SMME #473 Why Your Spa Emails Are Disappearing (And How to Fix It) with Amber McCue

Summary

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Episode Overview

Episode Title: SMME #473 Why Your Spa Emails Are Disappearing (And How to Fix It)
Host: Daniela Woerner (Licensed Aesthetician)
Guest: Amber McCue (Entrepreneur, Consultant, Email Marketing Expert)
Date: March 2, 2026

This episode dives into a critical issue facing spa owners and entrepreneurs: email marketing mishaps that can cost thousands of dollars and erode client trust. Guest Amber McCue shares her firsthand experience with an email delivery disaster during a major launch, breaking down why legitimate emails sometimes never reach client inboxes—and, crucially, how to diagnose and fix these issues before they sabotage your business.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Email Disaster Story

• Amber’s Event Launch Gone Wrong
  • Amber recounts running a well-practiced webinar launch when she and her team noticed drastically low show-up rates compared to past events (04:14–05:00).
  • Clients began reaching out via email and posting in Facebook groups, saying they never received event reminders—not even in spam or promotions folders, which indicated a deeper issue (05:00–05:32).
  • Quote (Amber): “It wasn’t even landing necessarily in their spam folder…There’s a reason for that, which we will share.” (05:32)

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The Real Impact: Business & Client Trust

• Host Daniela underscores the devastating effect an email meltdown can have: missed events, wasted marketing budgets, and confusion for clients.
• “The thought process of investing so much time and so much money to host an event. And if your people are not getting the communication…” (05:35, Daniela)

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Diagnosing the Root Problem

• Amber’s team sprang into action, leveraging their email marketing background to diagnose the issue swiftly (06:36–07:07).
• Amber shares that most spa and small business owners wouldn't know where to start since even tech-savvy teams can get thrown by these failures (07:07–07:31).
• Quote (Daniela): “I feel like I am tech savvy. And I would not have known where to look with email.” (07:20)

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Step-by-Step Solutions for Spa Owners

1. Clean Your Email List (08:17–09:31)

• Only email contacts who regularly open your messages; consistent non-responders hurt your “sender reputation.”
• Emailing unengaged contacts signals Gmail/Yahoo/etc. to push your emails to spam or ignore entirely.
• Quote (Amber): “Emailing people that are just letting their inbox fill up, you do not want to keep emailing them…They don’t want it. So they're going to move it to that promotions, that spam folder over time.” (08:50–09:31)
• Daniela mentions using Zero Bounce to eliminate fake, dead, or bounced emails yearly—even if it means removing thousands at once (09:31–10:07).
• “Your heart sinks a little bit…But it’s like, you know, what if those are not real people or if they’re not, you know, wanting to hear or be in relationship with us, that’s fine.” (10:09–10:17, Daniela)

2. Monitor Email Engagement

• Email service providers (Mailchimp, Flodesk, etc.) show open rates. Run reports to find unresponsive emails and clean accordingly (10:29–11:00).
• Some CRMs have built-in tools; third-party solutions like Zero Bounce help automate the process and keep your list healthy.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Amber, on missing emails:
  “It wasn’t even landing necessarily in their spam folder…There’s a reason for that, which we will share.” (05:32)

• Daniela, on tech overwhelm:
  “I feel like I am tech savvy. And I would not have known where to look with email.” (07:20)

• Amber, on list hygiene:
  “Emailing people that are just letting their inbox fill up, you do not want to keep emailing them…They don’t want it.” (08:50–09:31)

• Daniela, on letting go of disengaged contacts:
  “Your heart sinks a little bit…But it’s like, you know, what if those are not real people or if they’re not, you know, wanting to hear or be in relationship with us, that’s fine. Lesson release. Blessed release.” (10:09–10:17)

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Important Timestamps

• 04:14–05:32
  Amber outlines how she discovered emails weren’t reaching clients at all.

• 06:36–07:31
  Discussing how Amber’s team diagnosed the issue—and the gaps in most small business owners’ know-how.

• 08:17–09:31
  Deep dive on why email list hygiene is critical.

• 09:31–10:17
  Daniela shares best practices using tools like Zero Bounce for automated list cleaning.

• 10:29–11:00
  How to monitor open rates and engagement within different email service providers.

