Email and Wait Is Dead in 2026: Why Your Email Needs Strategy, Not Blind Hope

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Allea Grummert (00:11):
Hi there. Welcome to Happy Subscribers, a podcast that explores how bloggers and content creators can create more purposeful relationships with your audience through email marketing. I’m Allie Grimmert, email marketing strategist, copywriter, email platform expert and founder of the Dum For You email marketing agency, Duet. I started as a personal finance blogger in 2016 and have since helped hundreds of bloggers and creators like you maximize your email marketing for more impact, more traffic, and a better connection with your subscribers. Be prepared for some advanced email talk, as well as tactical tips to help get your valuable content into the hands of your audience faster and easier. I’m excited you’re here, so let’s do it. We can create a deeper, more meaningful connection with the community you love and serve through email.

(01:00):
If you are interested in getting my help to grow your email list, send traffic back to your website and create a more meaningful relationship with your subscribers through email marketing, visit duet.co/happy to book a free call with me. I promise you’ll learn a lot even in the process just about your own business, your own goals, and what could potentially be next for you and the growth of your email marketing strategy. Go ahead and book a call with me. I can’t wait to meet you. Oh, baby. 2026 is here. Well, soon, but it’s basically here. I am at this point coming back from Christmas break. I’m picturing future me because I’m actually recording this before Christmas so that I can really enjoy my time off with my friends and family and not pack a podcast mic for my drive back to Nebraska. As you listen to this, it is nearing 2026.

(02:01):
It’s getting so real. I am always excited for a new year. There’s just something about the refreshness of it. I’m not one who sets particular goals or resolutions or anything. I do have a word for the year and maybe that’s a podcast all its own, but the word is wonder. And I’m still trying to define what that is. I’m also tied kind of with using the word saver, but wonder just kind of feels like, “Hmm, I wonder what’s possible.” If you heard that noise, it’s my cat rolling down the back patio and her rolling patio. I do have the door open. Believe it or not, it is 51 degrees in Nashville in December and it is so freaking gorgeous. So I wish you were here. That all being said. Let’s talk about some predictions when it comes to email marketing for 2026 because you hear a lot, but you listening probably also do a lot of other things than email.

(03:01):
And email’s literally all I do. And so I’ve had time to kind of think through what I anticipate seeing in 2026 and some of it might rock your bone a little and you’re welcome to tell me that. You can DM me, let me know, or reply back to one of my emails if you’re on my list. If you’re not on my email list, you can do that by going to dwett.co, D-U-E-T-T.co/happy and get on my email list that way. That’s the way we can build a relationship. You can always reply back to my emails. I want to hear from you. But if you’ve got a beef with me, you just let me know. But here I am going to tell you what I expect or anticipate seeing in 2026. So I’m not really like a hot take kind of gal, but these are the things that if I had to stand on soapboxes, multiple soapboxes, there are seven of them.

(03:52):
So seven, five? Nope, there’s seven because your girl is verbose and I couldn’t just organize it into fewer. The first prediction that I have is that relationship driven creators will outperform everyone else. Now, I say this because we tend to use our emails. As creators, it can be really easy. I’m not saying so much for me as a service provider, but who I work with as content creators who have a lot of blog content and a lot of eyeballs they want to get in front of, we tend to treat email as like an RSS feed for like, “Just go do it. Here’s the thing, here’s the email,” which is true. If you send an email, you will get clicks. I can almost guarantee it. But I’m seeing that the relationship driven creators are going to rise above because there’s spending time talking to the humans on their email list.

(04:53):
Now, this requires a shift in thinking, and I don’t know if everyone’s going to do it. And not everyone has the luxury of doing it just yet at whatever point in your blogging career that you’re in. So I want to make that known too. Kind of across the board what I’m sharing today might not be applicable for where you’re at in your business and it might not be something that you can shift into because you’re just getting started or you’re just in your first couple of years of being a blogger or content creator. That being said, as you grow and develop, take some of these things and start doing them now, make them habits. So relationships with your audience are going to take precedence. Instead of just being like a one, like sending off telegraphs or sending out the newspaper of like, “Hey, go read the thing, extra, extra, read all about it.

