Email isn’t dead — your list is

Open rates are a vanity metric. Here’s what we track instead, and why the unsubscribe button is your friend.

The metric that matters

Reply rate. If nobody hits reply, you wrote a press release, not an email.

Why unsubscribes are good

Healthy lists shed weight on their own. A clean unsubscribe is a kindness — to them and to your sender reputation.

A small list of people who want your emails will out-earn a big list of people who tolerate them.

What we send, in practice

• Short. Subject line that promises one thing.
• Plain text first, design second.
• One link if possible. Two if you must.

A tiny operating system