Designed vs Text Emails: What Really Works in Email Marketing?

Is plain text boring? Not if you're Naomi West.

In her Unspam 2025 keynote, Naomi, a seasoned lifecycle marketer and email strategist at Parcel, makes a compelling case for text-based emails as the most authentic, scalable, and underutilized tool in a marketer’s toolkit. Drawing on nearly a decade of experience, real-world examples, and just the right amount of Canadian charm, she walks us through the lifecycle value of these emails and pitfalls.

TL;DR:

• Text-based emails are fast, flexible, and deeply human.
• They work across activation, monetization, and retention.
• Vanity metrics can mislead—test everything.
• Simplicity builds trust (and sometimes gets the click).
• You don’t need a fancy design to make a real impact.

Get ready to rethink everything you know about what makes a great email.

Naomi West: Hello. My name is Naomi, and I hate designed emails.

I'm just kidding. I'm super excited to be here. I can't wait to discuss this riveting topic: text-based emails.

I've been in the email space since 2015, most notably as a lifecycle or email marketer in some places here. I'm currently working at Parcel, and to continue my introduction, I have to pay homage to Unspam. So, the year was 2020. My colleague, copywriter partner in crime Megan, and I flew down from Vancouver, Canada, where I'm based (hence why I'm wearing a Canadian tuxedo today). We flew down from Vancouver to Greenville, South Carolina, which took three flights, not just one, but three. And contextually, you need to know: the year was 2020.

About two hours into the first day, we both received this message from my manager: "Hey, there's a good chance that you're going to have to work from home upon your return." And I was like, all right, that doesn't sound too bad. And then he continued to preface that the entire office might be closed as well.

And I'm like, okay. So, with that, I leaned into listening to all the conversations throughout day one. I networked a lot, and then by day two, I think everyone was so anxious about the state of the world that Matthew led us through a talk on the emotion wheel and how to process anxiety. It was also kind of Unspam in 2020. That completely launched my obsession with email.

And to my manager, who is in the room with us today, on day one of my meeting with him, I said, "I'm obsessed with email." I don't think he realized the extent to which I was obsessed with email, because over the past six years, I've talked about email on podcasts.

I was one of the first people to try a new email client, Notion Mail, which launched last year. I've curated collections, written blogs about email, and love to create courses for people who are entering email. And so that takes me to my current obsession, which is text-based emails.

I never thought I'd get here, but this is where we are. So today, we're going to look at the definition, the applications, the best practices, and the learnings. I first need to point out—sorry, Logan—that text-based emails are not plain text emails.

Plain text emails contain no formatting, images, or hyperlinks besides a raw URL. But a text-based email is what we're going to be talking about today. It's where 90% of the email is text. I'm leaving a little bit of room for branding. Now, this is long-winded. I will simplify it, don't worry. Why do I believe that text-based emails are like the GOAT, the greatest of all time? They require little effort to create. For most of my career, I have been in IC roles where it's up to me to design, execute, build, and strategize.

I'm sure others feel that way, too. Text-based emails can be delivered quickly to an audience. For example, I can get a text-based email out the same day. If I have to brief a brand team and then chase them, I'm like, "Hey, is the image almost ready?" And they're like, "No." It's just not the same. And with that, they can be authentic. Skipping to the fourth silo there, text-based emails are foundationally like that one-to-one connection that email was built upon, right? So they're super easy to build relationships with, authentically. And of course, the middle tube is excellent, being responsive and scaling to device sizes well.

Being accessible is super friendly, too. I also love the ability to search for a text-based email in an inbox, and people can use their own assistive technologies to translate the message. That's pretty cool.

As Logan prefaced, you probably have received a text-based email. This is one of the Unspam need-to-know reminders. So, was it you? Okay, raise your hand. When you think of a text-based email, do you think of a terms of service update? Okay, I've got a couple. Nice. Pricing increases? Okay. And then, kind of the same as the first, like a terms and conditions update that doesn't actually tell you anything about what's changing?

That's so great that you guys think of that when you think of a text-based email. That's me. 

Text-based emails can be so much more, and I know these look the exact same, but the context is what matters. Text-based emails do not need to be solely transactional touchpoints. They can be all of these right here, and I'll talk about them briefly.

So today, I essentially want to tell you that text-based emails can absolutely outperform their design counterparts, but they're not always a good option. So, let's look at how text-based emails fit into the customer lifecycle. This is how I visualize the customer lifecycle. I primarily work in SaaS, but I do quite a lot of consulting with e-commerce, and I've dabbled in non-profits. Regardless of the industry or the space, this is how I look at the customer lifecycle, starting with activation, right?

