Why Email Marketing is King in 2026

Instagram algorithms will keep changing. Platforms will come and go. But your email list? That’s one of the only marketing assets you actually own.

In this episode, I’m breaking down why email marketing still matters in 2026, what’s changing, what’s staying the same, and how solopreneurs, service providers, and female business owners can build an email list that actually works for them – without overwhelm or spammy tactics.

Whether your list is at zero, sitting untouched, or already growing, this episode will help you create a simple, sustainable plan you can actually stick with.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why social media is rented land – and email is owned
• How big brands use email marketing (and how small businesses can do the same)
• Why newsletters work best when they’re treated like a real product
• What email marketing will look like in 2026
• The six biggest email trends shaping the future
• How to personalize emails without becoming a data expert
• Why replies matter more than open rates
• How AI can support your voice without replacing it
• Simple email strategies you can start this week

Email Marketing in 2026: What’s Changing

• Hyper-personalization using tags, segments, and opt-ins
• AI and automation used as a support tool, not a replacement
• Privacy and permission-based marketing becoming more important than ever
• The newsletter renaissance – less marketing voice, more human voice
• Email as the hub connecting your podcast, blog, Instagram, Pinterest, and offers

Six Practical Email Strategies You Can Start This Week

1. Treat your email list like a garden – plant seeds and pull weeds
2. Use simple segmentation without overwhelm
3. Set up a welcome sequence that builds trust
4. Befriend AI and use it as an assistant
5. Design emails for mobile readers first
6. Optimize for replies, not perfection

Tools Mentioned

• Flodesk – my go-to email marketing platform for designers, creatives, and service providers
• Canva
• Showit
• ChatGPT

Final Thoughts

If your entire marketing strategy lives on social media, this episode is your sign to rethink that. Email marketing isn’t about doing more – it’s about building something that lasts.

Start small. Pick one thing. Write one email. Set up one opt-in. Progress will always beat perfection.

📧 Email Me! I want to hear from you: amanda@onewildbrand.com

👉 Explore my services: www.onewildbrand.com

📸 Follow along on Instagram: @onewildbrand

Transcript

Episode 9
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amanda-demoura_2_12-12-2025_094109: [00:01:00] All right. Picture this. It's 2030 and Instagram has changed its algorithm. 17 more times. TikTok might not even exist. Some AI hologram platform is the new shiny thing, and we're all pretending we understand it, but your email list is sitting there like, hello, friend. I've never left because an email list.

The closest thing to having somebody's home address in this day and age, it's a direct line. There's no algorithm, there's no hoping it finds the right people. There's no, [00:02:00] please pray for this to reach my somebody today. So what this episode is going to be is. Talking about the power of an email list, what to expect in 2026.

What's changing because email has changed too. What's not changing and what you should plan for as a solopreneur or a coach or a service provider, or honestly, any woman in a business online. So I'm gonna give you some simple, doable roadmaps. Even if your list is at zero, or even if you have a list and you've been ghosting it, there's no shame here.

We're gonna fix that. So to start, I wanna take you back to my scrappy startup seasons. In both of my businesses, I've had those moments where I'm sitting there with a tiny budget and a big dream, right? Okay. We've all been there thinking, okay, what are the companies. With marketing budgets [00:03:00] that start with a B or an M doing.

So I always used to try to envision that and how could I take what they were doing, little ideas from here and there, and I'm talking like, what's Nike doing? What's Starbucks? Doing things like that, what are they doing that's working that I can try to create on a obviously much smaller scale and a scrappy budget?

How do I mimic that? But at my price point of zero? And one of the most big brand moves you can make as a small business is email marketing. Social media is like shouting into a crowded room, and I think, of course, that has its place, right? I mean, I rely a lot on social media myself and I always have, but when we're talking about doing something that big companies are doing, they're kind of hitting all the points, right?

They're hitting social media, they're hitting email marketing, they're hitting [00:04:00] their website, they're probably doing some ground marketing. They're doing it all. And while I know that when you're small, you usually cannot start off doing it, doing it all. I would recommend starting to build your email list when you just start out, because I think in retrospect, and usually when I hear people talk about their business journey and they're looking at it in retrospect, those are the ideas that I wanna hear about because those are things that they wish they did.

And one of the things that I wish that I did was start my email list and email marketing from day one, just even if you're just, you know, starting the list or maybe you're not quite using it yet, but just start the list and I'll probably get into that a little bit more later. so I think these days email is like being invited to sit at a kitchen table.

It's personal, it's direct, and it's yours. Okay. So with both [00:05:00] of my companies, I wasn't always the one, you know, doing the work. I had a team, depending on what we're talking about here. but I was always the one writing our email newsletter copy, and that was very important to me. Same with social media.

