Beth O’Malley Wants Email Marketers to Stop Being Hard on Themselves

Quick Answer

What’s the smartest way to stand out in crowded inboxes?

Short answer: Do something unexpected. Email expert Beth O’Malley calls it a “pattern interrupt”: an email that surprises people, makes them smile, or gets them thinking differently. Whether that means using humor, breaking format, or sending something purely to delight, it helps your brand feel more human and memorable.

Why it matters: Most inboxes look the same: promotions, reminders, and routine updates. But when you disrupt that rhythm, people notice. A well-timed surprise can reignite engagement, strengthen your relationship with subscribers, and remind them that there’s a real person behind every send.

Beth O’Malley brings it all to every marketing conversation: creativity, empathy, and a refreshing dose of straight-talk honesty. Known as the “Queen of Email and CRM,” Beth encourages brands to find their authentic voice. She reminds marketers everywhere that effective email marketing isn’t about volume, it’s about real connections.

In this interview, Beth explains why when you pay attention to the why behind your messages, they’ll stand out. The why of each email matters just as much as what you send. 

Beth can help you break through the clutter of the inbox. It starts with writing like the human that you are. Thrown in a little curiosity and you’ll change how your audience feels about your brand, and that they won’t forget!

In this interview, you’ll learn:

• How to write emails that sound like real conversations
• Why empathy and creativity are just as important as email deliverability
• Why it’s so critical you avoid sending messages that feel robotic or self-serving
• Why your mindset matters more than things like your send time
• How small shifts in tone can make your brand more trustworthy

Wait until you meet Beth O’Malley.

You can also watch our interview below!

Good email marketers are “not trying to be like everyone else”

Beth, you were on one of our webinars, which was a smashing success, so I had to speak with you one-on-one. Thank you for joining me.

Thank you, Paul. It’s a pleasure to be here. Anything email or CRM, I will talk about all day! So this is perfect.

Some companies have such a strong approach to email that you immediately think: “these people get it.” Then there are others where you realize their approach could use some polishing. 

What can a company say to you that makes you think they truly get it?

People who do the different things that make me go, “oh, they’ve got it,” is that they do stuff out of the ordinary. They aren’t afraid to get to know their customers, their database. 

They aren’t afraid to ask questions to find out more. And when I see emails that land and I’m thinking, “you’ve nailed that approach,” it’s because they’re not trying to be like everyone else. 

They’re not putting every email as a sales message in the brand or B2B context. That’s my first green flag. I should probably write a list of green flags.

Another thing that really makes me go, “you’ve got it,” is that I can clearly tell when I’ve been excluded from other emails and flows because of my last action or where I am in my journey.

A really good example of that is when I flew with Virgin Atlantic. I signed up for their points system as a brand-new subscriber and customer, and between that and my flight, I had nothing but helpful info about things I needed to know along the journey. That, for me, is a major green flag – when you’re not sending “just in case” emails to everyone. 

It’s those really nice touch points that aren’t overcrowded or shadowed by everything else you want to send. Less is more. That’s always a green flag.

Accessible design is another huge green flag. It shows you’ve really thought about this. You’ve gone above and beyond. 

Emails that aren’t completely written by ChatGPT, that have tone and feel, make it clear the sender knows me. They’ve listened to me. They’re sending this to me because they know me and know what I’m interested in. Those are my ultimate green flags.

“Unsubscribes are actually a very positive signal.”

What’s one common myth about email deliverability that you frequently encounter, and how do you set the record straight?

The first one is that unsubscribes are bad for deliverability. I think this comes from some big names in email service providers (ESPs). If you Google it, it pops up on all the major ESP blogs. I’ve yet to find the original source, but we’ve all been fed that unsubscribes are something to minimize, that we should be careful because they affect deliverability. And it’s just not true.

Unsubscribes are actually a very positive signal. It doesn’t matter how many you get in your email – though they might feel horrible and bruise your ego – it won’t impact deliverability, even if you get 20 or 30. What you should really worry about are spam complaints. Those are the ones you definitely do not want 20 of.

Related: Gmail creator Paul Buchheit on what affects your email deliverability

Is it really possible to turn a stagnant email list or a stagnant campaign into a revenue driver?

Always. I often hear, “It’s not possible, email doesn’t work for us,” especially in B2B businesses with long sales cycles. For me, email is an assistant – part of an impact ecosystem. 

In some businesses, it’s hard to directly attribute revenue because there are so many touch points. It’s multi-channel and complex, but I’ve worked with over 50 industries, and I’ve yet to encounter one where email hasn’t influenced or assisted revenue.

