Email Marketing RulesThe Savvy, Time-Saving Responsive-Aware Approach to Email Design
Posted on August 12, 2015
While responsive email design is seeing the highest adoption rate among B2C marketers, responsive-aware may be the savviest and most time-efficient approach to creating a mobile-friendly subscriber experience.
What’s responsive-aware design? It’s an email design approach that uses responsive design for the headers and footers, while using mobile-aware design for the remaining body content. It’s a savvy approach to email design for three reasons:
First, this approach uses responsive design in the portions of an email where the highest link densities and smallest text font sizes are found. Using responsive design to turn an 8-link desktop navigation bar into a much more tappable 3-link one on mobile, for instance, makes the subscriber experience much better. And navigation bar links generally convert at a high rate, so ensuring that they’re easily tappable with a finger is smart business.
Second, header and footer coding is built into your templates, so…
>> Read the full post on Litmus.com
The 5 Levels of Mobile-Friendly Email Design
Posted on August 11, 2015
Sometimes being mobile-friendly can seem black and white. You’re either using responsive design or you’re not. But there are actually gradations of mobile-friendliness, especially in emails.
In my latest Marketing Land column, I discuss the 5 levels of mobile-friendly email design:
5. Responsive email design: Email content and layout adjust to user’s screen size
4. Responsive-aware design: Headers and footers are responsive, while remaining body content is mobile-aware
3. Mobile-aware design: Single-column layout, large text and images, large and well-spaced buttons and links
2. Quasi–mobile-aware design: Header and footer are desktop-centric, while significant portions of the remaining body content are mobile-aware
1. Desktop-centric design: Multiple columns, small text and images, tightly clustered buttons and links
I also share some additional insights from our joint research with Salesforce that we didn’t include in our 2015 Mobile-Friendly Email & Landing Page Trends infographic.
>> Read the entire column on MarketingLand.com
The Last Word on June and July 2015
Posted on August 5, 2015
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, tweets and examples you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & whitepapers
This is how you make your emails Apple Siri-proof (Email Audience)
Punched card coding – Javascript functionality with CSS – Mark Robbins / Front-Trends 2015 (RebelMail)
How the Top 500 Internet Retailers Collect Email Sign-ups (250ok)
How Email Engagement Compares to Social Engagement (Marketing Tech Blog)
Cart Abandonment Incentives: More Hindrance than Help? (Relevance)
Mind the Marketing Gap (Oracle)
Everything You Need to Know About Gmail’s New Postmaster Tools (Return Path)
Typographic patterns in email (StyleCampaign)
Fastest Way to Lose Customers (KISSmetrics)
Yes, Virginia, there is list churn (Word to the Wise)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
@iamelliot: Blimey. “People don’t buy on mobile so it’s not important” is still apparently a thing in 2015. You keep telling yourself that.
@listrak: Any holiday theme created for your website should carry over into your messages across the board. #ShineBrighter
@joelbook: By 2018, Gartner predicts that organizations that excel in personalization will outsell companies that don’t by 20%. lnkd.in/eEvs3Yw
@iamelliot: Just got an email from Google that looks better on iPhone than in Gmail. pic.twitter.com/Lpdq0NRHou
Noteworthy subject lines
Under Armour, 7/4 — Honor Our Heroes This 4th
Saks Fifth Avenue, 7/4 — Saks Celebrates American Designers
Petco, 7/23 — EARLY ACCESS: Black. Friday. In. July.
FragranceNet.com, 7/30 — 25% off sitewide – Christmas in July Sale ends today!
eBags, 6/1 — 2 Reasons to Celebrate: Dads & Grads Double Deal
Uncommon Goods, 6/2 — Father’s Day Finds For Great Guys.
Brooks Brothers, 6/2 — Need a gift? The Pop Shop is open.
Golfsmith, 6/5 — Top 5 Gifts for Dad!
Boston Market, 6/4 — Too Good to be a Nugget
Subway, 6/2 — The Meal of Approval
Dunkin’ Donuts, 6/10 — Celebrate National Iced Tea Day!