I want that to be me, my brand voice, and just my personal story. So that can be you too. And I think that lands a lot better with your audience than some like. Crazy chat, GPT thing or something you are outsourcing to someone else. Don't rely on someone else to, write your copy. I think email newsletters and email marketing in general can be very fun.

that might just be me, but I don't think it is. I personally, like I've just always loved to write. I love the physical act of writing with like a pen or a pencil, but I always just loved. [00:06:00] Like English class. I loved writing stories. and I always have sort of been good at that. So I like it, but it can be something that anyone can kind of grow to love, in my opinion.

So. With my previous company, I sent newsletters consistently, and this is where I started to see things come together. I talk a lot about how my previous company's journey and what we did there led me to where I am today. So I fell in love with marketing and brand design and website and social media, and that is now why I have a, a web.

Design and branding studio for female entrepreneurs because I fell in love with it so much. but. When I started treating our marketing like a big company, that is when things really shifted and those [00:07:00] newsletters were a part of it. I treated them like a real product, not an afterthought. Every email had something valuable for, this was a dental related company, so for dental offices specifically, I always wrote them with the reader in mind.

So. You know, when I was writing it, I'm thinking, okay, who is opening this email? Is this a receptionist that's sitting at the front desk? Is this the dentist? Is this the office manager? And what is that person going to find valuable here? So. I did a lot of things with, you know, how dental offices can boost their revenue through in, you know, insurance coding and things like that.

So those were things people wanted to open, like, how do we make more money? Okay, open. So the email titles weren't, I don't wanna say they were clickbaity, but because there was certainly meet in those email bodies, but [00:08:00] your email title, your subject line is quite important too. the coolest thing about this was I could see where people clicked, how many people opened them, which links in there.

they clicked how many times, like I found that part so fun. As soon as these blasts went out, I'd be like going in there and looking at analytics. I still do that now. So with every newsletter I sent. It always drove a lot of traffic to my website and whatever else I was linking. So the way I had my newsletter set up was, there was again, some meat to the newsletter.

There was something I was talking about. ways to boost production or whatever it might be. And then at the end, I usually linked about three things that, maybe one thing was a podcast that I was just featured on, or maybe it was a link to my most recent [00:09:00] podcast, or. Maybe it was a free resource that I had for dental offices, or maybe it was a paid resource that I had for dental offices.

I had a lot of, spreadsheets and templates and things that we sold, and maybe the third thing was. Something that I found really valuable for a dental office, so a course that I thought might benefit them or something that was usually unrelated to me because I didn't like the whole newsletter to be like, me, me, me, and buy from me, so, so I always kind of threw in something else from a totally unrelated company, just something that I thought was really cool and that I received no benefit from.

I felt like that maintained a little bit of like integrity and authenticity there. I still follow that format now a bit with one wild brand. I have switched that up a little bit, but I still follow that, pretty closely. [00:10:00] So. again, every time I sent a newsletter, my, you know, SEO rankings went up, my website traffic was increased, and this is what we want.

And if you're sending them on a consistent basis, that is really gonna work to your benefit.

So. . Next. The big truth here is social media is rented land. It's like a cocktail party. It's loud, it's crowded. The rules change whenever the platform feels like it.

An email is owned. Emails, like the coffee date, you're invited, you're focused. , It's one-on-one. And as a solopreneur, your email list is one of the only true assets that you own. If you think about that, you know, your Instagram reach might tank tomorrow, and that has happened to many business owners over the last couple years.

And I mean, your account could get hacked shut down, randomly flagged. You still need to have a way to communicate with [00:11:00] your audience. So collecting email addresses and having that list to fall back on is always a good idea and should be taken seriously. Also, if you've ever wanted to speak at an event or host a workshop or sell tickets, sell out a program or pitch yourself as a guest expert.

A company that you might be collaborating with there is gonna ask, okay, what's your following? Who can you market this towards? And if your answer is just, well, I'll post it on Instagram and kind of hope it lands, that's not a strategy at all. so if you say, I have an email list. Of however many it is and, you know, here is my open rate, maybe here's some past statistics on things like this that is gonna seem much more professional and much more enticing to a company that you're hoping to work with.

So [00:12:00] that's just something to think about there. All right, email marketing for 2026, and I wanna talk about what's changing and what's not. So making this a little bit futuristic because email marketing for 2026 is not about spamming people with five sales emails in a row. It's about connection and trust and relevance.

