Why Benchmarks Don’t Pay Payroll: 2026 And Beyond Email Conversion Strategy for Founders With 10k+ Email Lists
Intro: Why Benchmarks Don’t Pay Payroll
Most founders think their email list is a trophy. 13,842 subscribers. Benchmarks hit. CTRs “fine.” But when Stripe shows a nervous pulse instead of a steady heartbeat, you realize the trophy is hollow.
This isn’t about open rates. It isn’t about pretty templates. It’s about whether your list is a profit lever—or a sugar pill that embarrasses you in the boardroom.
In this post, you’ll learn:
Why Email conversion strategy beats vanity metrics
How A/B testing in email marketing transforms polite clicks into unapologetic conversions
What it looks like when you finally treat your list like the revenue engine it was meant to be
Once Upon a Time: The Founder’s Email List
Once upon a time there was a founder whose list sat at 13,842 subscribers and felt heavier every month.
Every day, she watched Stripe show a thin, nervous pulse of sales that barely covered her ad spend, let alone the payroll of the people who trusted her to get this right.
One day her CMO slid a laptop across the table and said, “Here’s the part nobody on those podcasts tells you—our campaigns are technically ‘fine,’ we’re ‘on benchmark,’ and we’re still nowhere near the numbers this list should be throwing off.”
Because of that, she stopped whispering, “Maybe our audience is tired,” and started saying, “Maybe we’ve never actually learned how these people think, feel, and decide.”
Because of that, she stopped blasting one clever message at 13,842 strangers and began testing like that TikTok “testing my boyfriend” trend—only this time she wasn’t checking if he noticed her hair, she was checking if growth‑hungry founders, risk‑averse CFOs, and burned‑out marketing leads noticed anything she said at all.
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| “Only one survives. Let the A/B begin.” |
Because of that, she saw what happens when you stop chasing vanity opens and start A/B testing full offers and page flows: not 10% bumps, but conversion rates jumping from “industry average” into “oh, this pays for our mistakes from last year,” the kind of shift where the same list buys two to three times more simply because you finally matched the right promise to the right person.
Until finally, she understood her list better than most people understand the partner they share a bed with—and the numbers proved it, week after week.
And ever since then, she has refused to send a single “best guess” email without a test stitched into its bones.
That is the level this post is written for.
Founders.
Owners.
Revenue‑bearing leaders who have already done the hard part—building a list big enough to matter—and who are now stuck in the most humiliating spot in the game:
You did everything “right.”
You hit benchmarks.
You shipped content.
You nurtured.
You segmented a bit.
And the result still feels like a polite trickle instead of an unapologetic river.
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| “Open rates are fine. Clicks are fine. Revenue is… fine?” |
So let’s talk about why.
And what someone like you actually does when you’re done pretending that averages are acceptable.
Your list is not 13,842 people. It’s three arguments you’re losing.
Spend an evening lurking where serious operators vent.
You see the same three problems repeat in slightly different clothes:
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“Our list is big, but email barely moves the revenue needle.”
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“We get opens and clicks, but conversions are stubbornly flat.”
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“Every launch feels like rolling dice; we can’t predict anything.”
Underneath those lines live deeper beliefs:
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“If this were fixable, we’d have fixed it by now.”
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“Maybe our audience just isn’t like those case‑study brands.”
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“If we test and the numbers are still bad, that’s on me.”
So instead of testing like scientists, most teams decorate like interior designers.
New template.
New color.
New banner.
Same blunt promise.
Same vague buyer.
Same untested structure.
It’s like standing in the hallway of your own house, shouting,
“Do you want growth?
Do you like freedom?
Do you care about profit?”
…and being shocked when nobody comes to the door.
Hopkins would look at that and shrug.
Not because your product is bad.
Not because your audience is broken.
But because, in his words, the only uncertainty that should remain is people and products—not the method.
Right now, your method is a mood.
TikTok tests boyfriends. You don’t test buyers.
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| “Your email campaign when you don’t segment.” |
That TikTok “testing my boyfriend” trend is ridiculous on the surface.
But it’s also brutally honest about how humans work.
She changes her hair.
She walks in with nails a different color.
She leaves a decoy text open.
The entire video is one question:
“Will he notice what actually matters to me?”
Viewers are hooked because of three things:
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Curiosity – “What will he do?”
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Pattern – “He always misses this; will he miss it again?”
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Truth – “This is who he really is when nobody is looking.”
Now look at how you treat your list.
You send one email with a general promise.
You send it to founders, to CFOs, to marketing leads, to operators.
You don’t change the angle.
You don’t change the emotional stakes.
You don’t change the level of awareness.
You don’t ask, “Will this person notice this specific thing?”
You ask, “Will anyone buy?”
