Month: August 2016

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Blog Roundup

Weekly Blog Roundup – August 26, 2016

Weekly Blog Roundup 081916

There are many articles I read on a daily basis for both work and pleasure. Below are some of the most recent ones I’ve read in the last week, along with some commentary about each article.

Email Marketing

“5 Things That Have Changed Since the FixOutlook Project” – Litmus

With the awesome news out of #LitmusLive a couple weeks ago, some email marketers are reticient to celebrate. Those marketers point to previous efforts to repair the horrible rendering in Outlook, such as the FixOutlook.org Project. Chad White from Litmus goes through a few of those concerns and how the environment (and Microsoft) has changed since 2009.

“Lessons learned from Airbnb’s Email Specialist” – Really Good Emails

A look at Airbnb and their email marketing. In the vein of Ways We Work (one of my fave sites) and a great read.

“Why Email Marketing Beats Social Media in Lead Generation, and What You Can Do About It” – StrongSocial

I had a conversation with a co-worker earlier this week about her Google AdWords test campaign to get more blog subscribers. In a two week trial, she’s quadrupled her blog audience and tripled her email subscribers! Email is incredible for reaching your audience, provided you do it right.

“Everything You Wanted to Know About Email CTA Buttons” – Really Good Emails

I passed this article around work this week for the insight provided. It’s amazing how many CTA buttons still say “click here” or “learn more.” Try something new!

Marketing

“How to Measure Brand Awareness” – Hubspot and Distilled

Researching “brand awareness” for work, and came across this wonderful video from Adria Saracino from Distilled. Adria walks you through the steps to figure out your brand awareness goals and how to measure those goals. I’ve already set up an Excel Spreadsheet based on the information from this video and measuring some of those important metrics!

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Marketing

Why GIFs are better than video

I check my personal email frequently throughout the day. Yes, big admission, I know. Not really. Most of the time I do this, however, is through the Mailbox app on my iPhone. Why do I feel it’s okay to do this? Because I just swipe-delay my messages until that evening. It cleans up my Inbox and brings back all the important messages that evening when I have more time to go through the messages.

But all that info is definitely not why you’re reading this. It’s to know why an almost 20-year-old feature of the web — the .gif — is better than video, in my mind, in one particular case. *Note: there are probably many reasons why the .gif is better than video for many cases. I believe this is just one such case that came to mind and I was non-sober enough to write about.

Used poorly, the .gif reminds many of the days of GeoCities:

But used correctly, GIFs can look like this:

This was in an email I got from The White House, and the .gif grabbed my attention more than anything else in the email.

If this was communicated through video, here’s what I would need to do to get the info.

  1. Click the thumbnail in the email.
  2. Browser opens if not open already.
  3. New window/tab loads in browser.
  4. Click video to play.
  5. Wait 30 seconds for ad or loading.
  6. Video plays.
  7. Finally get information I clicked on, almost 2 minutes after getting the email.

What do I need to do with the .gif? Open the email. It just works.
*Note: .gifs don’t work in every email client. Here’s a great chart from Campaign Monitor of who supports animated .gifs.

So, if you’re looking to use the versatile .gif in an upcoming email campaign, here’s what you should remember:

  1. Keep it concise and clear. The White House communicated one thing and one thing only through the above .gif.
  2. Keep file size smaller. Since this is loading when the email opens, a large .gif will take time to load.
  3. Know your audience. Use the above chart and your email analytics to make sure that your audience will be able to see your crazy, awesome, .gif magic.
  4. And remember, don’t blind your reader with flashing neon, construction signs, or dancing babies.
Categories
Blog Roundup

Weekly Blog Roundup – August 19, 2016

Weekly Blog Roundup 081916

There are many articles I read on a daily basis for both work and pleasure. Below are some of the most recent ones I’ve read in the last week, along with some commentary about each article.

Email Marketing

“Litmus and Microsoft Partner to Make Email Better” – Litmus

“…And on the 8th day, God created this partnership.” Amazing news out of The Email Design Conference hosted by email testing company Litmus. Litmus and Microsoft are partnering to make Outlook better for email marketers. You can get a lot more info on the link above, but the gist of the partnership is that we (the email marketers, #emailgeeks) will be able to submit rendering issues to Litmus. Litmus will compile these issues and work with the Outlook team at Microsoft. Amazing.

“Four ways the Microsoft-Litmus partnership may shake up B2B email marketing” – The Marketing Practice

Good future-thought on how the aforementioned partnership could change email marketing.

