Blog
Notes from the
honest side of email
Deliverability, honest analytics and outreach craft — written in plain language, with no growth-hack snake oil.
Earlier articles
253 articles
DeliverabilityAnalysis7 min
You set up bulk-sender compliance in 2024. Here's what's actually changed since.
SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and unsubscribe were the checklist in 2024. By mid-2026: Microsoft joined, Gmail's enforcement hardened, and the spam-rate target tightened.
Deliverability6 min
Reading DMARC XML reports by hand vs. having Norbelys do it
What manually parsing DMARC aggregate report XML files actually involves at real send volume, and why most teams stop doing it themselves within weeks.
AIAnalysis9 min
Marketing teams have AI now. They still miss their own deadlines
A July 2026 survey of 300+ enterprise marketers found 85% missed a campaign launch date despite widespread AI use. The bottleneck moved, it didn't disappear.
ProspectingAnalysis5 min
Multichannel outbound reportedly beats single-channel by 287% — what layering touches actually means
2026 benchmarks cite a 287% response-rate lift for multichannel sequences over single-channel outreach, and why email stays the anchor channel.
StrategyAnalysis8 min
Reply rates went from 8.5% to 3.43%: what the trend line actually says
Cold email reply rates have compressed for years — 8.5% in 2019, ~5% by 2025, 3.43% platform-wide in 2026. Why the floor keeps dropping, and what still works.
StrategyField note5 min
You don't need a sales hire to start doing outbound
Most B2B founders run their own outbound until 10-20 customers close before hiring an AE. What that setup actually needs, alone, without sales tooling overhead.
StrategyAnalysis7 min
Three companies control 84% of the AI agent market, says France's competition watchdog
France's competition watchdog found OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic hold over 84% of the AI agent market — what that concentration means for buyers and builders.
AIAnalysis8 min
What to do with 400 business cards after a trade show
Most trade show leads never get a follow-up email at all. How fast you respond, not how good your booth was, decides who actually becomes a customer.
StrategyAnalysis6 min
Voice clones, QR codes, and texts: why 'watch for bad grammar' is dead advice now
Voice cloning, QR fraud, and smishing are 2026's fastest-growing scam vectors, and none are caught by reading copy carefully. What protects a business is process.
ComplianceAnalysis5 min
What a 14-million-account breach at an email platform teaches every sender
KDDI's disclosure that a shared email platform behind six Japanese ISPs was breached shows how credential exposure anywhere becomes a stuffing risk everywhere.
StrategyAnalysis6 min
What buyers actually say about AI-generated outreach, according to 2026 survey data
Gartner's 2026 buyer survey and Validity's 2026 consumer research agree on one thing: AI-generated content isn't the problem on its own. Unverified AI content is.
ComplianceAnalysis5 min
What "internal legacy systems" actually means in a breach notice
Abbott's July 2026 disclosure of two breaches, one traced to legacy systems, decodes a phrase that shows up constantly in breach notices and rarely gets explained.