Targeted email works best when each subscriber gets content that fits what they told you and what they do: where they signed up, what they browse, what they click and what they buy. That is the main lesson of Rok Hrastnik’s work on the Dormeo mattress brand at Studio Moderna, and it still holds in November 2026. What has changed is how you measure and deliver that mail. Apple Mail Privacy Protection has inflated open rates since September 2021, and since February 2024 Gmail and Yahoo require bulk senders to authenticate with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, offer one-click unsubscribe and keep reported spam below 0.3%.
Who Rok Hrastnik is
This interview with Rok Hrastnik ran ahead of the Email Summit, where he spoke on “Targeting and Messaging Strategies that Affect Behavior.” By then he had worked in interactive marketing and media for nearly a decade. He was at Studio Moderna, a direct-response TV (DRTV) and multichannel retailer that then operated in 19 European countries. His job was digital business development, which meant using several channels and media to get the group’s brands in front of more people.
Rok is best known for his e-book “Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS.” MarketingProfs promoted it as the best and most comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers. He also spoke at DMA Annual and ACCM. RSS is no longer a mainstream marketing channel, and Google shut down Google Reader in 2013. His main argument carries straight over to email, though: permission-based channels should be run with the discipline of direct marketing.
Studio Moderna has grown since this interview. In 2022 the company said it sold direct to consumers in more than 20 Central and Eastern European countries and had over 20 million customers. That same year an entity controlled by founder Sandi Češko acquired its holding company. Dormeo is still its flagship brand, alongside sister brands such as Delimano.
What was it like when you first started with email marketing and targeted messaging?
“For me the story starts back in 2001, when I first did email marketing for a financial consulting company. That first experience was a real eye-opener about what email can do when it’s done right. Even then we realized that relevant communication with prospects and customers isn’t about sending a new sales message every other day, as many US online retailers still do. It’s about educating or entertaining your audience, building their trust step by step and preparing them for their first purchase.
“Sure, we could have got a higher short-term response by focusing only on the immediate sale. But that would have alienated every reader who wasn’t in ‘shopping mode’ yet, and over time it would have destroyed the long-term potential of our email lists and lead generation.
“This point became even clearer a couple of years later, when I started managing online operations for a business daily newspaper, where targeted and timely messaging was the norm. You still have thousands of subscribers who only want the daily business news recap. But you only start providing real value when you let subscribers decide exactly which business news they want and exactly when they want it. Some only want alerts when their stock tickers move. Others only care about news in their own industry. Others only care about news involving their company or their competitors. In online media, giving your audience that kind of choice is crucial.”
How this holds up in 2026: The warning about daily sales blasts matters more now than it did then. Gmail and Yahoo both use a 0.3% spam complaint rate as the line for bulk senders, and Google advises staying below 0.1%. Readers who aren’t ready to buy and keep getting sales mail are the ones who click “Report spam.” A preference center that lets people choose topics and frequency, as the newspaper did, is one of the simplest ways to keep complaints down.
What were the most useful things you learned early on?
“When I joined Studio Moderna in 2004, our email had one focus: sales, sales, sales, and more sales, right now. I went along with it, but my earlier email experience kept nagging at me. At its core, online retail isn’t that different from selling business services or running online media. People are still people, and people want real value. The catch is that different things are valuable to different people. There’s no cookie-cutter model of ‘value’ that works for everyone.
“With that in mind, we transformed our email program step by step through five distinct development phases. We moved from a total focus on immediate direct sales to putting readership and engagement ahead of everything else. Studio Moderna owns several brands, but let’s follow the process for Dormeo, our mattress and sleep brand.”
Phase 1: Sales campaigns only
“The first step, as you can imagine, was a total focus on sales campaigns. We measured results with the standard mix of open rates, click-through rates and conversions, plus basic business data such as revenue per email address. Early results were encouraging, but not good enough.”
How this holds up in 2026: Revenue per email address and conversions are still the right business metrics. Open rates are not. Apple Mail Privacy Protection, launched with iOS 15 in September 2021, preloads message content and tracking pixels in the background, so Apple Mail users can show up as openers whether or not they read anything. Gmail’s image proxy also caches images. Treat clicks, conversions and revenue as your main signals and opens as a rough trend line at best.
