If you’re an email marketer and still consider open rates as the main indicator of success, it’s time for a wake-up call.

In fact, it’s way past that time. In 2021, Apple announced its MPP feature along with the iOS 15 update, taking email marketers by storm.

So, what is Apple MPP?

As per the feature, Apple Mail prevents email senders from tracking email opens and users’ IP addresses to protect their privacy. It automatically loads email content, like images, on devices with iOS 15 and inflates open rates.

This means that open rates are no longer a reliable metric, and one should track clicks and submissions to understand how their campaigns performed.

Okay, but how did it impact real email marketers?

We survey email marketers yearly to understand trends, benchmarks, and best practices. Then, we compile our findings in a report called ‘State of Email’, which helps fellow marketers discover what’s working (and what’s not) for others in the industry.

In 2023 and 2024, we discovered marketers had started prioritizing click rates and submissions as their go-to email metric.

However, we were shocked when we surveyed 130+ marketers for the State of Email 2025.

What we learned while creating the State of Email 2025

Last year, the number of marketers relying on open rates increased to 20.5% in 2024 — a sharp contrast to previous years.

This could mean

🍎 Our surveyors didn’t have enough Apple users in their email list, which is highly unlikely as Apple Mail dominates the email clients market with a whopping 56.7% share.

🤷Or they rely on outdated metrics due to a lack of awareness or a tendency to report inflated performance.

In either case, this situation points towards a deeper issue of poor email strategy at the top and a disregard for the true potential of email marketing.

If you’ve read to this point, you’re a true-blue email marketer, and the next section is for you.

Actionable tips to get over open rates and improve email strategy

As many wise people say, what you can’t measure, you can’t improve. Hence, it’s important to be honest about your campaign performance, even if that means reporting lesser numbers.

However, if your email strategy is right, you can improve metrics like CTR and submission and build a long-lasting relationship with your subscribers — the real purpose of email marketing.

Here are some tips to help you through -

Respect your email recipients

✅ Start by honoring their choices — ask them how frequently they want your emails or whether they want them at all.

✅Keep the ‘Unsubscribe’ button loud and clear. Smaller and engaged list > Large but non-responsive list

✅Ask for feedback consistently and implement it. You can now add rating widgets with stars and emojis or even a form inside email.

Optimize for engagement, and not just opens

✅ Don’t turn your emails into another promotional ad, especially if you’re a SaaS. Use emails to nurture subscribers and engage them.

✅ Use email gamification to spice up your boring emails. Think quizzes, polls, and even scratch-the-card widgets.

✅ Give recipients a reason to respond to your emails or wait for the next one. Informative newsletters, product updates, and even catchy promotional emails can help subscribers wait for your emails.

Learn from your peers

✅ Do not work in silos. There’re many communities and shared resources to get inspiration from. For example — Really good email, Email love, etc., for email design and copy.

✅ Follow experts and learn from their practices. You can find them on LinkedIn, hear through their webinars/podcasts, or even reach out on Slack communities like email geeks.

✅ Always keep a tab on industry trends. Reports like State of Email can tell you where you stand and what you need to improve.

The Shocking Truth About Email Metrics in 2025 was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the middle of this year, I was made responsible for 'crafting more success stories' for our brand.

I found the challenge interesting and straightforward — like any other ADHD brain struggling with time and effort perception.

It was more than just a writing and project management responsibility. One has to put on one's journalistic lenses, think beyond content, and produce a story worth celebrating (and selling a product).

Here's my attempt at documenting my learnings so far —

Testimonials vs Case Studies

Testimonials show what your customers think of your product or services, think of a customer quote you can publish on your homepage, etc., whereas case studies elaborate on how your product/service helped the client solve a challenge and attain a specific goal.

Both are important, but internal stakeholders (the sales team) love a good case study. It helps them explain the use cases and show the real impact of your product/service.

However, getting a case study takes a lot of time, at least 1 client interview, and loads of layers of approval. Focusing solely on them results in less social proof being published and leads to everyone questioning your efforts.

Here's how we solved this problem and accommodated both formats

• Created a 'Wall of love' — a page that publishes all sorts of social proofs — quotes, videos, shout-outs, etc.
• Designed multiple webpage formats to record all kinds of stories — one that specifies challenges, solutions, and outcomes, another that records a client's journey and our role in their story.
• Scheduled a recurring monthly meeting with Sales, CSM, and marketing to share updates and keep everyone on the same page.

Getting more conversions from success stories

We can be all fancy about why we do what we do. But in reality, every marketing effort should focus on getting more signups and demos, especially in an early-stage startup.

