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This piece originally appeared in TechCrunch Early 2020 saw commerce transform as people transitioned to online shopping by necessity. But the trend was already starting. The pandemic merely accelerated it. In fact, by 2025, global ecommerce will generate over $7 trillion, contributing to over 24% of total global retail shares. What does that double-digit growth mean for retailers? That CRM data — and email — will play even larger roles in the buyer journey. Brands understand the importance of building relationships with their customers. These connections grow awareness and increase the bottom line. Creating and expanding those connections, however, relies on gathering actionable data to develop personalized email strategies that engage customers. There’s no magic solution for personalizing individual shopper or subscriber experiences. What separates the most effective companies from their competition is how marketing teams focus their efforts and put the data to work to deliver exceptional brand experiences.
As an email marketer, you’re always trying to improve your campaigns through the use of copy, design, and images. But with so much competition for subscribers’ attention, you need to get creative about how to entice readers to click through and care about your message. Enter: Animated GIFs in email. Email marketers are increasingly turning to animated GIFs in email to provide extra visual interest in their messages. According to our 2020 State of Email data, 51.28% of marketers said they’re using animated GIFs at least sometimes in their marketing emails. So how can you get in on this action? In this blog post, we’ll cover: What a GIF is The benefits (with inspiring examples) The downsides of animated GIFs How to make animated GIFs with Adobe Animate Animated GIF best practices Email client support and load times What is an animated GIF? GIF, which stands for Graphics Interchange Format
This is a question that I get asked often: If somebody sends an email message that is 100% images, does that design choice itself make the message more likely to get relegated to the spam folder? My short answer is no, not really, but it merits a discussion, so let’s dive into it a little bit deeper.First, let’s get this bit out of the way — YES, some spam filters will score emails higher (more spammy) if the image-to-text ratio is low – meaning that a message contains little text, but is chock full of images. SpamAssassin is an example of a filter that will note this in its filtering results. But while SpamAssassin can be good for “broad strokes” guidance for email senders, this is an example case where SpamAssassin’s filters give different results compared to the spam filtering engines of the biggest ISPs and mailbox providers like Gmail
If you’re like the nearly 60% of email marketing pros who responded to our 2021 State of Email survey, you invest more than two weeks into your email production cycles. But did you know 16% of all emails never make it into the inbox? While email deliverability can feel like a bit of a mystery at times, you don’t have to cross your fingers and hope that your messages end up where you intend. With Litmus Spam Testing, you can identify and fix issues that might otherwise land your emails in spam—long before you hit send. Read on to learn more about why spam tests are so important, what they can help you identify, and how to conduct them. What is Litmus Spam Testing? Litmus Spam Testing scans your emails against 25+ different tests, identifying any issues that could prevent you from landing in the inbox. Best of all, it
Email marketing often gets overlooked in the wake of new and flashier digital marketing platforms. But email still works—and it continues to be unmatched when it comes to return on investment (ROI), resulting in a $36 return for every $1 spent. And when we asked the email community surveyed as part of our 2021 State of Email report, 79% of respondents ranked email as their top three most impactful marketing channels. So how can you get the most out of your email marketing to keep subscribers engaged and converting–while simultaneously collecting the data that will help you continually refine your approach? We partnered with our friends at HubSpot to share our insights on the 2022 email marketing trends you can leverage, as part of their State of Marketing Trends 2022 report. In our chapter, you’ll learn our suggestions for establishing an email marketing game plan that shows ways to tap
Are HTML bullet points useful in emails? Bullet points in plain text emails are an incredibly useful tool for content hierarchy. They allow subscribers to read the key elements of your emails quickly and easily. They are a great way to set apart important information from the rest of the email. As so often in email design, something that sounds as simple as adding a bulleted list actually can turn out to be a bit more difficult than you first thought. Email clients can render bullet points in very different ways, encouraging some email builders to avoid them altogether or use tables to force them into order, making it hard for subscribers using screen readers. So, if you’re looking to add bullet points to your emails without forsaking accessibility, then keep reading… Using list tags for HTML bulleted lists Here at Litmus we use list tags when we code HTML
What are the top email clients in June 2022? Here’s a look at the most popular email clients by open environment, mobile, webmail, desktop, Dark Mode vs. Light Mode—plus the shifts that took place from May to June 2022. Before we jump in, we’ve got an update. We’ve added detection for the following nine email clients: Orange.fr QQ Mail Bell Mail 163 Mail Naver Videotron Webmail Xfinity Outlook Web Access BT Internet We’re excited to add these webmail clients to Litmus Email Analytics, and will continue to measure their impact with email client market share. If you use Litmus Email Analytics, you may have noticed these email clients last month in your Email Analytics reports under “web version.” For more on what “web version” means, visit our Help Center. Before diving in, we always like to note: As of fall 2021, the category “Apple” includes Apple iPhone (iOS Mail), Apple
Data hygiene may not sound like the most exciting part of email marketing—but it’s one of the most important steps to designing campaigns that perform. The fact is, your data impacts whether (and how well) you can personalize emails, the extent to which your subscribers engage with your messages, and whether they receive them in their inbox at all. But just as your subscriber data is always in a state of change—data hygiene is not a one and done proposition. It requires discipline, governance, and proactivity with teams (and vendors) across your organization. We recently picked the brains of experts from Klaviyo, Simon Data, and Litmus Personalize powered by Kickdynamic for their best practices, tips and insights on all things data hygiene, and how to apply it for impactful email personalization. Read on for some of their top tips—or watch the full webinar on-demand here. What is data hygiene? In
We at Litmus have some great news to share with the email marketing community. Email standards are becoming a real thing courtesy of a new community of industry professionals, the Email Markup Consortium (EMC). And we are here for it! Whether you’re an email designer, email developer, or email marketer, the lack of email standards can quickly derail your efforts. This not only creates more work for your team, but sets murky goals and expectations. However, the EMC is bringing the email community together to help create consistency and collaboration—which is a huge win for all. To help you better understand the EMC, and what it means for you, we have broken down the details. What is the Email Markup Consortium (EMC)? The EMC is “working to improve the user experience, accessibility, performance, consistency, and reliability of email markup.” Led by Hussein Al Hammad, Mark Robbins, and Alice Li
We’re at the halfway point of 2022 and marketers aren’t slowing down. With the summer weather in full swing, brands are using vacations and the climbing temperatures to their advantage to really catch subscribers’ attention. Whether it was a clever subject line, the perfect timing of a triggered email, or some amazing examples of personalization—read on to see the emails that caught our eyes this month. MeUndies Google Store Todoist Studio Boux Avenue Dense Discovery Anthropologie Jess Materna, Director of Product Marketing MeUndies Subject Line: This new print is Ink-credible Preview Text: Yea, it’s an octopus. Jess says: I love the tone and personality of this email! It’s short and sweet—and cheeky (pun intended). I love the underwater/ripple effect on the main image paired with the close-up still of the print below. Jaina Mistry, Senior Email Marketing Manager Google Store Subject Line: The Father’s Day Gift Guide Preview Text: Bring