One of my first objectives at targetjobs was to stop selling standalone email blasts. When emails are treated purely as inventory, the incentive is to sell and send as many as possible - regardless of impact. This approach damages long-term engagement and undermines overall strategy.
To shift this mindset, I created a solution that kept email as a commercial asset but introduced delivery logic to protect performance. This became known internally as the Smart Email.
Smart Emails are essentially drip campaigns, deployed over multiple weeks. Rather than sending to the entire audience in one blast, users are added to a holding pool. Each day, the algorithm assesses each user’s engagement profile - taking into account recency of send, opens, clicks, and other signals.
If the user is considered likely to engage, they receive the email that day. If not, they remain in the pool to be reassessed later. The process continues until the campaign has run its course. This approach doubled the performance of traditional sends and drastically reduced negative impact on engagement rates.
We later evolved this into a commercial product called Email Series - a sequenced campaign built around the same smart logic. These journeys adapt to each user, delivering stories over time in a way that suits their behaviour, not a rigid schedule. For employers, this enables deeper storytelling and higher performance, without compromising long-term deliverability or user trust.
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