The approach matters far more than the small details like send time. Everyone obsesses over when to send or how many emails to send, but what really counts is whether it moves the person forward based on what you know about them. It’s all about knowing your audience.

If anyone thinks, “It doesn’t work for us,” or only looks for direct sales, I say every email should still make an impact. Thinking this way takes the pressure off marketers. They stop obsessing over every single email, wondering why no one bought or signed up. Over time, you’ll be surprised at the revenue impact. And if you were to stop emailing, you’d see that revenue decline.

You’ve mentioned people saying, “email doesn’t work for us.” I recently spoke with a brilliant, hardworking business owner, Sarah, who runs a lemonade stand. She told me, “Paul, email doesn’t apply to us, we’re in a different location all the time.” 

I honestly didn’t know how to respond. Beth, what would you have said?

So a lemonade stand moving around? For me, that sounds like a perfect opportunity. When there’s something like that with a lot of moving parts, it’s similar to events. Events are a difficult market for email because everything is timely. Location-based or time-based businesses can absolutely use email – it’s about awareness.

Everybody likes lemonade, right? So use that as a chance to talk about lemonade in a way no one else has. You never know who reads an email, goes out, and mentions it to someone else. That’s how the next lemonade stand finds its audience. For me, I’d flip it on its head: it’s not about direct selling; it’s about impact and awareness.

That lemonade strategy has to offer something worth engaging with. There needs to be a value exchange to get people to open and click – that engagement matters for deliverability. I love challenges like this. I often make bets with companies when they say, “We can’t,” and I say, “We can.”

I’d genuinely say you’re in a niche space, so you could talk about something unique and attract attention. There’s no one in my inbox talking about lemonade.

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You are completely undeterred.

I try to be. Maybe – I don’t know what would throw me off. I’m rarely speechless, Paul.

“You can feel when you’ve been broadcast to.”

I want you to imagine someone’s email marketing campaigns as a ship headed for the rocks. What are the red flags that tell you a company’s email marketing is headed for disaster?

My gosh, how long have we got? We’re gonna need more time. 

Okay, first and foremost, I think I’ve just gotten used to seeing it, and I speak to so many marketers daily, so it’s very obvious to me there’s a huge problem. The first huge red flag is leadership. In a lot of businesses, marketers are forced to send more, and you can tell the emails are very broad.

This is really awful. I have 25 inboxes that I have to run lots of tests on myself. I’m a customer on some, a subscriber on some, a lead on some. And I think there have only been two cases with businesses I’ve tested that have sent me different messaging depending on my segment. You can feel when you’ve been broadcast to – and I think that’s the key word here – spoken at, not spoken to.

So for me, the big red flag is when a company isn’t willing to look at their approach and question it. And you have leadership saying, send to everyone just in case, everybody should know about this. 

That’s the major red flag. You can see it in your own inbox. You know when that’s been sent to everyone. That’s my biggest, biggest red flag.

Second red flag: all-image emails. We’re in a day and age where this just shouldn’t be happening. Images and graphics can be very effective, especially for brands that sell products, but we’ve gotten into bad habits with inaccessible, all-image emails that look terrible on mobile. People treat them like web pages and put a menu at the top – I’m like, what are we doing?

Another red flag is sending to everyone, every time. 

Another big red flag I see when working with marketers is when they’re staring at open rates. Everything is about how many people opened it, or clicked it. This is supposed to tell us if it’s good or bad. But, as I said at the start, it’s all about impact. Open rates can be a little dodgy, so obsessing over them is a red flag.

Finally, if I look in my inbox and see constant sale promotions that never actually end – emails that tell me something is ending but it never ends – that’s another clear red flag.

B2B emails that are very assumptive – that’s a big red flag in copy. A lot of emails just assume people care. They tell you stuff without answering the key question: Why should I care? You’ve done this, you’ve launched that, we’ve got this, can you do this for us, fill out a survey?

There are so many examples, I could go on all day. But the approach is the big one for me. If you aren’t willing to experiment, innovate, push boundaries, and stop doing what everyone else does, that’s a red flag. The inbox looks the same for everyone, at least mine does. And it’s a bit rubbish.

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You’ve touched on what I think is the ultimate mistake: updating your customer without asking the key question: Why on earth would they care about this? My financial institution sends emails that have reached a comedic level. They announced that they installed new hand dryers at all their locations. 

I haven’t heard that one before. When you get the next one, please forward it to me because it needs to appear on my LinkedIn. 