(05:45):
” The relationship driven creators are asking for engagement from their subscribers on a more human to human basis, especially in the time of AI. This is how we build relationships. We build them over walks in the park or over a meal or going for coffee with a friend. This is how we get to know people. And I see, I envision that the creators who talk to their audience are the ones who are going to really thrive. And by thrive, I mean, they’re going to see higher engagement, they’re going to see longer brand retention, if you will, people sticking around, brand loyalty, and you’re not going to have to work as hard to keep your subscribers happy and on your list when you are actually speaking their language. So this looks like asking for replies to your emails. That’s one way to do it. Another could be what happens if you want to host your own event and invite people to join you.

(06:49):
Maybe it’s your top engaged folks on your email list. What would it mean to host a quarterly office hours or brainstorming session or something exclusive to your list? The important part is that it’s face to face, and it doesn’t have to be you and 10,000 people on your email list. You can filter it out to be just the most engaged folks, but put yourself in a position where you can actually engage in conversation and hear back from them. Another would be polls that include depth. Sure, you can always ask like, “Hey, which of these free recipes do you want me to feature on Friday?” That’s one thing, but what if you ask them, “What are your hopes?

(07:33):
When you get a cake recipe for me, how are you hoping to feel once it’s done or when you show up at the party with the cake?” Be able to ask those questions. You could even host a welcome call. I know I have a client from a few years ago who did this once a month, just had an onboarding call for new people on the list and you would encourage them to then sign up for the membership to get more calls and more community, but for just new subscribers to get to know you. And we’re not talking very long time, it can be 20 minutes. And I’m saying this as not just a Facebook live. You want to hear people’s voices, give them a time and a place to commit and to join you. And of course you can set out a recording if you really want to.

(08:19):
So all of this both builds a relationship with your audience and your individual subscribers, but it also gives you real time audience research. I just sent out an email to my list with one question and what bananas is that four people have replied with the exact same answer. Probably got eight replies. Half of them were all about this one thing. And I was like, “Okay, tell me more.” “Okay, flesh that out for me. Is it kind of along these lines or these lines? Or what’s your deeper question here? “And I get to engage with them, which means I get to create better content for my listeners who are also on my email list and engaged with that email and replied to my answer or replied to my question with an answer. So these relationship driven creators, they’re the ones who when you have answers and you have a voice and you have a language for your audience, you’re able to really define the role of your content in the reader’s life.

(09:18):
It’s something where you get to speak to, I had a conversation with a fellow reader, that’s not something AI’s doing. They’re not having conversations with individual readers and you can assume those things where I get to say now,” I had four people reply saying they struggle with consistency when it comes to email marketing. “And I’m like, ” Great, I can put that in an email and it shows humanity. “It also gives readers a reason to care and not just click because we want them to know you as a creator, as the brand, if you will. And we want them to click through to your emails because you care about them and they know that you listen to them as well. So I think 2026 will favor the creators who are proactive and responsive to their audience, not just people pushing out lots and lots of content.

(10:11):
So number two, second prediction, permission must be earned and retained. Now, I think getting the subscriber can feel very transactional, especially as we have things like Grow or Grocers List or ManyChat. We have always really cool ways to grow lists, even the kits creator network, but it feels pretty darn transactional. It’s like, ” Hey, can you give me this thing? Sure, I’ll give you the thing. “”Great. Now you’re on my email list.” That’s step one, but keeping them is the relationship and the way that I think that this is going to happen the best is through segmentation.

(11:02):
So we now, like we originally got permission from people to be on their list, we need to continue to retain permission that it’s continued to be earned to be in someone’s inbox. So I believe segmentation will be the gold standard for nurturing and caring for and retaining subscribers on your list. So yes, cast a big net, if you will, but think about how they’re on your list and how can you give them what they want, not what they don’t want, give them control if they want it for what they want showing up in their inbox. So I think it’s really easy to send out really great content, but if we’re not listening to our subscribers on what actually applies to them, it’s like we’re ignoring them and we don’t want that either. And we want to give readers relevant content for what they’re looking for, struggling with, hoping for, and then you can deliver that.

(12:01):
There are so many other benefits to segmentation, but I believe really thinking through, what if I gave a limited number of emails to each subscriber and not one email that goes to everyone every day of the week or six days of the week? Prediction number three, and I believe this with all my heart, and I hope for this with all my heart, email will stop being a commodity and become a core business asset. For so sneak and long, email is what’s on the back burner. It’s like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do all this. I’ll show up on social media. I’ll grow my list.” But email, it just feels like, “Oh, it’s this thing I throw together and ship it. ” And I think that’s going to change because email itself, like I said, AI could send out an email for you. An RSS feed could send out an email for you, but frequent emailing or just being like a Rolodex of content and quote unquote inspiration for your audience of what recipes to make or what home decor to try is going to fall by the wayside.