What's not changing is the core reason email works. You're showing up in a space. People actually check and they're opted in. But what is changing is how personal and experience driven the email is becoming. And if you can do high tech with high heart, that's a win-win. So my prediction for 2026 is people are really gonna wanna feel like this email is tailored to them.

Again, something I wish I did from the very beginning, with my first business is I only collected email addresses and I didn't collect first names, and I really wish I did [00:13:00] that because now that is something that I do. And there are several ways or places throughout the email where you can insert someone's first name.

You can do it in the email subject line. definitely the email body. Various places. So that is something that I recommend is don't just get their email, get their first name, and honestly, some more information too, if you want. I mean, with opt-in forms, there's a whole slew of. Boxes that you can put on there.

You can do first name, phone number. I might not really recommend that depending on what you're trying to do. email address, home address if you want. Again, it really depends on your business and what you're doing or what you're selling as to what information you might wanna try to get from people.

Next six trends that I think are shaping up for the end of 2025 here, and obviously 2026. [00:14:00] So number one, hyper-personalization. I obviously just talked about this. The future of email needs to feel like it was written for the reader, and it needs to be sent out to hundreds of people.

So how are you going to do that? What are your tactics there? You don't need to be like a data scientist to figure this out. So starting with two simple segments. Based on how people joined your list. So if someone joined for a website checklist versus a Canva template pack, you can customize each journey there.

So know, it's one email list, but two separate experiences. And that is kind of how I have mine set up. So I have a bunch of different ways people can opt into my email list. One is just my email newsletter. Right. And so that has its own journey. One, I have a guide that is how to start a podcast in six simple [00:15:00] steps, and that has their own journey.

And by that I mean what happens is they opt in. Okay, for my podcast freebie, their very first email from me is an email with a link to download that PDF, their little freebie that they're opting in for. And then after that, they start to get this series of welcoming emails. The next one. Is an email that's a little bit about me, who I am, what I do, what led me here.

The next one after that is going to be a little bit more about my services, the websites that I have made for podcasts, owners and podcasts. and then they start to kind of like taper off and they go just into my general email list and start to receive all of my newsletters and things.

So the journey can be different again, depending on how people are getting to where you're going. I feel like oftentimes people feel like, well, I offer [00:16:00] a lot of different things and, and maybe this wouldn't apply to this person. And this is how you can separate those, is by having different journeys and different segments.

trend number two, AI and automation. So AI should support your voice and not replace it. That is my opinion. AI is here to give you time back, but is never going to replace the human. So if it's Sunday night, the house is finally quiet, you're exhausted and you need to write Tuesday's email. The old way of just kind of staring at a blank screen and getting nothing done is.

Out the new way is like spending 10 minutes with chat GPT to brainstorm some angles and structure and then adding in your stories and your opinion and your heart. That's the key. AI helps you write the draft, you polish it, [00:17:00] and then it's yours. but AI can never be you, and I feel like that I can't drive home that point enough.

And then of course, AI is amazing with automation and as I was just saying, welcoming sequences, nurture sequences, re-engagement, emails, things like that. This is how you build relationships even when you are, even when you're living your busy life. So what I do is, I mean, I talk to chat GPTA lot. I mean, it is listening to me chat all the time.

And I tell it my ideas, and then I feed it my personal stories that I want to weave in to whatever it might be. In this instance, an email newsletter or something, and it weaves those in wonderfully. But if I'm not giving them the stories, it's not gonna give me that back. So that is important.

Trend number three is privacy [00:18:00] and permission Trust is the whole game.

So. An email address is permission to enter someone's personal space. You need to treat that like it matters. Be transparent about what you send. Make unsubscribing easy. Okay? That should be at the bottom of your email. And, You need to give, sending emails. You need to give someone a way to unsubscribe.

Those are the rules out there, and you can kind of clean your list. Don't feel like you have to keep sending emails to people who are never opening them, so depending on what email marketing platform you're using, there's ways to go in and start cleaning up your email list and you will see a lot of companies kind of try to self-clean this a little bit.

They'll send an email like, Hey, we noticed you haven't opened our email in a while. Do you wanna be unsubscribed? And this is the ways that they're cleaning their [00:19:00] list. A smaller engage list beats a massive one that no one is opening any day. So again, don't be afraid to do that. Don't get sad when people unsubscribe to your emails.

I have to keep telling myself this too. Definitely. With my previous business I did like, it's like a little ouch, ooh, hurtful. But that's fine if they're not finding them useful or if they're not getting anything out of 'em. Let's focus on the people who are

trend number five, newsletter Renaissance. So people are tired.

