Two real Cloudflare emails, rebuilt — not just for clicks, but for how people actually read now. Plus what they'd look like as social. Borrowing from the companies winning attention today.
I argued five shifts are reshaping how our category markets — the biggest being that email has to be rebuilt around clicks, not opens, in a voice built for shorter attention and a younger, self-directed buyer.
So I did three things: picked two real Cloudflare emails of different types that underperform, studied how the best consumer & tech brands actually earn attention today, and rebuilt both — tone, persona, and creative, not just the mechanics. Then I mocked up how each would travel as social.
New voice and shape for a real audience — not a tidy-up.
Duolingo, Spotify, Wendy's, Morning Brew, Stripe — cited.
Every number pulled from our 2025 Marketo sends.
None of these are security companies. That's the point. The teams winning inboxes and feeds right now win on personality, personalization, and restraint — not feature lists. Here's the transferable move from each, and where I apply it.
Turned an owl mascot into a meme, leaned into its "passive-aggressive reminder" reputation, and staged Duo's "death" & resurrection (Feb 2025). A language app became must-watch.
We steal: give the sender a human character & a point of view. Humor and a real name beat a no-reply address.
Wikipedia, "Duolingo" (Image and brand); Bajaj, How a 23-year-old graduate helped transform Duolingo's social media marketing, Nov 23 2023.
Since 2016, a personalized year-in-review that's inherently shareable — millions of users market Spotify for free every December.
We steal: put the reader's own numbers in the email — their S3 bill, their account's usage. We sit on Radar + telemetry and barely use it.
Wikipedia, "Spotify Wrapped."
A me-too burger chain became a personality through bold voice — "Where's the beef?" to the Twitter roast era. Same patties, different brand.
We steal: a confident, distinct voice cuts through even in "boring" infrastructure and security.
Wikipedia, "Wendy's" (Advertising).
Conversational, witty, skimmable newsletters built multi-million audiences — the voice is the product. Morning Brew's majority stake sold to Insider Inc. in 2020 (~$75M reported).
We steal: subject-line wit, first person, one idea, skimmable in five seconds.
Axios/The New York Times (2020) on the Insider Inc. acquisition; Wikipedia, "Business Insider."
The brands developers actually trust write like peers: changelog-style, numbers and code over adjectives, docs one click away, no gates. They assume you're smart and busy.
We steal: for the developer email, lead with the number, drop in a real CLI line, link straight to the calculator — and never gate the proof.
Industry-documented practice (public product changelogs & developer marketing, Stripe / Vercel / Linear).
The brands on the last slide win on instinct. The research says the same thing in hard numbers — and it points at revenue, not vanity metrics.
The through-line: personality, the reader's own data, a human voice, and restraint aren't flourishes — they're the levers the highest-ROI programs already pull. This deck moves two of our emails from the 53% toward the 93%.
I filtered 3,677 2025 sends to the 278 that reached 25k+ people (a big enough audience to trust), then to the 209 that clicked under 3%. From those I picked two that fail in opposite ways — so the fixes teach different lessons.
Our flagship event. Talks to senior buyers — and drowns them in options.
A product email to developers — written like an ad, not a peer.
Source: [2025] Email Performance — All Raw Data (Marketo export). Filters: Sent ≥ 25,000; % Clicked < 3%.
Senior security / IT / engineering leader, 35–55. Reads on a phone between meetings. Has seen every vendor pitch and trusts none of them by default.
Audience source: house list + past Connect attendees + cold enterprise (ZoomInfo / SFDC-sourced).
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Register Now Agenda · Venue · Speakers| Metric | This invite | Connect avg · 45 sends |
|---|---|---|
| Clicked | 0.7% | 0.62% |
| Opened | 17.5% | 16.6% |
It isn't a fluke — it's the rule. Across 45 Connect invites, clicks cluster near 0.6%. Sources: All Raw Data (Marketo); Connect Promos benchmark (volume-weighted). Creative: real Connect invite (Sydney send, same template family).
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See the full agenda →Pragmatic developer / platform engineer, 25–45. Lives in docs, terminals and peer forums. Can smell marketing from the subject line — and deletes it.
Audience source: content downloads (R2 calculator, ebooks) + developer sign-ups + cold developer lists.
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Download the ebook Learn more · Contact sales| Metric | This email | CF large-send avg |
|---|---|---|
| Clicked | 1.3% | 1.31% |
| Opened | 18.8% | 22.5% |
793,170 sent. Clicks land at exactly our own average — for an audience that should be our most engaged. R2 positioning: "object storage, minus egress fees" (zero egress vs. AWS S3 ≈ $0.09/GB). Source: All Raw Data (Marketo); R2 launch blog.
S3 charges ~$0.09/GB to read your own data back. R2 charges $0. On 50 TB/mo of egress, that's the difference between a $4,500 bill and nothing.
No form. Straight to the calculator. Docs: developers.cloudflare.com/r2
"Winners own their audience" was shift #5. An email is one channel — the buyer is also scrolling. Same R2 story, four named demographics, four platforms, four voices. Tone follows the reader, not the brand template.
The Terminal-Dwellers
Gen Z Builders
The Guardians
The Career-Switchers
Two emails rebuilt for two real readers, a social plan for four more, every move borrowed from the brands winning attention today — and every number checked against our own 2025 sends.
Aayna Bahulkar · Marketing Operations
Data: 2025 Marketo email performance · External: Duolingo, Spotify, Wendy's, Morning Brew/Insider Inc., Stripe/Vercel/Linear (cited inline).