The B.R.A.V.E. mindset

Is email really dead? Not even close, if you ask Lindsay Tjepkema.

In her Unspam 2025 keynote, Lindsay, a veteran marketer and SaaS founder, debunks the tired "email is dead" narrative and introduces Thinking Brave, a decision-making framework built for marketers under pressure. With sharp insights, personal stories, and a whole lot of heart, she challenges the crowd to make small, bold, aligned choices that drive lasting impact.

TL;DR:

• Email remains the most powerful and overlooked growth engine.
• One-degree decisions shape brand legacy over time.
• Thinking Brave stands for Brand, Relationships, Audacity, Values, and Energy.
• Alignment is more valuable than shortcuts or hacks.
• You hold more power than you realize.

Get ready to think differently, lead boldly, and reclaim email’s rightful place in your strategy.

Lindsay Tjepkema: I'm just gonna have to rethink my entire thing because I had this activity that involved licking, so I'm just gonna have to pivot. So, just, I'll think of something. I brought my phone up 'cause I'm very conscious of time, and if anything, and after, I wanna give you a little more time to talk about things.

I don't know how to break this to everyone to get things started. This is really awkward in this room, so I'm just gonna come out with it. Oh, did you already hear? Gosh. Okay, good. So email's dead. I don't know if you've heard that repeatedly for the last decade, two decades, or three decades. 

Email is not dead. However, we keep hearing it over and over from all the talking heads, LinkedIn posts, and podcasts. It's everywhere. Email is attacked from every angle. AI's eating email, taking jobs, and doing away with everything that makes it so special.

However, like our good friend Jason Bourne, email is that thing that just won't die because it shouldn't. We are still here. Email is still building trust, establishing relationships, and creating connections between real humans and real brands in ways that a whole lot of other channels cannot.

But why? Why do people keep trying to bury email? What did email ever do to everybody else? I have a theory that, like Jason Bourne, they're trying to control it. Trying to take something that just works is really good, and does something that nothing else can because we're obsessed with shiny, new, and different things, and trying to take something that works really well and make it something that can be controlled or manipulated and made new.

Not really for the sake of all of us and the brands you represent, but for the people trying to get something as a means to an end. But I'm here to say that email is very much not dead. You all know that. Actually, it's the most underappreciated growth engine that we've got in businesses.

Do you guys agree? It's pretty special. It can do something that no other channel can.

And so now this is the part where I tell all of you stuff that you already know, but just so that we're all on the same page. Email is a one-to-many miracle, right? It is. Well, just think about it. It is owned, it is direct, it is personal. It allows you to reach people wherever they are, all over the world, at any time. Regardless of who's checking TikTok, who's involved in LinkedIn, or what's happening worldwide, people always check their email. Always have, right? So, the email is here. And listen, I am a massive fan of many other marketing channels.

I am kind of obsessed with LinkedIn, right? I love LinkedIn and podcasting. I actually started a company that deals with podcasting and video marketing. There are a lot of things here that are special, but email stands out. Let me break it down. It's so cold-calling way down over here. I know a lot of people still find a lot of value in it, but if you think about it.

It's one-to-one. It's like one thing at a time. So, the audience size for every single call is tiny. And the control, you have almost no control over what happens. Okay? So let's go to another part. As I mentioned, I love podcasting. I love YouTube; I love videos. Those are great, too. And while you have a potentially large audience size, you don't have much control over what happens.

When you're doing things in a rented space, such as good old blogging, websites, and webinars, you're kind of at the mercy of the algorithm. You have much control over the content, but the audience size, especially when starting something new, is usually limited.

Right. And then, keynote speaking, I love all of you. I love doing this so much, but anyone speaking or if that's important to your brand, you're at the mercy of events like this one, and being invited is not something you can really maximize the audience size and have a lot of control over. But then there's email, and you have this special place with email that lets you reach tons of people and have a lot of control over the situation. And unlike almost all of these other things, you can measure it. You all have so much power over what you can do, how you can connect with people, how you can reach people, and how you can measure. You can't do that with podcasting. You can't do that with LinkedIn, yet people outside this room keep trying to kill email.

