Email Design

Can you believe it’s already the end of Q1?! The first quarter of the year always seems to fly by (for me at least), and it’s got me reflecting on how I distribute my time, energy—and attention. Speaking of attention: did you know the average amount of time readers spend with an email is only 8.97 seconds? That’s not much time at all, considering the average was 13.4 seconds in 2018. So: what emails kept our attention span for longer than 8.97 seconds this month? Keep scrolling for a showcase of our favorite emails from March 2023.  Surreal Awesome Books Fable Billie The Standard Peacock Appcues Surreal Subject line: We’ve landed Dwayne Johnson Preview text: And Serena Williams. And Ronaldo. See the email on Scope Carin Slater (Litmus’ Email Marketing Specialist) says: I’m familiar with Surreal’s brand, so I knew something was going on when the subject line hit my

If you’re following the thrilling adventures of Team Litmus, you’ll know our team hit the road last month for one of the biggest email events of the year! That’s right, we’re talking about the 2023 ANA Email Evolution Conference, better known as the EEC. We did all the things one normally does at a conference, including networking, taking notes, and handing out adorable plush moose (aka, Litmoose).  The Litmoose are on the loose! Drop by and say hi to @carinslater, @logansandrock, and @hannahjtiner at the @ANAmarketers Email Evolution Conference!#ANAEEC pic.twitter.com/GvzvKZ0rIf — Litmus (@litmusapp) February 7, 2023 Totally normal.  Anyway, we couldn’t attend a landmark event like this without recording it for posterity. So without further ado, here are a few of our team’s takeaways from the 2023 ANA Email Evolution Conference! Test, test, and test some more Are you testing your emails, your audiences, your creatives? You should be testing

Okay, so you’ve got people opening your email. Your designs wow, your headlines compel, your segmentation is simply perfect. Pop corks and toss the confetti, the hard part is over… right?  Not so fast. As every email pro has discovered at one point or another, getting opens is only half the battle. The next big challenge is engagement.  Now, let’s be real—there’s a dozen different ways to tempt your beloved readers into clicking links, but today, we’ll be sharing one of our favorite features for proving real value to your readers, and keeping those clickers clickin’. Scrollers scrollin’. Buyers buyin’. (Okay, we’ll stop.) And the feature is… drumroll please… loading bars! Today, we’ll look at how to increase email engagement with loading bars, plus take a peek at some rad examples of loading bar utilization.  What is a live progress or loading bar? A loading bar, sometimes called a progress

If you look after an email program, you’ve probably been asked: “Can we just send another email?” As daunting as this question may be, it should come as no surprise! After all, email marketing is your most powerful channel—ranked among the top three most impactful marketing channels by nearly 80% of respondents who completed our 2021 State of Email survey. Yet 70% of respondents said their email workload increased. And 45% are contending with more last-minute email changes than they have in the past. Yikes! How can you prepare for email marketing requests that come from your stakeholders (and your organization at large)? And how do you manage email design, development, and content? Our recommendation: set your email team up for success with an email marketing workflow— one that is defined less by control and more by flexibility. The Ultimate Email Marketing Workflow Toolkit Discover seven of our favorite tools

The Community Spotlight—a monthly blog series highlighting some of the amazing members of the email community—is back! Every month, we’ll interview, highlight, and celebrate the splendid members of the email community. We dig into where they got their start, where they are now, and explore their challenges and passions in email. This month, we’re chatting with Samar Owais—conversion strategist, SaaS and eCommerce industry expert, and (spoiler alert) K-pop fan. Samar Owais (she/her) Email Conversion Strategist and Founder at Emails Done Right Follow Samar on LinkedIn and Twitter   What did the beginning of your time in email marketing look like? Non-stop learning. Once I became fascinated with email marketing, there was no looking back. Every time I had a question, I’d turn to the University of Google. More often than not, I’d find the answer—or at least 20% of an answer. It would be enough for me to pull the