That reminds me – there was another company, Virgin, obviously a group of companies. I really love some of what they do, but someone forwarded me an email I featured in my newsletter today. 

They’d done a rebrand and… quite honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference. I know that brand. Couldn’t tell the difference. They put their color palette in the email and were like, This is our new color palette, here are all the colors. This is our new brand logo, which didn’t look any different, and This is our new art design we’re gonna use. They said, We are different but still us. And it was a classic case of… Why do I care? You haven’t told me anything. Just stop sending it.

I think it comes from leadership. I don’t know many marketers who think that’s a good idea. But the mindset is, We’re doing all this stuff, people want to know about it, and no one ever said they wanted to know about that. So hand dryers – that’s a new extreme! That’s mental.

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“I’m very much a why person.”

How would you respond to someone at a company who says … We have just cut half of our list. We had a hundred thousand. We’ve cut half of them. What would you say to them?

Why? First of all, what’s the reason for cutting it? Maybe they’re cleaning out their data. I want to understand why. I’m very much a why person. I’m very annoying with my clients because I’m constantly like, Yeah, why, why, why? 

So the first thing I’d ask is: why? What are they trying to achieve by that? There’s a lot of advice online: send to less, segment, send personalized emails. And I always think that sounds very generic. What does that actually mean?

If they had a list of a hundred thousand people and only 20% were disengaged, while the rest were highly engaged – a mix of customers they were actually interacting with – I’d say, Don’t cut down your list. Do not cut down that list. You’ve got a brilliant list.

If that hundred thousand is a pile of people they don’t know anything about anymore, who haven’t interacted or bought in a very long time, or done anything, then hurrah, get rid of that majority of that list!

My rule of thumb is I’m yet to be wrong. But, when I work with a business, I always put a bet on it. I bet we can get rid of 20 % of your list or 30 % of your list. And we pretty much do. 

So I think I’d want to know the why, without being difficult. I want to know why they’re doing that. What do you think that’s going to achieve? And go from there.

“Size alone means absolutely nothing in the email world.”

What I think is interesting about your answer is that your immediate reaction isn’t that it’s a bad thing. All too often someone will say, Well, guess what? We’ve just hit 50,000. 

Listen: a list is a list. I try to approach list building very practically. I launched my newsletter this year, which had been three years on the to-do list. Because it’s my business and my name is on the line, it’s very much a “Can Beth walk the walk?” sort of thing. So when I see those numbers, it’s nice, but…

I also see when people join and I know they’re not going to enjoy the newsletter, or they probably won’t get the most out of it. So when people say, We’ve got 100,000 people on our list, to me, that means absolutely nothing.

Another common mindset toward email addresses – I’m pretty sure this happens globally – is when someone gets access to a list: We’ve got these people’s emails! Everyone gets excited, like it’s gold dust. And I kind of laugh a little, because I’m like, Yeah, what are you going to do with it? Then it flops, and they say, Email doesn’t work for us, because they emailed everyone and no one replied.

Just having a list of people’s personal details means nothing unless you know what to do with it and how to maximize it. For me, I don’t care if your list is a million people or 50. We can do something with it, but chances are, size alone means absolutely nothing in the email world.

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“Don’t go completely wild,” but try interrupting the pattern

What unconventional tip would you give for someone who wants to stand out in the inbox?

I’ve talked about approach a lot. I’m not a tips-and-tricks kind of girl. 

You see it online: someone’s like, I’ve tried this, and then everybody does it. I think email trends can be really difficult, but an unconventional approach to stand out is a pattern interrupt email.

I’ve read about this kind of pattern interrupt starting more on social media, to stop the scroll. Everybody sees the same things. You can apply that to email by creating something people don’t expect from you. People underestimate the fact that when their name is seen in the inbox, even if they don’t open it, it still takes a few brain cells and connections to register it.

A pattern interrupt is essentially an email that makes someone pause, think, Hang on, why have they sent me this? We don’t want to drive a negative emotion; we want curiosity, interest. That could mean being creative with the sender name. 

Don’t go completely wild, but for example, with my email list, just under 20% of people who signed up early had stopped engaging. I changed the “from name” to The Queen of Email and made the subject line daring. Inside the email, I continued that unexpected approach.

If you’re constantly sending promos, do something completely different. Offer something valuable, ask a question, get them to engage in something fun. I even have a spinner wheel in my email – it literally spins. People clicked, engaged, and told me why they hadn’t been opening emails. About 70% responded, and most said it was because they’d been filing them away for a rainy day when they had time.