Why? Ironically, your inbox is probably full of people telling you that, you know, there's a playbook, here's a hack, here's a growth hack, here's something that you should do differently, here's something, here's a way to make the human part of what you're doing smaller, to make it automated and AIed and automatic and less, and less, and less.

And tell me if I'm right. Pressure on you is growing.

The overwhelm is real. The overstimulation is real. Logan was talking about feeling overstimulated here. But I'm guessing this is probably the least stimulating thing you are stepping away from your computers in your daily life. Right? There's so much pressure. There's so much pressure, and there's no shortage of people telling you that there are new ways to do things all the time, which is why we're gonna talk about thinking brave and I wanna teach you today, you're gonna be surrounded by so many different, tips and processes and, you know, case studies and great examples. 

I want to give you something that will help you make decisions here, at home, at work, and in your personal life, too. So we're going to go through this quickly. What is thinking brave? But we're going to go through it over and over throughout the next 40 minutes.

So don't, don't feel overwhelmed. Don't feel overwhelmed with this. There are lots of other things to be overwhelmed by right now. This is not one of them. Okay, so what is thinking brave in a nutshell? Thinking bravely is a mindset. It's a way of thinking, of making decisions about things as you approach them, however big or small they might be.

And in short, it says, okay, is this thing I'm about to do? B is it aligned with my brand? Is it aligned with how I wanna be positioned long term? R Is it in alignment with relationships with people I want to know, like, and trust, our brand, our company, and long-term? A, is it audacious? Am I playing it safe or holding space for creativity and thinking outside the box? V is values. Do we, do we have values?

Do we know what they are? Okay, is this in alignment with them? And then E. Does this thing I'm about to do align with and give positive energy? Or is there a friction here that doesn't need to be? So that's the basis of it. We're gonna talk about all of that.

But before all this, who the heck am I, and why am I here? And why should you be listening to me when there are lots of other people who could be telling you lots of essential things? I've been in marketing for 20 years—yeah, probably more—so I have been behind campaigns.

I have sent the emails and led the teams. I've also, for five of those years, been the founder and CEO of a venture-backed SaaS startup that served marketers. So, all of that is to say, I've done a lot of marketing and marketing to marketers for a very long time, which means I'm obsessed. I'm very, very obsessed with what all of us here do.

It also means that I have seen all of the talking heads call things dead. I have seen the growth hacks, playbooks, and claims of silver bullets so many times, just like all of you have for so long, and I'm just over it. Are you guys over it? Do you just want to do good things?

Do you want to create great relationships with good people? Me too. This is why my husband snapped this picture of me: if I'm at home nine times out of 10, I wear this shirt because I'm over it. Are you guys over it? Just over it? Yeah. Okay. So, I am excited to be here because I'm obsessed with marketing and email marketing, but I also love the idea that this is an unconference. That is, it kind of bucks the norm. Am I right? So, I want to give you a chance to think differently today, but this is not about me at all. That's all you're gonna hear about me. I just wanted to give some context about who this weird, dramatic person is up here talking to you about. Things that you already know.

I wanna talk about you. Who here is only doing email marketing? Like that's, that is your 100% role. Okay. Who leads a team and does email marketing? That's all of you do. Okay. And who has lots and lots of other things in addition to email marketing? Okay. All right. So, suffice it to say you have much going on, right?

Regardless of whether email is the entirety of what you do, there are many, many, many facets to that. Processes are enormous, and decision-making with emails that go out the door is big. There are lots of people involved, right? Then, if that's part of what you do, it's one of the many lists of things that people probably tell you that they know.

They know what you do. They know how to do it better than you. They have lots of very valuable advice on how you should be doing what you're doing. Right? So the common thread here, regardless of whether email is the entirety of your role or you're doing lots of different things, is that you are your brand's voice.

And think about that. That's cool. Despite all the pressure you're under and all the overwhelmed and all the cool things we're gonna talk about today. So much of what people experience when they experience your business starts in your brain and in the conversations you're having with your coworkers; that is incredible and extremely important. One of the things that I want you to leave here with today is the value you bring to every decision you make. And if you don't believe me, let's talk about Salesforce. Has anybody heard of this company? It's tiny. Okay, a few of you. So, in 2024, Salesforce achieved nearly 35 billion with a B dollars in annual revenue.