So, even if you spend hours extracting the best stories and creating them flawlessly, your hard work will be wasted if it doesn't attribute to conversions.

The quality of your story alone won't help you achieve this. You will have to focus on optimizing the page for conversion and utilizing the best trigger point of your story to drive signups.

The easiest way to do this is to create a page layout that gives visitors enough context for the story and encourages them to sign up without taking too long.

So, we created a 'TLDR' section at the top fold, which includes the client's quote, challenge, solution, outcome, and a glimpse of their email template.

After this, they'd have two options — 
- To send this story to their manager or team as a possible solution to the problem they might be facing.
- Or directly book a demo to understand how they can get the same results.

Check out the screenshot of the design below —

If people scroll below, they can read everything in detail but the top-fold gives them enough information to decide.

Our hypothesis worked in this case — we've observed signups increase by 2X via case studies.

Here are some takeaways for you to follow.

• Mention the product feature being used in the story at the top-fold.
• Design a block that gives information like industry, challenge, etc, in minimal words. This will help similar prospects take notice quickly and invest more time reading the entire story.
• Mention your impact in the title — be it quantitative or qualitative.

Distributing them to maximize the impact

Distribution differs from link-seeding on different channels, and we wanted our success stories to stand out more from other campaigns.

As Linkedin is where our audience usually hang-out (marketers, CMOS, email marketers), we started creating a carousel for each story. This carousel has a mascot denoting the client and their service and tells their case in a fun, story-like manner.

We ensure that our team promotes this carousel on LinkedIn, starting with our founder, and we also send it to the client with a pre-written caption.

Result?

• Our success story carousels have gotten 80K+ impressions on LinkedIn in the past 2 quarters.
• We’ve seen clients become more enthusiastic about promotions. As they get a good asset readymade, their team also promptly promotes it. More promotions equal more brand awareness, which in turn equals more leads.
• Some of our existing clients have contacted us asking to volunteer their stories and adopt features we explained in the carousels. Easy-to-consume content is a winner today!

Don’t have the design bandwidth to create such carousels? Here’s what you can do instead

• Write a text-only LinkedIn post explaining the case briefly. Using AI, create multiple versions and have your entire team post them to create a buzz on social media.
• Send a pre-written caption to your client and request them to post it, too.
• If you can't make a carousel or an infographic, create the main banner cleverly and use that as a visual asset for distribution.

Parting thoughts?

I don’t know how to conclude this except to share that this is a learning in progress, and we’re still experimenting with more designs and ways to get more success stories in less time.

Of course, there’re more nuisances involved. For example, a customer might be enthusiastic to share their story for their gain but you realize they don’t even have a good enough case?

How do you say no or navigate this conversation? I have thoughts regarding that as well but I will save them for the next post.

If you like this, clap your hand :D

And follow me for more of my learning as a marketer in an early-stage startup.

3 learnings after publishing 6+ case studies in 6 months. was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here’s the simple strategy we used (you can copy it too)

At first, email marketing seems simple. You write an email, shoot it to a list of email contacts, and they should be able to recieve and read it.

However, a few months into the process, one realizes that things are more complex. ESPs fiercely protect their users and won’t let you inside their inboxes if they realize your emails are not useful or interesting for them.

As a result, they start pushing your emails to the spam folder, which means your message never reaches the intended recipient jeopardizing whatever you’d put at stake on this campaign — more sales, webinar registrations, or course enrolments.

One of our clients, Fynd Academy, found themselves in a similar spot when they were about to launch their first-ever cohort-based learning program.

They wanted to inform the right people about it and get more enrolments for the course.

And the good news was they already had 30K+ email contacts of those who had taken similar workshops or applied for similar jobs.

No need to randomly shoot messages in the universe when you already have the addresses of people who’d be interested. Sounds great, right?

That’s what even they thought until they realized their emails were not performing as well as earlier.

So, they contacted Team Mailmodo, who first decided to diagnose the real problem. Here’s how they did it

Set up an internal test team.

Mailmodo created a segment of 15–20 email contacts comprising Fynd Academy’s internal team and started to send them email campaigns. Most people received these campaigns in their spam folder confirming their fear.

ESPs weren’t allowing Fynd Academy’s emails in the inboxes and they’d have to build their reputation all over again.

But the cohort was launching in just 1 month, and they’d completely relied on emails to get enrolments.

How would they make this a success if emails weren’t performing up to the mark?