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Actionable Takeaways for Spa Owners

• Regularly clean your email list: Remove unresponsive subscribers to maintain a healthy sender reputation.
• Monitor your open rates: Use your software’s reporting tools or third-party services to keep track.
• Don’t be afraid to remove thousands of emails: Keeping dead weight can cost you far more in lost business and deliverability issues.
• Learn the basics of email deliverability: Even as a non-tech business owner, understanding engagement metrics and list management is essential.

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Final Insights

Amber’s experience serves as a powerful reminder: email failures can strike any business, often without warning. Building smart systems, knowing what metrics to monitor, and cleaning your list are essential for protecting revenue and customer trust. Daniela and Amber keep it candid and practical—leaving spa owners with concrete steps to keep their communications flowing and their events full.

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Transcript

[A]

Well, hello and welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast. I'm Daniella and boy, do I have an interview for you today. So I have a group of friends, they're all entrepreneurs and we meet once a month to talk business. This is online because these are people that are all over the world now. I love this group. I'm so happy that we found each other. And a few calls ago, Amber was sharing an update. She was, she's the guest on today's episode and she was sharing a story with us about this email situation that happened to her company. And if I'm being real, you guys, if this happened to me, I would literally have no idea where to even start. And this is not just like a small email problem. This is something. This is a situation that could have potentially cost her tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, she and her team handled it like the pros that they are. And it was such a great reminder going through not only the monthly call that we had with our group of entrepreneurs, but also here on the podcast interview. To know people, to have people in your circle that know more than you is such a valuable thing. You never want to be the biggest fish in the pond. And Amber certainly knows so much more than me on this topic, which is

[B]

why I was so grateful when she

[A]

said so graciously agreed to come on and share this experience. This is not a highlight reel. This is not anything like that. This is real business. These are real problems that come up. And she is being very open and sharing what happened and giving lots of great feedback of what you can do to fix it if something like this ever happens to you. Now, if you do any sort of email marketing at all, you're going to want to listen in because Amber is getting real. All right, now let me just read her bio and then we will jump right into that interview. Okay, so Amber went from single mom in college to multi business owner running freedom based companies from Ethiopia to Chicago and from Abidjan to Zagreb. With a background in corporate consulting and studies at Johns Hopkins organization develop development MBA program, she helps modern CEOs scale strategically without sacrificing time@amber McHugh.com in addition to consulting, her businesses are in the online children's education and photography brand that grew from a side hustle to a multi million dollar operation in 26 cities, giving her firsthand experience in creating systems that fuel growth and freedom. She's incredible. I know you guys are going to love her as much as I do and let's go ahead and play that interview.

[B]

All right, Amber, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast. So happy to have you here. And I'm so. I'm really hoping that we can explain what happened with your email, because I think this is such, such an important aspect of doing business for business owners, for spa owners, any business owner that is using email to connect with their clients. If you're trying to do the debrief and figure out, like, what, what's happening, what's working, what's not working, I mean, this.

[A]

You blew my mind when you shared

[B]

with me this process. I was like, oh, my God, I

[A]

would not have known what to do.

[B]

So let's, let's go back to. And like, tell the story from the beginning. You have an online business. We were both doing a webinar, like a launch, very similar timing. And you had done this webinar multiple times before, no issues. You understood what your show up rates, your, you know, all your KPIs, and something was drastically off.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Okay, so start there.

[C]

Yes. Okay. We are hosting this event and big marketing campaign and we typically have a certain number of people showing up arriving throughout the week. Bigger number of people sign up and lesser people show up to the webinar, the workshops, and we're noticing it, we're kind of watching it. But then at the end of the week, people are saying, it's over, the event's over. I signed up for the event. I didn't get any of the emails. So we already had like this intuitive hit, like, something is off. But then when people said we didn't get the emails.

[B]

So are they responding to you or are they posting on your social? Like, how are you hearing this?

[C]

Yes, great question. A couple people emailed, like, I signed up for this event. I thought it was this week, what's happening? And then they were also posting in our Facebook community. And the thread after that just kind of like, me too, me too. I didn't get anything either. I didn't get anything either. Check here, check there. And it wasn't even landing necessarily in their spam folder. Right. Or in their promotions folder. I think we got it.

