In this second part of our interview series with Teodor Mincu, founder of MessengerOS, we explore essential aspects of email marketing, including handling unsubscribers, list management, and implementing effective testing strategies.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Part One of our interview with Teodor.
Check the episode on Spotify here:
Or you can watch it on YouTube here!
Q: What’s your opinion on unsubscribers? I’ve heard that brands are often reluctant to remove subscribers from their lists and afraid when people unsubscribe from their newsletters.
Teodor: Unsubscribes have both positive and negative aspects. On one hand, it feels like someone telling you, “I don’t like your content; leave me alone,” which isn’t pleasant. You might think, “What, you don’t like me anymore?”
In reality, the unsubscribe option is an essential tool that I recommend even for cold outreach. Always add an unsubscribe link at the end of your emails, even if they don’t look like personal communications.
This is crucial because without this option, recipients who are frustrated or disinterested might just hit the spam button instead.
When someone marks your email as spam, the consequences are more severe than a simple unsubscribe. For example, in MessengerOS, once you receive a spam complaint, that recipient is automatically filtered out from future mailings. This makes sense because there’s no point sending emails to someone who has explicitly flagged your messages as unwanted.
I’ve encountered situations where clients ask: “Why isn’t this person receiving our emails?” When I check, I discover: “Look, they filed a spam complaint a few weeks ago. That’s why they’re not receiving anything.” The client might suggest, “Let’s add them back to the list,” but that misses the point. The recipient hit the spam button because they were irritated by something and reacted accordingly.
The unsubscribe link is valuable because, unlike spam complaints, major email providers like Gmail and Yahoo don’t count unsubscribes as negative feedback. The recipient simply clicks a link and opts out cleanly. I recommend including this option in about 95% of your emails.
The exception would be purely functional communications. For instance, if you run a SaaS platform and need to inform users, “The platform will be down for maintenance tomorrow,” you don’t necessarily need an unsubscribe link because this isn’t marketing content, it’s essential information.
Q: So unsubscribers are actually beneficial because they filter themselves out and tell you they’re not interested, which ultimately saves you time? Am I right?
Teodor: Exactly. You avoid spam complaints, and they filter themselves out naturally. There’s also a benefit to your metrics – your open rate will improve over time. A single unsubscribe won’t dramatically boost your open rate, but with a large list, it becomes a numbers game.
When you have substantial subscriber numbers, you’ll inevitably have unsubscribes, and it’s not something to take personally. People forget they subscribed. Their interests change. Someone might think “I bought those shoes already. I don’t need more information about shoes, so I’m unsubscribing.” That’s perfectly normal.
Q: Is this especially true in e-commerce and product categories, where consumers might simply be done with a particular product?
Teodor: Absolutely. Once they’ve completed their purchase, many consumers are finished with that product category. They move on, and that’s fine. Everyone’s happy. It’s not something marketers should take personally.
The key is to consistently send interesting content.
I subscribe to several newsletters myself, and when they provide valuable information, subscribers think, “Maybe I’ll unsubscribe next time, but this email was actually interesting. Perhaps the next one will be valuable too.” That’s what keeps people on your list. That’s why it’s crucial to send more than just promotional offers.
Q: Is it better to test your emails with multiple versions and different segments?
Teodor: Testing is absolutely necessary. It’s relatively easy to test different subject lines and content variations. But what’s most important is analyzing the resulting data and taking action based on what you learn. Testing without implementing the insights doesn’t advance your strategy.
CPV Lab and CPV One easy split testing makes everything so much easier when you want to test different emails, different creatives or links to offers.
Q: What are the best ways of list management, in your opinion, for marketers?
Teodor: The fundamental goal is to build a quality list of engaged recipients.
Quality means subscribers who actually open your emails, read them, and take the desired actions – whether that’s making purchases or whatever conversion you’re seeking.
Finding these quality subscribers starts with identifying where your interested audience already exists.