However, they took this as a challenge and decided to (a) rebuild their domain reputation and win ESP’s trust again (b) and get course enrolments, too — with a little bit of help from Mailmodo, of course.

Here’s their strategy -

Step #1 Warming up to win trust

It’s exactly what it sounds like.

No oversharing, slow buildup.

Instead of bombarding thousands of emails on the first day, Fynd Academy started small with only a few emails on Day 1 and gradually increased the volume by 1.5X daily until Day 15.

This tells the ESPs that you’re not desperately sending emails to random contacts. You know your goal and who to reach out to.

Fynd Academy also ensured they only sent emails to the 30K+ contacts who were their target audience and would be interested in these messages.

These contacts already knew about Fynd Academy, so they were more likely to engage and provide good signals to the ESPs.

Step #2 Sending only educational emails

Imagine meeting a random new guy at the party, and they immediately try selling you their new product/service.

Bad strategy, right?

One needs to remember this philosophy while creating email campaigns as well. Mailmodo suggested the same to Fynd Academy.

In all of the warm-up emails during those 15 days, Fynd Academy repurposed their educational blogs into email campaigns and never once tried selling the cohort.

Result? People became genuinely interested in their emails, and their engagement grew with time.

Improved engagement signaled ESPs that this domain is trustworthy and that their emails deserve to be in more inboxes.

Step#3 Using interactive emails to identify high-qualified leads

All of these 30K+ people were interested in the subject matter of the cohort, but would they all join a cohort to upskill immediately?

Probably not.

Thus, sending all of them the ‘invitation to enroll’ may get less engagement and impact their carefully built reputation.

So, Mailmodo suggested Fynd Academy to include an interactive survey in their final email before the invitation email.

This email included a survey asking recipients if they were looking to upskill shortly and would help them segment their final target list.

The best part? The recipient could submit their answers without leaving their inboxes as the email was interactive and built within 5 minutes using Mailmodo.

This friction-free process boosted survey response, and Fynd Academy had a good list of qualified leads.

Quick tip: Want to check how the interactive survey worked? Read more details and see it in action here

Step#4 The final promotional email

The final email was the invitation to enroll in the cohort. It was sent only to the list made after the interactive survey.

It got 9X higher engagement and maximum enrolments for the cohort from this single campaign.

What you can learn from this

Improving email deliverability is a gradual process that shouldn’t be rushed.

But don’t get disheartened if you suddenly see an increase in spam rate and have an urgent email goal to meet. Trust the process -

• Remove inactive subscribers.
• Send intentional, educational emails
• Re-warm your domain by reducing the email volume and gradually increasing it later.

Have a particular case or question in mind? Leave a comment here or hit me up on LinkedIn, I’ll quickly reply.

From spam folder to inbox in just 15 days — we made this happen! was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And are losing out on potential 4X engagement and conversion.

Getting your subscribers to open the email is just half the job done.

But what happens after that?

I work for an email marketing software and this is a problem we often solve for our clients.

Beginners are usually elated with great open rates and often overlook the potential impact of a good email on revenue.

Bigbasket, India’s leading online grocer, came to us with a similar problem statement.

They had many email subscribers and great open rates but weren’t meeting any tangible business goals with these campaigns.

Yes, a few CTAs in their long emails led subscribers to their product pages, but they weren’t getting enough clicks.

They knew they could get more out of email as a channel but were unsure how.

Until they met our team and were introduced to email gamification with interactivity.

We specialize in creating interactive emails in minutes with our no-code editor and have even created a wordle inside emails, amongst many other cool things. (Spare the humble brag)

Team bigbasket is a good sport, and their emails already had a catchy tone. So, we decided to experiment more with one of their popular campaigns.

This email was about skincare and provided details about different skin types and which products suit them. Needless to say, it was lengthy and needed multiple scrolls.

Nobody would like to read about products not meant for their skin type.

We wanted to optimize this campaign for three goals

✅ Skip unnecessary details and get to the CTA quickly

✅Enable subscribers to play around with the email instead of static reading

✅Recommend products tailored to their specific needs

To achieve this, we created a quiz inside email within 10 minutes. This quiz helped subscribers determine their skin type and recommend only relevant products. Check the template below.

Here’s how it helped achieve this goal

✅Subscribers could now take a 3-step quiz and quickly get to the CTA

✅No more reading a blog-like email. You could take a quiz as if you’re on a landing page

✅ The quiz gave them information about their skin type and recommended relevant products.

Result?

Bigbakset got 4X email engagement with these campaigns.