They've created a category, or a category exists purely because there are companies out there that implement, build on top of, integrate with, or serve Salesforce. Some of you might be involved with some of them. They own a quarter of CRM's market share—more than its next four largest competitors combined.

Okay? But Salesforce wasn't always Salesforce; of course, they had started somewhere. So what got them here? Well, it wasn't the product. The product alone did not make Salesforce. Who is Salesforce? How many of you are using a CRM? Even if it's not you, your company uses a CRM that is not Salesforce.

I'm sorry to the Salesforce representatives here. Several of you, right? There are other options. Many of them are a lot less complicated and a lot more cost-effective. Good, good. Okay, so it's not just the product. It's not luck either because, and I know, I mean, Salesforce, “good,” “bad,” or “otherwise,” this is not like a, “Hey, Salesforce is amazing.”

Nor is Salesforce bad. It's just an agreement that Salesforce has broken through and reached a level that a lot of us in our companies would like to reach, but they had a lot of headwinds against them. They got started just a couple of years before the dot-com bust, and they were greatly impacted by it.

They had to lay off, I think, 20% of their entire workforce just as they were getting started. Wow. Before, they were Salesforce, and it wasn't the founder, either. Mark Benioff is Mark Benioff. However, he didn't do it alone. It's not like he stood there and made a whole bunch of decisions and was like, "This will be a great company."

Yes. Thank you. They introduced the cloud. I know that seems crazy to us now, but they were audacious enough to come out with something that thought completely differently. And yes, I know that's not all the marketers, but we'll get to that. They also rolled out the first conference series, I'm sorry, conference series in tech with Dreamforce.

So now all of us get to go on a business trip and see people like Peak, Who Fighters, and Metallica. One of Salesforce's values is helping customers succeed, which is why they've made many decisions like creating Trailblazers, an entire community where Salesforce gets to know the people who use it.

The product. I know these all seem like pretty obvious things, but it wasn't before Salesforce rolled it out. As their competitors raised prices, Salesforce introduced a freemium model so more people could access it. They've done a lot of things to invest in their culture, right? So, the summary here is that they thought differently.

They thought bravely, and the marketers took that out to the world; instead of getting stifled by all of this crazy, innovative thinking, they brought it to all of their users, like all of you do, to help actually make Salesforce what it is today. Salesforce is Salesforce because of a million decisions made by hundreds of people over dozens of years. We thought brave, right?

They made decisions at every turn that aligned with who they wanted to be long-term. They were very acutely aware of the people that they wanted to know, like, and trust long-term. They were audacious, which I think we've covered. They align with their values of helping their customers succeed, and their marketers have made decisions that have allowed them to chase the positive energy to win solutions, not get stifled by how we should promote this? How can we tell people about a cloud with all your data? 

The reason that I wanted to talk about Salesforce, other than the big picture of like, "Hey, big things happen over time, through lots and lots of decisions," is the basis of everything we're gonna talk about today. One of the common threads with Salesforce is email, right?

So, not only do they use it for demand gen and to promote what they're doing, but they also use it for onboarding, cross-selling, and upselling. And, actually, a little over a decade ago, they made a massive acquisition of ExactTarget to introduce us all to something called Marketing Cloud.

So they even invested in them, making them part of their product. Email is a huge part of their story. And it's not just Salesforce; it's a lot of these other brands that we all know like and trust, too. Email is at the center of so many companies and so many brands that we all value, look to, turn to, and trust.

Brands like these know the power of relationships, and they decide accordingly. They know the value that the brand brings to their audiences and to their growth potential. Their audacity is constantly over and over, not in one big grand gesture, but in every decision they make. They have values, make decisions according to them, and chase positive energy to create environments where people can thrive and be creative and successful. So that's the big picture. That's me zooming out and talking about the big brands that we know and recognize, and how they're thinking bravely and differently. But let's talk about you. It might be like,” cool, this is great. I'm not Salesforce, I don't work for one of those brands”, or maybe you do, but you're like, "I'm doing this one thing," or "I'm responsible for this campaign." Like "You don't understand the role that I'm in, I'm so stifled. I don't get to be big and creative. I don't get to do big, audacious things".