That’s like setting up a “testing my boyfriend” video where you hide the camera two houses away, mumble your question, and complain when he doesn’t react.
Definition: A/B testing in email marketing means sending two versions of a campaign to see which performs better on conversions.
Serious testing means you deliberately change one thing your person might notice.
For the achievement‑driven founder, you test:
“Hit your next funding round targets from email alone.”
For the safety‑driven CFO, you test:
“Turn email into the one forecast line that never embarrasses you.”
For the burnt‑out marketing lead, you test:
“Stop rewriting the same three campaigns and start shipping tests that actually move conversion.”
Same product.
Same list size.
Different boyfriend tests.
You see who turns their head.
The conversion math that should make you feel a little nauseous
Here’s why this conversation is not academic.
Imagine two companies, both with lists around that 13–15k mark.
Same industry.
Same broad market.
Company A runs “best guess” campaigns.
They hit normal benchmarks.
They see, say, 1–2% of recipients turning into buyers on key promos.
Company B runs structured tests across emails, landing pages, and offers.
They treat each campaign like a mini‑lab.
They tighten segments around actual behavior.
And they steadily move their conversion rates into the 3–6% zone on comparable sends.
Those numbers are realistic gaps between average and top‑tier execution.
Not hype.
Not fantasy.
Run that across a list of ~14,000 people.
At 1% conversion, a promo might produce 140 orders.
At 4%, the same promo, to the same list, under a better‑tested structure, produces 560.
If your average order is, say, $100, that’s the difference between:
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$14,000 from one campaign
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$56,000 from the same people
Now stack that difference across:
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Four key promos per quarter
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Plus evergreen flows you finally tune instead of tolerate
Suddenly, this isn’t “improving our email.”
This is “we left six figures rotting in old tests we never ran.”
Tell the truth.
If a stranger walked into your office and offered to buy your list’s untested upside for a flat $50k cash, would you sell it?
That’s what you’re doing when you decide, quarter after quarter, to stay at the “average” end of the benchmark charts.
Declarative takeaway: Six figures (over half a million dollars of revenue) rot in untested campaigns every year.(check the math: $42k difference x 4 promos per quarter= $168k per quarter x 4 quarters a year= $672,000 in promos/year ALONE)
Your list is three different people arguing in your inbox
When you read founder threads or revenue‑lead rants, you can almost hear three voices:
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The Growth Drunk
“If this list isn’t printing aggressive upside, what is the point of carrying it? I didn’t build a 14k database to feel like a blogger.” -
The Safety Chief
“We can’t throttle people with hard sells. We can’t blow up deliverability. If we get this wrong at scale, I’m the one who has to justify it in the board slide.” -
The Burned‑Out Marketer
“I’m the one dragged into ‘just one more campaign’ every time revenue feels low. I would test more if I wasn’t also expected to design, write, brief, and report.”
You try to write one email that soothes all three.
So it hits none of them deeply.
The Growth Drunk wants numbers and upside and the sense that someone, somewhere, knows how to squeeze proper juice from this list.
The Safety Chief wants proof, predictability, and the sense that if things go sideways, there was a clear method, not a reckless Hail Mary.
The Burned‑Out Marketer wants someone else to hold the testing architecture so they can execute without inventing every variable from scratch.
Testing, done right, isn’t “more work.”
It is the only thing that gives each of those people what they actually want.
What it looks like when your testing goes from “we should” to “we do”
Back to our founder.
She didn’t fix this with one heroic campaign.
She fixed it by changing how decisions were made.
First, she mapped reality.
Not vibes.
Not guesses.
She pulled:
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List size and growth over the last year
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Conversion by campaign type
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Conversion by automation flow
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Revenue per subscriber per quarter
Then she circled the ugliest number on the page.
It wasn’t open rate.
It wasn’t click rate.
It was “revenue per subscriber.”
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| Visual punchline that nails the misaligned priorities in email strategy |
For her, it should have hurt more than it did.
For her stage and audience, that number could realistically be two or three times higher without feeling aggressive or out of character.
Second, she forced a new rule into the system:
No campaign ships without a test baked in.
No test runs without a clear hypothesis.
No result gets ignored because “the numbers look weird.”
Every send becomes:
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One key who
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One key promise
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One visible variable
Example:
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WHO: Growth‑driven founders on the list
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PROMISE: Double their revenue per subscriber over the next 12 months
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VARIABLE: Status‑heavy “win” framing vs safety‑heavy “floor” framing
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| This is what email strategy looks like when you stop guessing and start segmenting with intent |
That’s it.
No drama.
Just the boyfriend test, run like adults.
Third, she refused to let copy live and die on taste.
If her favorite line lost, it died.
If an ugly subject line won, it lived.
