Counterintuitively, highly formatted and image-heavy emails can feel corporate and impersonal, decreasing engagement. Shifting to a simpler, plain-text style mimics a personal message from a friend, which increases perceived authenticity and encourages more replies and genuine connection.

Contrary to the belief that messaging should be universally simple, Hexagon discovered that using specific, technology-oriented terms led to higher user engagement, dwell time, and click-through rates. This suggests users prefer concrete language over vague, high-level concepts, even if not every term is relevant to them.

In an analysis of 50 past email campaigns, ChatGPT's 5.2 model correctly identified the winning A/B test variation 89% of the time without performance data. Marketers can use this predictive capability to vet campaign elements like subject lines and creative before launching live tests, potentially saving time and resources.

For statistically significant A/B test results on major changes like text vs. design, don't rely on a single send. Test within an automated series (e.g., a welcome flow) and collect data for an extended period, like a full quarter, to remove seasonality and ensure a healthy sample size.

Marketers often judge an email's quality on visuals alone, ignoring the user action that triggered it or technical constraints like image blocking in certain clients (e.g., Outlook), which can render a beautifully designed email blank.

Data from World Data Research shows that when an email contains three or more distinct destination links, the primary call-to-action receives 50% fewer clicks. This demonstrates that attempting to promote multiple offers simultaneously cannibalizes the effectiveness of your main goal. For maximum impact, emails should focus on a single, clear offer.

Marketers often focus on optimizing creative, landing pages, or automation. However, simply A/B testing the name or title of a content piece, sale, or offer can have the most significant impact on conversions with the least effort.

When brand teams resist testing simpler, text-based emails, don't argue about aesthetics. Frame the proposal around business value: reduced design and QA time, and the potential for higher conversion rates. Quantify the impact on efficiency and revenue to get buy-in.

For direct sales outreach, always default to plain text emails. Images, PDFs, and complex HTML frequently trigger spam filters and kill your campaign before it is ever read. The singular focus should be on crafting an engaging, text-based copy that earns a reply, not on a visually appealing design that hurts deliverability.