email-marketing-bible

The AI email automation skill for Claude, ChatGPT, and any agent.

Install it and your AI stops guessing about email. It audits your setup, builds your flows from a prompt, drafts copy in your voice (not slop), tells you why you are in spam, and runs your ESP through MCP, with a hard rule that nothing blasts without your say-so.

Built from 908 sources and the experience of running SmartrMail (email marketing SaaS, ~28,000 customers, 6 billion emails, acquired 2022). 19 chapters, 19 industry playbooks, 47 curated email designs. Free and open source.

Why this exists

Most email marketing advice is surface-level. "Personalise your subject lines." "Segment your list." "A/B test everything." You have heard it. It does not help when you are staring at a 2% open rate, or when you have just handed an AI agent the keys to your sending account and it is about to industrialise your mistakes.

In 2026 the job changed. Agents now build the campaign, segment the audience, draft the copy, and stage the send. The marketer is the director, not the operator. That only works if the agent is working from real benchmarks and hard guardrails instead of vibes. This skill is that discipline layer: the patterns that repeat across industries, the mistakes that destroy deliverability, the anti-slop rules that keep AI output from reading like AI output, and the send-safety gates that keep one prompt from mailing the wrong thing to your whole list.

Every claim is backed by data. No theory, no filler.

Install

git clone https://github.com/CosmoBlk/email-marketing-bible.git ~/.claude/skills/email-marketing-bible

One command. Your AI now has the full knowledge base. Works wherever you run skills (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and agents that read the skill format).

What the skill does

Once installed, your AI can:

Task	What it does
Run email automation	Build welcome, cart, post-purchase, and win-back flows from a prompt, then review exits, timing, and copy before anything goes live
Audit your setup	Review flows, segments, deliverability, and compliance, and tell you exactly what is missing
Draft and de-slop copy	Write emails with proven frameworks (PAS, AIDA, BAB) and strip the AI tells before send
Design anti-slop emails	Own a colour, real imagery, live-text headlines, generated into inbox-safe MJML or React Email, dark-mode and mobile checked
Drive your ESP from AI	Operate Klaviyo, Resend, beehiiv, Mailchimp, Omnisend, or nitrosend through MCP and connectors, with pre-send safety gates
Fix deliverability	Diagnose inbox placement with a step-by-step triage covering authentication, reputation, content, and the AI-mediated inbox (Gemini summaries, open rate as noise)
Pull industry benchmarks	Open, click, conversion, and revenue-per-email figures for your specific vertical
Compare platforms	Honest comparison by list size, budget, and whether you want to run it from an agent, not affiliate commissions
Review compliance	GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CASL, CCPA, and the Australian Spam Act, as a decision gate before any send
Write cold email	Cold sequences with proper infrastructure separation, warming, and personalisation

How to use it

Install the skill, then talk to your AI like an email marketing consultant.

Audit and build:

"Audit my Klaviyo account for a DTC skincare brand doing $2M/year. I have a
welcome series, abandoned cart, and one weekly newsletter. What am I missing,
and build me whatever flow would earn the most first."

Fix a problem:

"My emails are landing in Gmail promotions and opens dropped from 22% to 14%
over three months. What is going on and how do I fix it?"

De-slop:

"Here is a draft welcome email. Make it sound like a person, not an AI, and
keep it on our brand voice."

Design:

"Design a launch email for a premium coffee brand. Own a colour, real product
photography, generate it as MJML so it renders everywhere."

The skill is structured in two parts: an operating manual (when the AI is acting: building, sending, diagnosing, designing) and a dense reference (benchmarks, frameworks, playbooks). Your AI reads the manual to operate and drops into the reference for facts.

What is inside the knowledge base

19 chapters

#	Chapter	What you get
1	The Fundamentals	Why email wins, the stack, key metrics, the AI-mediated inbox
2	Building Your List	Organic growth, popups, opt-in, spam traps, validation
3	Segmentation & Personalisation	Engagement tiers, AI-built segments, 1:1 content from behaviour
4	The Emails That Make Money	Welcome, cart, post-purchase, win-back, and building flows with AI
5	Copywriting That Converts	Subject lines, frameworks, CTAs, and the anti-slop copy protocol
6	Design & Technical	Designing for two readers (human and AI summary), tokens and modules, dark mode, accessibility, anti-default craft
7	Deliverability	SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, reputation, warming, autonomous-send safety
8	Testing & Optimisation	A/B testing, significance, send-time, testing AI-assisted email
9	Analytics & Measurement	KPIs by type, attribution, querying your data with AI
10	Compliance & Privacy	GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CASL, CCPA, AU Spam Act, AI accountability
11	Industry Playbooks	Tactics for 19 verticals (see below)
12	Choosing Your Platform	Honest comparison, including which tools an agent can actually drive
13	Cold Email & B2B Outbound	Infrastructure, writing, follow-up, AI in outbound
14	WhatsApp Business	The cost model and where it pays off, per-user caps, quality tiers, opt-in and geo-branching, the AI-chatbot rule
15	SMS & RCS	TCPA, 10DLC and CTIA compliance, quiet hours, a realistic read on RCS, and AI in two-way messaging
16	AI & Agentic Marketing	Supervised autonomy, agent preflight gates, data governance, non-deterministic optimisation, and what the vendors actually shipped
17	Company Case Studies	How Casper, Morning Brew, Duolingo, Spotify, and others use email
18	Expert Directory	The practitioners referenced throughout, who to follow and why
19	Best Email Designs 2026	47 hand-curated emails with notes on why each works and what to steal

Plus four appendices: benchmarks by industry, frequency guide, marketing calendar, and methodology.

19 industry playbooks

Ecommerce DTC · SaaS B2B · SaaS B2C · Newsletter & Creator · Agency · Nonprofit · Healthcare · Financial Services · Real Estate · Travel & Hospitality · Education · Professional Services · Retail · Events · B2B Manufacturing · Restaurant & Food · Fitness · Media & Publishing · Marketplace & Platform

Expert contributors

Insights from practitioners including Chad S. White (Zeta Global), Joanna Wiebe (Copyhackers), Chase Dimond (Structured Agency), Nathan Barry (Kit), Ann Handley (MarketingProfs), Troy Ericson, Tyler Denk (beehiiv), Ben Settle, and many others. Full directory in Chapter 16.

Read the full guide

The complete Email Marketing Bible is at emailmarketingskill.com, searchable and browsable, with all 17 chapters and 4 appendices, plus a free PDF.

Research

908 sources across industry reports (Litmus, Klaviyo, HubSpot, Salesforce, Validity), practitioner blogs, podcasts and transcripts, platform documentation, and community discussions, refreshed mid-2026 with a focus on AI email automation.

Contributing

Found an error? Have better data? Know a tactic that is missing? Issues and PRs welcome. The more practitioners contribute, the better it gets.

License

MIT. Use it however you want.

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Built by George Hartley. Follow for updates.