Some visitors are on your website because they found you through PPC campaigns, while others discovered you organically when searching for your products or information about your brand.
You can actively build your list through targeted campaigns.
Landing pages are particularly effective – these are simplified pages without navigation menus or distractions, focused solely on the subscription offer. When creating these pages, don’t just ask people to “subscribe” without a clear value proposition. Make it a meaningful choice by offering something valuable in exchange for their email address.
For e-commerce businesses, this might be a discount like 10% off their first order. Alternatively, you could start with a free sign-up and later introduce incentives after they’ve been subscribed for a week or a month. The approach varies depending on your business model and what you can offer to acquire those valuable email addresses.
Q: So, providing an incentive is important for list management, right?
Teodor: It can be effective, though some argue this approach is overly transactional. There’s a risk that customers will take the discount, make a purchase (which results in a reduced margin for you), and then immediately unsubscribe. The effectiveness varies from business to business.
Some subscribers will indeed follow this pattern, while others will stay engaged for the long term. The important thing is understanding where your subscribers are coming from. If they’re already on your website, that’s inbound traffic – they’ve found you, and you’re just capturing their information.
Many marketers complain about pop-ups, but remember – you’re not the buyer persona, you’re the business owner. When you visit other e-commerce sites, you likely close pop-ups too.
The key is strategic implementation. Instead of displaying a pop-up immediately on every page, consider setting it to appear after a visitor has viewed two or three pages.
This indicates they’re genuinely engaging with your site rather than bouncing immediately. Then you might trigger the pop-up after five seconds on that third page to offer your incentive.
Other marketers place pop-ups on the first page with a short delay. They might collect more email addresses this way, but the quality could differ.
Q: Would you say visitors who engage with your content first tend to become higher-quality subscribers?
Teodor: It’s certainly possible that emails collected from visitors who’ve barely engaged with your site aren’t as high quality.
However, this is something that requires testing in your specific context. Speaking personally, I wouldn’t give my email address immediately after landing on a new site.
But if I visited previously and returned, meaning I already knew something about the brand, I might be more inclined to subscribe. The key is testing different approaches to see what works for your audience.
Q: How can marketers track if visitors have returned from a previous day?
Teodor: The standard approach is using cookies. If you set a cookie with a 30-day lifespan, you can identify when someone returns within that timeframe. This works well if you have consistent website traffic.
If website traffic is limited, you might focus on campaigns instead.
In this case, you’d calculate the economics – for instance, “If I spend $2 to acquire each email address, and the average subscriber generates $20 in revenue, then this is a profitable approach.” This helps determine whether your list management efforts are economically viable.
Q: So you might run PPC campaigns specifically for lead generation, create segmented lists, and it’s important to organize them by specific domains or product categories? Am I right?
Teodor: Exactly. You could create multiple landing pages – perhaps 10 different pages with corresponding ads for each one. If you sell various product categories, this allows you to see performance differences between them. You’ll discover the acquisition cost for each category and can allocate your budget accordingly.
Some categories might be more competitive and expensive, like electronics. Others, such as furniture, might have a lower acquisition cost. By segmenting your approach, you can optimize your list management strategy for each product category rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach.
Q: Does creating different lists make it easier?
Teodor: Yes, segmented lists definitely improve your email marketing effectiveness, but this approach requires commitment.
You need to invest time to set up the tests, run the ads, and analyze the results. It’s additional work, but the insights you gain are valuable for optimizing your strategy.
Q: Everything worthwhile requires work. How do we avoid the spam folder and keep emails in the inbox?
Teodor: The fundamental principle is authenticity.
If you’re honest in your approach, you’ll typically land in the inbox. What does “honest” mean in this context? It means targeting warm subscribers – people who are genuinely interested in your product or service.
These subscribers will not only receive your emails but will actually open them. If I’m interested in your content, I’ll open it. And when you achieve higher engagement rates, email providers will direct your messages to the inbox or promotions tab rather than spam.
This is the essence of effective email marketing.
