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Email geeks, we see all the hard work you put into your email marketing campaigns. Once you have a great idea, there’s the copywriting, the design work, the coding, the endless back-and-forth editing, and then finally, the operational side of pulling lists or behavioral triggers and actually pressing, “Send.” It’s a lot of work. Yet your beautiful email campaign may never actually reach the inbox. In fact, 70% of emails show at least one spam-related issue that could keep them from reaching the inbox. Email deliverability is a complicated, technical beast. While there are a few best practices that are tried-and-true to improve your deliverability (please, please don’t buy an email list!) it can be difficult to know what went wrong. While many factors affect your deliverability, spam traps are one of the biggest and most misunderstood of them all. What is a spam trap? Spam traps are commonly used

Welcome back to our latest installment of This Month in Email—your go-to series for all the latest happenings in the world of email marketing. What happened in November (aka the busiest month for inbox engagement )? Read on for the biggest headlines shaping the email marketing industry. News headlines In AI news Community In lighter news Email Client Market Share News headlines Remember when Google announced it would delete inactive accounts? Reminder: it’s set to start happening on December 1, 2023, which can help email marketers and hurt some . Goodbye TinyLetter. ​​ Mailchimp is shutting TinyLetter , an email newsletter service, on February 29, 2024. Speaking of next year… reminder that in February 2024, Yahoo and Google will require mass senders to abide by a specific set of rules .  Leaked API keys of MailChimp, Mailgun, and Sendgrid put 54 million users at risk . Three towns in New

Is there any way to ensure your emails always land in the inbox?  With Google and Yahoo enforcing new email deliverability rules, reaching your subscribers is about to get more difficult. But worry not—as long as you follow these new rules, your email campaigns should stay out of spam . From authenticating your emails to avoiding bounces and spam complaints, we’ll go through the steps you need to take to boost and maintain your inbox reach.  What are the new Gmail email deliverability rules? Big changes are coming to the email industry: starting in February 2024, Google and Yahoo will require mass senders to abide by a series of new rules.  If you send more than 5,000 daily emails to Google and Yahoo addresses, you must: Authenticate your emails using security protocols like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC.  Allow people to unsubscribe by clicking just one link, and honor unsubscribes within

We’re back, with the highlights of our inbox in this weird liminal space between Thanksgiving and December! Is it the holiday season yet? Can we get away with putting up Christmas lights before December 1st? Who can say? But what we can do is tell you who blew us away in the inbox this month! Without further ado, here are our top email picks from November 2023. TUSHY   Hearth Display  Jackson’s Art  Allbirds  TUSHY Subject line: Take your throne to the next level Preview text: You deserve an upgrade AND savings. Use code WELCOME10 on your first bidet purchase. Abigail says : I’ve been giggling at TUSHY’s emails ever since I signed up for them. This email is a great example of why: attention-grabbing headline, clever copy that engages throughout , and a cute footer that brings just a touch of humanity and humor literally everywhere possible.  Hearth Display

There are two kinds of people in the world: The ones who already have their holiday shopping checked off, cookies made, and tree lit the day after Halloween…and the ones who wait until the last possible second to get their holiday planning in order. (Hi, it’s me. I’m #2.) Like clockwork, the last few weeks before the Christmas holiday sees a major surge in e-commerce sales. eBay saw this play out back in 2007, with the final push of year-end shopping doing so well that the company coined the term “Green Monday.” While it sounds like something related more to Earth Day than holiday shopping, it happens each December. The “Green” stands for, well, American money. While email marketers (justifiably) emphasize Black Friday email campaigns in their holiday email strategy, it’s not your only shot to hit your end-of-year goals. Here’s what you need to know about Green Monday: What

Your email service provider (ESP) is essential to your email marketing workflow. Without it, you wouldn’t have a way to deliver the messages you work so hard to strategize, design, and test to your audience. While your relationship with your ESP can change over time, leaving one to move to another is bound to be an emotional time.  Whether you can’t wait to make the switch or you’re overwhelmed by what lies ahead, this guide will walk you through: What is ESP migration? Why it’s important to plan your move carefully An 8-step ESP migration checklist Tips to warm up your new IP What is ESP migration? ESP migration is the process of changing email providers and moving your email marketing program, automations, and data to a new platform. This guide focuses on moving your email program to a new email service provider ESP after you have a new account

It’s 2023, and artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. From generative AI tools like ChatGPT to coding assistants like GitHub Copilot, the potential of AI is top of mind for almost everyone in the digital landscape. However, evaluating its use requires a judicious approach, to say the least. Read on as we dive into key aspects for email marketers to consider when evaluating the use of AI in their workflows. Where AI shines AI is great for tasks that follow patterns and rules. For example, ChatGPT can quickly generate text based on a specified set of inputs, and coding assistants like GitHub Copilot can easily provide autocomplete suggestions while you code. In short, AI tools excel at tasks that are more repetitive in nature, giving marketers time back to focus on more complex tasks. Now, what exactly are those manual, repetitive tasks in the email workflow? Our 2023 State of Email

Did you know that building emails is the biggest bottleneck in the email production cycle ? If efficiency is the name of your game, then tools that help reduce the need for manual coding could very well become your secret weapon. What tools are out there? We may be biased, but our favorite is none other than our very Litmus Personalize ! It’s packed with tools designed to make email personalization a breeze. And with our latest round of enhancements , we’ve made it easier than ever to add personalized elements to your email campaigns—no coding experience required. Plus any and all Litmus customers have access to these features in their account today! You can now add elements like countdown timers , sentiment trackers, and personalized images to your email campaigns with one of our quick-start templates—included with all Litmus plans. Today, we’ll be walking through how to add progress

When we think about creativity in email, we often consider imagery as the go-to solution for eye-catching designs. There’s another way to get creative—typography. Learn how you can make an impact, too, as this guide explores: What email typography is What’s a typeface? Which typefaces you can use in email The benefits of email typography How to add font styles to your email Email typography best practices Real-life examples of great email typography What is typography in email? Typography is the styling of the written content and includes typeface, weight, size, color, and letter spacing. Typography in email is all about your copy’s overall look and arrangement to make a visual impact.  Many brands today are grabbing subscriber attention and getting their message across with well-styled copy and few or no images. What’s a typeface? A typeface, or a font family ,  is the design of a set of characters

The holiday email marketing season is here. It’s the most wonderful time of the year…but it feels more like a super hectic, stressful sprint to the finish line. It’s your last push to meet your annual goals, so stress levels—and email volume—are at an all-time high.  While your colleagues in other departments might be already sipping eggnog and swapping secret snowflake gifts, you’re in charge of making sure the team hits their revenue numbers and that the most high-stakes email campaigns of the year go off without a hitch. You and every other email marketer in your industry—making subscriber inboxes more crowded than ever.  No wonder email marketers sometimes get a little Grinch-y this time of year! Don’t worry—we’ve done some digging into the data to make sure you have a great holiday season (and can actually celebrate this year.) Here at Litmus, we analyzed  2.5 billion email opens from