During this stage, after you acquire an email address, I'm a big consent-based email marketer. Individuals are really looking to understand your business and the value of what you provide a little bit better. And so, with email, you can encourage them to move through that stage of the funnel until they reach monetization, where individuals are ready to make a purchase from you.

Finally, you know, you get their money, and they're now in this retention realm where they can turn into advocates, long-term customers, or both. As a marketer, I need to align my goals with this lifecycle. So, during the activation stage, I want the subscriber to take a certain action, such as Allison just described, opening an app or doing a meditation.

During monetization, I know they've had that aha moment with my product, so I'm ready for them to give me money. Finally, during retention, I want that subscriber to refer a friend, make a repeat purchase, or just be happy. Just really happy with the service.

So, the way in which we fit text-based emails into the lifecycle has advantages and pitfalls.

When I think of a great text-based email as part of the activation stage, I think of it as a "let's get to know each other" piece, where you have this authentic touchpoint. And I think it's you. Email, at its core, is a one-to-one channel, right? And by introducing the illusion of an individual, people react well to it. It kind of freaks me out sometimes because I feel bad, but it's just the way it is. Text-based emails can also allow you to say it as it is and deliver information bluntly. Let's look at this example. 

In the early days of Parcel, where I come from, we introduced this email as a "let's get to know each other" touchpoint, where Abby, the founder of Parcel, reached out and said, "Hey, this is me. How did you get here? What are you doing? Can you reply to me and tell me more about yourself? And if you want to just book into my calendar, here's how you can do so." Half of the replies I get are people yelling at me, saying, "Hey, your first name tag is broken." And then I'm like, "Hey Marco, can you read?" But the other replies are so, so beneficial. We get replies giving us information on the existing tech stack they’re using problems they’re trying to solve. And even better, individuals will book into Abby's calendar and just talk to her about what they’re looking for and why they've come to Parcel.

So it was a great, low-effort "let's get to know each other" touchpoint. Now, the pitfalls of text-based emails. On the flip side, it's like — how close are we, really? When we think about that cold sales email, I'm always like, ew. Like, why are you talking to me like a friend? You're not my friend. You're just creepy. There's a fine line between being personable and being creepy. Second, we have the product illusion. When introducing a new product to someone they may have never seen before, a text-based email can hinder that, because they have no idea what you're trying to teach. When I tested this, I had an interesting experience. In the activation stage of the lifecycle, I saw more clicks from a text-based email, but it was a vanity metric because people didn’t know what they were clicking through to.

This is an example email from Outdoor Voices.

They're a movement athleisure company. I really like them. I'm using them as a pitfall example, but I do really like them. They sent me an email that said, "You know, the quick-to-sell-out tech sweat, the move-free dress is back in stock." And I was like, "Oh my God, what? What is that?" Do I need it? And it's in two new colors. So you're almost intrigued enough to click through, even though I don't need a dress. I don't need any more athleisure clothes.

What happens here is the vanity metric increases, and conversion stays the same. So, this is a bit of a pitfall. Now, when we're looking at the advantages of text-based emails as part of the monetization phase, you can introduce text-based emails, and I know what I'm getting.

This approach allows you to communicate small details, very similar to activation. You can also create a complementary website experience where your text-based email is almost like a menu or an appendix next to what you're about to experience on the website.

In this example from Mala, a Vancouver-based candle company — they make a lovely WoodWick candle — they sent this email into my inbox around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

You get a buy-one-get-one-free offer, where you can see all the details listed as part of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts. It also lists out all the dates. On Friday, you can get a surprise four-ounce candle. On Saturday, if you purchase, you get a complimentary tea light candle. I can expect this email to be used in a really complementary way. I'm looking at it and thinking, okay, I want to shop on Sunday, and I'm going to buy a candle that day to get this specific free gift. Again, this is super low effort, and I can only imagine how much content you'd have to scroll through to get these precise details if it were a heavily designed email. Second, in this example from Meshki, I don't need an image to tell me I have a free shipping code. 

All I need to know is, "Hey, for the next seven days, you get free express shipping. Here's the code." I'm like, thanks. That was so easy. Now, the pitfalls of text-based emails as part of monetization. Like, what am I buying? What are you introducing to me? This is very similar to the product illusion. And then, if you have a really strict IT team or elderly parents — like mine — I’m concerned. Are they being phished? What is this person trying to get them to buy? In this example, again from Mala, she’s really trying it all. 