Does it ever feel that way? I know it can sometimes. Or maybe you're like, "Hey, I'm leading a team and can't get this team to do this thing". Or perhaps you're a startup founder or company CEO, and you're like, "Hey, that's great, but you don't understand the pressure that we're under to grow."

But I do. And the thing is, all of those companies have people working within them and have had people working within them just like you, just like every single one of you. Remember, hundreds of people made a million decisions over dozens of years. You play a huge role in being the voice, the decisions that guide the companies to become big, huge legacies like they are today regardless of whether the entirety of your role is in email or if it's in marketing as a whole, and email is a part of it you are the tip of the medieval spear that is building a legend. Okay? So, as you do, I want you to keep this one story with you. 

My son, I have three. Three boys. My oldest is obsessed with aviation. He's like obsessed with flying. Okay? Do you have anybody else who likes flying or pilot stuff? Okay. He told me this story. He's like, Mom, "it's a crazy thing. Did you know that if a plane takes off from San Francisco and it's headed to Washington DC and it's off by one degree, do you know what'll happen?"

And I was like, "Of course, I don't know what happened. What will happen? He said, "Okay, well, if it's off by one degree. When it has gone a hundred yards, it'll be off course by six feet". And I was like," Okay." He goes, "Get this, though. By the time it's over LA, it'll be off course by five miles". It's like, okay, well, that seems figureoutable, right?

He goes, "And I kid you not, by the time it lands, do you know where it'll land? Baltimore, not Washington, DC because it was off course by one degree". One degree at takeoff. Just one. And I mean, Baltimore's pretty great, is’t it?. Baltimore hotels are pretty lovely, and if I were on that plane, I would be pretty glad, especially lately, that it landed successfully and safely.

Am I right? But it's not Washington DC. That was where we intended to go. That was the full potential of that flight. Every single one of you makes one-degree decisions all day: subject lines, AB testing, copy imagery, email lists, segmentation, when to send, and what else to do. Who should be on the team?

Who should send the email? Who should be involved in the approval process? You make hundreds of one-degree decisions every single day. This also applies to your personal life: What to eat, where to go, and I should go to unspam? You make all of these decisions every single day, and they're not insignificant.

Remember your place in your company. It is at the center of your voice and the experience of what your customers, your business's customers, experience daily. You're holding the keys to the most underestimated, powerful growth channel that your business has. Your one-degree decisions carry a lot of weight, and they can get you to Washington, DC, or Baltimore.

Or maybe I should have flipped that for this one because you wanted to end up here. Right? Okay. So, are we clear that your one-degree decisions matter? This is the part where we start actually doing things. Does everybody have a card? I typically go through this whole thinking-brave thing in workshops that are about half a day long.

Sometimes, I do month-long engagements with people who actually implement this thinking process. Within our teams, we've got 23 minutes. But we're gonna do it. And my goal here: After giving, we zoomed way out. We talked, and we talked about email being dead. Email has had a huge role in some really big companies, and really big companies become really big companies by making lots and lots of decisions every single day.

That's how we got to where we are now. Cool? Okay. So now what we're going to do is, I'm gonna walk you through this thinking brave exercise so that you can, right here, walk through the process, maybe even make a decision right now. Then, carry this out and use it continuously with your teams. I'm telling you, this is not just something you can use for work.

It's also important to make personal decisions. Maybe you're considering making a personal or professional change or taking a big step. This will help. All right, so here's what I need you to do. I need you to think of a decision, not a pretend one. Don't think about, "Well, someday if I were about to hire someone".

No, it's a decision you're making right now. Is this thing that you're thinking about doing this, this decision you're making, going to get you closer to where you want to be as a brand long term? Does it position you for the long term? Do you want to be where you need to be as a brand?

Do yes. You can say no. You can do a question mark. Next question. Is this thing that you're thinking about doing, is it likely to help you establish or strengthen relationships with people you want to know, like, and trust you long term? The converse of this would be, I don't know, maybe it's just something, it's a short-term play.