We loved creating this quiz (with a little bit of help from ChatGPT to get the question), and we loved how bigbasket subscribers responded.

I wonder if other online retailers and D2C brands are even aware of this quiz widget. Do you know someone who could use this in their email?

If yes, share this with them or connect them to me, we’ll see what we can do. 🙂

Most D2C brands are unaware of this email tip was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Email marketing is a trusted strategy for businesses to meet their business objectives. Whatever stage a business might be at, having a strong email marketing plan will always be handy to get traction. While some businesses like using their system for email marketing, which has its benefits. But, in the larger scheme of things, finding a reliable email service provider can be a huge advantage over an internal tool.

The sheer number of options available for choosing an email service provider makes this selection process a daunting task. So let’s take a look at things you should consider to help answer the question marketers, start-ups, and brands often have, how to choose email service providers?

How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Tool:

Understand Your Business Needs:

Selecting the right email marketing tool begins with a comprehensive understanding of your business requirements. Take time to evaluate your budget constraints, the ease of use you require, the extent of automation features necessary, compatibility with your existing tools, and the potential for scalability as your business expands. By delineating your needs clearly, you pave the way for selecting a tool that seamlessly aligns with your objectives and can effectively support your business growth over time.

In addition to the factors mentioned above, consider aspects like the size and nature of your target audience, the frequency and volume of emails you plan to send, and any specific functionalities or integrations crucial for your marketing strategy. This detailed understanding ensures that you choose a tool that not only meets your current needs but also anticipates and accommodates your future requirements as your business evolves.

Research Your Options:

After identifying your business needs and the market, take measure of email marketing software from different angles. Start by exploring their features, pricing structures, customer feedbacks and customer support among other platforms. Users’ experiences should be highlighted through a focus on user reviews and testimonials as opposed to mere surfacy descriptions.

Moreover, as you carry out your research, make sure that you pay attention to the unique selling points of individual platforms like template designs, segmentation capabilities, automation workflows and analytics features. Consider whether these offerings will help you achieve specific goals or solve problems that have been encountered in current email marketing efforts. By doing this comprehensive research stage one can make an educated choice with the selecting process which will not only meet but surpass his or her expectations for a tool to use.

Try Before You Buy:

Many email marketing tools offer trial periods or demos to allow users to experience their functionality firsthand before making a commitment. Take advantage of these opportunities to explore the user interface, test out key features, and assess the overall usability of the platform. During the trial period, consider conducting a few test campaigns to gauge how the tool performs in real-world scenarios and whether it meets your expectations in terms of deliverability, customization options, and reporting capabilities.

As you explore different platforms, pay attention to the level of customer support provided during the trial period. Evaluate the responsiveness and helpfulness of the support team in addressing any questions or concerns you may have. Additionally, solicit feedback from team members who will be involved in using the tool to gather multiple perspectives on its suitability for your organization. By thoroughly testing the software before making a commitment, you can make an informed decision and avoid potential pitfalls down the road.

Ensure Compatibility:

Compatibility with your existing tools and systems is essential when choosing an email marketing platform. Assess whether the software seamlessly integrates with your customer relationship management (CRM) system, e-commerce platform, and any other tools you rely on for your marketing efforts. A smooth integration ensures seamless data flow between systems, allowing you to leverage customer data effectively and automate processes for greater efficiency.

During the evaluation process, verify the compatibility of the email marketing tool with your preferred email service provider (ESP) to ensure optimal deliverability and inbox placement. Additionally, consider any customization or configuration requirements necessary to integrate the software with your existing infrastructure. By prioritizing compatibility, you can streamline your workflow, minimize data silos, and maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

Plan for Future Growth:

As your business evolves and expands, your email marketing needs are likely to evolve as well. When selecting an email marketing tool, look for a solution that can scale alongside your business and accommodate future growth. Consider factors such as the platform’s pricing structure, feature set, and flexibility to adapt to changing requirements over time.

Evaluate whether the email marketing tool offers scalable pricing plans that align with your budget and anticipated growth trajectory. Additionally, assess the platform’s capacity to handle increasing email volumes, support additional users, and accommodate advanced features as your marketing efforts mature. By choosing a tool that can grow your business, you can avoid the hassle of migrating to a new platform in the future and ensure continuity and consistency in your email marketing strategy.

