I understand where that comes from.There was a time when email was incredibly effective. Inboxes weren’t as crowded, automation wasn’t everywhere, and you could send something fairly simple and still get a response. That was a different environment. Today, the average open rate across industries sits somewhere around 5–10%, which means most emails are ignored before they’re even read.
So it’s easy to look at that and assume the channel itself is broken.
But what’s actually happened is something different.
Email didn’t stop working. It just stopped rewarding lazy execution.
Most of what people receive now is automated, templated, and clearly trying to sell something without really understanding the person on the other end. After enough of that, people don’t reject email; they reject anything that feels irrelevant.
That’s where I think most get this wrong.
They approach email as if its job is to convert someone in a single touchpoint. So the message becomes a pitch, or a disguised pitch, and when it doesn’t land, the conclusion is that email doesn’t work.
But email isn’t meant to carry that kind of weight on its own.
When we look at what’s actually working, email is one piece of a larger system. It sits inside what we call the demand and conversion engine, and its role is much simpler than people make it.
It’s there to show how you think.
It’s there to deliver value.
And it’s there to keep you present.
When that’s the approach, the results look very different. Some consistently see open rates around 35%, which is meaningfully higher than the average. Not because they’ve found a trick, but because the emails feel aligned with everything else they’re already seeing from that person.
That’s the part that matters.
No one is deciding to work with you because of one email. They’re deciding because they’ve seen you multiple times, in multiple places, and each interaction reinforces the same message. Your content, your profile, your conversations, your follow-up. They all work together to build familiarity and trust.
Email is simply one of the ways that happens.
Even if someone doesn’t reply, even if they only skim what you wrote, your name showed up again. You stayed in their awareness. And when timing shifts, you’re not starting from scratch.
You’re already there.
That’s why I’ll always push back on the idea that email doesn’t work. In a market where attention is fragmented and decision-making happens over time, relying on a single channel is what actually creates inconsistency.
The people who are building real momentum right now aren’t doing one thing well. They’re creating multiple, consistent touchpoints that reinforce who they are and how they think.
Email is part of that and not because it’s perfect, but because relevance requires repetition.