😇 Good news: the bar is on the floor
October 2026 || Gradual sending, why nobody wants to open emails, and what to do about Black Friday
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October 2026 || Gradual sending, why nobody wants to open emails, and what to do about Black Friday [EmailOctopus Newsletter logo] [The EmailOctopus branding pattern] HI EMRE, A small business owner recently fired her marketing person and, before taking it in-house, asked her TikTok audience a simple question: do you actually read marketing emails? The comments exploded. People never opened them, deleted them, or sent them straight to spam. Yikes. You may be thinking it’s not exactly the kind of message I should be sending to our customers, as someone running a newsletter for a literal email marketing platform. Bear with me. _Practical task break_ You’re already in your mailbox, so humour me and scroll through a few days’ worth of your emails. If it’s easier, head to the Promotions tab. Check the subject lines – is anything enticing enough to make you open? Then, when you open it, can you say what this email is about? Does it spark your interest, make you want to check out the offer or think “I’m glad I signed up for this”? Does it make you feel something (anything at all)? _End of practical task_ If all you’ve found were excellent emails, congratulations – you’ve already weeded out the bad ones. We all want to be more like you. But if you’re not the lucky 1%, you've realised that most emails are… well, disappointing. Bad design, bad messaging, bad timing, bad targeting – just bad! Multiply that by the number of brands that convinced you to subscribe to their emails, and your mailbox may become a dreadful pit you avoid at all costs. Hot take: this can be a good thing for you. If the competition is _so bad_, all you need to do to shine is be just a bit better than them. Pardon my cheesy metaphor, but actually picture this in your head: your email can be a rose in a field of weeds – or it can be another thistle. It’s (luckily or not) all in your hands. That comment section I referred to earlier surfaced another detail. People named the emails they always open, praising brands that send content they are actually waiting for. They turned their subscribers into ambassadors by making their emails really good – it’s that simple. If you manage to become one of these brands, your subject lines, sending time, or CTA wording will matter much less. Until then, I’m here, with all the tools and tips to help you get there! 🤝 [collage of three images: a woman leaning on the arm of a leather sofa, looking at her phone with a bored expression; an email app icon showing six unread messages; and a single pink rose growing among dark green foliage.] NEW IN OCTOBER GRADUAL SENDING [Animation showing the UI and perks of Gradual sending] Use Gradual sending to spread your campaign's delivery over time – up to 24 hours. This is an excellent way to pace out visits to your website or a sudden influx of replies that flood your inbox. It can also help with your domain's warm-up or reputation management. You'll find it on the campaign review screen, under "How it's delivered". Pssst, it's free for everyone to use until October 30th – after that, it'll only be available on Pro, so make sure to check it out now if you're on Starter. Discover Gradual sending [1] AUTO-MAPPING COLUMNS IN IMPORTS [UI for mapping columns during import] Importing contacts used to mean matching every column to a field by hand. Every time. If you were moving across from a competitor or CRM with a long export, that got old quickly. Now, when your file has a header row, we pre-select the existing field that matches each heading. A “First Name” column goes straight into First name, “Last Name” into Last name, and so on. We ignore capitals, spaces, underscores and hyphens, so “first_name” and “FIRST NAME” match too. It picks up tags as well. A column headed “Tags” is set to import as comma-separated tags. MORE INTUITIVE CONTACT MANAGEMENT [UI for updating contacts with a bulk action] When you're tidying up your list or make any bulk actions (like bulk tagging or updating a custom field), it's helpful to know how many contacts you've picked. "Select visible" and "Select all" now show the number of contacts each one selects, so you can immediately spot it if you chose the right option. The action and confirmation steps are clearer, too – they show you the exact number of contacts you're about to update, unsubscribe or delete, both in the header and on the button. _Remember: deleted contacts can’t be restored. If you only want to stop emailing someone, unsubscribing them keeps their details (and their history) on file. And it's completely free._ OTTO'S MONTHLY PICKS [Hands with silver rings smoothing tissue paper inside a cardboard box, with a black-and-white photo print placed on top.] Article OPTING OUT OF BLACK FRIDAY DISCOUNTS If you’re not EmailOctopus, stuck with one product to sell, there’s a much better strategy than heavy Black Friday discounts. It’s simple: bundles, freebies and surprise gifts. Show your customers that they’ll get more for their money by bundling items into gift sets. Or say you’ll add something extra to each November order. Or incentivise them with “spend £50, get £10 credit for January”. This way, you move stock without cheapening your brand, keep your Q4 tills ringing, and get people to come back next year. You’re welcome. 