Email Marketing Software Reviews

1. Email Marketing Software: Campaign Monitor
   G2 Rating: 4.1 out of 5
   Pricing: $11 for 500 contacts2,500 email sends
   Review: Campaign Monitor Review
2. Email Marketing Software: Stripo
   G2 Rating: 4.8 out of 5
   Pricing: $15 for 50 Stored Emails & Templates
   Review: Stripo Review
3. Email Marketing Software: SendGrid
   G2 Rating: 4.0 out of 5
   Pricing: $15 for 5000 contacts
   Review: SendGrid Review
4. Email Marketing Software: Mailchimp
   G2 Rating: 4.3 out of 5
   Pricing: $13 for 500 contacts
   Review: Mailchimp Review
5. Email Marketing Software: Mailjet
   G2 Rating: 4.0 out of 5
   Pricing: $15 for 5,000 contacts
   Review: Mailjet Review
6. Email Marketing Software: ConvertKit
   G2 Rating: 4.6 out of 5
   Pricing: $15 for 300 contacts
   Review: ConvertKit Review
7. Email Marketing Software: Elastic Email
   G2 Rating: 4.4 out of 5
   Pricing: $9 for up to 2,000 contacts
   Review: Elastic Email Review
8. Email Marketing Software: AWeber
   G2 Rating: 4.2 out of 5
   Pricing: $14.99 for 500 contacts
   Review: AWeber Review
9. Email Marketing Software: EmailOctopus
   G2 Rating: 4.2 out of 5
   Pricing: $9 for 1000 contacts
   Review: EmailOctopus Review
10. Email Marketing Software: Omnisend
    G2 Rating: 4.6 out of 5
    Pricing: $20 for 1000 contacts
    Review: Omnisend Review
11. Email Marketing Software: MailerLite
    G2 Rating: 4.7 out of 5
    Pricing: $10 for 500 contacts
    Review: MailerLite Review
12. Email Marketing Software: Drip
    G2 Rating: 4.4 out of 5
    Pricing: 2,500 contacts for $39
    Review: Drip Review
13. Email Marketing Software: GetResponse
    G2 Rating: 4.2 out of 5
    Pricing: $19 for 1,000 contacts
    Review: GetResponse Review
14. Email Marketing Software: ActiveCampaign
    G2 Rating: 4.5 out of 5
    Pricing: $39 for 1,000 contacts
    Review: ActiveCampaign Review
15. Email Marketing Software: Constant Contact
    G2 Rating: 4.0 out of 5
    Pricing: $12 for 500 contacts
    Review: Constant Contact Review
16. Email Marketing Software: Brevo
    G2 Rating: 4.6 out of 5
    Pricing: $25 for 20,000 emails
    Review: Brevo Review
17. Klaviyo
    G2 Rating: 4.6 out of 5
    Pricing: $20 for 500 contacts
    Review: Klaviyo Review

How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Tool was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

But during my tenure at Mailmodo, I noticed that everyone was pushing themselves. It was in the culture to outperform yourself. We were often told in company townhalls that the company will grow only if you grow.

So I started this 60-day challenge because I wanted to experiment with the LinkedIn algorithm.

My goal was simple. To develop a habit of writing new jokes for a couple of weeks.

In this challenge, I posted 61 jokes and generated 600K+ impressions.

I’ve tried to share all my learnings from these 60 days in 9 observations. So that anyone creating content on social media can benefit from my experience.

Here are those observations (I’ve tried to keep them short):

1. Consistency is overrated

Write daily. But not every post you write will be good.

I’ve seen creators posting daily in the name of consistency. The internet does not need more content. It needs good content.

Think of all your followers — and your future followers. Why would you want them to read content that you know is sub-optimal?

My first learning was, consistency in writing is underrated, and consistency in posting is overrated.

After all, good distribution of poor content is more harmful than the poor distribution of good content.

2. Ideas generate ideas

When I started this challenge, I only had one joke in my mind. But as they say, whatever you pay attention to grows.

My first post was a joke about meeting my HR on Tinder. With each joke I posted, I had 2–3 more ideas around that topic. I wrote them in a Google document to revisit later.

In this challenge, I’ve made posts on stealing my colleague’s laptop charger, meeting the CEO of a $1B startup, 3 reasons why your Manager is Batman, and more.

I completed the 60-day challenge, but I still have 15–20 ideas left in that document.

3. Your online profile affects your offline profile

I once read that there are two kinds of people. When you walk into a room, you’re either a “there you are” person or a “here I am” person.

The former are more interested in others, while the latter are more interested in themselves.

And so “there you are” people make new friends more easily.

When I had meetings with new potential clients for work, they’d start by telling me that they had read my last joke on LinkedIn. Once, a partner shared a screenshot, telling me that one of my jokes was getting circulated in their company’s WhatsApp group.