(13:12):
I think in performance and how it connects with your audience, therefore email can’t just be, just ship it, just ship it. I think it needs to become a core business asset. Of course, I believe this. This is what I do for my clients all the time and it’s often so overlooked until we create something for them, we create a welcome sequence and my clients are like, “Oh my gosh, I actually fill a void in my subscriber’s life that actually matters to them and therefore matters to me as a creator. And this is my why to keep going and to keep sending emails.” So I think email for so long has just kind of been this pessay like I’ll do it when I have time or I’ll come back to it later, but I think it’s going to take a forefront. We’re going to see email as an asset.

(14:02):
I love repurposing content as well. So it’s like as you create these things, it can go in that feeling and that dedication you put in one email to communicate to your list what they are actually struggling with or how you solve it or your personality or the things that just make people love your content that they already love about you. We’re able to automate that so that as you continue to grow your list, people are getting in on the secret. They’re getting the best content and then you don’t have to do more work. It’s truly incredible. And I think people underestimate what email marketing can do. Number four, trust lives in email marketing. There’s so much … Guys, I saw a reel the other day or something on threads, I can’t remember, but the comment was there’s a special place in HE Double Hockey Sticks for people who make AI videos about cats, like these fake cat videos, because people like me come in and we like the really obvious AI, obviously I can tell, but there are some that I can tell initially and I just think, “Oh my gosh, the world is full of these beautiful little cats and I have been lied to.

(15:11):
I’ve been lied to. It’s not a real cat. That thing never existed and it makes me so sad.” Then I literally go and I take my little heart away on threads and I take my like away on Instagram and I just get … We don’t know what we can believe online. So this is where I think in 2026 creators and the recipients of the work that you’re creating and sending out will not live on social media, it’s going to live in the inbox. This is the most personal human to human platform other than a Zoom call and other than meeting in person at a conference or something. This is the most personal one to many platform that we have. And I say that as somebody who gets replies from her audience, I get replies to my inbox and I can engage with them. I’ve made friends that way.

(16:06):
If you know anything about my origin story as a personal finance blogger, this is how I became a lover of email marketing because I had people replying back to my personal finance emails telling me about their personal finance stories, things that were really raw and vulnerable. And I’m just a stranger living in Lincoln, Nebraska on the other side of the world from some of these folks encouraging them. So people build trust in the email platform and they expect, or I think that they hope, maybe we collectively can change what people expect from email marketing, that the people behind the emails are real, that we genuinely want to help them. We recognize them as people and not just the recipients of an automated email, right? We can build automated emails that actually feel really, really personal and we do that because we get to know them back to the other point.

(16:59):
So I also think that the other piece of this is that creators will not learn … I would say I think we’re finally going to realize the importance of email marketing in all of the vaultality, I think that’s how you pronounce it, volatility of what AI has done for search, for Pinterest, for social media and algorithms and all of that.

(17:29):
I hope you feel this, dear listener, creator of your own things, that email marketing is a really safe platform to build into. So I know it can be an investment of a learning curve and perhaps an investment of hiring on a team member or an agency like mine to help you, but it is a really safe platform that you have a lot of control over. And when you send emails, you will likely get traffic back to your website. I know I said it kind of like a guarantee at the beginning of this, but when you send an email, someone will click. The odds are really, really high. And so as you build these relationships as well, you’re also building a case for when you launch a product or a cookbook, or you get to brainstorm ideas with the people who are receiving your content. And I think that’s going to give creators like you and I more trust in email marketing as a tool because we don’t have to chase some sort of algorithm.

(18:28):
We can actually invest in it and know that it’s going to give us the returns, whether immediately or definitely in the long run. All right. Prediction number five, your existing content will become your 2026 advantage. Now, you’re probably like, “Oh, you’re just asking me to do more things y’all. Have I mentioned repurposing?” I love repurposing things. And so just because I want you to do more email doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do more work or do it from scratch. Case in point, you have tons of content already. So it’s repurposing it into an email or using that content. I’m talking like PDFs, YouTube videos, guest interviews on other people’s podcasts, maybe templates or things that you’ve created, checklists and sending that out to your list. So I learned this in school when I went to school for advertising. What is it like? The goal is that when something is created, you spend actually 20% of the time creating it, 80% of the time promoting it.