If I choose to do cold outreach to 1,000 random addresses, the expectations for engagement are naturally low – that’s a different approach entirely. But with warm outreach to people who have actively subscribed, there should be inherent interest in your product.
Beyond subscriber quality, the content you’re sending matters tremendously.
Your emails need to offer genuine value.
In e-commerce, this might be a significant discount – perhaps 40% off, since ultimately you’re selling something. What other value can you provide? If you’re offering something truly worthwhile, or even popular incentives like free shipping that tend to convert well, your open rates will increase as people engage with your content.
This improved engagement naturally leads to better inbox placement.
Email providers like Gmail and Yahoo created spam folders because they want to deliver quality service to their users. If inboxes were flooded with spam, users would switch providers. However, these companies don’t want to eliminate all marketing emails either – there’s a balance to maintain.
Q: Does better inbox placement improve your chances of conversion?
Teodor: It’s fundamentally logical.
If you’re sending to interested subscribers and maintaining their interest through nurturing content and compelling offers, they’ll open your emails.
When they consistently open your messages, email providers will continue delivering to the inbox. Inbox placement leads to more opens, which lead to more clicks, which ultimately lead to more conversions.
Of course, the numbers decrease as you move down the funnel. Perhaps 20% of recipients will open your email, then 5% of those will click through, and the final conversion rate depends on your specific offer. It all comes back to the quality of your list management and the value of your content.
There are also technical optimizations worth considering.
Send frequency is an important factor that varies by platform. At MessengerOS, for example, we can control precisely how many emails are sent per minute.
Q: Why should marketers be careful about send frequency?
Teodor: Gradual sending can significantly impact deliverability.
If you begin by sending at a measured pace, your open rate has time to build.
Here’s the issue with mass sending: If you blast 10,000 emails simultaneously in the first minute, by the time email #9,999 reaches Google, their systems might conclude, “The previous 9,998 emails from this sender haven’t been opened, so this is likely spam – send it to the spam folder.”
In contrast, if you distribute those same emails gradually – perhaps one, two, or three at a time over a 10-hour period – when email #9,999 is sent, the spam filter might observe, “This sender has achieved a 30% open rate so far, which indicates legitimate content. Deliver to the inbox or promotions tab.“
Q: Does your platform allow for that kind of gradual sending?
Teodor: At MessengerOS, we deliberately avoid sending thousands of emails per second. Unless your offer has a strict time constraint – like a countdown offer valid for only “24 hours, three hours, six hours”
I strongly recommend sending gradually.
This approach gives recipients time to engage, and as open rates accumulate, filters are more likely to recognize, “This content is interesting to users. Continue delivery to the inbox.”
For established senders with consistent weekly mailings over years, this is less critical.
Your domain has established credibility, and filters recognize your sending patterns. But for newer senders, slower delivery is crucial because it allows time for engagement to build.
If you blast 10,000 emails in one second, the algorithms have no history to evaluate for that 10,000th email. The filter might determine, “Sending 10,000 emails per second is unusual behavior. Route to spam as a precaution.”
Q: What can you do if you send those 10,000 emails and they go to spam? Can you improve your domain reputation?
Teodor: When emails go to spam, you typically won’t receive explicit notification – you’ll just observe unusually low open rates.
There are monitoring tools available, like Google’s Postmaster, which provides engagement metrics if your sending address uses Google’s domain hosting. These tools can confirm whether your engagement is high or low.
The challenge is that repairing reputation isn’t straightforward.
My recommendation in severe cases would be to consider using a different domain. I would set aside the damaged domain, perhaps limiting it to internal communications if it’s your primary domain.
While not ideal, sometimes the best approach is to let the reputation recover naturally over time.
You might attempt some remediation by sending emails to your own addresses and generating responses, which could gradually improve the domain’s standing. However, the timeline for reputation recovery is unpredictable – it could take weeks or months, depending on the severity of the issue.
Q: So it’s better to use a different domain afterwards?