I never thought posting jokes on LinkedIn would become an icebreaker. Since they already knew about me, I just had to learn about them.

It helped me to become a “there you are” person.

4. Always plan ahead

This was my biggest learning.

Having a buffer of posts planned for the coming week prevents the daily pressure of posting. Writing more when you are in your creative zone saves a lot of mental energy.

Toward the end of the challenge, I started scheduling my posts one week in advance. I know this goes against the definition of a daily challenge. But it was my project, I’m allowed to have my own definitions.

5. Short posts get more engagement

On LinkedIn, I usually post text-only jokes. They are based on a single observation. I found that more people read the post when it was shorter.

Longer posts did well only when the joke was REALLY good.

As the saying in comedy goes — the longer the premise, the bigger needs to be the payoff.

6. Trendy content gets attention more easily

I’ve posted more than 150+ jokes on LinkedIn. I’ve found that when a topic is topical, it gets more traction.

A bad joke on a news outperformed all jokes on my Manager.

I’m not proud of it, and I don’t recommend it. But I’ve noticed that it works.
The key is to jump on the trend before it gets overused.

7. Count of likes, comments, and followers are vanity metrics

I know this is a bold statement. And honestly, I’m yet to internalize it properly.

But I’d not have lasted more than 10 days in the challenge if I had just chased the metrics.

A few of my posts went viral, but I made it through only because I like writing jokes. More than getting likes.

8. Honesty over Manipulation

Some jokes performed surprisingly well only because they were honest.

In a time when everyone is creating content to trick the audience into engaging, the audience gravitates toward honest content. Something that is not desperate for engagement.

This also ties back to the previous learning. If you keep chasing vanity metrics, you’ll soon stop enjoying the process. Chase honesty instead.

9. People are kinder than I hoped

Even though I ensure that all my jokes are work or workplace-related. I felt nervous posting jokes on LinkedIn.

Sometimes a few people got offended, but that’s part of the risk of making them laugh. But no one has ever commented negatively on my posts about making jokes on this social media platform.

Rather many readers left witty and funnier comments on my posts. There are so many people who comment on my posts regularly.

Support from my readers really kept me going.

***

I’ll keep posting jokes. And as promised, most of them will be funny, some bold, and a few offensive.

But all of them will be for people who can take a joke as a joke.

One smile at a time.

***

***

For text-only jokes, you can connect with me on LinkedIn: here

For short funny videos, you can follow me on my Instagram: here

Gaming the LinkedIn algorithm: 60 days joke challenge was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re a marketer, ChatGPT can be a scary word.

Even I was intimidated initially but I still couldn’t get all the hype.

I experimented with it by giving it a few basic commands (aka prompts), but the results were still not as good as the internet claimed.

That’s when I stumbled upon a few marketers on platforms like LinkedIn and Medium who seemed to have learned the art of writing prompts. I had my first learning after following their tips (and copying their prompts). Sharing the most important ones below -

ChatGPT is as good as the prompts you write

You can train ChatGPT to behave as a writer, proofreader, researcher, and editor if you know how to write clear prompts.

For example, I typed a simple prompt asking for blog ideas, and I got a few generic ideas that I could’ve come up with myself easily. (Although, it did save me 30 minutes of brainstorming ngl)

But when I used a prompt submitted by an expert on Prompt Hunt, I got an entire plan made, which otherwise would’ve taken me half a working day.

You can see the difference between the results. Over the past few months, I have learned clear, contextual, and specific prompts always lead to better results.

Don’t be afraid to demand more from ChatGPT — you want your results in a specific format, mention it; if you want it to omit certain words or references, state it in the prompt.

Honestly, it is all in the prompts.

Although there’s more to ChatGPT than writing prompts

At the risk of contradicting myself, I’d like to share that multiple settings on ChatGPT can help you get desired results, and they’ve nothing to do with writing prompts.

But what do these settings control exactly? Remember that ChatGPT is ultimately a machine. It converts your words into the format it understands and then acts upon them. This format is called tokens.

Here’s how you can control it -

1. Max tokens — It specifies the length of the output. A higher number of tokens results in longer responses, whereas a lower number of tokens may shorten the response (and even give incomplete answers, so keep it balanced).
2. Temperature — It helps you control the randomness of the output. The scale ranges from 0 to 1, and the lower range gives you formal output, whereas the higher range provides creatively diverse results. Here’s the breakdown — 
   0.0 to 0.3 > Formal and non-creative writing
   0.3 to 0.7 > Balanced tone
   0.7 to 1.0 > Creative and diverse tone
3. Presence Penalty — Like its name, it penalizes the presence of tokens in the results when they’ve already been used in the input. Positive value discourages repetition of token, whereas negative values echo the input.
4. Frequency Penalty — This setting can direct ChatGPT to use rarer words instead of common vocabulary. Positive value promotes less common words and vice-versa.