Welcome to our new monthly blog series where I, your humble Senior Community Evangelist, recap our latest Litmus Talks and note key takeaways (and offer a few thoughts of my own) to occupy your precious brain space. This month, I’m sharing my thoughts on our Live Email Optimization virtual event, where Litmus’ Director of Email Marketing, Jaina Mistry along with our Email Marketing Specialist Carin Slater and Email Design and Production Specialist Hannah Tiner review five submitted emails by our courageous audience and offer feedback and praise. Read on (or jump ahead): Table of contents Consumer Reports ShopSmart newsletter Standard Life newsletter Feed 365 newsletter American Automobile Association (AAA) newsletter JetBrains webinar invite   Consumer Reports ShopSmart newsletter Consumer Reports sends a twice-weekly ShopSmart newsletter sent with the goal of driving clicks to affiliate shopping links and driving digital all-access subscriptions. What works well Animated GIFs: An animated GIF as

Every marketing email your brand sends should have a clear purpose and a sound strategy behind it. Sounds simple, right? As much as we may have this in mind, there are a number of forces working against marketers from achieving this. Using an email campaign planning template is a powerful solution to these problems. And it helps you get more out of your email campaigns to drive success in your overall marketing strategy. In this post, we’ll walk you through the what, why, and how of using an email campaign planning template: What is an email campaign planning template? Why should you use an email campaign planning template? How to create a good email campaign planning template Keep your team on track Use an email campaign planning template to ensure an email’s goal, messaging, audience, and timing are clear—from inception to execution. Prevent your emails from getting lost in translation

You know what’s what in digital marketing, so you’ve already heard the big, BIG news about the universal analytics sunset, and the rise of our new overlord Google Analytics 4 (GA4). All hail. You’ve seen the compare and contrast pieces, pored over the GA4 vs Universal Analytics thinkpieces… and then avoided switching as long as possible.  But, the inevitable day draws near. And if you’re anything like us, you may have poked around in GA4 yourself a little already and pulled some mysterious levers, hoping for the best. (Wrong lever, Kronk!) Especially if you’ve spent your career in Universal Analytics, this transition can be overwhelming, to say the least.  Never fear! We did some research and we’re here to share. Today, we’ll look at GA4 vs Universal Analytics—specifically as it relates to email marketing. What’s changing, what’s not changing, and how you can best utilize this new tracking format for

Context impacts how you perceive information. For example, think back to being a kid and seeing a teacher in the classroom versus in the grocery store. One scenario made perfect sense, and the other was enough to stop you in your tracks.  Context is exactly why the Gmail Promotions tab is the perfect place for your promotional emails to land. Some people may try to work around the folder to land in the primary inbox, but repeat after me—the promotions tab is not the spam folder. It’s a valuable tool for email marketers that’s about to get even more useful. “When people visit the Gmail Promo Tab, they’re signaling right then that they’re in a deal-finding and shopping mood. It’s quite valuable to brands to have an important deal or great product shown with rich images, in the right place (the Promo Tab), at that moment.” —Hank Leukart, Product Manager

Welcome back to This Month in Email—our new monthly series about the latest happenings around the world of email marketing. Read on for the biggest headlines shaping the email industry in February 2022. News headlines Email Client Market Share Community happenings The world of artificial intelligence (AI) News headlines Gmail released a new annotation feature, allowing email senders to display product carousels in the Promotions tab. Microsoft Outlook users were flooded with spam due to broken email filters. Bad ads are swamping social media platforms.  Firefox for Android adds extension for hiding email addresses. A late-night email from Google terminates 453 employees in India. Several students at Stanford received fraudulent emails about violating the university’s honor code. Sendmarc raises $7M to offer email protection from phishing attacks and email impersonation. AI-powered sales email coaching platform Lavender raised $13.2M for its AI-powered email marketing engine. Criminals continue to use PayPal accounts