Email Marketing RulesHow to Recover from an Email Marketing Mistake (or the Slow-Motion Meltdown and Rebirth of Our Live Twitter Feed Email)
Posted on October 1, 2015
You may have heard the triumphant story of how we embedded a live dynamic Twitter feed in our “Save the Date” email for The Email Design Conference (TEDC), but what you haven’t heard is the story about how it all went wrong when we pressed “send” the first time.
In addition to sharing this story, we highlight 5 things that email marketers can learn from our mistake:
- Recognize that your ESP is potentially an active player in how your emails render.
- Monitor other channels after sending an email.
- If you can recognize a serious mistake quickly, pause the campaign.
- Once you have a fix, double- and triple-check it.
- When a mistake seriously impacts conversions, brand image, or the subscriber experience, resend the email with a brief apology at the top.
>> Get the full story on the Litmus blog
>> Share an email marketing mistake you made and the lessons learned
Email Is Vital to a Sharing Strategy
Posted on September 30, 2015
When you want your customers to share their experiences with your brand, you should not just be thinking about social. You should think about email as well.
In Getting the Most from Your Email Content, ClickZ’s Susan Kuchinskas shares details from Sperry’s Odyssey Project, which created individually tailored adventures for nearly 80 people in exchange for them sharing their experiences with their followers via Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Instagram, YouTube—and, yes, email.
In the article, I shared some tips from Litmus’ Viral Email report that marketers can use to increase the viral effectiveness of their messages, including advice about design, content, and the role of targeting.
>> Read the full article on ClickZ.com
Infographic: Creating Memorable, Shareworthy Email Experiences
Posted on September 28, 2015
All marketers want to create relevant experiences for their email subscribers, but unfortunately the vast majority are not succeeding on a regular basis, according to joint research by Litmus and Fluent. We asked US consumers if they’d received a memorable promotional email in the past 2 months from any of the brands they subscribed to and only 21% said that they had.
Our new infographic, Creating Memorable, Shareworthy Email Experiences, shares the full results of our consumer survey. It also identifies specific tactics that marketers can use to create more memorable, shareworthy emails, drawing upon our recent research into mobile-friendly email and landing page trends and into viral email behavior.
>> View the infographic on the Litmus Blog
The Pros & Cons of the New ‘Block’ Button from Gmail
Posted on September 23, 2015
Gmail rolled out new “block” functionality to all Gmail webmail users yesterday, giving consumers yet another option to rid their inboxes of email they don’t want. On the surface, that might not sound like a great thing for marketers, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.
This option is just one of many that Gmail users have for getting rid of emails they don’t want, which also include deleting, unsubscribing, reporting as spam, and reporting as phishing. “Block” sits right in between “Unsubscribe” and “Report Spam” on the severity spectrum.
For marketers, the upside is that the new “block” option should reduce spam complaints because some subscribers who would have previously clicked “report spam” will now click “block” instead. The downside is that the “block” button may have created a new lower bar for ISP intervention, so some subscribers who might have previously clicked “unsubscribe” will now click “block” instead.
There are 4 ways email marketers can minimize the downside of this new development…
>> Read the full post on the Litmus Blog
4 Characteristics of Contextually Aware Emails
Posted on September 10, 2015
“Email is the most contextual medium—much more than the web,” Kevin Mandeville, Litmus’ content designer, said during a targeting and hacks workshop at The Email Design Conference in Boston last week. “We know much more about our users.”
Kevin was speaking mostly about marketers’ ability to target email clients like Outlook and Yahoo with various coding hacks, but when you think about email marketing on a program level, what he said is even truer.
Contextually aware systems are ones that can sense their environment and adapt their behavior accordingly. Email does this extremely well.
In my latest Marketing Land column, I discuss the four characteristics of a contextually aware system…
- Identity & Activity
- Time
- Location
- Device and Email Client
…and explain how email marketers can take advantage of each characteristic to create more relevant emails. I also include several examples of brands that have used contextual awareness in their email programs.
>> Read the entire column on MarketingLand.com
‘The Email Episode’ of Salesforce’s new Marketing Cloudcast
Posted on September 9, 2015
I was honored to be one of the first guests on Salesforce’s new podcast, the Marketing Cloudcast, which is hosted by my friends Heike Young and Joel Book. The podcast is available on Soundcloud and via iTunes.
In “The Email Episode: Giving Email a Little Respect,” we talk about:
- What I do at Litmus and how I got started in email marketing
- Why marketers have struggled with mobile
- How engagement-based filtering has changed deliverability
- How marketers can use data to create more engaging subscriber experiences
- Which brands I have a “brand crush” on
- The awesome power of triggered messaging
- Who has had the biggest influence on how I think about email marketing
- And much more…
>> Listen to the Marketing Cloudcast
The Benefits and Challenges of Interactive Emails
Posted on September 8, 2015
How to bring interactivity to email—and whether we should—was a major topic at The Email Design Conference last month. In this article, Fast Company talks with Justine Jordan and I and others in the industry about the benefits and challenges of interactive emails.
I summed up the benefits of bringing video, carousels, product browsing, checkout, and other web functionality to email in terms of reducing friction in the subscriber experience:
“Every year, people are in more and more of a hurry, and that definitely is the case with email users. If you can give them something actually in the email that’s actionable, they’re way more likely to engage with that, versus forcing them to click through to a website where they have to regain their bearings and find the things that they’re interested in.”
