Email Design
Did you know an email can display more than 300,000 different ways depending on the email client, device, and reading environment? In other words…there are 300,000 potential ways an email can break. And that’s before all of your stakeholders decide to poke and prod your code in different ways. With 60% of companies needing at least four stakeholders to review an email before it goes out, you’re going around and around and around testing and tweaking for every campaign. Email geeks know that creating exceptional emails has never been harder. Customer expectations are higher than ever— 86% of customers will leave a brand after only two poor experiences . No pressure, right? We tested five million emails last year. Here are the top five most common email mistakes we see (and how to fix them): 1. Deliverability issues Did your email make it to the inbox in the first place?
With so many conferences to choose from throughout the year, it’s challenging to prioritize which ones to attend and which to sit out on (and feel FOMO ) while patiently waiting for recordings and recaps. If you didn’t get a chance to join one this year—or you attended so many and need a refresher on what you learned—read on! The Litmus Team divided and conquered a fair amount of conferences this year ( including our own ) and did a round-up of our favorite takeaways and how to incorporate them into your 2024 email marketing strategy. 1. AI is extraordinary, but how do we use it for email? A hot topic in 2022, and an even hotter topic in 2023. (We can only assume 2024 will be nuclear!) Although AI isn’t new, the release of DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT began to rise in popularity in 2022 across our personal and
We’d all like to say our team’s decision-making is perfectly rational and organized…but it isn’t. Or at least not all the time. As much as companies aspire to be data-driven in their budgeting decisions, the reality is that most businesses just aren’t there yet. In theory, using single metrics like ROI to determine marketing budgets is useful—but rarely used. So, how can you get buy-in for your team’s needs without leaning on the powerful (but elusive) email ROI ? Let’s explore. What is executive ‘buy-in’? Executive buy-in is a term for having support from your executive team or leadership for a decision. Getting executive buy-in for something like your marketing budget means you convince your manager or executives that your team, department, or tool stack is worth the investment. Why is executive ‘buy-in’ important for email marketing? You need (and want) leaders to be on board with your email marketing
Email marketers don’t wear many hats—they wear them all. We asked email marketers what they’re responsible for in this year’s State of Email Workflows report, and out of a list of eleven options from design to development to deliverability, 22% said they handle ‘all of the above.’ When nearly a quarter of all email marketers routinely manage eleven essential functions in their team, having an email marketing strategy is non-negotiable to focus those important efforts and move the marketing needle! Here’s what you need to know about email marketing strategies and how to create a plan that drives email ROI for even the busiest teams. What is an email marketing strategy? An email marketing strategy is a plan that outlines who you send to, what your goals are, and how you’ll achieve them. Email marketing teams use strategies to prioritize their work when there’s too much on their plates and
Personalization is all the rage in email these days – and with good reason! In a world more saturated with information than ever before, personalization is a great way to add a human touch to communications and increase the relevance of your missive in the subscriber’s inbox. And there are so many great tools out there that make this possible! Our favorite, of course, is Litmus’ own Litmus Personalize —a powerful personalization tool that enables teams to utilize dynamic content, use AI to fuel product recommendations, and so much more. Today, we’ll sit down with Carin Slater and Hannah Tiner, two of our own email experts, and take a look at how email teams can make the most of Litmus Personalize. Table of contents: What is Litmus Personalize? What Litmus Personalize features does the Litmus team use most often? The Litmus Personalize workflow Our favorite features Fun facts about Litmus
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