10 Email Marketing Best Practices (That Still Work in 2026) 

1 – Get the technical basics right (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, one-click unsubscribe).
2 – Treat your list like an investment, not an ATM.
3 – Write like a human, not a template.
4 – Know who’s actually on your list.
5 – Ask for replies.
6 – Sell with honesty, not hype.
7 – Have a personality.
8 – Email more often than you think you should.
9 – Automate the few sequences that matter.
10 – Test the big things first.

Some email advice ages like fine wine.

Some ages like milk 😅

The first version of this post (2019, with a “2020” in the title and a big infographic) had a bit of both.

So here’s the 2026 version.

Same 10 best practices underneath. But rewritten with what I’ve learned since then – from sending emails to my own list almost every day, and from looking at the email programs of 100+ clients.

One thing hasn’t changed at all:

Your email list is the one marketing asset you actually own.

No algorithm can take it away from you. No platform can change the rules overnight and cut your reach in half.

Which is exactly why it deserves better than most people give it.

1. Get the technical basics right

This one wasn’t even on the list in 2019.

Now it’s number one.

Because since February 2024, Gmail requires anyone sending more than 5,000 emails a day to Gmail addresses to:

✅ Authenticate their emails (SPF, DKIM and DMARC)

✅ Offer one-click unsubscribe – and process it within two days

✅ Keep their spam-complaint rate low – Google says below 0.1%, and never reaching 0.3%

Yahoo introduced similar rules at the same time.

Even if you send less than that, follow them anyway. They’re the price of getting into the inbox.

(If “DMARC” sounds like a Star Wars droid to you… your email platform has a help article on it. It’s a 20-minute job, once.)

Boring?

Absolutely.

But the best email in the world is worthless if it lands in spam.

What about the Promotions tab?

Don’t lose sleep over it.

Gmail decides where your email lands based on how people treat your emails… not just on a few “salesy” words.

So the fix is the same as above: send emails people actually open, read and reply to. Plain text helps. Fewer images and links help.

And asking new subscribers to hit reply to your first email helps more than any trick I know.

2. Treat your list like an investment, not an ATM

A lot of marketers still talk about “milking the list.”

As if your subscribers were a cow you squeeze every time you need money.

Huge mistake.

Bombarding people with pitch after pitch, with nothing in between, burns them out. They stop opening… then they stop trusting you… and then they’re gone.

I like to think of an email list more like a 401k or an index fund.

You keep putting in deposits – useful emails, good stories, real help (I call them “relationship deposits“) – and over time it pays you back. Again and again.

Every email is either a deposit or a withdrawal.

Make sure you’re making more deposits.

3. Write like a human, not a template

In 2019 this one was called “have good copywriting.”

In 2026, there’s a new problem:

AI slop.

Inboxes are now full of emails that are technically fine… and completely forgettable. Same structure, same words, same fake enthusiasm.

It LOOKS like an email…

…the same way a mannequin looks like a person.

So the bar has moved.

It’s not enough to be clear anymore. You have to sound like a specific person – with opinions, a sense of humour, and things only you could say.

Use AI if you want (I do, every day). But give it your voice, your stories and your judgment. Otherwise it’ll write like everyone else… because that’s literally what it learned from.

If you want to see what a profitable sales email looks like up close, here’s my email copywriting case study – the email that helped push a Kickstarter campaign past $100k.

4. Know who’s actually on your list

People don’t buy because your argument is logical.

They buy because they feel understood.

So you need to know the pains, fears, hopes and dreams of the people on your list – in their words, not yours.

The easiest way to find out?

Ask them.

A simple survey. A one-question email. A “hit reply and tell me…” at the end of your welcome email.

I read every single reply I get. It’s the best market research I’ve ever done, and it costs nothing.

And here’s what surprised me most:

The people who actually buy from me are often NOT who I’d have guessed. They’re experienced, they already have a business, and they’re way past the beginner stuff.

I would never have known that without asking.

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5. Ask for replies

This might be the most underrated best practice on this list.

When people reply to your emails, three good things happen at once:

Your emails are more likely to land in their inbox next time.

You learn what they actually think.

