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Recovering Wasted Ad Spend Through Email Marketing

Author

Tyler Cook
August 31, 2025

I audited a client's CRM last week and found 331 contacts with misspelled email domains. Gmail.co instead of gmail.com. Yaho.com instead of yahoo.com.

The math was ugly: At a $50 cost per lead, this added up to $16,550 in wasted ad spend for leads they could never reach.

The real problem isn't the typos.
It's this compounds over time, getting worse with every campaign you run.

And many businesses don't realize their email program could be the key to making their ad spend more efficient.

Here are 7 strategies we use to help clients recoup ad waste and stretch their budgets further.

1. Fix Bad Data with AI

We built an automated workflow that scans for common misspellings of major email providers. When someone enters "gmail.co," the system automatically corrects it to "gmail.com" before it hits your CRM.

For the client above, we recovered all 331 unreachable contacts in 20 minutes. That's $16,550 in previously wasted ad spend, now reachable. (Prompt is included at the bottom of this email)

2. Solve B2B Deliverability Issues

Two big problems hit B2B advertisers:

Corporate email filters are brutal. You're paying for leads who opt in with work emails, but their IT departments have locked-down filtering systems. Poor sender reputation means your follow-up emails get blocked, even though the lead was solid. This is a huge problem for many B2B companies but the worst part is they don’t even realize it.

They see the leads created as new contacts in their CRM, but don’t realize those leads aren’t seeing any of the follow-up emails.

Retargeting match rates are terrible. You upload your email list to Facebook or Google, but you're trying to match business email addresses with personal social accounts. Most people don't sign up for social media with their work email. Enter strategy #3.

3. Collect Personal Email Addresses for B2B

When someone signs up with a professional email address, we ask for their personal email as a secondary contact. Position it as: "We'll use this for important updates and exclusive content."

This gives you higher retargeting match rates because people use personal emails for social media accounts.

4. Leverage Phone Numbers for Better Match Rates

Most people have 3-4 email addresses but only one primary phone number. Ask for phone numbers in your welcome flow: "We don't send texts often… usually just breaking news or first-to-know updates. What's the best number for you?"

Phone numbers give you higher match rates across all social platforms than email addresses. Plus, you can verify real humans easier with phone numbers than email addresses alone.

5. Use Email Data for Seasonal Budget Efficiency

For e-commerce companies, Black Friday and Cyber Monday blow out advertising budgets. But if you've built a quality email list throughout the year, you can rely more on retargeting during expensive advertising seasons.

Retargeting your own list costs much less than finding new audiences when everyone's competing for attention. Your seasonal budget stretches further because you're reaching people who already know you.

6. Mine Email Performance for Ad Content

Every month, look at which emails had higher open rates, click-through rates, or reply rates. These are content gold mines.

If an email topic resonated with your audience, that positioning or message will probably work well in ads too. It also acts as a lead filter. Only people experiencing that specific problem will engage with that ad content which creates efficiency at the copy level.

7. Survey Subscribers to Find New Advertising Opportunities

We implement a "new subscriber survey" for all clients. One key question: "Where do you spend time online? What communities are you part of? What other influencers do you follow?"

This tells us where our people congregate. Then we can show up in those communities, provide value, or even run paid promotions there. People gather around others with similar interests and problems.

Ready to Stop Wasting Money on Ads?

Want to see exactly where your email program could help save advertising dollars?

Schedule an email strategy call with us. We'll look at your current email setup and show you exactly where your email program could help make your ad spend more efficient.

No pitch, no pressure. Just a clear view of where you might be leaving money on the table.

Tyler

FREE GIFT: Email Domain Recovery Prompt

You will act as an expert email domain analyzer and corrector. Your task is to correct obvious misspellings of major free email providers.

When I provide an email address:
Extract the domain portion (everything after @) and check for obvious misspellings of these major free providers (by popularity):

Detect obvious misspellings using:
Visual substitutions (0→O, 1→l→I, rn→m, cl→d)
Missing/extra letters (gmal→gmail, gmaiil→gmail)
Wrong TLD (gmail.co→gmail.com, hotmai1.net→hotmail.com)
Transposed letters (gmial→gmail, outl0ok→outlook)

When multiple providers could match, choose the most popular

If no clear misspelling match exists, leave domain unchanged

Return only the corrected, complete email address - with the fixed domain.

Examples: tyler@gmai.com → tyler@gmail.com, steve@yah00.com → steve@yahoo.com, kevin@hotmai1.co → kevin@hotmail.com 

All input will be lowercase.