Email Design Podcast: The 2017 State of Email Creative

Email Design Podcast 86

In the 86th episode of The Email Design Podcast, I join host Kevin Mandeville to discuss the findings from Litmus’ 2017 State of Email Creative report. We walk through each section of the report, discussing: How marketers find email inspiration The value of email brand guidelines The adoption of responsive email design…

20 Things Successful Email Marketing Programs Do

20 Things Successful Email Marketing Programs Do

While it’s difficult to fail at email marketing, success can be elusive. Shifting consumer behaviors and expectations, new technologies, improving cross-channel integration, changing anti-spam and privacy laws, evolving inbox provider capabilities—all can make getting ahead a huge challenge. Less than 10% of marketers say their email programs are very successful, according to…

Report: 2017 State of Email Creative

2017 State of Email Creative

Email creative is unlike web or print design. It has its own unique constraints and opportunities that marketers must master to make the most of the channel. The rendering of your design is affected by the email client and screen size used to view it, whether images are disabled, and more. And…

7 Easy Wins to Add to Your Email Marketing To-Do List

Email is always changing, so marketers’ email marketing programs must always be changing as well to make sure they’re still relevant to consumers and creating great experiences for their subscribers. With that in mind, here are seven relatively easy-wins to consider adding to your email marketing to-do list this year: Use more…

Report: 2016 State of Email Design

Designing an email isn’t like designing a webpage or print piece. There are both limitations and opportunities around what you can do with email design, and it’s up to email designers and coders to master both of those. In the inaugural State of Email Design report, which is based on the responses…

4 Fears Email Marketers Need to Conquer

When Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers came out in 2008, everyone was really taken by the “10,000 Hour Rule,” which said that it took roughly 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. At the time, I worked at the email marketing agency Smith-Harmon and we liked the concept so much that we created…

The Often Missing Element in Email Marketing Success Metrics: Time

Email marketing success metrics are incredibly tricky, in part because it’s very easy to fall into a mindset of evaluating campaign success instead of program or customer success. While individual campaigns are important—some being critical—the collective impact of our campaigns on the engagement of our subscribers is even more important. It’s an…

My Time as a MediaPost Email Insider: 8 years, 163 columns

This month was my last as a MediaPost Email Insider. I’ve decided to move on and explore other opportunities, but I wanted to publicly thank MediaPost for sticking with me for 8 years and 3 months through three job changes and three acquisitions. During my time as an Email Insider, I wrote…

Quick Email Marketing Wins in 2015

Going into the New Year, instead of focusing on the new, why not focus on the easy. Below are my picks for email marketing initiatives that are low-effort and high-return: Optimize your snippet text Implement predictive intelligence for personalized recommendations Add defensive design elements to your email templates Test special characters in…

Email Marketing Double-Dog Dares: Vol. 4

Since email is a fast-moving, fast-evolving channel, marketers must be experimenters to succeed at a high level. With that in mind, I dare you—no, I double-dog dare you—to test these six out-of-the-box, bleeding edge, and fun/weird ideas: 1. Bring transparency and rewards to email activity. Especially now that ISPs are factoring engagement…