Dunkin’ Donuts, 6/5 — Free Donut on #NationalDonutDay – Today (June 5)
Discovery Store, 7/9 — Cheers to Shark Week! The Most Wonderful Week of the Year
Applebee’s, 7/29 — Chad, Celebrate Nat’l Chicken Wing Day with 1/2 Price Apps!
Anthropologie, 6/21 — Hearted: your Instagrams + our TAG SALE.
IKEA, 7/29 — Sign up for the new 2016 IKEA Catalog!
ThinkGeek, 7/9 — ThinkGeek yells “CONNNNNNNNN!”
Express, 7/29 — The Girlfriend Jean vs. the Boyfriend Jean
Vera Bradley, 6/2 — Meet us here for lunch …
Overstock.com, 6/2 — A to Zzzzz. Save on Everything You Need for a Better Bedroom (And Sleep!)
Clinique, 6/2 — You’ll be glowing—without the sun. 3 FREE minis with purchase.
Ann Taylor, 6/3 — Up For Promotion: 30% Off Suits
Vera Bradley, 6/8 — How long have you been friends?
Lululemon, 6/2 — more fun than skinny dipping
Gilt, 7/11 — Parsol: Go-to shades for stylish badasses
Crate & Barrel, 7/11 — Pull up a seat. They’re just $99.95 each.
Overstock.com, 7/14 — 2+2 = Up to 50% off Everything for Back to School
Zulily, 7/16 — Made you look…Sesame Street Collection and more
Express, 7/16 — Hey girl, let us ask you a question…
eBags, 7/23 — 100% Awesome, ??$ Off
American Red Cross, 7/31 — H2 Oh no! 5 Water Safety Questions
Zulily, 7/9 — Buying a new dress > Work
Brooks Brothers, 6/1 — Stop scrolling. Start saving on clearance.
REI, 7/16 — Copy, Paste & Save
Overstock.com, 6/5 — Open This or We’ll Tell Your Father
Applebee’s, 6/22 — Chad, The boldest email you’ll open today.
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
5 Reasons External Email Benchmarks Are Less Useful Than You Think
The Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs: Are You Satisfying All 4?
Infographic: 2015 Mobile-Friendly Email & Landing Page Trends
Tactics Used by the Top 1% of Viral Emails
5 Secrets to Getting Subscribers to Forward Your Emails
Shopping Cart Abandonment Gamesmanship
8 Keys to Making Your Emails Go Viral
The Dangers of Not Regularly Reviewing Your Triggered Emails
5 Reasons External Email Benchmarks Are Less Useful Than You Think
Posted on July 30, 2015
Our competitive nature drives us to want to know how other email marketers are performing. But aggregated, averaged benchmark data can provide false comfort and false alarms.
I’m not saying benchmarks are completely unuseful, just that they’re usually only helpful in a very general way for the following reasons:
- Audience response is different depending on the subscribers’ country or region.
- Audience response is different depending on the industry vertical.
- Audience response is different depending on the industry sub-vertical.
- Audience response is different depending on the brand’s business strategy and email marketing goals.
- Audience response is different depending on how a brand manages their email list.
For a full discussion of these, plus four ways to use external email benchmarks wisely…
>> Read the entire article on Litmus.com
Win a Copy of “Email Marketing Rules” in MarketingSherpa’s Weekly Book Giveaway
Posted on July 27, 2015
MarketingSherpa has been giving away great marketing books since 2002 and this week I’m excited that they’ll be giving away copies of Email Marketing Rules.
>> Sign up by Aug. 2 for your chance to win
While you’re at it, sign up to receive MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing newsletter, which will keep you up to date on all the latest trends and tips.
Good luck!
The Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs: Are You Satisfying All 4?
Posted on July 24, 2015
Everyone wants to send more “relevant” emails, right? That’s been the buzzword of the email industry for a few years now. However, typically relevance is discussed in narrow terms, generally in regards to content.
But relevance is much more than that. Just think about all the reasons that people mark your emails as spam or unsubscribe from them:
- I never subscribed.
- I received emails too often.
- The emails were too hard to read.
- The emails didn’t work well on my mobile device.
- The emails were frustrating because they had too many errors and bad links.
