Fixing your email game in 45 days or less
I knew you'd end up here with that gotta-do-it-yourself energy.
There's no way you're handing over the most important part of your client relationships without giving it a shot first. I respect that completely.
You're smart enough to figure this out — so I'm not going to gatekeep what a few hours of research would tell you anyway. Follow these six steps and you'll get almost exactly the result I would.
Almost.
Step 1. Let the symptoms speak
Just like you can't heal a patient without knowing their current health status — you can't fix your emails without knowing where they stand.
Here's what you need:
List size
Average product or service value
Current open rate
Current click-through rate
Current conversion rate
Emails sent per month
Now compare against industry standard:
Open rate: over 30% (mine run 40–60%)
Click-through rate: 11%
Conversion rate: 3%
Now run the numbers:
List size × open rate = Opens Opens × click rate = Clicks Clicks × conversion rate = Buyers Buyers × average sale value = Monthly email revenue
Do it twice — once with your current numbers, once with the industry standard. The gap between those two numbers is what's sitting in your promo tab right now.
Step 2. Diagnosis
Symptom
Possible Diagnosis
Test needed?
Open rate below 5%
Emails in spam or bad subject line
Inbox placement test
Open rate below 20%
Emails in promo or bad subject line
Inbox placement test
Open rate below 30%
Subject line problem
No test needed — fix is in Step 3
Click rate below 10%
Email copy problem
No test needed — fix is in Step 3
Conversion below 3%
Funnel problem
No test needed — fix is in Step 3
How to do an inbox placement test:
Create a brand new personal email — completely unrelated to your brand. Send your latest campaign to that email. Check which tab it lands in.
Important: don't use your regular email or business email. Inboxes you already interact with your own brand from will skew toward primary and won't reflect what the majority of your list actually sees.
Step 3. Treatment
If you're in spam:
Two possible causes. Either your authentication failed — or you sound like a sketchy underground clinic trying to rob people of their life savings.
Let's rule out authentication first.
Open an email you sent to yourself. Click the three dots next to reply. Click "show original." Check your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. All three should say PASS.
If they don't:
SPF — make sure your record lists all authorised servers allowed to send from your domain. DKIM — ensure your signatures are correctly configured with a unique encrypted key for each email. DMARC — set a record that tells recipient servers what to do when SPF or DKIM fail.
If you're in promo:
Gmail has no personal beef with you — assuming you have no deep-seated rivalry with Pichai.
Gmail doesn't care whether you're emailing prospective customers or your best friend. It only cares about one thing: engagement. High open rates signal trust. Low open rates signal promo.
So start by emailing only your most engaged subscribers. Slowly re-introduce the occasional openers. Archive the people who haven't opened in six months — they're dragging your domain reputation down.
While you're rebuilding, keep these in mind:
Write like you're talking to your favourite patient, not like a business chasing a sale. If it sounds like a promotion, it'll land like one.
Go easy on the product photos. Nobody wants a catalogue in their primary inbox and Gmail knows the difference.
If your subject line is the problem:
You like peace and quiet. Your subject line cannot afford to.
Picture yourself as one of a hundred people trying to get the attention of one specific person — not everyone, just one. What do you say?
Something they can't ignore. Your subject line needs to do at least one of these:
Evoke curiosity
Call out a pain point
Address scepticism
Promise a solution
Bust a myth
If your email copy is the problem:
First — don't bait and switch. Deliver exactly what your subject line promised.
Then write like you're talking to a friend. Personal anecdotes, real life updates, genuine value. End with one CTA — one product, one link, one ask. Not three. Not two. One.
Step 4. Maintenance
Your mailing list is like your patients' gut health. You can't fix it once and forget it. It needs ongoing attention or you'll be back in promo within months.
You've got everything you need to do this yourself. I genuinely believe that.
But I also know you have patients to see, herbs to source, and approximately four hundred other things on your list that matter more than your open rates.
So here's the deal — if you've read this far and still want to do it yourself, book a call anyway. We'll set a timeline together and I'll check in on you. If it's sorted, brilliant. If it's not, I'm right here.
Either way, you're not doing this alone.
