What’s one ‘basic’ tactic or piece of advice you ignored that ended up working?

Honestly, delaying the popup.

For the longest time I thought: show it fast, capture early, maximize volume. Pretty standard thinking.

But when I actually tested delaying it based on behavior instead of time, everything improved. Higher submit rates, better email quality, and more revenue per subscriber.

What I was missing:
People don’t give their email when they land.
They give it once they’re convinced.

Now I rarely use fixed timers. I wait for signals. Scroll depth, product views, time on site. Basically: interest first, ask second.

Another upvote for what ​@zacfromson said: "send more emails."

Background: At a past job, we sent 3 emails per day (e.g. 8am, noon, 6pm in recipient's timezone) per brand, with each subsequent email excluding openers/clickers of the previous email(s) that day. I'm definitely not advocating for sending this much (even if you're recycling emails and your subscribers are ok with that frequency, it's hard to justify that workload on your marketing and design team), but our deliverability and sender reputation were stellar. If we could repeatedly send to non-openers/clickers every day, you can probably afford to send an email 2 days in a row. 😄

How to do it well? Have a preference center with a frequency option, keep an eye on your unsubscribes, monitor your reputation in Klaviyo and Google Postmaster Tools, and go ahead and send it. 😉

“KISS”!

I used to think that email needs to comprehensive and include key information about the product/content to qualify for a “good” email. However, looking at all the best performing emails in the past year, both in revenue and in clickthrough rate, the top ones are those short and simple emails with a good visual. We need to start trusting those short emails!

I know many brand have tested the simple text ones - we are still exploring ways to do it that also align with our brand image - but I can see that is something could convert really well. 

​@Wout Groot - I WISH with all y heart I had the same experience as you.

...because this one one pains me every time but it’s so real:

“annoying pop-ups… work”

I wanted so badly for this not to be true
like I really believed if we just made things:

• more thoughtful
• more on-brand
• less intrusive

people would respond better

and then you test:

• the clean, respectful popup → performs fine
• the slightly aggressive one → better
• the big, hard-to-miss, pops-up-again version → wins

and you’re just sitting there like… no 😭

same with:

• multi-step popups
• exit intent + timed + scroll
• showing it again if they don’t convert

it’s not that users like it
it’s that it works anyway

the thing that finally clicked for me was:

--our job isn’t to be less annoying — it’s to be worth the interruption--

so now it’s less about removing popups
and more about:

• making the offer strong enough
• making the timing feel intentional
• and knowing where the line actually is (not where we wish it was)

still wish the polite version won though 😅