The challenges were much harder to sum up, but largely boil down to uneven support across email clients because of the lack of accepted email coding standards. To see what Mark Robbins of RebelMail, Justin Khoo of FreshInbox, Kraig Swensrud of Campaign Monitor, and others said…
>> Read the entire article on FastCompany.com
The Last Word on August 2015
Posted on September 4, 2015
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, tweets and examples you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & whitepapers
Android Fragmentation Visualized (Open Signal)
Microsoft Outlook For Apple Watch One-Ups Apple’s Native Email Client (TechCrunch)
Why Open-Bait Doesn’t Work in Email (Email Critic)
Your Email Marketing May Impact Your Rankings (ClickZ)
Does An Animated Pop-up Work or Annoy? (WhichTestWon)
Candid answers to CAN-SPAM questions (FTC)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
@iamelliot: “human to human marketing” is a bullshit infused buzzword about why we shouldn’t use buzzword infused bullshit #h2hmarketing
@chelseajcook: I’m just a girl looking for a perfectly designed email in an imperfect email client world. #TEDC15
@lozzzytweets: Less cool than in person but @RodriguezCommaJ is joining us via robot for #tedc15! We miss you Ceej! pic.twitter.com/d6HX6iveaF
@yarrcat: 5% of your list are responsible for 38% of opens – treat ’em special! #TEDC15
@dcaro12: There is no such thing as pixel perfect design in email. It is impossible. @flcarneiro #tedc15
@EmailSnarketing: Status: #TEDC15 withdrawals and digging myself out of a pile of emails. Send snacks.
Noteworthy subject lines
The Container Store, 8/19 – Back To School with Some Favorite Mommy Bloggers
Victoria’s Secret, 8/6 – PINK Friday starts TONIGHT!
Levi’s, 8/30 – The Fall Checklists (+ Up to 30% off ends soon)
Saks Fifth Avenue, 8/19 – It’s never too soon to think COATS.
The Container Store, 8/15 – 1st time ever – Free elfa Installation
P&G everyday, 8/20 – Just for you: free shopping bag from Shutterfly
FragranceNet.com, 8/6 – Fragrance Layering 101 (plus TWO new coupons!)
Karmaloop, 8/24 – It’s All About The Tall Tee. See Our Top Styling Tips.
Anthropologie, 8/29 – 7 must-have tops, 1 must-have SALE.
Ann Taylor, 8/4 – We Heart You Too! What You’re Loving Now
Under Armour, 8/30 – This Hoodie Has No Off-Season
FansEdge, 8/15 – Retro gear never gets old!
Banana Republic, 8/15 – Shoes don’t make the man, but…
Ann Taylor, 8/19 – Between Sandals And Boots, There’s This…
Threadless, 8/24 – Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Bete…
Garnet Hill, 8/19 – Couldn’t shop garnethill.com? We apologize.
GNC, 8/29 – Oops! We meant – Save up to 60% ALL Weekend In Stores and Online!
J.Crew, 8/4 – Ends tonight: 20% off full-price styles with your J.Crew Card. Don’t have one? Sign up now.
Ninety Nine Restaurant, 8/19 – Together We’ve Raised Over 550k!
Urban Outfitters, 8/19 – These shirts. Just saying.
Etsy, 8/12 – Hit Refresh
Banana Republic, 8/24 – Instant gratification is inside
AutoAnything: You’re Missing This!
Victoria’s Secret, 8/12 – Open for offer code.
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
6 Keys to a Successful Welcome Email Experience
The Savvy, Time-Saving Responsive-Aware Approach to Email Design
1-Year Anniversary of ‘Email Marketing Rules’: Thanks for Your Support!
Posted on September 1, 2015
The 2nd Edition of “Email Marketing Rules” was published 1 year ago today and I just want to again say, Thank You! Thanks to everyone who has purchased it. Thanks to everyone who has tweeted, blogged, and otherwise said nice things about it. And an extra big thanks to the 57 people who have reviewed it on Amazon.
As a sign of my heartfelt appreciation, I’ve cut the paperback list price by 13% to $12.99 and the Kindle price by 33% to just $3.99.
For those of you who haven’t grabbed a copy yet, I hope this makes it easier for you to do so.
>> Buy print edition—and afterward get the digital version for FREE via Kindle Matchbook
>> Buy Kindle edition (which is readable on any device with the free Kindle Reader app)
For those of you who already have a copy, I would be thrilled if you would write a review on Amazon or recommend it to your friends or colleagues.
>> Click to Tweet: I highly recommend “Email Marketing Rules” by @chadswhite. Pick it up today at Amazon the new reduced price: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1500981974/
I’d also like to once again thank my awesome editors, Mark Brownlow and Aaron Smith; Jay Baer, who wrote the insightful foreword; Andrea Smith, who designed the cool cover and illustrations; my copyeditor, Brian Walls; and all the folks who generously wrote blurbs for the book: Jeff Rohrs, Don Davis, Simms Jenkins, Kyle Lacy, Loren McDonald, Andrew Bonar, Dave Chaffey, and Justine Jordan. And last, but certainly not least, thanks again to my wonderful wife, Kate, who has supported me all the way.
6 Keys to a Successful Welcome Email Experience
Posted on August 17, 2015
You’ve honed your email signup appeal language to entice people to subscribe. You’ve created a signup form that minimizes friction. You’ve placed that form on your website, in your mobile app, on your Facebook page, and in other places where your customers and potential customers will see them. And—success—people are subscribing. Now what?
Sending a welcome email is that next crucial step. Here are six tips to ensure that your welcome email creates a great subscriber experience:
1. Send a welcome email immediately! Don’t settle for overnight batched welcome email sending. It has to be sent immediately after someone signs up. The reason is that…
>> Read the full post on the Litmus Blog
Welcome! Email Marketing Rules is your guide to understanding the best practices of this complex, often misunderstood channel as you craft the best executions for your brand. Every week, we’ll explore strategies and tactics, discuss tips and inspiration, and dig into industry news and trends.
Chad S. White
Head of Research
Oracle Digital Experience Agency
Author of Email Marketing Rules and nearly 4,000 articles about digital and email marketing