“Email deliverability is on the decline: report” – ClickZ

I’ve been on a deliverability kick lately and this article brings more of that info to the forefront.

“Campaign Monitor Introduces Marketing Automation for Everyone” – Campaign Monitor

Pretty cool introduction from Campaign Monitor. While probably not as big as the Litmus – Microsoft partnership, this is a huge announcement for SMB who can’t afford enterprise-level marketing automation.

If you’re looking for marketing automation for your small business, you might want to see what Campaign Monitor is up to these days.

“Email design at its best at TEDC16” – Nicki Graham

A wonderful follow-up and write-up from Nicki, who attended The Email Design Conference this past week. Nicki goes through some of the presentations/talks at TEDC16 and shares her thoughts on the conference overall.

Categories
Blog Roundup

Weekly Blog Roundup – August 12, 2016

weekly blog roundup - august 12, 2016

There are many articles I read on a daily basis for both work and pleasure. Below are some of the most recent ones I’ve read in the last week, along with some commentary about each article.

Email Marketing

“Lessons Learned After The First 12 Months as an Email Marketer” – Only Influencers

An interesting post from a new email marketer. While I agree with most, I do heartedly disagree with Joy’s idea that there’s nothing new in email marketing. Especially when there’s so much new information and happenings on the same site hosting her own post, Only Influencers. However, I will say that early in my email marketing career, I had a similar perspective. It would be interesting for me to put down my thoughts and experiences in email marketing in a new post.

“What the Clinton and Trump Campaigns teach us about deliverability” – Only Influencers

A post about marketing and the presidential campaign that isn’t actually clickbait! Bravo!

While every marketer needs to be concerned and focused on their deliverability, this post dives deep into the nuances of deliverability and its place in the current presidential race. Definitely gets in the weeds a bit, but if deliverability is your scene, this is a post for you!

“Email for President” – Return Path

The basis of the aforementioned Only Influencers post, Return Path looked at major deliverability statistics of the email campaigns of both presidential candidates.

Blogging

“A 2-Week Publishing Hiatus to Make Our Blog Better (We Need Your Help!)” – Unbounce

We all need breaks every now and then to refresh the creative juices. Unbounce is doing just that — but not just to sit around and slack, but with the goal to make their blog better. Good read.

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Marketing

Lessons Learned After The First 5 Years as an Email Marketer

Lessons Learned After The First 5 Years as an Email Marketer

This post is a tongue-in-cheek response to a post by Joy Ugi over at Only Influencers about her first 12 months as an email marketer. 

It’s your fifth year as an email marketer.

Then you blink and a whole decade has flown by. It happened to me, and I bet it already happened to you. After five years of email marketing, you haven’t learned everything there is to know, but you damn well feel like you know everything.

But then you still get those rude awakenings when you feel a disturbance in the email marketing Force.

Learn. Do Something With What You Learn.

It’s easy to read what other email marketers are doing. I do it every day. I have a weekly blog roundup listing those same articles and posts I read. We go to conferences and attend webinars where we learn to be a better email marketer.

But all of that is for naught if we don’t do something with that knowledge. This is the biggest thing I’ve learned over the last five years in marketing, specifically as an email marketer.

It’s easy to see the new Engagement Studio from Pardot, get some best practices, some example drip campaigns, and go to your team saying, “Look at this great new addition to Pardot!” But what separates you as a “veteran” of email marketing is your ability to do something with that knowledge, something to make your marketing efforts and campaigns better.

Be Humble. Educate.

It seems as though the egos of those in Marketing are only second in size to the egos of those in Sales. It’s easy for us in email marketing to feel that we “know better” than most, because outside of marketing, most people still think of email marketing as spam. It’s easy for us to look down upon those who “don’t know better.”

Why educate someone who wants to buy a list and blast out the latest sales promotion?

You- the email marketer – educate them because it makes the entire organization better. You are only as strong as your weakest point, and if the stakeholders in your organization continue to believe email marketing stands alone and is meant for blast emails, well, you’re not doing your job. Period.

So you need to be humble and educate those around you. Teach them the same values you hold dear about clean email design, responsive and mobile-first principles, connecting email with marketing automation and your CRM. All of these take you, your colleagues, and your organization to the next level.

Be More.