And they start to feel like they’re talking to a person, not a brand.

When I built a campaign around small, conversational first steps – including a thank-you page that asked people to hit reply – the first two emails got 251 replies from 544 new subscribers. (The full story is here.)

You won’t get that from a “Hi, thanks for subscribing!” email.

6. Sell with honesty, not hype

Before the internet, it was pretty easy to hype people up and keep them in the dark.

Not anymore.

Anyone can Google anything in five seconds. Every review, every complaint, every refund request is out there.

So the old “BIGGEST OPPORTUNITY OF THE CENTURY!!!” style doesn’t just feel icky… it doesn’t work as well as it used to.

What works better?

Admitting things.

“This isn’t for everyone.”

“Here’s what it WON’T do for you.”

“I’d rather tell you that now than after you buy.”

It sounds counterintuitive, but honesty is persuasive. When you admit the limitations, people believe the rest of what you say.

7. Have a personality

For years, most business emails were drier than the Gobi desert.

The thinking was that “professional” meant serious, cold and careful.

No one cares.

If your email sounds like everybody else’s, people will ignore it. Instantly.

So be funnier. Be more opinionated. Tell the story about the thing that went wrong.

Will some people unsubscribe?

Yepp.

Good.

Those weren’t your people anyway – they were just sitting on your list, not opening, and hurting your deliverability.

One of my favourite examples is still Jon Buchan from Charm Offensive. Even his confirmation emails make you smile. That’s a high bar for a confirmation email :)

8. Email more often than you think you should

Before I got into marketing, I worked at a wealth management company.

My job was to cold call 50 high-net-worth individuals and C-level executives a day.

I HAAATED it.

Not because I couldn’t hit my targets… but because my boss wanted me to call the same prospects again and again, more and more pushy every time.

And to my surprise, it worked. Annoyingly well, actually (at least in the Eastern European market I was calling at the time).

It just went against everything I believed about how to treat people.

So here’s the lesson I took from it:

Frequency works in sales – even when you do it badly. Imagine what it does when you do it well.

With email, “doing it well” means sending relevant, useful, entertaining emails several times a week to people who asked to hear from you.

And no, it won’t make everyone unsubscribe.

When I looked at my own numbers, the unsubscribe rate stayed roughly flat – around 0.11% per email – whether I was pitching hard or not.

Silence is what really kills a list.

If yours has gone quiet for a while, don’t just blast it with a promo. Reactivate it first. A coach with 800 subscribers he hadn’t emailed in 7 months sent one short, plain email – 14 replies in 24 hours, and one of them turned into a $2,100 coaching package.

9. Automate the few sequences that matter

In 2019 I told you to build lots of automations.

In 2026 I’d tell you something different:

Build fewer. Make them better.

I learned this the hard way – I once had so many patched-together automations that the whole system turned into a Frankenstein monster (the full confession is here).

For most businesses, three sequences do the heavy lifting:

A welcome sequence that turns a new subscriber into a reader – and ideally a buyer – in the first few days. (If yours isn’t converting, start here.)

A launch or promo sequence for when you have something to sell.

A reactivation sequence for people who’ve gone quiet.

Get those three right before you build anything else.

10. Test the big things first

Most people test the small stuff first.

Button colours. Subject line emojis. Sending at 9 am vs 10 am.

It’s not useless… but it’s not where the money is.

The way I see it, roughly 41% of a campaign’s success comes from the list, 39% from the offer, and only about 20% from the copy itself (the classic direct-mail version is the 40/40/20 rule – same idea, same order).

So test in that order.

Are you sending to the right people?

Is the offer something they actually want?

THEN worry about the words.

A quick word on open rates…

Since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection came out in 2021, a lot of “opens” aren’t real. Apple Mail loads the email on its own servers, whether the person reads it or not.

So I don’t steer by open rates anymore.

I watch clicks, replies… and sales. Those are the numbers that pay the bills.

The tools will keep changing – Gmail will update its rules again, the AI tools will get better, some new platform will promise to “replace email.”

How people decide to buy doesn’t change.

Learn that, and these 10 best practices will keep working long after 2026.

-Csaba