🧠 2025 Email Marketing Myths to Avoid

Hey, it’s Ray.

The inbox landscape moves fast, and 2025 is already serving up a fresh batch of “best-practice” myths that can quietly bleed your growth. 

Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on five of the biggest whoppers and giving you a playbook to dodge them.

Myth #1

“Klaviyo drives 30% of our revenue, look at the dashboard!”

That shiny percentage looks amazing until you peek under the hood:

• Long attribution windows let every touchpoint stake a claim.

• Click tracking credits a bake-sale email for Black-Friday revenue.

Reality: Attribution ≠ incremental revenue. Unless you’re running holdout groups or clean A/B tests, you’re confusing credit with contribution.

Quick Fix: Spin up a 10% holdout cohort for the next 30 days. Compare total revenue per user (RPU) to your mailed list. That delta is the true lift, nothing else matters.

Myth #2

“We’re crushing it, our open rate is 70%!”

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection now pre-loads every image (including your tracking pixel) the moment a subscriber’s inbox refreshes, long before they decide to read. 

That single change can puff up open rates by 3–7 percentage points (or more), turning a decent subject line into a “winner” on paper even when clicks and sales stay flat.

Reality: Opens are still handy for spotting deliverability crashes, if they suddenly nosedive, you may be hitting spam folders, but they’re too noisy to judge revenue performance. Engagement that matters happens after the pixel fires.

Quick Fix: Re-balance your KPI mix so it rewards actions that move money:

• Opens: Treat as a safety gauge, about 10% of your internal scoring.

• Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR): Make it the core engagement signal; around four times the weight of opens.

• Placed-Order / Conversion Rate: Give this the lion’s share (≈ 50%), because purchases, not vanity metrics, keep the lights on.

The exact percentages will vary by brand, but the hierarchy stays the same.

Shift attention from “Did they glance?” to “Did they click and buy?”

Measure what pays the bills, not what flatters the dashboard.

Myth #3

“Industry benchmarks are the north star.”

Sure, benchmarks give context, but chasing averages guarantees you’ll be average. Your list quality, offer positioning, and customer journey are one-of-one.

Reality: Custom benchmarks > generic ones.

Quick Fix: Build a rolling 90-day baseline for each lifecycle segment (welcome, post-purchase, win-back). Then aim to beat your own top quartile by 10% every quarter.

Myth #4

“Just send more emails, volume = revenue.”

Cranking frequency without strategy leads to fatigue, spam complaints, and churn.

Reality: More isn’t better, better is better. Timing, relevance, and creative resonance trump blast counts.

Quick Fix:

1. Quality gate: Suppress anyone who hasn’t clicked in 60 days from non-promo campaigns.

2. Smart send time: Use Klaviyo’s smart-send or a data-based cadence tied to shopping cycles (e.g., payday windows).

3. Creative relevance: Map content to lifecycle stage, not calendar days.
   

Myth #5

“Attribution windows don’t overlap; Klaviyo’s got it covered.”

Every platform runs its own look-back clock. 

A shopper who views a Facebook ad, taps an SMS, and checks out after your email can be credited three times for the same order, because 

Facebook may use a 7-day click window while Klaviyo uses 5. Dashboards look great, but revenue hasn’t tripled.

Reality: Pause one channel for a slice of your list. If total revenue barely budges, that channel was taking credit, not creating lift.

Quick Fix:

1. Unify windows: Set 5-day click / 0-day view across email, SMS, and paid media.

2. Toggle-off test: Stop email (or any channel) for 10 % of the list for two weeks; watch blended ROAS and revenue per user.

3. De-dupe orders: Export order IDs from each platform and see how often a single sale shows up twice.
   

Fund the channels that move incremental dollars, not the ones with the loudest attribution claims.

TL;DR Playbook for 2025

☑ Holdout testing → Proves incremental lift
☑ Shift to CTOR & orders → Cuts through AMPP noise
☑ Custom benchmarks → Drives meaningful progress
☑ Quality-first cadence → Preserves list health
☑ Uniform attribution windows → Ends double-counting

Want Hands-On Help?

If sorting signal from noise feels overwhelming, let’s chat.

I’ll audit your flows, attribution settings, and KPI stack, then build a myth-proof roadmap that grows real revenue.

Talk soon,

Raymond Chen
Founder & CEO, 11 Agency

More Ways to Level Up Your Email Game

If this sounds like a lot to manage, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

There’s a lot that goes into building a high-converting email strategy. 

If you’re serious about optimizing your email marketing, let’s talk. 

Here’s what we can do:

✅ Done-for-You Email Strategy: If you’re ready to scale but don’t have the time, we’ll build out a full email system that maximizes your revenue. You can book a call with me here. 

✅ Or, if you just want to grab a free resource, get a FREE 10-page KPI audit and a 128-point health scorecard to optimize your email marketing. Get it here!

Extra Tips to Boost Your Email Strategy

If you’re up for boosting your email game, I’ve got a few more gems for you:

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In my YouTube video, I walk you through the process of designing popups in 2025 that boost email deliverability, grow your list, and drive more conversions. Using tools like Klaviyo and platforms like Shopify, I’ll show you exactly how to optimize your forms for success. 👉 Watch it here: 

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I just put together a deep dive into the latest email compliance and data privacy updates for 2025. If you want to keep your emails landing in inboxes (and out of trouble), this guide has everything you need. Check it out here!

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