I think social media is loud and newsletters are becoming like a quiet corner of the internet where you can actually talk like a human. I see all the time people with, you know, they have the. Fixer email all plugged in, and they have folders for their newsletters to go in so that they can go in and read those all at the [00:20:00] same time or whenever they're making time to read them.

and there's a bit of a resurgence here for sure. Some of the best emails that I have ever sent were just like, plain, a simple text, one story, one takeaway. That's it. And you'll notice that with a lot of companies, I think these days. So what I'm seeing people wanting in 2026 is less marketing voice and more real voice.

This is where I say. You've really gotta have chat GPT or whatever you're using. Trained very well, and this has taken me years. I can spot chat GPTA mile away and some people who just constantly right to me with emails that they just threw into chat GPT and sent me. I really don't like that. And people need to stray from that or [00:21:00] train cha GPTA little bit better.

Trend number six is channel integration with email, kind of being the hub here. And when I say channels, I think email is the hub, and then your podcast and your blog and your Instagram and your Pinterest and your workshops. These are kind of all the spokes to the hub. And the goal here is not to do everything like totally full blown, because that's not realistic.

But all of the little things that you are doing are pointing to something else. So for example, you post on Instagram that you have a free download. Someone opts into that, that is going to trigger a welcoming sequence in your email, and then your welcoming sequence is going to start building trust.

And then when you launch something big, like a course or a webinar or something. You're not just yelling into the void. This is an [00:22:00] audience that you've already started to warm up. They've already started to get to know you. You've already started to build trust, so you're inviting people into that workshop or whatever it may be, who already feel like they know you, and you're gonna have a much better success rate doing that rather than just, again, blasting into the ether.

Okay. The next part here is I wanna talk about six practical strategies. You can start this week. Super actionable stuff. So

strategy number one here is treat your email list like a garden. You need to plant seeds, you need to pull weeds. So this week, pick one seed to grow, and that can be a very simple opt-in to your. Email list, and then you wanna pick one to clean, which is if you already have an email list, identify people who haven't engaged with you ever, or at least in a [00:23:00] timeframe, like 90 days or something like that.

You can then target them by send like a re-engagement email. Hey, I wanna respect your inbox. Do you still wanna hear from me? Something like this? If they don't respond. Release them from your email list. Again, focusing on the people who actually find this valuable and who are opening your stuff.

Strategy number two is segmentation without the overwhelm.

So having two groups here, so. Creating two opt-ins or at least tag people based on what group they came from. And in your next email you can customize one section for each group or even one paragraph even that's like the whole strategy. So generally, when I am working with my web design clients, often I am helping them set up their email marketing system.

And a lot of times they [00:24:00] already have a list. Sometimes they have tags, sometimes they don't. But let's just say they have a few different ways to opt in. I always make a tag. So you know, was the tag just simply they opted into the email newsletter, was the tag they downloaded? This freebie, was it a different freebie?

were they on their list because they were an audience member at an event They spoke at? Are they just a friend of theirs? Things like that. and you can create as many tags as you want. previously. I had tags for people who opted in from a Facebook post, or if you have many chat built in, something like that.

So I feel like you can never really get too granular with this. All the data is really good. Data.

Strategy number three, automate with heart. So. If you do nothing else after this episode, set up a [00:25:00] welcome sequence and maybe it's just a three email framework. Email number one is immediate, okay? Deliver the freebie, the resource, whatever you are giving to them.

Share who you are, why you do what you do, what you believe. Email Number two is, a core belief, something you wish people understood about your work, what makes you different. And then

email number three, a few days later is, uh. Give them a quick win or a tip they can use often. So for example, again, one of my free resources is some free Canva templates and they download them.

A few days later I will send an email that gives them some more tips on how exactly to use these, how to customize them, maybe some posting strategies. Things like that. So something that is valuable that goes along with what they originally [00:26:00] opted into your list for. Number four is befriending ai. Use it as your assistant.

I really hope we're all doing this right now. I think we are, but I'm not sure. I use it for subject lines, outlines, proofreading, clarity, everything. But don't copy and paste your first draft. Please don't do that. use it to support your voice and not replace your voice. I think. When I'm saying everyone is doing this, it does kind of feel like they are, but I just see a lot of people letting it replace their voice and that's not good.

And again, I can spot that a million miles away and , other people can do that too. And more so, so. Let your voice shine through and definitely stop using M dashes. Okay, that's just dead giveaway. But chat, GPT will listen to you now when you tell them to take the M dashes out [00:27:00] and they'll remember it.

So do that.

Number five, design for everybody. And by that I mean. Most emails are opened on mobile, so when you're on your email marketing platform, I always preview what the newsletter or email is gonna look like, both on desktop and mobile. But mobile is more important here because that's where people are opening it.

