Supported by

I’ve been reading Will Guidara’s book Unreasonable Hospitality, and there’s a moment I keep coming back to.

A table of guests at Eleven Madison Park, one of the best restaurants in the world, mentioned they’d done all the fancy New York food things during their trip. The tasting menus, the omakase, the whole deal. But they were bummed they hadn’t grabbed a dirty water hot dog from a street cart.

So Guidara sent someone outside, bought a $2 hot dog, brought it back to the kitchen, and had his team plate it beautifully. They served it as a course.

That’s unreasonable hospitality. Not because it was expensive or complicated, but because someone actually listened—and then did something about it.

I read that and immediately thought: what would this look like in email marketing?

And then I thought: honestly, most brands can barely manage reasonable hospitality in the inbox.

The Current State of Email Hospitality

Let’s be honest about where the bar is.

I signed up for a dozen emails last week as a little experiment. Here’s what I found:

• 8 out of 12 used a no-reply email address
• Only 2 asked what kind of content I wanted to receive
• 1 acknowledged that I was a real human being and not just an email address
• 0 responded when I replied to their welcome email (even the ones with real reply addresses)

This is the equivalent of a restaurant where the host ignores you, the server never asks how you’re doing, and there’s a sign on the door that says “don’t talk to us.”

We’ve normalized this. We call it “best practices” and “scalable systems” and “automation.” But what we’ve really done is optimize for efficiency at the expense of connection.

What if we tried something different?

The No-Reply Problem

Let’s start with the most obvious offense: the no-reply email address.

Every time you send from [email protected], you’re telling subscribers: “We want to talk at you, but please don’t talk back.”

Imagine walking into a store where every employee wore a shirt that said “DON’T ASK ME QUESTIONS.” You’d leave. But in email, we’ve accepted this as normal.

The fix isn’t complicated. Use a real email address. It can go to a shared inbox. It can be monitored by your support team. It doesn’t have to be the CEO’s personal email.

But here’s the unreasonable hospitality version: actually respond when people reply.

I know, I know. “We get too many emails.” “It’s not scalable.” “That’s not my department.”

But think about what happens when someone takes the time to reply to your marketing email. They’re engaged. They’re interested. They’re raising their hand. And most brands just… ignore them.

What if you didn’t?

The “It’s Not Scalable” Excuse

I know what you’re thinking if you work at a large brand: “We can’t reply to every email. That’s not scalable.”

I’ve heard this excuse for 15 years. I’ve even made it myself when I worked at large companies.

But here’s what I’ve noticed: these same companies have support teams with dozens of people. They have community managers. They have social media teams responding to tweets and DMs. They have chat widgets and help desks and call centers.

They’ve figured out how to scale human interaction everywhere except email—the channel that drives more revenue than any other.

The problem isn’t scalability. It’s priority.

Replies to marketing emails fall into a gap. Support doesn’t think it’s their job. Marketing doesn’t have the tools or training to handle it. So everyone agrees to just… not. No-reply address it is. Problem solved.

Except it’s not solved. It’s avoided.

I get why this happens. I’ve worked at large bureaucratic companies where changing anything requires six meetings, three approvals, and a business case with projected ROI. Getting marketing replies routed to support—or getting support to treat marketing replies as real tickets—feels like pushing a boulder uphill.

But that’s a leadership problem, not a scalability problem.

Someone at the top has to decide that subscriber experience matters more than departmental silos. Someone has to say “when a customer replies to our email, that’s an opportunity, not an inconvenience.”

The brands that do this aren’t magically more resourced than you. They’ve just made a different choice about what matters.

For the Smaller Teams

Now, if you’re a small team—a few marketers, no dedicated support—I’ll give you more grace here. You genuinely might not have the bandwidth to respond to every reply.

But you could respond to some. The ones that are clearly from engaged customers. The ones asking real questions. The ones that took effort to write.

And at minimum, you could use a real reply address so that people can reach you if they need to. Even if you can’t respond to everything, the door being open matters.

The bar here isn’t perfection. It’s intention.

Ask What They Want—Then Actually Deliver

Guidara’s team at Eleven Madison Park studied their guests obsessively. They knew preferences, allergies, and special occasions before people even sat down. They created a database called “the dreamweaver” to track every detail.

Most email preference centers are the opposite of this. They’re an afterthought. A checkbox nobody looks at. A thing you built once in 2019 and forgot about.

Here’s what unreasonable hospitality looks like:

Actually ask. Not just “what topics interest you?” but “how often do you want to hear from us?” and “what format do you prefer?” and “what would make this valuable for you?”

Then honor it. This is where most brands fail. They ask, they collect the data, and then they ignore it because segmentation is hard and the campaign needs to go out to everyone.

If someone tells you they only want to hear about sales, don’t send them your brand story series. If someone says weekly is enough, don’t email them daily. This sounds obvious, but look at your own inbox and count how many brands actually respect your stated preferences.

The radical version? Ask subscribers directly what they want—via a reply, not just a form—and then reference it later. “You mentioned you were interested in X, so I thought you’d like this.”

