Latest / The Email Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Newsletters, Open Rates, and Subscriber Growth / Why Email Fatigue Is Killing Your Growth
Transcript
- Lucas: Look, if you’re checking your email dashboard right now, you probably see two numbers that are making you nervous. One is the open rate, which has been sliding for months across almost every vertical. The other is the unsubscribe rate, which is creeping up just slightly, but enough to keep CMOs awake at night. But there’s a third metric that barely anyone tracks, yet it’s becoming the single biggest predictor of churn: email fatigue. Luna: Right, because fatigue isn’t just about deleting an email. It’s that micro-hesitation before you even click. Like when you see a subject line and think, 'I’ll read this later,' and then you never do. That hesitation compounds. Lucas: Exactly. And here’s the thing most people miss. We’ve spent the last decade optimizing for volume. More sends, more flows, more triggers. But we’re hitting a ceiling where the marginal utility of each additional email is negative. I was looking at data from a mid-sized sustainable apparel brand last week. They cut their weekly newsletter from four emails to two, and within six weeks, their average order value went up by twelve percent. Luna: That seems counterintuitive. Less content usually means less opportunity to sell, doesn’t it? Lucas: It does, if you view email purely as a broadcast channel. But this brand shifted their framing entirely. They stopped treating the inbox like a billboard and started treating it like a conversation. The key wasn’t just cutting volume; it was curating signal over noise. They realized that subscribers weren’t ignoring them because they didn’t care about the products. They were ignoring them because the inbox felt like clutter. Luna: So it’s really an attention economy problem now. We’re competing with Slack notifications, text messages, and algorithmic feeds. An email feels like just another demand on cognitive load. Lucas: Precisely. And the cost of that cognitive load is real. When a subscriber opens an email and sees three different banners, two urgent calls to action, and a long footer full of links, their brain registers it as work. They close it. And once that association forms — that email equals effort — the next time you send, they don’t even look. They go straight to archive. That’s the silent killer of lifetime value. Luna: But how do you measure that? You can’t really track 'effort' directly. Most tools just give you clicks and opens. Lucas: You infer it through behavioral proxies. time to open is one. If someone takes forty-eight hours to open a promotional email that used to be opened in ten minutes, that’s a fatigue signal. Another is scroll depth. If the average click-through rate stays flat but the time spent reading drops by half, they’re scanning and skipping. And the strongest proxy is actually list decay speed. If unsubscribes spike after a campaign series, that’s direct feedback on fatigue levels. Luna: So instead of trying to fight the decline, you’re saying we should lean into restraint? Like a luxury brand model where scarcity drives desire? Lucas: Not quite scarcity, but intentionality. Let me give you a concrete example. There’s a fintech startup called Chime, or rather, similar players in that space, who have mastered this. They don’t send daily updates. They send triggered insights. Maybe it’s a weekly summary of spending patterns, or a monthly review of savings goals. Each email provides genuine utility. The subscriber opens it because it helps them, not because they fear missing out on a sale. Luna: That shifts the dynamic completely. It’s not interruptive marketing anymore. It’s a service. Lucas: Yes. And services build loyalty. Interruptions breed resentment. The difference is in the value proposition. When you send an email, ask yourself: does this help the reader make a better decision, or does it just help me hit a quarterly target? If it’s the latter, you’re contributing to their fatigue. If it’s the former, you’re building trust. Luna: But what about the pressure from sales teams? They always want more touchpoints. How do you convince a VP of Sales that sending less is actually good for revenue? Lucas: You show them the leaky bucket. I had a client recently who was blasting five newsletters a month plus daily product drops. Their revenue per subscriber was stagnant. We audited their flows and found that forty percent of their audience hadn’t clicked in ninety days. By consolidating those five newsletters into one high-quality weekly digest, we reduced overall send volume by sixty percent. But because the remaining audience was engaged, the revenue from that segment actually grew. We stopped paying for deliverability costs to people who didn’t care. Luna: So it’s also a cost efficiency play. Fewer sends mean lower ESP costs, but more importantly, higher conversion rates from the active cohort. Lucas: Exactly. And don’t forget deliverability. Internet Service