(19:35):
And oftentimes we create, we send, we move on to the next piece of content. Sometimes I have to remember, I should really tell my email list about … I should send out a roundup of top podcast interviews. That’s a great way to repurpose content. It’s the holidays. If y’all already got that email, it’s because I was like, “Okay, I don’t want to create something new. I want to repurpose something I’ve already done.” And when you’ve created really great content, whether it’s on the blog or a PDF or a guide of some sort or a five day email course, notify your list, tell them they can engage with it. Again, they may have forgotten that it existed. So I don’t think you necessarily need to be creating a lot of new content. If 2026 is the year where you’re like, or even the first half of the year and say, “What if I didn’t create tons of new content and I just repurpose what I have to email it out to my list?” Say perhaps while you’re working on a new offer or while you’re working on creating content that this may be out of season and you don’t want to email it to your list, give yourself the benefit of reusing content so you don’t have to create from scratch when it comes to email because what you’re doing is you’re a curator.

(20:43):
I’ve always said this to my clients or you’ve maybe heard me say it here before, like you’re like a managing editor of your own publication. You get to pick, oh, this is what goes out seasonally or here’s a roundup. Something else along those lines. I know I’ve heard kind of pushback over the years, like long time ago and I still hear some of it now of like, “But I already sent out that content.” Y’all, nobody’s going to be mad while a delightful menu that you’ve created of content related to a pain point or something seasonal when you’ve hand selected it. That’s not a burden to people. Insurances are, not everybody opened every one of your emails, as we know, and not everyone clicked all of them or when they did click, maybe they didn’t engage with it fully, but this is a good reminder. So repurpose, send out the content, make life easier for yourself, even if it’s just for like a short season because you need superprive to be able to focus and spend energy somewhere else in your business.

(21:41):
Prediction number six. Success around email marketing. Let me do that again. Okay. Prediction number six. We will be measuring the success of email marketing differently this year. Now, this is one of my soapboxes. What can I say? I think it’s important that you keep your eyes on your own data. Comparing your open rate to somebody else’s open rate, not super helpful. Click rate, not super helpful. Some people have been in business for 10 years and they see a high click through rate. Other people have been in business for 10 years and see a low click rate, but they get plenty of replies and they’re doing fine too. So it’s just really hard for you as a creator if you’re worried about whether you’re meeting somebody else’s mark. So I want you to keep your eyes on your own data, compare your own engagement to your own data.

(22:34):
That being said, even the data is not super reliable. When iOS change things for tracking opens, you can’t really trust an open rate to be super accurate. I think I’ve said this before. Sure. If your open rate goes from 15% to 50, probably from a list cleanup or something and getting rid of your cold subscribers, awesome. But the goal of going from like 45 to 50 shouldn’t be your primary goal. Those numbers are just too close. We just know that you have a relatively healthy list. Same thing with click rates. We’ve got bot clicks. Who even knows? But compare your data to your own data. There we go. I said it. This is somewhere you can actually reflect and say, “What is the purpose of my email marketing? Is it traffic? If so, be counting your total clicks. Keep a record of that from each email.

(23:25):
Two days after you send an email, how many people clicked?” That’s just your click rate. However, I saw this in an audit the other day with one of my clients and she goes, “I actually sent out this one email purposefully without anything to click on. I just wanted to send something valuable.” And so that might be why the click rate is lower. And I was like, “Exactly. Context matters. And your big goal is to send out something valuable without trying to garner a click in order to continue to build trust with your list. That’s what matters. That’s the metric for this email.” So same thing goes in welcome sequences. Even in mine, I didn’t have anything to link to in my welcome sequence for the first year. I didn’t even have a business website. I had a landing page. So I had nothing to click to.

(24:12):
So my click rate was like zero. Awesome. But the purpose of me introducing my content and how I help people, and you can reply if you have questions, that KPI was met. So be considerate of how you are measuring the success of your email list. Okay. Prediction number seven, we will find, I’m saying we collectively, the royal we, all of us. I’m just kidding. But email, we will find a new way to make money with email marketing and it won’t just be from traffic. So I’m seeing that creators are hitting a ceiling on monthly subscriber growth or how many people are clicking in their emails. We’re seeing people gain 10,000 subscribers, but then lives 5,000, which that’s a whole other thing we could talk about. But when we put so much pressure on this email marketing tool to be a traffic generator, we’re losing sight of kind of the overall brand and what’s possible.