[B]

I think that's what blew my mind

[A]

is that it wasn't even in spam.

[B]

I was like, yeah, yeah.

[C]

And there's a reason for that, which we will share.

[B]

So, I mean, I'm thinking about this. Like, in spas, we do in person events. We'll do mini events, we'll do open houses, and email is a big part of that communication. We do Call as well. But I mean, the. The thought process of investing so much time and so much money to host an event. And if your people are not getting the communication.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Then they raise their hand and say, I want to come. But then you never. You don't remind them. You don't tell them, oh, it's happening now.

[B]

And that also, like, doesn't look good on you from, like, you obviously did what you were supposed to do, but from their perspective, like, they're like, what? What's happening?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, so, okay, so you're seeing,

[A]

in the group, you're seeing this thread

[B]

that's going through, like, I didn't get any emails. You know what's happening. Yeah. So where does your mind go?

[C]

Well, it's interesting. My team saw these messages coming in first and they immediately started investigating because I was delivering a workshop as, like, the big flurry starts. It's happening. And they told me they investigated everything. And they told me about an hour later, we have a problem. We know what's happening. We checked all of these things and we got to the root cause, and so they were on it.

[B]

But how does your team, like. I feel very proud of my team. I feel like they're very tech savvy. I feel like. I feel like I am tech savvy. And I would not have known where

[A]

to look with email.

[B]

I would have thought, do you need

[A]

to clear your cache?

[B]

Do you need to turn off the computer and restart? Like, restart.

[C]

Is that. Maybe it's in your trash. Did you set up a fil. The basics. But they. We have. My business partner and I worked for a. An email marketing. A marketing agency. So I had done a lot of consulting on email strategy, email marketing, and we partnered and collaborated on a lot of things around this as well. So this really, the foundation of this came out of my corporate background. But running an online business, we kind of always had an eye on that and have been watching it ever since.

[B]

But for just the normal small business owner.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like how. What do they do? Like, what are the steps? What were the things that you guys looked at? Let's look. Okay, let's get into that.

[C]

Yeah, I'm gonna break it down. I'm gonna try and keep this so simple. And honestly, there are a couple of things that I don't even understand. So I'll tell you what, when I hit those points. But first up, clean email list. So if you are emailing people who aren't responding, they haven't opened an email in six months, a year, two years, Three years, I still need that.

[B]

I see you, those people with the 20,000 emails on your red bubble.

[A]

Come on.

[C]

And that is not helping you. So emailing people that are just letting their inbox fill up, you do not want to keep emailing them. And we knew this was not our problem because our email, we do not send emails to people who do not open over time because what that does is that it tells the email service providers, the Gmails, the Yahoos, the hotmails of the world, hey, they're not opening your email. They don't want it. So they're going to move it to that promotions, that spam folder over time if you're sending the email to enough people that do not open.

[B]

So we do, we use a software called Zero Bounce and we do this once a year. Are you familiar with that software?

[C]

I'm not that one specifically, but I'm familiar with software that checks this for you and it helps clean your list.

[B]

Yeah. So it goes through once a year. It removes any of the bots, it removes any, like, emails that are bouncing, anything like that. And it's really inexpensive to go through. And we do it once a year. And the first time that we did it, I think, I mean, it was

[A]

like thousands of emails that we got rid of.

[B]

So, like, your heart sinks a little bit.

[C]

So sad.

[B]

Yeah. But it's like, you know, what if those are not real people or if they're not, you know, wanting to hear

[A]

or be in relationship with us, that's fine. Lesson release. Blessed release.

[C]

Different season. People move.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, this is number one.

[C]

Clean that list.

[A]

Clean list.

[B]

And how do we tell if someone is opening our emails or not? Is that a feature that's standard inside of a mailchimp kit, whatever type flow, desk, whatever type of email service provider you're choosing?

[A]

Absolutely.

[C]

Yeah. You can see your open rate. So I've got 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% open rate. That other percentage that isn't open some email. Some CRMs have this built in so that you can see, run a report, see everyone who hasn't opened in 90 days. But otherwise, to your point, there are external plugins, you mentioned Zero Bounce. Some will integrate right with your CRM where you're sending emails from.