Here is some bad news for email teams
and anyone else pushing out marketing communications.
“Yesterday's growth playbooks leaned too heavily on volume — more emails, more ads, more SDR dials,” says a
research report from GTM Partners. “That drove pipeline, but rarely efficient growth.”
What should marketers be doing?
First, embrace services-as-software.
Customers expect bundled outcomes, not siloed tools.
They also have to recognize that the sales development representation-led funnel is breaking. "Buyers don't want cold handoffs; they want
seamless, value-driven engagement.”
Finally, the AI prompt is fast becoming the new interface. Companies that rethink workflows around AI will have a structural advantage.
Above
all, companies must recognize that the single most important metric of business health is net revenue retention (NRR), allowing for churn and both upgrades and downgrades.
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Of course,
this is based as much on retention of customers as on retaining of dollars.
It might pay to bring in another metric starting with “N:” the net promoter score (NPS), devised
by Frederick Reichheld, who in 1996 came out with the defining book The Loyalty Effect, which urged marketers to ask a single survey question: Would you recommend
us to a friend?
Got that? Where do you stand when it comes to NRR?
Here’s a guide to what it means:
- Below
100%? You’re shrinking.
- At 100%? You’re surviving.
- Between 110% and
120%? You’ve unlocked growth.
- At 120%+? You’ve reached rare air — territory reserved for companies with a true
go-to-market system.
Drilling down, the study recognizes these performers (and we quote):
- Public SaaS averages under 100%.
- Private SaaS clusters at 110–120%.
- PLG leaders are the outliers, with many consistently breaking 120%+.
The message for email marketers is
in the bullet point that says people want “seamless, value-driven engagement.”
Email is one channel uniquely set up to deliver that. In the meantime, try to catch up with Frederick
Reichheld.