(25:19):
As a brand, not just a telegraph newspaper company saying extra, extra here all about it, there’s so much we can build into email marketing that makes it more brand driven, knowing that that’s not necessarily like a turnkey way to make immediate money. So we have to be thinking about email marketing as a different type of revenue channel, or whether that’s an overall brand, or how you could actually solve problems for your audience outside of sending them to your website. This could look like creating products. It could be an exclusive newsletter. It could be doing more with affiliates, not just by linking to your Amazon shop page at the bottom of an email. How do we actually talk specifically about the products that you love and use? Can we do a giveaway? Can we do an email course on how to actually implement the tools? What can we automate?

(26:16):
If you have your favorite products, how do we make sure people know about them? Now, I know that that feels like pennies, but think about this as a concept. I don’t have an answer. If it were up to me, all these brands would just be knocking at your door to get in front of your 50,000 subscribers through ads, not sponsored content. If you don’t have to do additional work other than add ads for their brand, to your newsletter, that would be awesome. Because coming from marketing, we used to study the effectiveness of billboards. Do you know how to even measure how many eyeballs see a particular billboard on an interstate versus one that’s in the middle of town? It’s wild. But the point is, brands pay for exposure. They pay for brand awareness. The goal of a campaign doesn’t even necessarily need to be that they got so many clicks or that they got so many subscribers or they got so many giveaway entries.

(27:12):
That could be the KPI of the campaign, but I think as a creator, you have already fostered such an amazing group who is interested in your content that I think brands should be knocking down your freaking doors to have their brand show up in your inbox full stop. Now that’s just my idea and clearly a soapbox. I was using my hands. I know you can’t see it, but I was like karate shopping back here. But I think 2026 is going to be the year that we explore how creators can earn more with their email lists. I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to look, but I see that coming. There you go. Those are my predictions for 2026. I have a lot of hopes and dreams for the creator space, as well as our relationship with email marketing and what that means for your relationship with your subscribers and the people who’ve raised their hand and opted in and said, “Yes, I want more of this.

(28:08):
” And you know that I’m here to make this as simple as possible. Of course, there’s options if you want to hire my team to do this for you, but I know a lot, most listeners are not. And so I want you to take this away as an encouragement for what 2026 could be and thinking outside of the box of what we are used to. So hit me up in the DMs if you have thoughts, if you want to elaborate with me on some of these topics. If you want to solve all the problems, that’d be great. Just let me know and I will report back to all of everyone else. So thank you so much for listening. I’m here. My DMs are always open on Instagram. It’s @aligrummert. I’ll include the link in the show notes. If you want to join my email list, which is where I share so much valuable content for new and old subscribers alike, and where you’ll be the first to hear about any offers or webinars or things.

(29:06):
I don’t currently have anything planned, but you’ll want to get on the list regardless. And you can always email me back, reply back to any of those emails. Let me know what you’re thinking. I’d love to get to know you. So you can do that at duet.co/happy. We’ll include the link to that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much and here’s to 2026.

(29:30):
Thanks so much for listening to Happy Subscribers and our conversation about email marketing today. I hope you feel inspired to take action even if it’s a small change so you can more confidently share your valuable message with your community through email. Special thanks goes to my team who makes it possible to produce and share these episodes with you. Seriously, thank you guys. If you want to hear more email marketing tips, strategies, and success stories to help you develop deeper or meaningful relationships with your email subscribers, be sure to subscribe to Happy Subscribe drivers so you don’t miss an episode. If you have a few seconds, I invite you to share this episode link with a friend or post it on social media so your peers and community can benefit from it as well. And if you have a few minutes, I’d appreciate if you’d leave a written review of the podcast since that helps more people hear about it.

(30:16):
And I believe we need more creators sending more valuable emails to their audience with more confidence. If you want to reach out to me directly, the best way to do that is to join my email list through one of my top freebies listed in the show notes. You’ll get regular emails from me that are packed with value. And if you hit reply to any of those emails, it’ll land in my inbox and I can’t wait to chat with you there. Until next time, let’s do it.