I also found this detailed video that explains the “ hows” of all of this

ChatGPT does get better with a little help and, of course, a few Chrome extensions.

Browser Extension amplifies ChatGPT experience

The tech world didn’t waste time and has created hundreds of Chrome extensions to maximize ChatGPT’s output. My team and I have become a fan of a few of them, like —

1) Grapevine — Summarizes webpages

2) Merlin — Summarizes YouTube video, creates Google Sheet formulas, and suggests email replies.

3) TweetGPT — Changes the tone of any tweet based on your audience

Do try them out, and you’ll learn that ChatGPT DOES get better with extensions and integrations.

Yet, good prompts remain the key

What helps the most (in getting the best out of ChatGPT), however, is learning how to write the right prompts, and there’s no better way to do it than learning from experts.

Our AI prompt library helps you discover, submit, and rate marketing prompts from other experts.

It already has 250+ prompts from 50+ experts. You don’t have to skim through the dark abyss of the internet to learn about expert prompts (like I did) — we’ve already done the hard work for you, and people seem to be finding it useful already.

So, go check it out here if you haven’t.

What I learned about ChatGPT while creating a library of 300+ Prompts was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Accept it — not being salesy and truly being helpful are often at odds.

But here’s a story about an experiment I tried recently to defy this adage at Mailmodo. This began with the idea of creating a campaign to empower marketers to conquer email marketing challenges and shortfalls. (Trust me, it’s a slippery slope, a die-easy situation– you get the drift!)

The way to fix this (your opens, deliverability of click-throughs) is usually through a disciplined following of best practices. But then, the discipline is the difficult part. One way to make it easy was to gamify implementing these best practices. But how do you do that?

That’s when it struck me — why not build a 21-day challenge as folks do for the gym or other habitual exercises? And that’s how our brainchild, the 21-Day Email Performance Challenge, was born!

To give you an idea about the success of this campaign — today, the 21-day challenge has crossed the 450 participants mark. And also, today marks the end of the first cohort of participants — 300 of yous — a big, hearty congratulations.

So what do we do in this challenge?

1. One email a day to keep bad things away — We send participants one email daily packed with carefully curated, bite-sized action tasks to supercharge their email performance. (These tasks range from email authentication to list segmentation, design, deliverability, and more)
2. A reminder should you forget- A few hours later, we send a reminder email that sets up accountability. We asked them whether they had finished the task via an interactive email.
3. A report to measure your progress in 21 days- We collect the pre-21-day email data and post-21-day email data. And also build up a report on the progress and recommendations for improvements.
4. A community to help you figure it out- We provided a community with members like Samar Owais to help folks facing blockers or feeling lost.

Here are the sample emails for these -

1. The Daily email showcasing a challenge

2. The reminder email that goes out after the daily tasks

Sounds savvy?

So, here’s how we went about promoting it

1. Pre-launch → Our soft launch on May 3rd, alongside the brilliant conversion copywriter Samar Owais and our fantastic distribution partners, created an electrifying buzz. We saw an inspiring turnout of 300 participants.
2. Product Hunt launch → On D-day (May 10th, 2023), we launched Product Hunt. We got some genuine traction there as well by being featured amongst the top product.
3. Referral loops → Who better to promote you than those already signed up to take the challenge? So we built up an interactive referral widget inside the email.
4. Social Shares → We shared many of our stories and updates regularly on social to inform folks about what was happening and generate interest.

The Impact:

This is an ongoing and evergreen asset that we have fully automated. Following are the numbers we have seen so far-

• Total participants till now: 450 (and growing every day)
• Open rates: 39%
• Click rates: 10%
• Submissions: 3%
• Signups to the product: 35 (attributable)
• Main impact: Product awareness about Mailmodo

Now, we won’t sugarcoat it — the number of registrations didn’t skyrocket as we initially hoped. But let us share a little secret: it’s not about quantity but the fire burning within each participant.

We’ve been fortunate to attract individuals driven by ambition, thirsting for knowledge, and eager to see tangible improvements in their email performance. Their unwavering commitment has surpassed our expectations and kept the excitement alive, even halfway through the challenge. 📈

Here are some examples of great feedback that we received -

More submissions, referrals…

Our Hall of Fame

300+ folks have completed the challenge till now. We wish them all the best of emails.

