🎙️I Just Watched Ryan Deiss Explain Why Most Email Marketers Are Quietly Destroying Their Own Business

🎄 Merry Christmas Eve!

This one's quick, but it might be the most valuable thing you read before 2025.

Last week, I sat down with Ryan Deiss (founder of The Scalable Company and DigitalMarketer) for Audience Bridge Insights.

We were talking about email marketing when he said something that stopped me:

"Email was the first social network."

Before feeds. Before followers. Before algorithms. Before CPMs went vertical.

Email was how people connected online.

And here's the part most marketers miss: It's still the most powerful channel you have—when it's done correctly.

The problem? Most businesses are quietly breaking it.

Not because they're lazy. Not because they don't care.

Because they're doing what everyone else told them to do.

Watch the entire podcast now or scroll down to get my insights.

Ryan laid it out plainly:

Here's what happened:

Then ISPs tightened the rules. Gmail rolled out tabs. Yahoo started enforcing authentication. Microsoft followed suit.

Suddenly, the cracks showed.

The brands that were sending to everyone regardless of engagement? They got crushed.

Their emails stopped landing in inboxes. Open rates tanked. Revenue plateaued.

And they blamed "email fatigue" or "the algorithm" or "people don't read email anymore."

Wrong.

Email only works when engagement drives sending—not the other way around.

You can't blast 100,000 people who haven't opened in 6 months and expect mailbox providers to trust you.

That's not how deliverability works anymore.

Ryan dropped a truth that most marketers completely ignore:

"Only 3-6% of your list is ready to act at any given time."

Read that again.

Only 3-6% of your subscribers are in buying mode, actively looking for what you're offering, ready to click and engage.

Yet most brands still send everything to everyone.

Every offer. Every campaign. Every announcement.

That's how deliverability tanks. That's how inboxes close. That's how revenue plateaus.

Smart senders don't blast the whole list. They segment based on recent intent.

Who opened in the last 7 days? Who clicked in the last 30? Who's actively engaging vs. who's gone dormant?

"You have to meet people where they are," Ryan said. "Not where you want them to be."

If someone hasn't opened your email in 90 days, sending them more emails doesn't fix the problem. It makes it worse.

Because now mailbox providers see you sending to unengaged recipients, and your sender reputation takes the hit.

The old email playbook looked like this:

Indoctrination → Nurture → Offer

47-step sequences. Multi-week onboarding flows. Complex automation maps that look like circuit boards.

Ryan's take? "Every email must stand on its own now."

Today's inbox rewards:

Not 47-step sequences that nobody finishes.

"People's attention spans have changed," he said. "They're not going to sit through a 12-email nurture sequence anymore. If email #1 doesn't deliver value, they're out."

The best email marketers today are writing emails that work independently—each one valuable on its own, not dependent on what came before or what's coming next.

Here's where Ryan blew my mind:

The best brands now use email to:

Owned audience → distributed attention.

You're not trying to keep people in their inbox reading 2,000-word essays.

You're using email to direct them to where your best content lives—YouTube, podcasts, your site, wherever you're building long-form value.

"Email is the connective tissue," Ryan said. "It's how you get people to consume your content wherever it lives."

That shift changes everything about how you write emails and what you measure.

Ryan's been in digital marketing long enough to see entire businesses disappear overnight when algorithms changed.

SEO updates. Social platform shutdowns. Ad account bans.

"I've watched companies lose everything because they built on rented land," he said.

Email isn't immune to changes. Gmail can change rules tomorrow. Yahoo can tighten requirements. Microsoft can shift policies.

But it's still the most controllable channel you have.

If you protect engagement and deliverability, email compounds over time.

If you ignore them, it collapses quietly—and you won't even know it's happening until the damage is done.

"Your email list is the only marketing asset you truly own," Ryan said. "But only if you treat it like an asset worth protecting."

If you run a newsletter, scale revenue through email, or depend on owned audience growth:

You can't afford to keep doing what everyone else is doing.

Blasting your full list doesn't work anymore.

Long, complex automations aren't converting like they used to.

Ignoring deliverability will quietly destroy your business.

The brands winning with email today are:

Because it is.

If you are unfamiliar with a Base Sending Segment ready my article here.

Get a Free Email Strategy Audit call.

We'll look at your segmentation, engagement patterns, deliverability health, and sender reputation—and show you exactly where you're losing money without realizing it.

Reply to this email and I'll send you the private booking link.

(If you're sending to your full list every time and haven't segmented by engagement in the last 90 days, you need this call.)

Have a Merry Christmas,

Chris Miquel

PS: Ryan said something at the end of our conversation that stuck with me: "Email is the only channel where you control the relationship. But most people are treating it like a megaphone instead of a conversation." Don't be most people.

BEFORE YOU GO

This is just the surface. The full episode with Ryan Deiss is packed with insights on email strategy, deliverability, audience building, and why most marketers are making mistakes they don't even know they're making.

🎧 Listen now 👈