Creativity meets technique — Stripo.e mail

On this unique interview with Stripo, Rui Nunes, a famend professional in e mail advertising, opens up about his journey into the trade, the traits shaping it, and the methodologies behind his most profitable campaigns. Rui additionally shares worthwhile insights into the way forward for e mail advertising, emphasizing the function of personalization, knowledge optimization, and AI-driven instruments in delivering standout campaigns.

Skilled

Founding father of SendXmail, Zopply, and HotLeads

Rui Nunes is a serial entrepreneur whose portfolio contains three digital advertising companies SendXmail, Zopply, and HotLeads, in addition to many different corporations in several fields. He began working with e mail earlier than the 2000s and by no means let go, though individuals say it is DEAD since then. 

Rui likes to go alongside his expertise and know-how to the youthful era coming into the advertising world. He spreads his courses from Lisbon to Barcelona and Bangkok, educating digital regulation, efficiency advertising, e mail advertising, and advertising automation with AI.

He is additionally been a board member of the Portuguese Affiliation of Advertising Professionals (APPM), for greater than 10 years and empowers native entrepreneurs to compete worldwide.

Inventive by nature and an artist at coronary heart and soul, realized to like knowledge and numbers by taking a look at them from one other perspective.

The final word app: Why e mail advertising nonetheless thrives

Stripo: You’ve had a various journey in advertising, from communication design to founding a number of companies and educating. What initially drew you to e mail advertising, and what features proceed to captivate you?

Rui: My life is a serendipity of occasions offering a number of doorways to open. I select to open the doorways that relate to what challenges me, match my values, and appear proper at that second.

Have I carried out many issues that I remorse? For positive, nevertheless it’s a part of the method. I realized a lot from it.

In ’96–97, two Spanish entrepreneurs challenged me to check every part about the perfect web alternatives in the US on the time. After researching so much utilizing a dial-up web connection (sure, I’m that previous), it was clear that permission e mail advertising was the best way to go.

Even at the moment, and earlier than regulation was made to demand it, having the subscriber’s permission was what made the distinction between the a number of corporations utilizing e mail advertising on the time.

It was clear that there was a decline in these utilizing opt-out methods (including individuals with out their consent till they’d decide out) and in those that collected their consent within the course of. That idea was the delivery of the most important permission e mail advertising database in Portuguese and Spanish worldwide. I’m pleased with being a part of that achievement.

Challenger channels like SMS, social media, direct messaging apps, and even Slack have vitiated the dying of e mail advertising. We’re nonetheless right here and thriving.

On the finish of the day, e mail is what I name the last word app. It’s a common protocol of communication that may be present in any digital system, even in undeveloped nations. It may be in our newest Tesla mannequin or our sensible fridge.

Rui Nunes,

Founding father of SendXmail, Zopply, and HotLeads.

Likewise, it has additionally change into like an web ID. We use our e mail addresses to log in, which has change into an identification course of to work across the internet. That’s what I discover superb about it as a channel. It has change into pervasive and a part of the online as we all know it.

Electronic mail advertising methods that ship: Insights and greatest practices

S: Together with your expertise main groups and serving to corporations maximize their ROI, what do you see as essentially the most neglected metric in e mail advertising as we speak, and why do you assume extra manufacturers ought to concentrate on it?

R: The great and unhealthy of e mail advertising are the identical: it’s low cost and works! So, extracting the ROI of e mail advertising isn’t that onerous.

Having stated that, essentially the most neglected metric I see with e mail advertising as we speak and from the start is their subscribers’ LTV — lifetime worth.

To today, I nonetheless bear in mind very carefully that after I left the primary e mail advertising firm I led, I used to be checking the analytics, and there have been individuals nonetheless opening, clicking, and doing the issues that generated cash for greater than 12 years straight.

I’ll repeat it: 12 years!

Are you able to think about how a lot cash these individuals have generated for us through the years, since we’re paid per e mail despatched or performance-based?

When you may have a excessive quantity, you could be extra aggressive in your funding to get related individuals onto your listing. As a substitute of attempting to scrape for quantity, paying pennies to get unengaged subscribers, you possibly can pay a lot increased to have high performers each time.

S: Personalization and segmentation have change into important in e mail advertising. How do you strategy creating significant, data-driven segments that transcend the fundamentals, and will you share an instance of a profitable marketing campaign the place superior segmentation performed a key function?

R: Positive. For starters, some segments weren’t used beforehand as a result of we didn’t have sufficient subscribers in these segments to justify growing personalized content material for them. It wouldn’t make sense as a result of it wasn’t worthwhile to do it. We would wish extra important mass to make it price it.

Segments have been the most effective methods to extract essentially the most out of a listing, not solely from a efficiency perspective but additionally to supply extra related content material for every particular person. The extra related we discover the e-mail, the extra it’ll carry out and the extra we’ll have interaction.