But the pattern interrupt is so different because people don’t expect it. You’ve got to be a little wild with it and be okay with pushing boundaries, but always test it on a small segment first. See how it goes. If you get negative feedback, don’t roll it out more broadly.

That’s my unconventional tip: try something daring that doesn’t drive a negative emotion. It should spark curiosity or make someone think, That was actually really funny, or That was helpful, that was different. Then they might forward it or share it. That’s exactly what you want, so give it a go.

What would you say to someone who hears this and thinks, “Queen Beth O’Malley’s advice is exactly what we need – we need this to work for us”?

Wow, let’s go. You can find me on LinkedIn, give it a go! Honestly, anybody can do this. The first thing you should do is sit down and understand how email is currently working for your business and where the barriers to transformation are. A lot of the work I do is about transformation. I rarely do it for a company alone; I usually work with teams.

The first step is identifying the barriers. Is leadership scared to change approach? Are there deliverability issues? Map all of that out before starting your transformation journey, because there’s often a lot of work to do beforehand. Systems might be messy. Data might be a disaster. It all sounds nice to jump in, but you usually have prep work first.

That’s where the three pillars of email and CRM come in: 

• Data
• Systems
• Strategy

Strategy is the ultimate goal, but you can’t usually get there without first addressing the other two. My advice: start there, map it out, and then work backward to solve the problems that will block you.

Are most email marketers aware of email deliverability nowadays?

They’re aware of it. I actually did a really big survey and tried to find out from people in my network and community what they really knew. Everyone said, “I know about it, I’ve heard of it, I’ve Googled it, I’ve attended a webinar.” But when it comes to actually testing, monitoring, and fixing deliverability issues? They’re completely lost. Not all of them, but many.

So I’ve taken it upon myself to put more practical stuff out there – master classes, webinars like the one I did with you guys – so people can take action. 

Because honestly, people think it’s all about authentication and the tech side. They’ll say, “Oh, I’ve got SPF, DMARC, DKIM, ARC all set up, so I’m good.” And I’m like, no. You could still be in a world of pain even with that set up properly.

There’s still so much work to be done around education and giving marketers a proper toolkit. That’s why I love ZeroBounce so much. You are my toolkit, literally!

“Tapas: small, precise, flavorful. That’s the email approach I aim for.”

If you could compare your approach to email to any kind of cuisine, what would it be?

I’d say tapas. Small plates, lots of flavor packed into a small dish. Every email – or dish, if you like – has a purpose and one goal: it’s satisfying, but it makes you want more. You can’t just throw everything together and hope it works. Each dish, or email, needs to be well thought out and well executed.

With tapas, you can tell a story, and it leaves people wanting the next one. That’s how I approach email. It’s not about a big, overloaded meal. One thing done really well is far more effective than cramming in banners, offers, and messages “just in case.” 

Tapas: small, precise, flavorful. That’s the email approach I aim for.

And tapas can’t rely on a hearty portion. It works because there’s just a bit of it, right?

Just a bit, yeah. You could double up if you wanted, but it’s never overwhelming. I’ve never had tapas where I overate and felt stuffed. and that’s how I like to treat email. Never overdo it; always leave room to build on top.

What can anyone do to make today better?

If you’re a marketer, stop being so hard on yourself. I know what it’s like to be on the hamster wheel, trying to serve every part of a business, reading things online, wondering how everyone else makes it look so easy. 

Your open rates don’t matter, your click rates don’t matter. You’re doing a great job. Just pause for a second and give yourself a little pat on the back. It’s hard being a marketer, and you’re doing fabulous.

“If anyone’s had the biggest email failures, it’s me.”

I’ll take that advice today. I promise not to be too hard on myself.

Yes, do not. We’ve all got enough going on in life. No need to stress about an email that went out wrong. If it helps, I did that last week. I forgot to remove the mobile-only blocks – and nothing bad happened. Mistakes happen. If anyone’s had the biggest email failures, it’s me.

That’s wonderful. And I hope everybody follows that advice today. Thank you so much.

Thank you. This has been really lovely, and it’s gone super fast. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed talking about everything. I could do it for hours!

Ready to make email marketing a whole lot easier?

As our friend Beth O’Malley told us, you don’t have to do everything at once! Be human, show up and try to put your creativity cap on. You can simplify your email campaigns by starting with the right tools. ZeroBounce ONE helps you clean, monitor, and protect the entirety of your email ecosystem, so you can focus on what really matters: creating emails that really connect.

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