Providers and webmail providers like Gmail and Outlook are getting smarter at filtering out low-engagement senders. If you’re sending to inactive users, you’re hurting your sender reputation. Which means your emails to active users might end up in spam. So fatigue isn’t just a user experience problem. It’s a technical infrastructure problem too. Luna: That’s a crucial point. Most people think of email as separate from SEO or ad tech, but the algorithms governing inbox placement are heavily tied to engagement signals. Lucas: Right. So if you ignore fatigue, you risk losing visibility for everyone. The solution starts with segmentation, but not the old-school demographic stuff. I’m talking about behavioral segmentation based on engagement tolerance. Some users love daily deals. Others prefer monthly roundups. You need to let them choose their preferred cadence. Luna: Preference centers are notoriously underutilized though. Most people skip them or fill them out incorrectly. Lucas: True, but you don’t need a complex preference center to start. You can use simple toggles. 'Show me daily deals' versus 'Show me weekly highlights.' Or even simpler: post-purchase flows can be optimized differently than nurture flows. After a buy, the customer expects updates. In a nurture phase, they expect value. Match the frequency to the context. Luna: So context is king. Frequency must follow context. Lucas: Yes. And here’s the hard part for many businesses: you have to be willing to let some subscribers leave. If someone only engages when you send three times a week, and you drop to once, they might opt out. But that’s okay. Those are low-value subscribers. Keeping them inflates your list size while dragging down your metrics. It’s better to have a smaller, highly engaged list that converts consistently than a bloated list that looks good on paper but generates nothing. Luna: It’s a painful truth. Everyone wants big lists. But big lists with low engagement are liabilities. Lucas: They are. And the market is rewarding the companies that understand this shift. Look at the rise of 'quiet commerce' brands. They send fewer emails, but each one is beautifully crafted, personally signed, and deeply relevant. They treat the inbox like a private club, not a town square. Luna: I’ve noticed that in my own subscriptions. I’ve dropped several newsletters because they felt too noisy. But I stay loyal to the ones that feel like a personal note. Lucas: That’s the gold standard. A personal note. That’s what we’re aiming for. It requires discipline. It requires resisting the urge to fill empty slots in the calendar. But the payoff is a relationship that lasts years, not just quarters. Luna: So, actionable advice for our listeners: audit your recent sends. Look at the time to open and scroll depth. Identify the fatigue signals. Then prune the volume. Lucas: Spot on. Start small. Cut one send per week. Measure the impact on engagement and revenue over thirty days. If the metrics hold steady or improve, cut another. Treat it like a scientific experiment. You’re not guessing. You’re testing. Luna: And remember, it’s not about doing less for the sake of laziness. It’s about doing less so you can do better with what remains. Lucas: Exactly. Quality of attention beats quantity of impressions. Every single time. Luna: Before we wrap up this deep dive, I want to pause for a moment. If these conversations about email strategy and consumer psychology have sparked something you've actually used in your campaigns today, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — that's F. E. X. I. N. G. O. Lucas: Yeah, we appreciate it. It keeps the research sharp and the ads off your feed. Now, back to the data. Luna: Let’s talk about the actual mechanics of that 'personal note' approach. How do you scale personalization without burning out your copy team? Lucas: Great question. You don’t write every email by hand. You create modular templates with variable voice tones. Think of it like a style guide. For high-value segments, you might add a handwritten-style P.S. or a photo of the founder. For broader segments, you rely on strong, concise copy. The key is consistency in tone, not necessarily in handwriting. Luna: So it’s about emotional resonance, not literal intimacy. Lucas: Correct. Resonance scales. Intimacy does not. Find the balance where the subscriber feels seen, but the operation remains efficient. Luna: That’s a powerful distinction. Seen, not smothered. Lucas: Right. And as we move into Q4, watch your fatigue metrics closely. The holiday season is a trap for over-sending. Brands that resist the urge to blast will stand out simply by being calm. Luna: Calm in a chaotic inbox. That’s the new competitive advantage. Lucas: It absolutely is. And that’s where the real growth lies now. Not in shouting louder, but in speaking clearer. Luna: So the question isn't just how to grow your list, but how to keep your best subscribers listening. Lucas: Precisely. Because in the end, attention is the only currency that matters.