A few of our best-performing and neglected segments are primarily based on previous behaviors in our internet properties and campaigns. Entrepreneurs rely totally on everlasting knowledge like age and sources, whereas behavioral knowledge is usually extra correct and fewer biased.

Now we have a shopper within the B2B trade for whom we now have e mail automation prepared for many who set off a algorithm, like visiting the product and pricing pages greater than X instances. That automation makes use of totally different segments with dynamic content material to ship a super-customized e mail to interact and shut the deal.

Since we activated it, they’ve attributed US$1.3M in simply 4 weeks working. In fact, all of the benefit isn’t just for this automation, however we’re capturing the result of the complete advertising funding utilizing segment-triggered campaigns like this.

S: You carry a singular mixture of inventive route and analytical focus to your e mail advertising methods. How does this twin strategy affect the best way you design and execute e mail campaigns, particularly when balancing creativity with data-driven choices?

R: Let’s say that my inventive and inventive facet is what’s native.

It comes naturally, though I attempted to develop it as a lot as potential whereas rising up and gained a collection of prizes and reward . . . nevertheless it wasn’t paying the payments but. So, I needed to decide and develop a facet of me that wasn’t pure: the analytical one, if you’d like.

At first, it was agonizing to take a look at numbers, do math, and attempt to make sense of them. Nonetheless, through the years, it has change into fairly totally different. Now, I really like to take a look at uncooked knowledge and create a murals out of it. I selected to see it as an artwork type.

Now, it’s my superpower, which just a few grasp: the capability to have a creative eye for design and perceive what the info tells me to construct campaigns that work. I’m humble sufficient to grasp that regardless of having over 30 years within the area, knowledge and A/B testing can nonetheless beat my bets.

So, though my inventive facet needs to fly and supply out-of-the-box concepts that work like wonders, I additionally perceive that data-driven choices are the best way to go when the second comes.

Most of my work as we speak includes overseeing the crew’s growth and creating frameworks and processes that nurture the designers’ inventive facet whereas empowering the info analysts to have a say within the remaining product.

S: Your background contains founding corporations centered on digital advertising in several nations. In what methods have you ever tailored your e mail advertising methods for various cultural or regional audiences inside these markets?

R: Truly, most of our market resides within the US, UK, and Northern Europe. Spain, Italy, and Portugal (the final one is my headquarters) have a residual influence on my companies.

There are very totally different cultural audiences in all of those markets. I’m not solely speaking about language. If that have been the case, it will be simpler. We might simply have to translate the content material, and that’s that. However no! It’s extra difficult than that. It’s a special tradition altogether. Even inside the identical shopper, in the event that they’re worldwide, they battle, and we’re now snug with this.

Rui Nunes,

Founding father of SendXmail, Zopply, and HotLeads.

Every content material localization takes a specific strategy to that area, tradition, and even the aim of the marketing campaign or publication. We are able to deal with this correctly as a result of individuals work for us in each location we handle.

We spend money on native professionals who deeply perceive what works in that location. Moreover, we at the moment have greater than 350 contractors working across the globe on many tasks. Since our inception, our totally distant stance has been a profitable alternative for us, because it has change into an asset as an alternative of a legal responsibility.

Navigating traits in automation methods

S: Having applied advertising automation for quite a few manufacturers, what traits do you see in automation methods, and are there any rising automation instruments or practices you’re enthusiastic about?

R: There’s an fascinating mixture of traits taking place. Despite the fact that many massive manufacturers go for the same old suspects within the area, like Salesforce Advertising Cloud with Einstein or Adobe Expertise Cloud with GenStudio or Goal, there’s additionally a rising development of massive manufacturers ditching all-in-one options for one thing tailored in keeping with their wants.

Klarna is essentially the most publicized model, however I’ve seen a couple of different manufacturers dipping their toes right into a custom-built answer that conveys totally different options, like AI-coding help and no-code techniques, to construct one thing utterly designed for his or her wants.

The explanations for this are primarily three:

1. It’s cost-saving because you spend money on one thing that you simply personal afterward. There are not any month-to-month super-costly charges, which is paramount for the large manufacturers.
2. Tailored design and expertise: this implies they’ll design one thing that responds on to the expertise they need to present their viewers.
3. Proprietary IP.

They usually can maintain evolving the instruments to answer future calls for.

This opens a brand new world, and we’re tremendous excited to contribute to no matter answer the purchasers want on this division.

For medium–smaller corporations, we’re seeing huge adoption of API connector instruments, like Zapier and Make, to supply complicated advertising automation that the common platforms can’t present in a single answer.

These instruments enable us to do superb issues, and so they rival the large manufacturers, which normally price 50 instances extra.

