Edition #422
Why email is the last honest channel
The one deliverability fix that adds 18% to pipeline.
3/9/2026 · 50,400 operators
// This week in marketing
Meta CPMs broke a 3-year pattern last week
For the first time since Q2 2022, blended Meta CPMs are declining mid-quarter. Advertisers report softening auction pressure across DTC and finance verticals. We dug into 18 MMP dashboards — here is where the money actually moved.
Google silently shipped a new Performance Max diagnostic
A hidden tab inside the PMax report now surfaces audience overlap from YouTube placements. Early numbers suggest 23% of PMax conversions are being double-counted against brand search.
// Tactic of the week
The 12-line cold email that outperformed a $40k brand play
One B2B SaaS operator replaced an entire paid LinkedIn program with a 12-line handwritten outbound sequence. Open rate 74%, reply rate 19%, pipeline $2.1M in 90 days. We broke down every line, every trigger, every CTA.
// Tool spotlight
Finch — the attribution tool that makes MMM feel like magic
Finch blends causal inference with last-click in a single dashboard. It is the first attribution product we have seen that survives a full audit from both finance and growth. $49/mo — absurdly underpriced.
// Stat worth knowing
71% of B2B buyers finalize a shortlist before talking to sales
Forrester buyer behavior data shows the research-to-shortlist window collapsed from 14 weeks to 6. If your content is not indexed inside that window, you are not in the deal.
// From our sponsors
Customer.io — the lifecycle stack our editors actually use
Full disclosure: we run Addigest subscriber flows on Customer.io. Fast, dev-friendly, and the segmentation is elite. If you are scaling lifecycle past 50k contacts, start here.