By: Tom Brown

Q1 2026 is already underway, and many brands are discovering that momentum might be lagging. Campaigns are live, but revenue may be under pressure. By the time teams identify the gaps, inbox placement may have already slipped, and recovery can be challenging to happen quickly enough to save the quarter.

Perry Sheraw has spent more than two decades inside email systems, CRMs, and marketing operations. She frequently identifies four execution gaps that can quietly determine whether Q1 accelerates or stalls. Rather than focusing on trends or predictions, her guidance focuses on the operational blind spots that many teams might overlook until performance drops.

If you are not addressing these four areas, you could be losing revenue right now.

1. Treating Deliverability Like a Background Task

When email revenue declines, most teams often blame content, offers, or send timing. Perry looks elsewhere.

“If mailbox providers don’t trust you, your emails might not reach the inbox. Strategy doesn’t matter if delivery fails.”

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft now enforce sender requirements with less tolerance than before. Authentication must remain clean across every sending domain and be actively monitored. Expired keys, DNS drift, and broken authentication are common issues. Each is avoidable, yet still widespread.

List hygiene may cause even more damage. Many brands are hesitant to remove subscribers, so they continue sending to unengaged contacts. That behavior can actively damage sender’s reputation and trigger throttling and filtering, especially with Gmail and Microsoft. The majority of email revenue tends to come from engaged audiences, yet dormant subscribers remain on too many lists.

Volume behavior matters more than most teams realize. Sudden spikes after promotions or list growth campaigns can look risky to inbox providers. Gmail now expects slow, predictable warm-ups. Once reputation drops, recovery might take weeks.

“Content still matters,” Perry notes, “but relevance tends to beat cleverness every time.” Urgency-driven subject lines may perform once, but they can weaken long-term trust signals. Brands that succeed treat deliverability as a revenue metric, not a background task.

Pro Tip: Relying on your email platform’s reporting alone might not be enough. If engagement has dropped or you do not know how to test inbox placement properly, a deliverability audit might be overdue.

2. Letting High-ROI Automations Drift

Across eCommerce brands moving through Q1, Perry sees the same gaps. Abandoned Cart and Abandoned Inquiry flows are among the highest ROI automations in most email programs, yet they are often underoptimized.

“If you are not seeing 30 percent plus open rates and three percent click rates on these flows, you might need an optimization plan immediately.”

Abandoned Cart flows are recovery systems, not pressure machines. Over-discounting might train customers to wait, erode margin, and create long-term dependency. Strong cart flows balance urgency with value and test incentives strategically, recovering revenue without cannibalizing future sales.

The goal is not to send as many reminders as possible. It is to strike the right balance between urgency and relevance.

When these flows fall behind, brands may rely on constant promotions just to hold revenue steady. Perry advises shifting away from aggressive campaign blasts and toward recurring, relevant revenue built through automation.

3. Ignoring Forms and Auto-Responders

This is one of the most common and often overlooked revenue leaks Perry encounters.

Forms break. Auto-responders send outdated messages. CTAs become stale. Many brands go months without testing any of it.

First, ensure you have a form capturing email addresses on your homepage. If you do not, that is a critical gap. If forms are live, confirm they are working correctly and not delivering outdated or generic messages.

Second, update your CTAs. No one wants to “Submit.” Language matters. Calls to action should be clear, inviting, and aligned with the value the subscriber expects to receive.

Auto-responders create the first real brand impression. If they are broken, outdated, or generic, trust might erode before the relationship even begins.

“Forms should be tested quarterly at minimum and after every major site or campaign change. Submit test entries, review the experience, and ensure the messaging reflects your current positioning.”

4. Treating HubSpot Like a Feature List Instead of an AI-Driven Cost System

The fourth issue Perry sees is not an email execution problem at all. It is a platform decision problem. Specifically, how companies are approaching HubSpot now that Breeze AI is embedded across the platform.

“One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make with HubSpot is buying based on features instead of understanding how Breeze AI actually works.”

HubSpot changed fundamentally in 2024 and 2025. The introduction of Breeze AI added AI-powered prospecting, summaries, enrichment, and insights across Sales, Marketing, Service, and Content hubs. What many teams miss is that these capabilities are no longer flat features.

They run on a credit-based consumption model.

AI is no longer something you simply turn on. Every summary generated, enrichment pulled, or AI-assisted action taken consumes credits. Usage directly affects cost.

This shift turns HubSpot from a licensing decision into an operational cost model. Teams that adopt Breeze AI without guardrails might see spend increase faster than revenue impact.

Perry consistently sees two failure patterns.

“Some teams overbuy.” They upgrade tiers and enable AI broadly without defined workflows, governance, or reporting needs. Breeze AI gets used inconsistently, credits burn unpredictably, and leadership might question ROI.

“Other teams underinvest.” They avoid AI usage entirely, then hit limitations later and rebuild at higher cost once the platform is already embedded.

The right approach starts with strategy.

For smaller teams, HubSpot Starter can provide structure without unnecessary AI usage. It allows teams to establish clean processes, data discipline, and baseline automation before layering in AI where it truly adds value.

For larger teams, HubSpot becomes an operational system. Professional and Enterprise tiers make sense only when workflows, reporting, and AI usage are intentionally designed. Breeze AI is most effective when paired with clear use cases, monitored credit consumption, and disciplined execution.

“Breeze AI can absolutely improve efficiency,” Perry says. “But only when teams understand that it is a metered system, not a magic upgrade.”

Without that understanding, HubSpot might become expensive shelfware instead of a growth platform.

Act Now. Q1 Is Already Moving.

Perry closes with a clear reminder: “The brands that win in Q1 are the ones that act early enough to see the impact, before performance forces reactive decisions.”

Inbox reputation, automation performance, form functionality, and platform decisions compound quickly. The work done early in Q1 often determines how it ends, and recovery rarely happens fast enough once revenue slips.

Revenue systems reward preparation.

Audit your deliverability. Optimize your highest-impact automations. Pressure-test your forms and auto-responders. Evaluate your HubSpot strategy with discipline, before Q1 momentum decides the outcome for you.

For teams navigating these decisions, Perry Sheraw works directly with organizations on deliverability, automation, and platform strategy.