Every time I get an email from her, she's doing something different. But in this one, you’ve got kind of a novella at the start, and my mind completely skips over that. I go right to this blue CTA that says, “Shop up to 60% off here.” I'm like, I don’t know what I’m buying. What are you selling? What is up to 60% off? Do I need a candle? I don't think so. And because I’m not being teased with any of the candle types or their scents — or flavors, well, scents, no licking, I’m not engaging with this email. I’m kind of just skipping over it. I think it falls into this pitfall of, “I don’t know what I’m buying.”

The third stage, retention, is my favorite because it never gets enough TLC. In my opinion, in the retention stage, people already know your product. Hopefully, you can deliver information quickly to them, and their information benefits you. So you can provide subscribers with an experience with fewer hoops for them to jump through, but in return, you get more learning from them. And you can also use text-based emails to focus on the need to know. So, in this example, it is like a presentation company called Tome. 

They allow you to do things with AI slides. It's amazing. In this example, all they want from me, after I have been a really frequent user for about three months, is for me to fill out a survey, and I don't need an image to do that, right? When you implement surveys and these types of touchpoints into your program, you can do it the same day and get information back that might benefit your product cycle really, really quickly. And then again, I love this example from Mailchimp, where they're introducing the concept of an office hour. 

I could see CSMs at SaaS companies or other companies introducing office hour webinars in this exact format, where they just deliver information in bullet points. They send the email out, and all is well. You didn't need to wait two weeks for it to be designed. But the pitfalls of text-based emails are that if the customer has forgotten about you and you have no branding of any sort, branding matters sometimes, right? So they could have completely forgotten about you. They might feel phished. They might bark at you with spam.

And so, you need to tread lightly with text-based emails as part of the retention period, just in case they have entirely forgotten about you. Secondary to this, I see newsletters fitting into the retention stage of the lifecycle a lot. Sometimes, text-based emails can cause information overload, right? It can easily become like a novella. And I'm a writer. I've got Kate, my colleague and my manager in here. They're always like, “Simplify, stop writing so much”. I'm like, I can't. So, in this example from Mejuri, a jewelry company, I hadn't purchased from them in a long time, and this email landed in my inbox, and I immediately was like, who is this?

It says Mejuri right in the first sentence, but I didn't read it, so it caught me off guard. I was like, I don't know who this brand is. They're regular emails, well-designed, with jewelry in them and lovely typography, and it caught me off guard. And then information overload, right? If you have too many hyperlinks, they're all contextually hyperlinked, which is excellent, but if you have too many hyperlinks, it can be overwhelming. 

This is my hydro provider, and I like them for sending out emails, but I was immediately overwhelmed. So, kind of best practices when it comes to fitting in text-based emails as part of your lifecycle. I think it's really important to operate within your resources. 

So, looking back at that first email that I shared, it was an email from Abby saying, "Hey, welcome. How'd you get here?" We did outgrow that email. At a certain point, we no longer, or he no longer, wanted people booking time into his calendar because it would take up much of his day.

You know, it makes sense with the next one, too. You really have to be open to offering an avenue for replies. So I've worked with large enterprise companies previously, and they're like, "We need to use a no reply." I'm like, "Well, then you can't have a text-based email. It doesn't look right. It's not right."

It's really important when you're using text-based emails to act like a human. Secondary to that, this shouldn't be an email-specific thing, but don't be creepy. One of my other learnings from employing text-based emails throughout my lifecycle is that sometimes, one touchpoint is not enough. Having a follow-up touchpoint again, like a text-based email, works really, really well. Finally, don't be deceived by metrics. So with that kind of inflated click-through rate that I often see, based on people being super curious, deceptive metrics start to pop up.

What does success look like when you start deploying text-based emails? Well, it looks like knowing your customer. I think this is maybe a finance term, but I learned this at one of my last jobs: KYC. Knowing your customers lets you make decisions based on what they like best. I could, you know, spend the next five to ten minutes talking about how my ideas are all right and everybody should take my applications and apply them, but you shouldn't. You should test them because audiences and businesses are unique. I hope you feel inspired to test them, but sometimes they won't work. 

So, in this example of something that I tested and learned a lot from, a brand called Mandarin. 

They are like a leather bag company run by a single individual. When she came to me looking for email marketing help, she said, "I need to understand how to create a really low-resource, low-effort email marketing program." It takes me a really long time to loop in our graphic designer to create content, so I said, "Hey, let's figure out where text-based will work."