We're trying to get a lot of attention, a lot of opens, and something right now. Audacity—I have a feeling this is one of my favorites. I feel like it's a favorite of this room. Have you held space for creativity in this thing you're thinking of? Have you truly allowed for some audacity that's outside-the-box thinking?

Or the converse of this is, are you playing it safe with values? Do you know your values? Do you guys have values? I mean, you all have values, but do you know your company's values or whatever this decision is in alignment with? Is it in alignment with your values? Is it going to strengthen and uphold the brand's values or the person it's tied to?

And energy. This one feels a bit ethereal, but it's very important. Does it feel right? Is it like you're chasing the positive energy to a winning solution, or is it a grind? Does it just feel like I can't get people on board? I don't know if this feels like it's the right thing.

This just doesn't feel like a fit. There's friction. Okay. Does everyone have all of their answers? Yes. No. Or like a question mark. I want you to look at your cards if you have five yeses, "Hooray". Congratulations. So now you have something that's worth pursuing. Will it work? But what you've just done is you have validated that it's worth the extremely valuable time, money, energy, and resources you have to put behind it because it will most likely be on track to get you to Washington, DC, instead of landing in Baltimore. If you have even one question mark or one blank, that is a red light, that is a sign to go back and fix it before you move forward. Why? Because whatever it is that you're thinking about doing won't work, at least not the way you intended it to.

So maybe the plane won't crash. Sorry. That's very morbid. But it will end up in the wrong city, right? It won't reach its full potential. And I can tell you right now that putting money, time, energy, and resources behind something that is right out of the bat is not gonna get you to where you wanna go. Doesn't it take? Isn't it worth it to take a minute and go back and fix it first?

Okay? So let's walk through what it looks like if you skip over one of these things, shall we? Okay. Brand. This is how you end up with a perfume commercial. What do I mean by that? Who has seen, like, on TV, there's like Johnny Depp on a beach, there's like a snake, there's probably like fire somewhere and like some rocks, and you're like, what is he doing?

A new movie? Oh, it's perfume. Got it. Don't do that to your brand. Remember, we all have very valuable time, money, energy, and resources. You're under so much pressure. We're all overwhelmed and stretched thin. Don't put all of that into something that's gonna be disjointed, and people don't like when they do see it; let's say it meets all of these other things, and they're like, wow, that was really cool. Who was that for? Don't do that. 

That's what happens when you skip over brand relationships. Okay, it could be a really great idea, a fun thing. It could go viral. A really good email picks it up, and it wins all the awards, everything. But everybody who likes it is cats and kittens, and that's not your target audience.

What's the point if it's not the people that you want to know, like, and trust you long term? I know that we're under pressure to deliver big numbers and big results, but when you reach out to the wrong people, it's gonna bite you in the butt long term. Audacity, this one is so easy to skip over because there's so much fear and scarcity everywhere, right?

But when you skip over audacity, you end up with something safe, boring, and forgettable, and you know what doesn't sell stuff. Things that are safe, boring, and forgettable. And so something that feels safe. In a time when our resources are so scarce, and we are so pinched and under so much pressure, you're like, "I'm just gonna do the thing that's safe because I'm terrified that it won't work. And what happens if it doesn't work?" And I get it, things are really, really scary. But you know what's scarier? Shipping something, putting a lot of time, money, energy, and super valuable resources behind something that I can tell you right off the bat will not work the way you want it to. So don't skip over Audacity values.

Probably, I don't have to tell you this one, but if you do something that's out of alignment with your values, it breaks some trust. And this doesn't even have to be a scandal. It doesn't have to be like, "Oh, did you see what they did?". if you stand for something that is very like kind of old school and ethical and like, and very human to human and, and very kinda buttoned up and then you go do something 'cause you're inspired by and you're being audacious and it's like cool with your brand and like lots of high energy and you do something 'cause you're inspired by a brand that's like fast and break stuff. And I'm sorry, I'm supposed to swear, move fast and break shit.

And like you just do that. Even if it's a really cool campaign, if there's a misalignment with your values and you're showing up in ways that don't fit with who you've told people who you are and what you say you stand for, it confuses your audience, and that leads to a breakdown of trust.