- I didn’t find the content valuable.
- The emails made me feel like a number rather than an individual.
- I can easily find the content elsewhere.
Spanning everything from permission to quality assurance, accessibility to legibility, and content to frequency, all of these speak to the quality of the subscriber experience and how relevant the messages were to the individual.
The Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs, which we debuted in The Viral Email report, provides this big picture view of relevance. In this guest post for Convince & Convert, I discuss all four subscriber needs, including how to fulfill them and how to measure them.
>> Read the entire post at ConvinceAndConvert.com
Infographic: 2015 Mobile-Friendly Email & Landing Page Trends
Posted on July 21, 2015
We’ve been beating the drum on the need to be more mobile-friendly for years as email reading has shifted from desktop and webmail to mobile devices.
According to data from Litmus Email Analytics, mobile email reading has plateaued at around 50%. However, new joint research from Litmus and Salesforce shows that marketers still have significant room to improve, despite advances over the past 12 months.
Our new infographic, 2015 Mobile-Friendly Email & Landing Page Trends, highlights where B2C brands are in terms of adjusting to the new mobile marketplace with their email and landing page designs. It also offers some advice on how to fix the disconnects that currently exist in the subscriber experience.
>> View the infographic on Salesforce.com
Tactics Used by the Top 1% of Viral Emails
Posted on July 15, 2015
“One of the key drivers of sharing is social capital. Sharing something of interest to our network is a way of showing that we’re in the know. It is a means to build our professional, cultural or social standing among our circles,” said Alfred Hermida, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia and author of Tell Everyone: Why We Share and Why It Matters.
In this article, MarketingSherpa applies Prof. Hermida’s experiences to the findings of our Viral Email report, in addition to bringing their own sharp analysis of the research to bear. They ultimately distilled the report into four takeaways for creating viral emails:
Tip #1. Help your customers share their passions
Tip #2. Plan remarkable experiences in your email marketing calendar
Tip #3. Respect your subscribers and give them a functional experience
Tip #4. Measure success
>> Read the full article on MarketingSherpa.com
5 Secrets to Getting Subscribers to Forward Your Emails
Posted on July 14, 2015
Social sharing gets a lot of attention—in large part, because it’s relatively easy to measure—but the all but invisible email forward can be just as powerful for brands. Whereas social sharing is public, diffuse, and powerful at driving top-of-the-funnel awareness, email forwards are private, targeted, and excel at driving bottom-of-the-funnel action.
To better understand email forwarding behavior, Litmus used its Email Analytics tool to measure the forwarding activity from more than 400,000 email campaigns. We then analyzed more than 200 campaigns from the most forwarded 1% of emails and compared them to an equal number of campaigns from the middle-of-the-pack median, looking at differences in tactics and email topics.
The findings, detailed in The Viral Email report, sometimes reinforced common sense but other times revealed counterintuitive approaches. In my first monthly column for Marketing Land, I reveal five key tactics for spurring email forwards, including two not included in the report.
>> Read the entire article on MarketingLand.com
#Webinar: ‘How to Make Your Emails Go Viral’ on 7/14 at 11am ET
Posted on July 8, 2015
We tend to associate “going viral” with social media—in part because it’s relatively easy to see and measure the very public noise of social sharing in terms of likes, favorites, and retweets. However, the much quieter email forward is often a considerably more powerful influencer because its sharing is more targeted, personal, and urgent.
In this free webinar, Justine Jordan, Marketing Director at Litmus, and I will share insights gained from examining the forwards generated by more than 400,000 email sends. We’ll cover benchmarks for forward-to-open rates, discuss different email tactics for spurring email forwards, and share real-world examples of highly viral emails.
This webinar is ideal for email marketers and designers alike in need of inspiration for getting their emails shared—and how to properly measure viral success.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. The webinar will be recorded and all registrants will receive the slides and recording post-event.
“How to Make Your Emails Go Viral”
July 14, 2015 at 11am ET (8am PT)
With Chad White, Research Director, Litmus (@chadswhite)
And Justine Jordan, Marketing Director, Litmus (@meladorri)
>> Register for this Free Webinar
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