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| "Where untested emails go to die." |
She let the list tell the truth.
Why Vanity Metrics Fail
Definition: Revenue per subscriber is the average revenue generated per person on your list over a set period. It’s the metric that tells you whether your list is actually profitable—not just busy.
She circled the ugliest number on the page. It wasn’t open rate. It wasn’t click rate. It was Revenue per subscriber.
Declarative takeaway: Benchmarks don’t pay payroll. Conversions do.
Where someone like you actually needs help
This is where you realize the choke point isn’t willpower.
It’s architecture.
You don’t need more “copy tips.”
You need a system and a partner whose full‑time job is:
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Translating all this psychology into specific tests for your segments
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Writing both sides of those tests at a level that can actually win
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Reading the numbers with you and extracting decisions, not trivia
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Protecting your brand voice and deliverability while you push harder on revenue
That is the role you hire me for.
Not as a random freelancer who writes a few emails.
As a direct response copywriter and strategist who:
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Knows email deliverability well enough that your best ideas still land in Primary
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Uses AI as a power tool, not a content crutch, so we can ideate faster and test more without sounding robotic
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Understands buyer psychology at the “VALS plus real‑world founder angst” level, not just who they follow on LinkedIn
You bring the list, the offers, and the stakes.
I bring the method, the words, and the testing spine.
Ten questions that tell you exactly whether it’s time
Let’s make this concrete.
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Do you know your revenue per subscriber for the last two quarters, by segment?
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Can you name one test in the last 90 days that increased conversion, not just opens?
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Do you know which emotional driver—growth, safety, status, or relief—pulls the biggest response in your highest‑value slice?
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Is there a clear, documented testing backlog, ranked by potential impact?
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Does someone on your team own that backlog and its results in their job description?
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When a campaign underperforms, can you point to one specific element you’re testing next, instead of rewriting from zero?
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Could you defend your email strategy in a boardroom using numbers instead of opinions?
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Do your marketer(s) feel supported by a testing framework, or suffocated by constant “we need something new”?
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If your list doubled tomorrow, would your system squeeze more from it, or simply double the noise?
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If this quarter’s email revenue simply repeated last quarter’s, would you be fine… or furious?
.jpg "Can you defend your email strategy with numbers?- founder accountability moment.") |
| "Can you defend your email strategy with numbers?” |
If your honest answers cluster around “no,” then the gap isn’t small.
The gap is structural.
Declarative takeaway: Can you defend your email strategy with numbers?
What working together actually looks like (not the fluff version)
Here’s how this unfolds when you bring me into the picture.
Phase 1 – Clarify and score the upside
We look straight at:
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Revenue per subscriber
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Conversion by key campaign type
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Conversion by automation
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Size and behavior of your most profitable segments
We mark where you sit relative to realistic top‑tier performance for your stage.
We don’t chase some mythical 90% conversion.
We chase the difference between where you are and where you could be without burning your brand.
Phase 2 – Build the minimum viable testing engine
We don’t boil the ocean.
We design the smallest testing system that can:
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Be run by your existing team without collapse
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Feed on real data you already collect
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Focus on the two or three variables most likely to move cash
You get:
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A 60‑day testing roadmap
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Fully written A/B assets for your first priority promos and flows
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Simple reporting templates that turn “results” into “next steps”
Phase 3 – Compound the winners
As tests run, we:
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Promote winners into your evergreen flows and flagship campaigns
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Kill losers without drama
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Identify patterns across segments and drivers
Email stops being a messy archive.
It becomes a living library of proven angles, offers, and stories your people have already paid you to keep using.
If you want this level of rigor, here’s your move
You don’t need to marry me.
You don’t need a 12‑month retainer.
You need to see, with your own eyes, what happens when someone who lives for this walks into your world and starts turning knobs on purpose.
So here’s the simplest next step.
Send me a message with the words:
“Let’s test this list properly.”
When you do, here’s what you get back:
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A short loom or breakdown pinpointing where your current email setup is silently capping your conversions and your revenue per subscriber.
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Three high‑impact test ideas designed specifically for your stage, your list size, and your buyer mix—each one something you can run even if we never work together.
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If it feels like a fit, a clear, no‑pressure outline of a 60‑day engagement where I architect, write, and help you interpret the tests that matter most.
No drama.
No “secret system.”
Just the grown‑up version of that TikTok trend:
Stop wondering if your audience still loves you.
Start testing the exact moments where they show you.
Once upon a time, Maya thought her 13,842 people were tired.
Now they are one of the most reliable lines on her revenue forecast.
If you want that shift, too, the next test isn’t in your ESP.
It’s in your decision to treat this work like the profit lever it actually is—and get someone beside you who knows how to pull it.
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