So make sure that that looks good.

Are your paragraph short?

Is the font big enough?

Are the links and buttons easy to tap? Keep it clean, keep it a single column. I love a white space email. certainly, my brand is full of color, and that is incorporated other places, but a white space email is actually way better for the user to read.

So that is what I would recommend. You know, don't have a blue email body.

Number six is staying human optimize for replies and not perfection here. So my favorite metric is [00:28:00] not open rates. It's replies because replies mean relationships. End your emails with a real question. Invite people to respond. Tell them you want to hear from them.

Talk like you're a person and not a brand announcement. So. Serve, serve, serve, and then sell through an invitation. That makes sense. Okay? This really needs to feel human and authentic and personalized, and that is where you're really gonna see the big results. So to kind of summarize that a little bit, what actually lasts.

Instagram posts disappear in hours.

Tiktoks, I don't even wanna talk about, they disappear even faster.

Podcast episodes can get buried, but

your email list is a living asset. It's a connection that you own and that you can continue to build trust and community.

So. Make sure that you are keeping this all in mind [00:29:00] when you're creating your marketing strategy. If your marketing strategy is totally social media focused and there's no email marketing at all, let's try to change that. Hopefully this episode's helping you

My next part here is what are your next steps? Your next step is not. To do all of this. Okay. I think people can get a little bit overwhelmed when they hear so much information. The point is not for you to do all of this in one day. The point is for you to pick one thing and start, and maybe that's starting your list.

Maybe it's writing your. Newsletter in six months. Maybe you've ghosted your list. Maybe it's setting up a, a welcome sequence. Maybe it's cleaning your list. Just pick one. Okay. Progress will always beat to perfection and consistency will always beat intensity. So a connection will always lead to conversation.

[00:30:00] And here's a little exercise I think that will help is. You just closing your laptop? Okay. Picture one subscriber. Just one person. And maybe you know them, maybe you don't. What are they struggling with? What do they need to hear today? What's one email that they might really want to open and write it like a friend?

It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be overly polished. It doesn't have to be salesy and like, in my opinion, it shouldn't be salesy at all. And make that email helpful and true and human. Invite them to reply and hit send. That's it.

Okay. I've talked a lot about email writing and the importance of all this. Okay, let's talk about the vehicle. What's gonna get you there? And I've mentioned this before in other podcasts, I've used quite a few different email marketing platforms and. [00:31:00] I've used MailChimp and some others. my favorite and the one I really recommend, I set it up or really push most of my web design clients to have this is flow desk.

And. What I love about flow desks is they have a bunch of different templates. Beautiful templates for you to start with. So if you're not a designer like me, or if that's something that really stresses you out, flow desks is the place to start. It's like, I wanna make an email newsletter, but I can't design all that stuff.

Okay. Problem solved. All you really need to do in flow desks is upload your logo, your brand colors. you can do your fonts too, and I recommend that and kind of get started. It's very drag and drop if you've played around on Canva at all. I would say it's quite similar to that type of platform. So drag and drop, customizable, very [00:32:00] easy.

it's easy to just get started and send out emails. Making segments and tags and things like that is all very easy too. So this is my favorite. prior to this, I was using MailChimp for quite a long time, and the thing with MailChimp is. It was created, I don't even know how, I wanna say, probably 20 years ago.

And that really shows on the platform. It's a very dated, intricate involved process to do what you want to do. And I think the end result certainly can be the same as flow desks, but again, it's very complicated to get there. And. Myself being quite tech savvy. I had to invest quite a bit of time to get it to do what I wanted to do and get out of it.

So [00:33:00] with flow desks, I was literally breezing around in minutes. Again, I am tech savvy, but this is very user friendly, so I can't recommend it enough. In addition to the email marketing, it has a lot of other things too. So it has what they call checkouts. So if you are selling something, you know, maybe you have a PDF or something that people can purchase, it's very easy within flow desks to create like a.

Small landing page where you can sell that you connect it to Stripe and then you get paid and an email goes out where this is getting delivered. So that's one thing. It does a bunch, a bunch, a bunch of other stuff. But again, can't recommend it enough. And I will put a link to Flow Desk in the description of this email just so you can go check it out.

all right.

To wrap up here, if you do one thing this week, set up. [00:34:00] An opt-in and write one email or just pick one of the to-dos that I mentioned a couple minutes ago. Just start small. And if you have any questions, again here's my invite. Reach out to me. I am always happy to help and offer guidance and, just chat.

That is kind of what I'm here for.

So thank you so much for listening, and I will catch you on the next episode.