Dispatch
“Why your welcome sequence is losing $4.30 per subscriber”
Campaign teardowns. Deliverability intel. Subject line breakdowns.
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Issue #093
The anatomy of a 61% open rate — and the list hygiene that made it possible
Last Tuesday, a DTC skincare brand sent to 38,000 subscribers and hit a 61.4% open rate. Not a transactional email. Not a cart abandonment. A cold editorial send. I got the full breakdown from their retention lead — here's exactly what they did differently.
First: they hadn't sent in 11 days. Intentional. They call it the "anticipation gap" — and the data suggests it's worth roughly 8–12 open rate points on their list...
Second: the subject line was 4 words. "We've been thinking." No emoji, no number, no bracket. Here's why short wins on warmed lists...
In This Issue
- 01The 61% open rate anatomy — list hygiene + send timing breakdown
- 02Why "We've been thinking" outperformed 14 other subject line variants
- 03Deliverability note: Gmail's Feb 2026 filtering update, what changed
- 04Tool spotlight: Postmark's new bounce classification API
Get the full issue — and every one after it — free.
Campaigns that actually converted
Grove Supply Co.
"You left something important behind"
Removing the promo code increased revenue per send by 31%. Scarcity without discount pulled harder than 15% off.
Meridian Running
"48 hours. Then it's gone."
Plain-text format outperformed HTML version by 18 open rate points on the same list. Felt personal, not promotional.
Folio Finance
"Your Q3 money report is ready"
Triggered by in-app event (Q3 close). Behavioral sends on small, engaged segments outperform batch by 3–4x open rate.
"The difference between a 22% and a 51% open rate is rarely the subject line. It's the list you built before you sent."— Marcus Webb, Dispatch #083
93 issues. Start anywhere.
Why your welcome sequence is losing $4.30 per subscriber
A 6-email welcome sequence audit across 14 brands. The average sequence leaves $4.30 on the table per new subscriber — here's the fix.
The re-engagement email that pulled 34% from a "dead" segment
Sent to 90-day unengaged subscribers with zero promotional content. Just a question. 34% opened. Here's the exact copy structure.
Sender reputation in 2026: what's changed, what still matters
Gmail and Yahoo's new sender requirements took effect Jan 1. Here's what actually changed, what's FUD, and your 3-step audit checklist.
How a 200-word plain text email generated $31K for a $97 product
One email. 200 words. No images, no CTA button. Just text and a link. The full annotated breakdown of why it worked.
Segmentation that actually moves the needle (not the 6-segment trap)
Most senders over-segment and under-send. The optimal number of segments for lists under 100K, with real open rate comparisons.
Every issue in the archive is free to read. New ones land every Thursday.
The actual stack. Honest notes.
No affiliate links.
No sponsored placements.
Primary send platform for e-commerce. Flow builder is best-in-class. Pricing gets steep after 50K — worth it if you're using predictive analytics.
We use it. Recommend it above 10K list size.
Transactional sends only. Deliverability is exceptional. Not for marketing sends — their terms are strict and we respect that.
The only transactional ESP we trust for inbox placement.
Email rendering tests across 100+ clients. Expensive but essential before any major send. The spam analysis tool caught a filter issue that would have killed a 40K send.
Run it before any send over 10K.
Inbox placement testing and sender reputation monitoring. Caught a gradual reputation decline 3 weeks before it would have become a deliverability crisis.
Underrated. Most senders discover it too late.
Best newsletter-native platform for editorial sends. Built-in referral program is genuinely effective. We built Dispatch on it before migrating to custom infrastructure.
Recommended for newsletters under 50K.
Email verification before importing cold lists. Not glamorous but prevents the reputation damage that a 15% bounce rate causes. Run every list, every time.
Non-negotiable for any cold or purchased list.
Tools listed are used by the Dispatch editorial team or recommended by readers in our community. We have no affiliate agreements. If that changes, we'll say so.
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"Dispatch is the one newsletter I read before I respond to Slack. The Grove Supply teardown in Issue 087 changed how I write cart abandonment emails — pulled an extra $14K that month."