S: Automation and AI are rising quickly in e mail advertising. What function do you see AI enjoying in personalization and segmentation, and are there any potential pitfalls manufacturers ought to look ahead to when integrating AI into their e mail methods?

R: We’re on the tipping level of asserting that multiplying the human strategy is definitely a actuality. Up till very lately, solely with instruments like Salesforce Advertising Cloud and related may AI be used to create content material slots inside a publication designed for every subscriber — what we wish to name hyper-personalization.

With the appearance of extra democratic entry to AI, even for these with smaller budgets, we will now see the rise of hyper-personalization for anybody within the area.

Nonetheless, e mail advertising and automation platforms usually are not growing these options quick sufficient, as AI is evolving quickly. To appreciate the complete potential of those applied sciences, we have to resort to third-party techniques that do the heavy work for us.

I see many individuals fall into the principle pitfalls of relying an excessive amount of on AI and never having a set of boundaries and guidelines of use. They let AI hallucinate, as we normally name it when it goes freestyle and produces content material towards model guidelines and tips.

It’s essential to supply stable constraints and have a number of testing grounds to make sure that the content material generated doesn’t go rogue and supply content material that doesn’t work as meant.

S: Do you assume the use and coaching of AI analytics and automation are a development in e mail advertising that can acquire momentum in 2025?

R: I might say so in our case and the purchasers we work with. Nonetheless, this gained’t be the case for almost all of the e-mail advertising and automation market. I’m so pessimistic about it due to the lag between improvements and the adoption charge in earlier conditions.

Despite the fact that AMP for e mail was launched years in the past, solely a fraction of e mail entrepreneurs use it commonly. The identical is true for DMARC and BIMI on the sender authentication facet or for darkish mode when the system activates at evening.

I feel there’s an urge and a requirement to use it, however most e mail entrepreneurs will solely use the advert hoc and guide strategy, constructing content material individually on ChatGPT and Claude after which pasting it into the publication.

In my understanding, that’s extra of what we used to do, however as an alternative of knowledgeable copywriter, it will likely be a machine producing bland content material towards the competitors doing the identical factor.

Sharing data: Classes from a thought chief

S: Your e mail publication shares common ideas and insights on model advertising, together with case research. What makes a specific case research or perception stand out, and the way do you select which examples to incorporate to supply essentially the most worth on your subscribers?

R: The method is fairly simple. A number of sources do a lot of the curation for me, and I even have notification alerts round particular key phrases that do a lot of the work.

My job, then, is to establish what is nice sufficient to be part of the publication.

What makes it ok?

1. Is it from a dependable supply?
2. Have we seen related outcomes utilizing the identical techniques?
3. Does our expertise out there maintain what they declare?
4. Is there sufficient details about what they did to extract worth?
5. Are the outcomes ok to encourage others to observe their strategy?
6. Can our viewers be taught from that have with sensible examples and techniques?
7. Is it totally different sufficient from the earlier shared instances to always be taught new issues?

It doesn’t matter if we’re speaking a few single-creator publication or an enormous company with a extra complicated technique and techniques. What issues is whether or not we will be taught from it and apply it to our specific case.

That’s why I feel everybody, from seasoned e mail and automation entrepreneurs to solopreneurs who should juggle all of the features, can be taught from these experiences.

S: As an educator, you assist information the following era of entrepreneurs. What abilities do you take into account important for somebody coming into the e-mail advertising area as we speak, and the way has this modified over current years?

R: As at all times, for the reason that starting of this occupation, what’s wanted is the excessive capability to adapt to the context, the established order, and the way our viewers prefers to interact.

Our focus as entrepreneurs is to grasp our services or products and our viewers deeply in order that we will talk relevantly to each events.

A terrific e mail marketer should at all times be up-to-date with the most recent traits and totally perceive the fundamentals and greatest practices.

A important thoughts that isn’t starstruck by the brand new shiny objects can be important.

It must make sense. We shouldn’t leap into each new development simply because it’s . . . new — solely when it is sensible for our final purpose.

Wrapping up

We’re extremely grateful to Rui Nunes for sharing his data and expertise on this interview. His insights make clear the artwork and science of e mail advertising and the mindset wanted to achieve a always evolving trade.

Listed here are the important thing takeaways from our dialog:

1. Personalization is crucial — Rui emphasised the facility of tailoring emails to particular person subscriber preferences, combining zero-party knowledge with inventive storytelling to extend engagement.
2. Testing unlocks success — A/B testing and iterative studying stay nonnegotiable when refining e mail campaigns. Rui’s examples show how even small tweaks can result in vital outcomes.
3. AI instruments are the long run — whereas creativity stays essential, leveraging AI and automation instruments may help streamline processes and obtain higher outcomes, enabling entrepreneurs to concentrate on strategic objectives.

We hope Rui’s experience evokes you to innovate and refine your e mail advertising methods.