find (the honest answers). We’re all friends here; this is a safe space and maybe, just maybe, we can offer a few pointers.

TLDR? Let your actions speak louder than your naming conventions.

What have we found to expand your email knowledge today?

Here are a few of our favourite links from across the email and business world, carefully curated just for you:

Find of the week ⭐

Dark mode and the impact it has on emails is one of those things that just keeps coming up…and it catches us all.

Our good friend, Simon from All About Email, had the brilliant Annett Forcier as a guest in a brilliant feature this week, and man, what a deep-dive on all things dark mode.

But besides a brilliant bit of insight, Annett’s also built a pretty badass Email Dark-Mode Preview tool that we’ve already bookmarked.

And, because we’re in the game of sharing the cool (email or otherwise) stuff we find, thought what better than to share it with you to try out before your next send 😉

Test your email brand for dark mode here.

We're also constantly on the lookout for new resources, news, tools and links, so hit us up if you've got something valuable to feature!

Yeah…we feel seen 🙃

Especially pertinent as we try to get our Southern Hemisphere summer bodies ready.

Diets only realistically start on Mondays, right?

What’s the secret to staying ahead of the curve in the world of AI? Information. 

Luckily, you can join 2,000,000+ early adopters reading The Rundown AI — the free newsletter that makes you smarter on AI with just a 5-minute read per day.

Sign up to start learning.