And then you can get those emails out the door. Now, as we saw during test periods—Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day, and introducing new products—designed emails have to be the first touchpoint when we're introducing a new bag. If they are not the first touchpoint, people will not click. They do not care. They want to know what they're about to buy. But any follow-up point—abandoned carts, browse abandons, "Hey, we saw you checking out this email that we just sent"—they outperform design variants as the follow-up. So text-based kind of comes in there. In my current role at Parcel, I've always done text-based because they're low effort, and I'm not.

I have no creative energy in here. I'm not a graphic designer or a developer. About two years into working at Parcel, Mark Robbins, an infamous email wizard, joined the Parcel team. Yes, wow. And I was so excited for him to take my ugly little text-based emails and make them beautiful. Because sometimes people would reply and they'd be like, "You work for an email platform and your emails suck." I'd be like, it's just me. And I'd take this personally. I was so excited for Mark to come in and essentially turn all of these emails into nicely designed ones. Unfortunately for Mark, none performed better than the text-based variants.

So Mark is still with us, don't worry. Unfortunately, the hypothesis of a designed email variant didn't go well. I can now reply to those people and say, "You're wrong." These are ugly, but they work. When you start to know your customers, you can leverage customer data well. So for context, this is an email from the Girlfriend Collective, a similar athleisure company.

I don't know why I'm subscribing to so many athleisure companies. I loved what they did with this text-based email because these three products are actually like my browsing history from the day prior. And they brought it in.

They said, "Here are the team favorites." And I was like, wait a second. I was just thinking that they could be my favorites, and I thought it was just a great, low-effort way to bring this personalized email into their program and convince me that I needed a puffer vest. Leveraging customer data can be low-effort in the way that you encourage people to have the aha moments, similar to what Allison was just describing in the last talk. There are certain events that you want people to reach throughout the customer lifecycle. So this example from Notion is pretty text-based. 

We have an image at the top and a couple of checkboxes, but by using customer data and probably some if-this-then-that statements based on customers and users completing those events, you can show a text-based dynamic email that feels really easy for a user to engage with.

Knowing your customers also allows you to experiment with things like newsletters. So newsletters. When I think of a newsletter, I'm thinking of scrolling through a really long email, and there are images that represent every single article. In this example, YouSwim, a swimwear company, turned their newsletter into not only a product feature newsletter but one full of their favorite songs right now, or like an album that was store-like, here’s this community event, or here’s this influencer you should care about. 

And I loved that. It's just a simple text-based email that does not feel like the novella style of writing that I complain about, but one that's easy to digest. Although I just talked about the product illusion and not knowing what is on the other side of the button they're about to click or the link you're about to click, sometimes, the mystery is essential. So this is an example email from Sundays Furniture, a local Vancouver furniture company.

I can't afford anything that they sell, but I like to window shop, and they sent this email out. "I'm Sarah, the manager here at the Vancouver showroom. I'm reaching out to share that we've refreshed our space, and you should come in for a visit." And I was like, okay. If they had included imagery of their showroom in this email, I probably wouldn't have visited because it tickled my fancy via the email. But I was intrigued enough to go into their store, and I did make a purchase. I think it was a spoon or something, but I made a purchase, and they got me, and I still can't afford their furniture.

Again, when you're playing around with CTAs, I just complained about my sweet hydro company and how they send out a lot of information with many CTAs. 

Sure, it can be a bad thing, but you can also deploy the same technique in a way that works. This is an example email from Endy, a Canadian mattress company, and I loved how their first kind of CTA is like, "Shop 15 percent off everything." Still, in that second paragraph, they hyperlink the individual products. And if I think about how this email would have been designed, you know, in a significantly designed way, it probably would have been a long email with an image attached to all of these products, and I would have never made it to the end. But all of these CTAs were above the fold on my computer.

So, to wrap up the learnings, I highly encourage you, when you're deploying text-based emails, to do so if you feel inspired. 

Now, I encourage you to link contextually. We hate the "shop here" because you don't know where you're going. Use typography and information hierarchy to your advantage. Please A/B test your biases. It's the only way you discover what works and what doesn't. And if I had not tested my hypothesis when I leaned on Mark, we would have had lower engagement by now. But it's kind of like a fun game you can play with yourself and your team. When you get to A/B test your biases, I highly encourage you not to write novellas. They're painful. Don't be maliciously vague, and don't pretend that subscribers recognize you, which is a hard pill for all of us to swallow.

So, what are the successful applications of text-based emails? If you subscribe to Megan Boon's newsletter, you'll know. It depends. Thanks.