That’s the email equivalent of remembering someone’s name.

Your Welcome Email Is Your First Impression

In restaurants, the first 90 seconds determine the entire experience. The greeting, the eye contact, the energy—it all sets expectations for what’s to come.

Your welcome email is that moment. And most brands completely waste it.

The standard welcome email: “Thanks for subscribing! Here’s 10% off. Now please enjoy radio silence until we need to sell you something.”

That’s not hospitality. That’s a transaction.

What if your welcome sequence actually welcomed people?

Set expectations clearly. What will you send? How often? What value will they get? Don’t make them guess.

Ask a question. Not a survey. An actual question that invites a real reply. “What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing with [your topic] right now?” Some people will answer. And now you have a conversation.

Give something genuinely valuable. Not a discount. Not a PDF nobody reads. Something that makes them think “wow, if this is the free stuff, I can’t wait to see what else they have.”

Make them feel like they joined something. Not a list. A community, a movement, a group of people who care about the same things.

The difference between “you’ve been added to our mailing list” and “welcome, you’re one of us now” is enormous. And it costs nothing.

Read the Room

Great hospitality requires reading the room. Guidara’s team could sense when a table wanted to be left alone versus when they wanted more attention. They adjusted accordingly.

Email marketers? We mostly just keep sending.

Someone hasn’t opened in six months? Keep sending. Someone opened once three years ago? Still on the list. Someone unsubscribed, resubscribed, and is now ignoring everything? Let’s hit them with the flash sale.

Unreasonable hospitality means paying attention to what people are telling you through their behavior—and respecting it.

Engagement-based sending. Send more to people who want more. Send less to people who are pulling away. This isn’t rocket science, but it requires you to actually set it up.

Sunset flows that respect attention. Before you delete someone, try one last genuine reach-out. Not “we miss you!” guilt. An actual acknowledgment: “Hey, I noticed you haven’t been opening these. Totally fine if you’re not interested anymore. But if you do want to stay, here’s what’s coming up.”

The counterintuitive move. Sometimes the most hospitable thing you can do is send less. Let people breathe. Don’t fill every day of their inbox. Trust that when you do show up, you’ll have something worth saying.

The Unexpected Gesture

This is the hot dog moment. The thing that makes someone stop and think “wait, did that just happen?”

In email, these moments are rare. But they’re possible.

Birthday emails that aren’t just discount codes. What if you actually said something nice? What if it felt like it came from a person and not a triggered automation?

Anniversary acknowledgments. “You’ve been subscribed for a year. Thank you for being here.” No ask, no sell, just gratitude.

Responding to feedback personally. Someone fills out your survey. Instead of the automated “thanks for your feedback!” what if you actually replied with a real response to what they said?

Remembering details and referencing them. “Last time you bought X, so I thought you’d like Y.” Not creepy. Thoughtful. The difference is in the execution.

Handwritten notes. Yes, some brands actually do this, triggered by email behavior or purchase patterns. A physical card in the mail. It’s expensive. It’s not scalable. And people never forget it.

You probably can’t do all of these. But you could do one. What would your hot dog moment be?

Make It Easy to Leave

This one sounds counterintuitive, but Guidara talks about never making guests feel trapped. The best restaurants don’t guilt you into staying or make it awkward to leave. They make the exit as graceful as the entrance.

Email equivalent? Make unsubscribing easy. Genuinely easy.

One click that actually works. A clear “manage preferences” option that doesn’t require logging in. An exit survey that’s curious, not desperate. No guilt trips, no “are you sure?” manipulation.

The confidence to let people go gracefully is itself a form of hospitality. It says: “We want you here, but only if you want to be here.”

And here’s the thing—when leaving is easy, people trust you more. They’re more likely to stay because they know they can go.

The ROI of Giving a Shit

I can already hear the objections. “This doesn’t scale.” “We don’t have the resources.” “My boss just wants to see revenue from this campaign.”

Fair. But consider what you’re optimizing for.

The brands that practice unreasonable hospitality in email see lower unsubscribe rates. Higher engagement. Better deliverability (because engaged subscribers signal to inbox providers that your email is wanted). More replies, more conversations, more actual relationships.

And the kind of word-of-mouth you can’t buy. Nobody screenshots a generic promotional email to share with friends. But an email that makes them feel seen? That gets shared.

It’s not either/or. You can still sell. You can still automate. You can still run campaigns at scale. But you can do all of that while treating subscribers like guests instead of targets.

The question is whether you want to.

The Challenge

Eleven Madison Park didn’t become one of the best restaurants in the world by being pretty good. They became the best by being unreasonable about hospitality. By doing things that didn’t scale. By caring about details that most people would never notice.

You don’t have to transform your entire email program overnight. But you could pick one thing.

Replace your no-reply address with a real one—and commit to responding to replies for a month.

Rewrite your welcome email to actually welcome people.

Build a sunset flow that respects your subscribers’ attention.

Add one moment of genuine, unexpected hospitality to your automation.

What’s your hot dog moment going to be? Let me know at [email protected], I promise to reply!

Much love,
Andy

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @emaillove