Teodor: Yes, switching to a new domain can be effective, but this situation typically only arises with cold outreach. If you’re sending to warm subscribers who have explicitly shown interest in your content, you’re unlikely to encounter severe deliverability problems in the first place. With cold outreach, however, these issues are much more common.
Q: By “cold,” do you mean people who don’t know they need your product or service?
Teodor: Cold refers to recipients who haven’t opted in to receive your communications.
Unfortunately, some marketers use lists obtained from questionable sources – I know it’s problematic, essentially spam, but it happens. There are platforms like Instantly and various LinkedIn scrapers that offer to sell leads or contact information.
The fundamental issue is that these individuals never requested your emails or subscribed to anything.
That’s what makes them “cold” – they have no prior relationship with you. They might recognize your brand if you’re well-established, but they haven’t expressed interest and aren’t expecting your communication.
This approach is completely different from permission-based marketing and requires entirely different strategies.
Q: What metrics are important to track when evaluating the success of an email marketing campaign?
Teodor: While conversion is ultimately the most critical metric – which you can track using tools like CPV Lab conversion tracker– it’s important to set realistic expectations based on your subscriber count.
With a relatively small list of 1,000 subscribers, you might only generate one or two conversions from a campaign. The following week could yield even fewer results.
This is because email subscribers have different characteristics than high-intent visitors coming directly from search engines.
Your email subscribers appreciate your brand enough to sign up, but subscription doesn’t necessarily indicate immediate purchase intent. For instance, someone who subscribed to a shoe retailer’s newsletter might not need new shoes right away.
Q: Is that why marketers should consider upselling and offering related products in that product area?
Teodor: Yes, cross-selling related items can be effective, especially if you have data about customer preferences.
But my broader point is that while conversion seems like the ideal metric, you may not always have sufficient data to draw meaningful conclusions. If you’re generating 1,000 conversions from your list, that provides statistically significant information to work with.
However, with just one or two conversions, the results could be attributed to random chance.
Today’s complex customer journeys make attribution particularly challenging. You can’t always determine with certainty whether a conversion came from your email or from a PPC campaign that the customer saw previously.
Attribution is an entire discussion unto itself. Conversion tracking is valuable, certainly, but it’s difficult to isolate exactly why someone made a purchase. Perhaps they knew your brand from a PPC campaign before opening your email. Using discount codes can help track email conversions, but even this approach has limitations.
Q: Does using tracking links make attribution clearer, or is that a separate discussion?
Teodor: Even with tracking links and unique discount codes, attribution remains complex. A customer might not have used your discount code if they hadn’t already heard about your brand from a friend. The customer journey is rarely linear and typically involves multiple touchpoints.
While driving sales remains our ultimate goal, when reliable conversion data is unavailable, marketers often resort to measuring clicks – though these represent only a small percentage of total recipients.
Moving further upstream in the metrics funnel, we have open rates, but these have become increasingly unreliable.
Email service providers like Apple now preemptively open emails as a privacy protection measure for their users. This means you can’t accurately determine when – or even if – the actual recipient viewed your message.
The data might show an email was opened, but you can’t verify whether it was actually viewed by the intended recipient or just preprocessed by the email provider.
In some cases, if Apple restricts your IP address, you might lose access to open data entirely.
Q: What would you consider a good open rate?
Teodor: While open rates aren’t the most valuable metric to base investment decisions on, they’re still worth monitoring as performance indicators.
If you’re seeing a 5% open rate, that’s a clear red flag that something is wrong with your strategy. Anything under 10% should be considered a yellow flag – a warning sign requiring attention.
In terms of benchmarks, a 20% open rate is generally normal for email marketing. When you reach 30%, that indicates good quality engagement. Anything above 30% is excellent and suggests you’re really connecting with your audience.
Q: So 30% represents a high-quality subscriber base?
Teodor: Yes, when you’re achieving 30% or higher – even starting around 27% – it indicates something legitimate is happening, and your subscriber base is genuinely engaged.
