This article is brought to you by Chris Alleva from Structured.Agency, a Replo agency partner.
Last updated: 2026-02-19
—
“Plain text emails are the only way to guarantee deliverability." This concept is not just wrong. It's costing you money.
Last month, we took a DTC ecommerce brand from 8% Gmail open rates to 50% while using fully designed emails. In fact, their revenue per recipient jumped from $0.92 to $3.81.
Here’s exactly how we did it…
The Plain Text Email Trap 📝
Plain text emails DO work. They've always worked. That's why this myth has stuck around so long.
When something delivers consistent results, it's hard to imagine there might be a better way.
When we first came on this brand, their initial metrics were speaking for themselves:
- 58% open rates
- Nearly 4% conversion rate
- $3.58 revenue per recipient
- 5.1% click rate
Hard to argue with those numbers, right? Most email marketers would kill for metrics like these. The plain text approach was working exactly as promised: reliable deliverability, solid engagement, and steady revenue.
But something was off.
The website was stunning. The product photography was professional. The unboxing experience was crafted to generate viral moments on social media. Yet their emails (often the most frequent touchpoint with customers) looked like they were stuck in 2005.
They wanted emails that would wow customers and drive more email engagement. Emails that would strengthen their brand presence and create those "I need to share this" moments. Emails that would turn their most frequent customer touchpoint into a competitive advantage.
That's when things got interesting…
{{get-started="/components"}}
The Email Deliverability Issue 📉
So we took the leap. We designed beautiful, branded emails that matched their premium identity.
Everything about them was perfect: the photography popped, the layouts were clean, and the CTAs were impossible to miss. These were emails worthy of their brand. Then we launched them.
The results?
Let's just say they were... painful:
- Gmail open rates crashed to 8.8%
- Overall open rate: 28.2%
- Revenue per recipient plummeted to $0.92
- Conversion rate dropped to 0.9%
Every email marketer's worst nightmare was playing out in real time. Our beautiful new emails were landing in spam folders or, worse, vanishing into the promotional tab abyss.
Revenue was tanking.
The data seemed to be screaming what everyone had told us all along: stick to plain text if you want deliverability.
The easy move would have been to switch back to plain text. Cut our losses. Chalk it up as a failed experiment and join the chorus of voices saying "beautiful emails are dead."
But something didn't add up.
These weren't spammy emails. The content was valuable. The design was professional. The sending patterns were clean.
Why would Gmail suddenly decide these emails weren't worthy of the primary inbox?
That's when we started digging deeper…
The Hidden Email Design Pattern 🔍
Instead of accepting defeat, we went into full detective mode.
Something about this situation just wasn't adding up, and we were determined to find out why.
- Why did some designed emails perform well while others tanked, even when they used identical templates?
- Why did Gmail specifically have such a dramatic reaction while other email clients remained relatively stable?
- What if the problem wasn't the design itself, but how we were introducing it to our audience?
We noticed that subscribers who had previously engaged with our emails were still opening the designed versions at decent rates.
But new subscribers? They were getting radio silence.
That's when it hit us: Gmail wasn't rejecting our designed emails because they were designed. It was rejecting them because they looked nothing like what our existing subscribers were used to engaging with.
We then discovered something fascinating about how Gmail's algorithm really works…
The Gmail Email Algorithm 🧠
Think about how Gmail works.
It's constantly learning from user behavior to decide what's spam and what's valuable.
When you suddenly switch from plain text to designed emails, it's like showing up at a formal event in a tuxedo when everyone's only seen you in jeans.
You need to make introductions first.
Here's exactly what we did:
1. Created Ultra-Targeted Gmail Segments
- 7-day engaged users (opened or clicked)
- 14-day engaged users (opened or clicked)
- 1-day engaged users (opened or clicked)
- All non-purchasers, all Gmail users.
2. The Email Conditioning Process
- We started to send new designed emails as campaigns to these segments first
- Started with our most engaged (7-day) segment and gradually expanded to other segments
- Monitored metrics daily
3. Email Design Optimization
- As we kept sending we made sure to improve by taking out and keeping key information (like discount codes) highly visible
- Maintained consistent branding
- Optimized CTA placement and visibility
- Tested different layouts with our most engaged segments
After implementing this email strategy, the numbers blew us away:
- Gmail open rates soared from 8.8% to 50%
- Overall opens recovered to 53.6% (nearly matching our original 58.3%)
- Click rates jumped to 7.0% (beating our original 5.1%)
- Revenue per recipient grew to $3.81 (surpassing our plain text best of $3.58)
- Conversion rate reached 4.1% (higher than our original 3.7%)
But it gets better.
The Compound Effect 📈
Once we cracked the code on deliverability, something unexpected happened: the improvements rippled through the entire email program.
Think of it like dominoes falling in the best possible way:
- Follow-up emails saw 22% higher revenue per recipient without changing a single word of copy
- Overall flow revenue jumped by 14% across all campaigns
- Engagement rates didn't just spike but stayed consistently higher week after week
- Deliverability remained rock-solid even as we scaled to larger send volumes
We had done it. We had proven that you could have both: stunning design AND stellar deliverability.
{{get-started="/components"}}
Your Turn: Email Optimization Implementation Guide 🛠️
Now that you've seen what's possible, let me show you exactly how to implement this for your brand.
Start by taking a deep look at your current performance. You'll want to understand exactly where you stand with open rates across different email clients, your revenue per recipient, and your conversion rates.
Pay special attention to engagement patterns, like knowing who your most engaged subscribers are is crucial for what comes next.
With that established, it's time to build your segments. Focus on creating three core groups: those who've engaged with your emails in the last
- 7 days
- 14 days
- and 21 days.
These will be your testing grounds for the new designs. Remember to separate your Gmail users from other email clients. They'll need special attention during this process.
When it comes to designing your new templates, don't start from scratch. Take your highest-performing emails and give them a visual upgrade.
The implementation timeline is critical here. Start small with your 7-day engaged segment in week one. Watch those metrics like a hawk. If they hold steady or improve, expand to your 14-day segment in week two, followed by your 21-day segment in week three. By week four, you should be ready to roll out your new designs to your main flows.
Throughout this process, keep a close eye on your deliverability metrics daily. Watch how your engagement rates respond to different designs and be ready to iterate quickly. The key is to scale what works and adjust what doesn't.
It's about understanding how Gmail thinks and working with it, not against it. You don't have to choose between beautiful emails and good deliverability, but you just need to be strategic about how you get there.
====
Want to get in touch with Structured for your business? Fill out the form here.
(And yeah, their emails look great AND land in primary. Just saying... 😉)
Landing Pages for Email Marketing
So you’ve got an email with a high open rate and click rate…what next? Optimize the pages where you send email clicks. How do you do that?
With purpose built, high performing landing pages. Every page you send traffic to should have one purpose. Maybe it’s filling out a form, subscribing, or more likely to convert into a purchase.
Replo helps you quickly build custom on-brand pages that convert site visitors. Turn those email clicks into more revenue and better ecommerce business metrics.
Oh, and you can use A/B Testing in Replo to optimize til your hearts content and your revenue is through the roof!
