Teardowns

Three follow-up emails we'd fix, and how

Anonymised examples of the emails B2B companies actually send after an event, to a dormant list, and from sales. Each one rewritten, with the reasoning. New teardowns go out monthly in Funnel Notes.

A marketer reviewing an email on screen with notes

Photo slot: photo-teardown.jpg — someone reviewing an email draft on a laptop, annotations, 1:1

Teardown 1

The post-webinar "thanks for attending"

A Microsoft partner, 640 registrants, one email sent to everyone 26 hours after the session. 3 meetings.

Before

Subject: Thank you for attending our webinar!

Hi there,

Thank you for joining our webinar on Modern Data Platforms. We hope you found it valuable! You can watch the recording here.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions. We look forward to staying in touch!

Best regards,
The Marketing Team

After

Subject: The slide everyone asked about (min 23)

Daniel,

Thanks for sticking around for the Q&A yesterday. Three people asked about the same thing: how to sequence a migration so reporting never goes dark. That slide is at 23:10 in the recording.

If you're weighing that at Northwind, I can walk through how two teams your size did it. 20 minutes, no deck. Pick a time or just reply.

Priya
Account Executive · you attended live on Tue, so you're on the attendee track; no-shows get a different email

Subject names a specific moment from the session instead of thanking people for showing up.
Sent from the rep who will take the call, not "The Marketing Team", so replies land with a person.
One ask, sized to interest: a 20-minute walkthrough, not "reach out if you have questions".
Attendees, no-shows and non-engaged registrants each get their own track; this is the attendee version.

Teardown 2

The quarterly newsletter to 42,000 people

An IT services firm sending one newsletter a quarter to the whole database, including 38,000 contacts who hadn't engaged in a year. Open rate 11% and falling.

Before

Subject: Acme Q3 Newsletter: Updates, Insights & More

Dear Valued Contact,

We're excited to share our latest updates! This quarter we launched two new service lines, welcomed 14 new team members, and attended 5 industry events. Read on for insights from our leadership team…

[four more sections, 1,100 words, six images]

Stay connected with us on LinkedIn!

After

Subject: Still useful, or should we stop?

Hi Marcus,

You downloaded our cloud cost checklist in 2023 and we haven't sent anything worth reading since. That's on us.

Before we send anything else: is this still relevant to what you're working on?

Yes, keep me posted · No, take me off the list

One thing, if it helps: the question we get most this year is how to cut cloud spend without a migration. Happy to share the three moves that worked, no pitch.

Sofia
sent to the 38,000 dormant contacts only; the 3,800 engaged contacts got a different email

Dormant contacts get re-permissioned, not newslettered. Non-responders are sunset after four emails, which protects the domain.
Plain text, one idea, one question. Six-image newsletters to cold contacts are how domains end up in spam.
The engaged 3,800 keep getting content; the two groups are never mixed again.
Result in the worked scenario (illustrative, not a named client): 31 meetings in 30 days from a list that had produced none.

Teardown 3

The SDR sequence sent from the main domain

A SaaS company whose sales team ran cold outreach from @company.com while marketing sent campaigns from the same domain. Marketing open rates fell from 24% to 9% and nobody connected the two.

Before

From: jake@company.com

Subject: Quick question

Hi {{first_name}},

I noticed {{company}} is growing fast. We help companies like yours cut onboarding time by 40%. Do you have 15 minutes this week?

[step 2 of 8 · sent to 2,400 purchased contacts per week]

After

From: jake@outreach.company.com

Subject: Your onboarding checklist (from the webinar)

Hi Lena,

You asked during Thursday's session whether the checklist works for a 40-person support team. Short answer: yes, with two changes, which I've marked in this copy.

If it's useful, I can show you how Brightline set it up in 20 minutes. If not, no follow-up from me.

Jake
sent only to opted-in webinar attendees · cold outreach moved to a separate subdomain with its own warm-up

Cold outreach moved to a subdomain so its complaint rate no longer drags marketing email into spam.
Purchased list suppressed. Opted-in attendees get the sequence; that alone restored inbox placement from 39% to 91% in the worked scenario.
Merge fields replaced with a real reference to something the contact did.
An exit is offered ("no follow-up from me"), which lowers complaints and, counter-intuitively, raises replies.

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