"How does the team feel about this? How does leadership feel about this? How do I feel about this?" And when you overlook that step, you just grind through the friction at best. You end up with a checkmark on the list, a project that's done, a campaign that's complete.

Again, you don't reach your full potential. That could be fine, but this is how you skip out on the potential that you could reach as a team, and this is where you start to break down your culture, which has implications in the long term. So, do you see how that works? I mean, it took us a couple of minutes.

You don't have to have a huge meeting about it to go through it. You can. You don't have to like putting it up on office posters. You can, but even just in your role by yourself, you can take a beat and say, "Is this brave?" If not, can I take another second and go back and make sure it is before I spend any more time on it.

Okay. But why, why Lindsay? Why should I do this? Well, I'm glad you asked because when we think of ROI and revenue, we look at companies like Salesforce and all those other companies we put up there. This is one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. Now, there are a lot of companies out there that are thinking bravely.

None of them know that they're thinking bravely because that's a thing that I came up with, and I just taught it all to you. However, you can go around and look at the companies and the people that you're inspired by, and I guarantee you will look at the ones who are successful. In whatever way they or you define success, I guarantee you they're doing a version of this.

They think differently. They don't follow other people's playbooks. Instead of doing what those who came before them did, they're focused on thinking how they think. Right? That makes all the difference, above and beyond revenue, which is super important. This shows up inefficiencies.

Because you are spending time on the things that are most likely to get you where you want to go, as opposed to all of these other little side things, because more is better. And if I just do more things, some of them will likely succeed. No. What if you could focus on the things that are most likely to get you to where you wanna go from the beginning, leading to effectiveness.

You're gonna have a higher win rate because you've taken a minute to actually think really critically about the things you're about to do. Which is just gonna make the work that you do as a person, team, and company much more effective. And then one of my favorites is team retention. When you're doing things like asking how this makes us feel?

What does our very expert professional experience and intuition say? Is this the right thing to do? Should we be spending our resources on this? And when your team is part of that decision, and when they see the work that they're doing, actually being effective. In a time like now, where there's so much pressure, and there's so much fear, and there's so much scarcity, and there's so much crap going on in the world, when you can see that what you're doing matters, it changes everything, right?

And then your audience can feel it, too. When your audience knows and sees it, you've made every effort to know them and to demonstrate your values to them. You've also shown them why you're doing what you're doing and how they play a role in what you're doing, too. So the RROI is enormous, and it goes across many different things if you're still like, "I don't know. Cool. That seems like a fun little exercise".

I wanna challenge you one more time. Think of something that didn't work. Commanding your personal life can be in your last job. It can be out in a campaign that you ran last week. Okay. Think of a thing that didn't work, and we'll go through this again. Ask yourself, really, honestly, to go back through the card.

Was it in alignment with your brand? And again, if this is like a personal thing, a decision that you made, was it in alignment with your brand, with who you are? Okay. Relationships: was it in alignment? This thing that. That broke down. Was it aligned with the people you wanted to know, like, and trust you long term?

Audacious? Was it audacious? Was it, was it values? Was it in alignment with who you say you are? Truly? Can you say that honestly, an energy? When you were making that decision, did you know?

Okay, so have you gone through that? Did anybody identify where the gap was or something that broke down? Can you start to see it? I'm in a room full of people who are at the very tip of the spear, with brains that are the voices of companies that are doing big things. You think all those marketers and people created emails for Salesforce before it was Salesforce.

Did they know they were part of creating $35 billion in 2024? Probably gonna be more very soon. Legacy? No. They were making decisions every single day, just like you. One-degree decisions that repeatedly got them to some place far bigger than they ever could have imagined. And you can, and you do, too, but you already know that because so many of you are already doing this right now. 

I hope that this is helpful. I'm excited to hear how you'll use it in the break. I think tomorrow we're having a little chat about it, and I know that we're giving the slides, but if for whatever reason you want it right now or if you want a version, digital version of the card, you can scan that and it'll go right to your inbox. And please don't make fun of me for my email abilities. I tried my best; thank you so much for being here.