Many organizations, mine included, don’t have the luxury of having one staff or employee focusing solely on email marketing, let alone having multiple staff focusing on email marketing. Here where I live and work in Cedar Rapids, I know a few email marketers from GoDaddy. They’ve presented to local marketers a few times about email marketing best practices. Now, they have the luxury many of us don’t: dedicated designers and dedicated writers. Awesome!

Most of us don’t have that.

And so we need to do more. Show value and bring value in other ways. For you, is that marketing automation? Analytics? Digital Campaigns? Social? Take the strengths you’ve developed working in email marketing and transfer them to another interest, find ways to bring value to your organization with your strengths.

It’s A Journey.

When I took my current job almost five years ago, I would be hard pressed to imagine where I am now. I code in my sleep. I know Pardot menus in my dreams. I know what Custom Fields are linked from Salesforce, and what Custom Objects we can only report on in Salesforce.

It’s been an incredible journey. And it’s not over, yet. Just keep swimming.

Categories
Blog Roundup

Weekly Blog Roundup – August 5, 2016

Weekly_Blog_Roundup_Aug_5_2016

There are many articles I read on a daily basis for both work and pleasure. Below are some of the most recent ones I’ve read in the last week, along with some commentary about each article.

Email Marketing

“What’s your email marketing plan?” – MailChimp

Good post on the basics of setting up a plan for your email marketing.

“5 remarkably effective email personalization tactics” – Emma

Starts off with a great analogy that everyone will understand, and gets better from there. Emma hits it out of the park with this post.

“Six Email Habits That Are Alienating Your Customers” – MarketingProfs

Amazing how many people and companies still do some of these habits. Got to have buy-in from leadership to push best practices forward. Not everyone has that luxury.

“The Email Marketing Playlist” – Litmus via Spotify

Ha! What a fun way to start the weekend! Been listening to this while putting my last two posts together! Perfect! “Jump in the Line” is great for post writing!

Categories
Marketing

Monochrome MailChimp: A New Favorite

Monochrome MailChimp

I’ve written about Unroll.me before many times. It’s probably my favorite item in my inbox every day. And it’s the worst item in my inbox every day as well. (What’s even worse is when their servers go down, but that’s extremely infrequent.)

The reason Unroll.me is my favorite/worst item in my inbox is because it collects all of the crap that I don’t want to read every day. It’s the crap that I’ve signed up for because, at some point, I wanted that spammy newsletter or shopping email.

(P.S. If the NSA or CIA or Kremlin is reading this, put spam like this in front of me, tell me that I have to redesign the emails to good design, and I’ll tell you anything.)

In the midst of all of that, a nice little email caught my eye today, and the sender definitely knows a little something about email.

monochrome-mailchimp-no-images
This is the email that caught my eye, and without images as well!

Yes, MailChimp is a modern marvel with email design, but I had to write about this email. This. This is not something we, even as email designers, see every day. This is pushing the envelope, in a very good way.

One of the things I love about the design, is that it’s not completely black-and-white. The beige/creme header stands out against the black/grey motif of the lower half and gives the reader some breathing room to focus on the header – “A few of our favorites.”

And while I didn’t open the email on mobile until I was writing this blog post, the design is definitely mobile-friendly.

The same email, with images.
The same email, with images.
The mobile version, as shown by Litmus Scope.
The mobile version, as shown by Litmus Scope.

Stranger Things

Now, I thought to myself, this is a pretty cool email, right? So, I’m in Litmus Scope — which, by the way, if you’re not using, you need to — and I check the text version of the email.

The very long text version of the Awesome Monochrome MailChimp Email.
The very long text version of the Awesome Monochrome MailChimp Email.

At first glance, I think, “Oh, they expanded the text snippets of the articles for each of their links.” And then I read closer, and realize something else: This is marketing about MailChimp!

Snippet of the text version.
Snippet of the text version.

The text-version of the email had nothing to do with the actual email. It was marketing.

Now, I would absolutely love to hear the conversations that not only came up with this idea, but pushed it forward. (Author’s Note: I don’t receive many emails from MailChimp, so this could be something they do on regular basis, but I also know that not everyone reads the text version of emails.)

Now, I’ve loaded this email into Litmus Scope, so you can take a look at it in all it’s glory.

A lot to think about

A main reason why I wanted to share this email and my thoughts on the email was that it really got my wheels turning. It’s so unusual! It’s minimalist, but still full. It’s monochrome, but still colorful in a way. It functions across all platforms. And then there’s the text version!

10/10 Mailchimp. Bravo.