Phase 2: A newsletter about sleep
“The next logical step was an email newsletter about, yes, you guessed it, sleep. Issue after issue had tips on sleeping better, choosing the right mattress, mattress materials, readers’ dream interpretations, the effects of poor sleep and so on. The logic was simple: support the purchase for people already considering one, and persuade everyone else that they should start considering one now. As we focused more on content, we also added churn to our regular metrics.
“Then a funny thing happened. After a couple of issues, readership started dropping and churn rose sharply. We learned the hard way that people just aren’t interested in reading about sleep every week. Go figure.”
Phase 3: A general lifestyle newsletter
“That brought us to our third phase: turning the newsletter from a sleep newsletter into a general lifestyle newsletter. We kept some sleep content but focused more on high-readership general-interest topics such as diets, sexuality, relationships, home decoration and personal growth. That’s when things really started moving. And yes, you really can sell mattresses with articles about diets and sex.
“We then added gender information to our email database, which was another big eye-opener. We quickly saw that men and women cared about completely different topics, and they also interacted with email differently.”
Phase 4: Gender-based newsletters and campaigns
“This new information led to our next stage: gender-based lifestyle newsletters and email campaigns. From then on we segmented all email by gender. That covered content selection and also structural changes to the templates, based on how each group interacted with email.
“One of many differences: the women’s newsletters were built for reading and the men’s newsletters were built for browsing. In the women’s version, the table of contents focused on ‘selling’ each article to win the click. The men’s version gave the main point of the article up front.”
How this holds up in 2026: The principle still applies: segment on differences your own data shows, and change the template as well as the copy. Gender alone is a blunt proxy, though. Stated preferences and behavior (topics clicked, products viewed, purchase history) predict interest more directly and don’t rest on assumptions about who someone is. If you do collect gender, ask for it directly and make the field optional. Template tests also look different now that most email is read on phones and many readers use dark mode. A “browse” layout that puts the main point first often works for everyone on a small screen.
The Dormeo phases at a glance
| Phase | What Dormeo sent | Metrics watched | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sales campaigns only | Opens, clicks, conversions, revenue per address | Encouraging, but not enough |
| 2 | Weekly newsletter about sleep | Above, plus churn | Readership fell and churn rose sharply after a few issues |
| 3 | General lifestyle newsletter with some sleep content | Readership, churn, sales | Engagement and sales picked up |
| 4 | Separate lifestyle newsletters and campaigns by gender | Interaction patterns by segment | Different content and template structure per group |
What other targets do you focus on now?
“Targeting based on the lead generation source. For example, an address that joined through a viral sweepstakes game is treated completely differently from one that came from a catalog request or a sleep-tips whitepaper download.
“Targeting based on engagement. We look at a range of metrics that show what a person is interested in at a given moment, and we use that data to pick the right message for their interests and their stage in the buying cycle. If you spend 10 minutes browsing our mattresses, that’s a clear sign you’re in the market for a mattress now. Our emails to you will usually reflect that, along with other behavior patterns we watch for.”
How this holds up in 2026: Both tactics are standard today. Signup source is a field most ESPs let you store and segment on, and the “10 minutes browsing mattresses” signal is what e-commerce platforms now automate as browse abandonment flows. Two rules apply that didn’t exist in this form back then. In the EU, GDPR (in force since May 25, 2018) requires consent that is freely given, specific and informed, so a sweepstakes entry only counts as a marketing opt-in if the entrant clearly agreed to receive email. On-site behavior tracking in the EU also needs cookie consent before it can feed your email triggers.
How do you get a better feel for your customers through email?
“We use subscriber surveys to learn which content and products each group of users cares about. We also use transactional data for follow-up sales. And we analyze responses to different subject lines to see what matters most to each user group, then shape our communication around that data. For example, someone who responds to a subject line about allergies is treated differently from someone who responds to one about neck pain.”
