One of the cool side effects of reading marketing and sales psychology books is that, besides gaining new knowledge, your BS detector goes way up.
It’s pretty hard to scam me these days, for two reasons:
- I’m Estonian (we have a “don’t talk to me” attitude on autopilot)
- I know most tricks in the book
And let’s face it, there are scams everywhere you look.
The email marketing industry is no exception.
In this article, I will uncover seven gimmicks that email marketing agencies use to convince e-commerce brands to invest in their services.
Disclaimer: Not ALL email marketing agencies are bad. There are plenty of great ones out there. I wrote this list so you can avoid getting burned and do what’s best for your business.
Let’s dive in…
1. The “Scamantees”
I like Alex Hormozi … in limited doses.
I think he’s a super smart guy who gives a ton of value.
But after he released his $100M Offers book, something which I like to call the Scamantees started emerging.
“We guarantee an X% increase in email revenue in X DAYS, or YOU DON’T PAY!”
I bet my right arm that you’ve heard something like this at least once.
Seems like a win-win situation, right?
If they deliver you the results, amazing.
If they don’t, you pay nothing.
That’s not how it works.
You see, the “Scamantees” are ESPECIALLY problematic among email marketing agencies.
And the reason is simple:
Email marketing revenue can be easily manipulated.
In fact, I don’t even have to do ANY work and land you the guaranteed result.
All I have to do is:
- Log in to your email service provider (ESP)
- Change the attribution settings
In other words, I’ll ensure that almost every sale you make is attributed to email.
All I have to do is sit back, kick my legs up, and wait.
By the end of 30 days, your email revenue is guaranteed to go up.
Did I help you grow your business?
Nope.
Did I deliver the promised result?
On paper, yes.
Now “pay me.”
2. The screenshoters
Every day, when I log into LinkedIn, I see another Klaviyo “case study” screenshot.
An email marketer bragging about how they “grew an e-commerce brand’s email revenue by 1241%.”
Their proof?
Publishing a screenshot of their client’s Klaviyo dashboard.
It’s pretty damn funny.
What’s even more hilarious, most of these so-called case studies don’t show whether they actually helped grow the business.
When you look closer, the screenshots are nitpicked.
They pull data from oddly specific date ranges, like 4th November to 22nd December, just to fit whatever narrative they’re trying to push.
It’s like making a basketball mixtape of your high school teammate’s best plays and calling him the next Steph Curry.
Another thing about these case studies is that they are out of context.
The brand that wasn’t sending any emails suddenly starts blasting 3-5 campaigns per week, of course the email revenue will go up.
At least I would certainly hope so.
But here’s what really matters:
Did they actually help grow the business?
Are they vague about their strategies?
Is there a testimonial from a client showing how happy they were with their work?
The bottom line is this … because email revenue is so easily manipulated, you have to take these screenshots with a grain of salt.
3. “Forget paid ads; do email instead”
Yeah… I must admit, I was a part of this scam.
In my defense, I had just quit my marketing manager job to go freelance. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was talking about (I still don’t).
I saw this agency owner, way more successful than me, with 10x more clients, preaching that email marketing was replacing paid ads.
I thought, “That’s a cool angle.”
At the end of the day, everyone raves about Meta and TikTok ads, but email kinda flies under the radar, right?
It was also a chance for me to practice my copy chops, so I wrote these bullets for my website:
“Email is the only marketing channel you own.”
“Creating ads that convert is damn near impossible these days.”
“What happens when Zuck decides to shut down your ad account?”
Boy was I wrong.
And it’s not because these statements are inherently false — they’re all 100% valid.
But here’s the truth:
Email marketing does NOT replace paid ads.
If anything, they’re a one-two punch.
For a scaling e-commerce brand, paid ads bring you something that email marketing doesn’t:
Traffic.
If you don’t have a reliable acquisition channel that consistently brings in new (and engaged) visitors, you’re screwed.
Here’s what will happen when you try to replace ads with emails:
You’ve got all these slick flows and targeted campaigns …
And NO ONE to send them to.
Because your email list consists of five people.
Your Shopify store is basically a dead body on page 2 of Google’s search results.
NO ONE WILL FIND IT!
All because some dimwit wanted to hype up their service.
Figure out your acquisition channels first.
Then dial in your email game.
4. “We turn every $1 into $43.5”
Here’s yet another witty claim made by email agencies to convince you that you’re just one service away from turning your business from “zero” to “hero”.
Some people might see these specific numbers and think they’re backed by data.
But that doesn’t mean there’s any truth behind them.
Let me explain:
For an email marketer to have a positive impact on your brand, they need an active email list.
To have an email list, you need to collect email addresses.
To collect email addresses, you need to drive traffic to your website.
