Litmus
The holiday season makes December one of the busiest times of the year for email. There was no shortage of messaging about holiday deals, winter weather, and seasonal steals. But out of all the emails that made their way to our inboxes, what stood out the most? Read on to see what email campaigns caught our attention in December 2021. Alaina Calabro, Events Manager Morning Brew Subject line: Temps are dropping Preview text: Stay warm with Morning Brew’s winter essentials Alaina says: I liked the emoji in the subject line and the overlapping images on the header. This is new for the company and I love sweatshirts so I liked seeing all their cold weather options. Daniel Hawkins, Marketing Designer Huckberry Subject line: Timex x Huckberry Daniel says: While this email does rely on many images, they are great looking images. They really highlight the products and make me want…
Every email has a purpose. Whether it’s to inform users of a product update, an upcoming event, or the latest offers—every campaign should have a primary goal. In most cases, the goal is to get subscribers to do something. Enter: calls-to-action (CTAs). CTAs help guide your subscriber to the primary action you want them to take. In this blog, we’ll cover CTA best practices, including: Why is a call-to-action important? Designing calls-to-action for email Types of calls-to-action Primary CTAs Secondary CTAs Styling calls-to-action Styled text links Rollover effect How many calls-to-action are too many? Testing your call-to-action Why is a call-to-action important? While some email campaigns exist purely for entertainment or educational reasons, most campaigns are used to market something—a product, service, or event. As email marketers, we need our subscribers to buy those products, subscribe to those services, and register for those events. And the only way to accomplish…
Getting the most out of email is not an easy task, particularly when circumstances are less than ideal. As the world grappled with another year of the pandemic, marketers found themselves tasked with a multitude of challenges in 2021. In addition to meeting lofty business goals with limited budgets and resources while maneuvering ongoing changes to privacy regulations, increasingly complex workflows added additional hurdles. On average, companies utilize more than 12 different tools to manage their campaigns and 60% of companies have more than 4 stakeholders that need to be involved in the review process. With marketing responsible for contributing 44% of all company revenue, the pressure to succeed is high. How Litmus Solved Email Challenges Litmus tackled these challenges head on in 2021 through product innovation, allowing marketers the ability to gain all possible efficiencies in their email workflow. We focused on solutions that empowered agile, on-brand, error-free email…
We’re back! It’s that time of the month where we recap the shifts that took place with email client market share last month. Let’s take a look at what happened in November 2021. Top email clients If you’ve been following along, you’ll recall that last month we introduced a new grouping for Apple clients. Apple iPhone (iOS Mail), Apple Mail (macOS Mail), Apple iPad (iPadOS Mail), and Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP-impacted opens) will now be listed under “Apple”. To learn why, head over to our blog on email client market share. And before we dive in, two key things we always like to note: 1) MPP hides device data so we can’t differentiate between iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, and 2) the new OSes also don’t differentiate between MPP and non-MPP in the user agent data it passes. With that, the top 3 email clients for November 2021 are Apple,…
When email subscribers sign up for more communication from your brand, particularly from retailers, they expect to see products and promotions sent straight to their inbox. However as a marketer, you want to make sure you get the right products in front of the right shoppers so they make it to the checkout without abandoning their virtual cart. With personalization continuing to be a top priority, the best way to show subscribers what they want is to tap straight into your data feed for current inventory and pricing. By relying on a Google Shopping Feed to dynamically display products, you can spend less time worrying about a bad brand experience due to a customer being disappointed to find the product they want is no longer in stock. After all, brand experience can make or break shopper loyalty. Besides shortening the buyer’s journey (a huge benefit), automating the product content shown…
In October, we put out a call for your best emails as part of the Email Excellence Awards. And DID YOU ALL DELIVER. A big thank you to everyone who submitted their email for consideration. Judging this year’s submissions was no easy feat. Not just because of the volume (nearly 300 entries), but because of the quality of entries. The work this community puts out is truly top-notch. All submissions and nominations were judged by a panel of email experts from Litmus and around the email community, including: Anne Tomlin, Founder of Emails Y’all and Email Loot Jen Capstraw, Co-Founder of Women of Email Jaina Mistry, Senior Manager of Email Marketing at Litmus Cynthia Price, VP of Marketing at Litmus Jess Materna, Director of Product Marketing at Litmus Lily Worth, Email Design and Production at Litmus The winners of the Email Excellence Awards were announced last week—and now we’re sharing…
Data privacy measures are increasing and each new regulation impacts how email marketers reach their audiences. In 2014, Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) went into effect, with The European Union’s privacy law—General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)—following in 2018. Then in 2020, it was the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which strengthened measures in the U.S. and is likely to be a blueprint for other states to follow. 2021 was the year of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), and looming on the horizon is the death of third-party cookies from Google in 2023. With the rise of privacy measures, it’s important to not only stay informed but also to plan for the long-term health of your email program. While the upcoming changes are uncertain, something you can count on is that privacy measures will continue to increase—and it’s best to be prepared. Our recommendation? If you aren’t doing it now, you should…
Email plays a critical role in your marketing mix—and not just because it provides a 36:1 ROI. You can also use email to inform the rest of your marketing strategy. In this blog, I’ll answer the following questions: How can email inform your marketing strategy? What kind of data will you find in Email Analytics? Why use Email Analytics and not just benchmarks? What are some different applications of Email Analytics data? How do I get started with Email Analytics? Let’s get started! How can email inform your marketing strategy? While it’s only one part of a holistic marketing strategy, email can be a key lever. Here’s why: Email marketing captures first-party data. As privacy measures become increasingly restrictive, leaning on owned channels like email will be critical. Your email programs can provide valuable insights into what content people are engaging with, as well as when and where they’re engaging…
Welcome back! It’s time for us to recap the previous month and see what shifts happened with email client market share. This time, we’ve got an exciting update to share: We recently launched our new and improved email client market share site to include Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) data, pre- and post-MPP launch. Read on to learn about the updates, how you can use email client market share, and what shifts we saw in October 2021. What changed with Litmus’ email client market share site? Over the years, Litmus has reported on email client market share to help marketers make better decisions when it comes to strategy and prioritization for design, coding, and overall email program focus—both on our email client market share site and this blog series, which looks at the data on a month-to-month basis. On September 20, 2021, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) went into effect,…
Sometimes spam seems like the great unknown. There’s so much out there about spam—but it’s hard to narrow down what exactly is keeping your email from the inbox? That’s what we plan to break down for you today. What you’ll learn in this article: The difference between delivery and deliverability What spam filters look for How Litmus Spam Testing works 5 tips for improving deliverability What’s the difference between delivery and deliverability? These two words often get used interchangeably—but they don’t mean the same thing. Delivery tells you whether or not your emails were received by the servers of your subscribers’ inbox providers. An email counts as delivered if it did not bounce, regardless if it landed in the inbox or the junk folder. So your delivery rate is the percentage of the number of emails delivered divided by the number of emails sent. Deliverability refers to whether your message…