How this holds up in 2026: Surveys and purchase data are still the most reliable sources here, because people tell you directly or show you with their money. For subject lines, the idea of tagging people by the topic they respond to still works, but base “responds” on clicks rather than opens, since machine opens from Apple Mail Privacy Protection can make a subject line look like a winner when nobody read it.
Then and now: what a targeted program needs today
The strategy in this interview has aged well. The technical and legal floor under it has risen.
| Area | When this interview ran | November 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Main engagement metric | Open rate | Clicks, conversions, revenue per subscriber; opens skewed by Apple MPP since 2021 |
| Authentication | Optional for most senders | SPF, DKIM and DMARC required for bulk senders by Gmail and Yahoo since February 2024, and by Microsoft for Outlook.com, Hotmail.com and Live.com since May 5, 2025 |
| Bulk sender threshold | None published | Gmail and Microsoft: more than 5,000 messages a day to their consumer addresses; Yahoo publishes no number |
| Spam complaints | Watched informally | Below 0.3% for Gmail and Yahoo, ideally under 0.1% |
| Unsubscribe | A link in the footer | One-click unsubscribe via the List-Unsubscribe header (RFC 8058) for promotional mail, honored within two days |
| Enforcement | Spam filtering only | Gmail stepped up enforcement in November 2025, with more temporary and permanent rejections of non-compliant mail; Microsoft sends non-compliant high-volume mail to Junk |
| Consent | Varied by country | GDPR in the EU since May 2018; CAN-SPAM in the US requires a working opt-out honored within 10 business days |
If you’re applying Dormeo’s approach to your own list, start with the authentication and unsubscribe basics in that table. Then add one segment at a time, using signup source and click behavior, and check churn and complaint rates after every change, just as the Dormeo team did once its sleep newsletter started losing readers.
FAQ
Should an e-commerce newsletter focus on content or on sales?
Usually a mix, with content carrying the regular issues and sales offers going to people who show buying intent. Dormeo’s experience shows that a sales-only program left readers who weren’t ready to buy with nothing to read. A newsletter about the product category alone also wore out fast. Broad, interest-led content kept people reading until they were ready to buy.
Is gender segmentation still worth doing?
It can be, if your own data shows real differences in what groups click and buy. In most programs, segments built on stated preferences and behavior beat demographic proxies, because they reflect actual interest. If you collect gender, make it a voluntary field and test whether it improves results before building templates around it.
Can you still use open rates to compare subject lines?
Not on their own. Apple Mail Privacy Protection can register opens for messages nobody read, and image caching by other providers adds more noise. Compare subject lines on click rate and conversions, and if you report opens, exclude or flag machine opens where your ESP allows it.
What do Gmail and Yahoo require from bulk senders now?
They require SPF, DKIM and a DMARC record (at least p=none), with DMARC alignment. Bulk senders’ promotional and subscribed mail must also support one-click unsubscribe through the List-Unsubscribe header and honor requests within two days, and both providers expect a spam complaint rate below 0.3%. Gmail defines bulk senders as those sending more than 5,000 messages a day to personal Gmail accounts. Since November 2025 it has been rejecting more non-compliant mail.
Is a sweepstakes a good way to grow an email list?
It brings in volume, but those subscribers often engage less than people who requested a catalog or downloaded a guide. That’s why Dormeo treated the two groups differently. In the EU, entrants must clearly and separately agree to marketing email. Everywhere, low-intent signups raise the risk of spam complaints if you mail them the same way as your core list.
How quickly do you have to process unsubscribes?
Gmail and Yahoo expect one-click unsubscribe requests to be honored within two days. The US CAN-SPAM Act sets a legal maximum of 10 business days, but meeting the stricter mailbox provider standard keeps you safe on both counts. Every extra message sent after someone opts out is a likely spam complaint.
Sources
- Google Workspace Admin Help: Email sender guidelines FAQ
- Yahoo Sender Hub: Sender best practices
- Microsoft Tech Community: Outlook’s new requirements for high-volume senders
- FTC: CAN-SPAM Act compliance guide for business
- Litmus: Apple Mail Privacy Protection for marketers