These incredible individuals have shown us that remarkable progress is possible in a few weeks. Their unwavering dedication and hunger for success have set the bar high and left us in awe. 🌟

If you, dear reader, participated in this, do comment and share your feedback. Would love to hear from you.

Ready for a challenge?

Feeling inspired or even curious?

Join us on this awe-inspiring journey, and together, build better emails. Here’s the link- https://www.mailmodo.com/email-challenge/

Have questions about the campaign? Or how to build one for yourself? Share it in the comments, and I will try to answer them asap.

About Mailmodo: Mailmodo is a complete email marketing that helps folks create and send beautiful interactive emails and get amazing returns on each campaign. Interested in exploring Mailmodo — sign up for free here.

How to Build a Non-Salesy Product Marketing Campaign was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Email mistakes can send a chill down any marketer’s spine. They are embarrassing, make your brand look unprofessional, and don’t bring you the desired results. These mistakes escape the most detail-oriented eyes, and we only realize them once it’s too late.

While it is tough to keep a tab on the various kinds of email mistakes, there are a few basic ones that marketers must pay keen attention to, in order to avoid them.

Let’s take a look at some common email mistakes that can cost you $$$ and how you can fix ‘em, ft. your favorite memes!

1. The one without the links

2. The one with small buttons

3. The one with heavy images

4. The one where the fallback setup is incomplete

5. The one without email-safe fonts

6. The one with only images

7. The one without the Alt text

8. The one that gets clipped

These memes are surely a lot of fun, but you can only imagine the horror a marketer faces when these mistakes end up creating a bad experience for the user.

Read more about email mistakes, how they can affect you as a brand, and how you can avoid them here.

A Meme POV on Email Mistakes was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the things that Mailmodo takes pride in is the fact that we strive to give value to founders and marketers. The Growth Chat is Mailmodo’s podcast where experienced marketers from across the world share their learnings, stories, and insights to inspire and help marketers grow their businesses. As we conducted these monthly webinars, one of the hurdles we faced was lesser attendee turnout despite 250+ registrations every event. This got us thinking.

Why was this happening?

On analysis, we realized that event registrations only gets us to the users’ inbox, not to their calendar — which has become the holy grail through which people show up to meetings, events, and more. If it’s not on the user’s calendar, time isn’t blocked out, and the notifications at the start of the event don’t show up on the user’s desktop or mobile. Out of sight, out of mind.

The DIY Solution to our problem

So, we brainstormed on ways to get the event onto the user’s calendar without multiple redirects or ics file downloads. So using an AMP email form, we set up a workflow using a Google API and Pipedream where users can add the event to the calendar in one click, without leaving the inbox. We rolled this out in our next set of events and saw an immediate uptick in attendees.

The leap of faith

Soon our customers noticed it and we set it up for them as well. Even they started seeing positive results! Now that we had the proof of concept, we knew we had to build a DIY widget version of this in our product. Our product team took a leap of faith and built a product feature to solve the same pain point for our customers.

When the ‘Add to Calendar’ widget was released as an interactive widget, all marketers had to do was create a template, add the widget, link your Google Calendar event to the widget, and voilà! Not only does it enable one-click registration, but since it’s added to the calendar, it also boosts event attendance.

We tested the Add to Calendar widget for our events and saw a higher submission rate.

Internally, within Mailmodo, the team started using the widget in their newsletters, event invitations, and product update emails. It caught the eye of Naomi West, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Parcel who tweeted about it.

Naomi West on Twitter: "When people ask me if email is dead. My response is normally along the lines of "I think you're going to start to see some really cool things soon..." - cool thing being this immediate "add to calendar" type feature from @mailmodo pic.twitter.com/11pDhBP0Y2 / Twitter"

When people ask me if email is dead. My response is normally along the lines of "I think you're going to start to see some really cool things soon..." - cool thing being this immediate "add to calendar" type feature from @mailmodo pic.twitter.com/11pDhBP0Y2

Recently, in the Email Automation Masterclass — Jen Capstraw, Founder of Women of Email mentioned how she found the experience seamless.

What started out as an internal project for Mailmodo, is now a fully functional, easy-to-use, and highly impactful widget available for our customers to get higher webinar registrations, boost event attendance and create a delightful email experience.

Hosting an upcoming event? Try out ‘Add to Calendar’ on your own. Sign up here.

Why we built Add to Calendar was originally published in Building Mailmodo on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.