The 20-27% range is still decent – your subscribers may not be your biggest advocates, but they’re sufficiently interested, and that level of engagement can drive sales.
When you drop below 20%, however, that’s when you should start investigating potential issues.
Q: Could a low open rate indicate you haven’t cleaned your list and still have many subscribers who haven’t engaged in a long time?
Teodor: Absolutely.
List hygiene plays a crucial role in maintaining healthy metrics. If you were to keep only subscribers who opened your last two newsletters, you might see your open rate jump to 80%. But percentages alone don’t tell the complete story – I always consider the absolute numbers as well.
For instance, 2,000 email opens that represent 20% of your list management tells you something quite different than just knowing you have a “20% open rate.” You need to evaluate the complete picture to make informed decisions.
Q: Have you noticed if content personalization is useful in emails?
Teodor: Personalization can be beneficial, but in my experience, it’s not absolutely essential for success. Consider the common recommendation to include the recipient’s name in the subject line to grab attention. The theory makes sense – if someone says “Julia” in a crowded room, you’ll naturally notice it because your brain is wired to recognize your name.
Similarly, when scanning your inbox, seeing your name might catch your attention. But let’s be realistic – when a colleague wants to tell me something important, they rarely put “Teodor” in the subject line. They’re typically concise and focused on the message content, with any personal address appearing in the body of the email.
If you already have the personalization data, by all means use it.
However, I wouldn’t recommend investing significant resources in extracting first names from a CRM or email addresses solely for this purpose.
If you have 100,000 email subscribers but lack personalization data, it’s perfectly acceptable to proceed without it.
More valuable personalization might involve location-specific content – for example, “This offer is only available in New York” for New York residents.
But this requires having reliable geographical data about your recipients, which isn’t always available. If you’re a local business, location-based personalization might be worth the effort, but for global businesses with multiple physical locations, implementing such targeting requires additional work.
Q: When implementing lead generation through PPC campaigns, is it possible to capture geographical data and incorporate it into your email marketing strategy?
Teodor: Yes, it’s definitely possible, but the feasibility depends largely on your available resources – both financial investment and dedicated attention. The fundamental question is whether you have sufficient budget and personnel to implement such targeted strategies effectively.
Do you have a team member who can focus exclusively on this type of segmentation? If so, that’s advantageous. However, it’s worth considering the counterargument that sometimes favors broader targeting: “Don’t limit your campaigns to specific demographics. Cast a wider net to maximize potential reach.”
CPV Lab ad tracker allows to send geographical data to your landing page and to show dynamic elements inside in your landing page for a personalized experience.
Q: Does the feasibility of implementing such strategies correlate with one’s marketing expertise?
Teodor: Precisely. An experienced marketer might analyze the data and conclude, “For just three additional conversions, it’s more efficient to broadcast to the entire list.”
This illustrates why effective email marketing must be evidence-based at every stage. All decisions should be supported by thorough testing and analysis rather than assumptions.
Split testing ultimately the answer, testing different versions, different subjects, different everything.
Q: What about using AI in emails? I receive many emails claiming they researched my company when they’re clearly AI-generated.
Teodor: Yes, those generic messages are easy to spot – “Teodor and MessengerOS” followed by obviously templated content.
Those of us working in technology and digital marketing can immediately identify these patterns, but if you’re targeting someone outside our industry – perhaps an elderly person or someone in a traditional trade like baking – they might recognize ChatGPT but not fully understand its capabilities. For those audiences, these approaches might still be effective.
This approach works on a statistical basis. If you send to 100,000 recipients, it might work for 10 or 100 of them – I don’t have precise figures, but these companies clearly see enough return to justify their investment.
They often aren’t concerned about domain reputation because they’re focused solely on volume. They probably allocate specific budgets for mass sending because their conversions might involve higher-ticket items that justify the approach.
That said, I use AI tools like ChatGPT myself, and they offer tremendous value. Anyone not utilizing these technologies is missing significant time-saving opportunities.