And unless 100% of your traffic is organic, you’re paying way more than $1 to acquire those subscribers.
I’ve yet to see an e-commerce brand that doesn’t rely on paid traffic in some form.
Essentially, they’re trying to convince you that email is some kind of silver bullet when, in reality, it’s just a piece of a much bigger puzzle.
If email were such a money printer, brands would turn off every other marketing channel and go all-in on flows and campaigns.
But it simply doesn’t work that way.
5. “You’re leaving money on the table”
I’ve had brand owners ask if I can help them build an email automation system for their new Shopify store.
They’re already mentioning stuff like “winback flow” and “cross-sell sequence.”
That’s when I know some email guru has brainwashed them into thinking they’re leaving money on the table.
The truth is, if you’re just starting, you’ve got WAY bigger fish to fry.
You should be focused on:
- Testing your products
- Defining your target audience
- Crafting ROI-positive ads
In these situations, I always refer to the Pareto principle:
80% of email automation revenue comes from 20% of flows.
When you’re in the early days, here’s all you really need:
- A highly converting pop-up form to grow your email list
- A welcome sequence to overcome objections + collect first-party data
- A post-purchase flow to build goodwill + collect reviews for customer research.
- Abandonment flows (browse, cart, checkout abandonment) to recover lost sales.
Set these up, and then forget about email until you’ve gained some traction and validated there’s a real market for your products.
Anyone saying you’re leaving money on the table because you don’t have a cross-sell sequence or a replenishment flow is likely trying to squeeze money out of you.
Unless you’re already doing at least 8 figures a year.
6. “Your emails have to be beautiful”
This is probably the most controversial one on this list.
And this isn’t necessarily a scam, unless your agency or freelancer bills you by the hour, so they can spend all day designing pretty emails in Figma.
Here’s my two cents:
If you’re a small, lesser-known brand (making less than 8 figures a year), you’re probably better off focusing on plain-text, story-based emails.
Not only do these emails tend to have better deliverability, higher engagement and increased conversions, but they also take only an hour or two to ship out.
But more importantly:
Plain-text emails make you stand out.
Many smaller brands look to big industry players for marketing inspiration, without realizing that their current approach is not what got those companies to where they are.
Let me give you an example…
If you’re a new fashion brand trying to mimic Gucci’s visual, corporate-style emails, you’re playing a losing game.
Gucci has something you don’t have (yet): a loyal customer base, brand heritage, and global reputation.
A proven luxury brand has so much more at stake, so it makes sense to play it safe with “boring” emails.
But being safe and boring isn’t usually what made these brands successful.
Challenging the status quo did.
Take Rolls-Royce, for instance.
Rolls-Royce was largely known as a niche car brand in the early 1950s, but it took off after David Ogilvy created an advertising campaign that no one had seen before.
And thanks to that, they built a loyal customer base.
Email is just another opportunity for you to do the same.
You can treat it as a way to fit in…
Or a chance to fit out.
I’m not trying to undermine anyone’s work.
Or say that you should ignore design (it’s never that black and white).
You should test and draw your conclusions.
But this idea that “your emails have to be beautiful” is just plain false.
7. Vanity Warriors
Email marketing agencies love to boast vanity metrics to their clients:
“Look, there’s been an improvement in open rates.”
Or…
“The engagement for this campaign was amazing, over 5% of recipients clicked!”
Now, the question is:
As a business owner, should you care?
And the answer is no, because as you know:
High open rates don’t pay the bills.
Revenue does.
That’s not to say clicks and opens should be completely dismissed.
At the end of the day, the more people see and click on your emails, the higher the chances of you landing a sale.
But if that additional engagement doesn’t translate to more sales, you have a problem.
So, what should you track?
I prefer paying attention to metrics that actually move the needle for e-commerce businesses.
One of the first calculations I do when auditing an email account is revenue per subscriber. It gives you a sense of how healthy your email list is and how effectively you’re monetizing it.
Click here if you want FREE access to my 66-question Klaviyo audit checklist.
If you have a long-term partnership with an email agency, I believe they should also help you improve key metrics like customer retention rate, average order value (AOV), and customer lifetime value (CLV).
It doesn’t matter how much revenue your welcome sequence generates (which is highly discounted anyway) if you can’t retain any customers.
Are some variables outside of their control?
Sure, an email marketing agency can’t dictate how fast your customer service team replies or how smooth your checkout process is.
But they can provide deep insights about your audience, collect first-party data, and create highly relevant offers.
It’s all part of the bigger picture.
What you should do next
I’m curious to know your opinion and whether you would add anything to this list.
If you want to hear more content like this + access my Klaviyo audit checklist, subscribe to my email list or connect with me on LinkedIn.