💅 Read more [2] [Dense Discovery logo used in an EmailOctopus case study.] Case study DENSE DISCOVERY Speaking of a newsletter you would never skip. In Dense Discovery, Kai brings a unique blend of fascinating, digestible and educational content into your mailbox. His strategy, verbatim: “For the foreseeable future, DD will remain nothing more than a humble email, sent because I still enjoy sending it, to people who – somewhat improbably, 579 issues in – still want to read it. For now, that's still the whole strategy: find good stuff, put it into an email, hit send, repeat.” 👁️ Read more [3] [Hands placing a wooden wick into a jar of freshly poured white candle wax, with a second finished candle beside it on a linen-covered table.] Article HOW WILL NEWSLETTERS THRIVE IN AN AI-POWERED INBOX I really wish I didn’t have to send you to read AI-related pieces in every issue. Yet here we are. You know, candles didn’t go extinct the second we got electricity – their PR changed from being an absolute necessity to a luxury, a mood item. Marketers in the late 19th century were working overtime to convince people to stock up for special occasions or religious rituals. The best ones managed to survive by innovating, pivoting focus and rebranding. Nowadays, people buy candles not because they need them, but because they love them. Human-written content is going through the same rebrand. AI can handle the utilitarian copy, but your creative pieces made for entertainment, insights, or opinion absolutely should be written by humans. This specific piece is extra juicy and walks you through the world of an AI-dominated mailbox in 15 minutes. 🕯️ Read more [4] [Zapier logo used in an EmailOctopus article.] Integration ZAPIER I just realised the last time I recommended Zapier was over two years ago, and some of you fresh email marketers may not be familiar. Take a deep breath, this is going to change your life (or at least your workflows). Integrations are a hassle to build and maintain. It’s also impossible to integrate with every single app out there. And your tech stack should not be a roadblock when you’re trying to run a business. Zapier is the glue that keeps it all together. You can connect EmailOctopus with thousands of other apps and get Zapier’s AI assistant to figure it out for you. Add a subscriber when they attend your event. Get a notification anytime someone subscribes to your list. Trigger a post-purchase flow in EmailOctopus as soon as your subscriber buys something in your shop. Anything to make your life easier ahead of the Black Friday craze. ⚡️ Read more [5] PRO TIP FROM THE TEAM 🧠 CONNECT WITH THE HUMAN ON THE OTHER SIDE It's not exactly breaking the fourth wall, because you're generally _supposed to_ speak to your subscribers in your emails. But I feel many brands rarely actually acknowledge them or expect them to answer. This is a mistake. Especially given that auto pre-fetching rules distort your recipients' real engagement visibility. If you rely solely on open and click rates, you're very much in the dark. So ask your recipients to reply to your next email. Doesn’t matter how you do it. Ask for their opinion somewhere in the footer. Or say you’ll send them a photo of your cat if they reply with "cat pic, please". Or just be straightforward and say you want to know how many people actually read your emails. Then tag them as "superfans". This will help your deliverability (replies = increased engagement), give you an idea of how your recipients actually interact with your content, and let you identify your biggest supporters (handy if you ever need to work on your sender reputation). And perhaps you’ll get some insights on what they love about your emails. No downsides! P.S. If you’ve read this, you may as well hit reply and let me know 😉 BEHIND THE SCENES 🇨🇿 PRAGUE TRIP We went to Prague for our annual company trip earlier this month. It was so much fun – we had dinner in a medieval tavern, went for a run tour and learned how to make a chimney cake. We also discovered that horseradish (aka the Slavic wasabi) is, in fact, too much for some of us ;) [EmailOctopus team eating chimney cakes] NEXT UP Now that the first feature from the Smart Send initiative is up and running (Gradual sending), you all know what's coming next: Smart timing. It'll let you send your campaign at a time each of your recipients is most likely to open it. We're aiming to get it launched in the next few weeks – I know you'll love it! That's it for today. Happy emailing 🐙 [Photo of Magdalena, Customer Success Manager.] EmailOctopus by Three Hearts Digital Ltd 86-90 Paul Street EC2A 4NE United Kingdom [facebook social link] [6] [x social link] [7] [instagram social link] [8] You're receiving this email because you've signed up to receive updates from EmailOctopus. If you'd prefer not to receive these you can unsubscribe [9]. 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- Accession
- nse/emailoctopus/2026-10-23/4879
- From
- Magdalena at EmailOctopus · mada@emailoctopus.com
- Sent
- 23 October 2026 · 10:00 UTC