The key is not to simply copy and paste AI output. Don’t let AI do all the work – instead, use it as a starting point and then refine the content.
Consider the alternative: if I had to write a full page of content without any assistance, I could certainly produce something, but it might take three hours and potentially contain grammatical errors or unclear explanations, especially since I’m not a native English speaker.
My typical approach is to develop the content concept and core message first, then use ChatGPT to generate an initial draft. This often provides perspectives I hadn’t considered. I’ll incorporate these insights, but I always edit the content – removing overly long sentences and those telltale emojis that immediately signal AI-generated content.
Emojis are immediate indicators of AI generation. But removing these obvious markers doesn’t mean you’re being deceptive about the content.
I simply eliminate the most obvious AI signatures to create more professional, authentic-seeming communications.
Q: Do you think it’s beneficial to use content that serves your audience by starting with AI-generated ideas and then incorporating your own insights?
Teodor: Absolutely. AI can introduce concepts you might not have considered otherwise. It genuinely expands your knowledge base and provides valuable starting points.
The key is adding your expertise and perspective to make the content truly valuable and unique.
Q: What advice would you give to marketers who are just starting to build their email lists?
Teodor: The first reality to accept is that list management is not free.
Don’t expect it to be costless. Even if you’re simply copying and pasting emails from your Outlook or inbox (not from LinkedIn), it represents an investment of time. If you build or purchase a list, you should anticipate lower open rates and potential reputation issues – that’s simply the nature of non-organic list acquisition.
For those committed to building a quality list, understand that it takes time to develop organically.
Alternatively, you can approach it as a financial calculation: If acquiring a warm, interested subscriber costs $3 through Facebook or another platform, but that subscriber ultimately generates $20 in revenue, that’s a profitable equation. Start with a modest investment – perhaps $100 – and evaluate the results.
Q: So it ultimately comes down to the mathematics of customer acquisition? Right?
Teodor: Exactly. Once someone subscribes and remains on your list, that connection becomes an asset. You can continue sending emails at minimal cost, provided they remain engaged. However, it’s crucial to maintain relevance.
Use the same domain they originally subscribed to, and ensure your content aligns with their demonstrated interests. If someone subscribed for information about shoes and you suddenly start promoting pianos, they’re likely to disengage.
Segmentation and maintaining multiple lists is so important, but as we discussed, it’s a cost-effective traffic source once you’ve built and properly maintained your list management.
And list management can be very economical if you already have website traffic. If you’re already investing in PPC advertising, why not implement a strategic pop-up to capture email addresses from those visitors? It’s an obvious opportunity to leverage traffic you’re already paying for.
Connect with Teodor
As mentioned in the interview, you can connect with Teodor Mincu on LinkedIn or book a consultation through the MessengerOS website to discuss your specific email marketing challenges
Conclusion: Email Marketing Mastery with Teodor Mincu
In this enlightening second part of our interview with Teodor Mincu, founder of MessengerOS, we’ve explored critical aspects of email marketing that can dramatically improve your results. From the counterintuitive benefits of unsubscribes to the nuances of domain reputation management, Teodor has shared practical insights that only come from years of hands-on experience in the field.
Key takeaways from this conversation include:
- Understanding why unsubscribes can actually improve your email marketing performance
- Building quality email lists that generate real engagement
- List management to keep your emails out of the spam folder
- The truth about open rates and what numbers you should aim for
- Practical approaches to personalization that don’t waste resources
- How to intelligently incorporate AI into your email content creation
But this is just a portion of the valuable knowledge Teodor has shared. If you found these insights helpful, there’s much more to discover in the complete interview.
Watch the Full Interview
To get the complete picture of Teodor’s email marketing expertise, watch the full video interview on our YouTube channel. The video includes visual demonstrations and additional list management tips not captured in this transcript.
This interview is part of our ongoing Champions of Performance Marketing series featuring marketing experts who provide actionable strategies you can implement today. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when we release our next expert interview.
