Email creative is unlike web or print creative. It has its own unique constraints that marketers must master to make the most of the channel.
In this webinar, Litmus Research Director Chad White and expert email developer and Litmus Product Manager Kevin Mandeville and I will identify the top 5 opportunities to improve your team’s email creative process, based on the findings of Litmus’ 2017 State of Email Creative research report. But they won’t just give you the insights, they’ll share practical how-to advice to help you executive on each opportunity at your brand.
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The Top 5 Opportunities for Improving Your Email Creative
1. Top 5 Opportunities
for Improving Your
Email Creative
Insights from Litmus’ 2017 State of Email Creative Report
2. 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.
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
3. Based on our survey of more than 3,500
marketers, our 2017 State of Email Creative
report identifies the top 5 opportunities to
improve your email creative strategy:
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
5. Over the next 45 minutes, we’ll share
research into the usage of each of these,
plus how-to advice so you can put these
tools and tactics to use for your brand.
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
6. Chad S. White
Research Director at Litmus
Author of Email Marketing Rules
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Kevin Mandeville
Product Manager
Litmus
7. The Litmus Email Creative Platform works
alongside your existing ESP to help you
ensure a consistently great brand experience
for every subscriber, work more efficiently,
accelerate campaign performance, reduce
errors, and stay out of the spam folder.
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
8. Litmus offers:
● Email Previews in a wide range of clients
● Builder, our email HTML editor
● Spam Testing in 20+ filters
● Checklist for quality assurance
● Email Analytics for new insights
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
11. Most emails are opened on mobile devices—
and have been for several years now. Your
brand’s mobile email readership levels can
differ, but our industry reached a critical
mass years ago.
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
13. A strong majority of brands use responsive
design for their emails, although adoption is
lower for automated and transactional emails
than for broadcast and segmented emails.
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
17. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Most brands are using responsive design to
create minor changes between the desktop
and mobile versions of their emails.
31. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Motion is powerful because it draws the eye.
It’s attention-grabbing. Support for video in
email is decent for most senders, but support
for CSS animation is stronger and support for
animated GIFs is nearly universal.
32. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Successful email programs are 52% more
likely than less successful programs to use
animation at least sometimes in their email
designs (53% vs. 35%).
34. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Animated GIF usage is much stronger
among B2C brands. Our 2017 State of Email
Creative research shows 38% of B2B brands
never use animated GIFs in their emails,
compared to only 22% of B2C brands.
40. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Animated GIFs
are not supported
in Outlook 2007-
2016 for
Windows First frame should include play button and CTA
50. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Defensive design techniques help your
emails convey their message when images
are blocked. Those techniques include using:
1.HTML or system text
2.Background colors on table cells
3.ALT text
52. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
While ALT text is very common, most brands
don’t style theirs often. This involves using
CSS styles to change your ALT text’s…
● Font
● Color
● Size
● Style
● Weight
54. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Successful email programs are 50% more
likely than less successful programs to
always or often use styled ALT text (26.6%
vs. 17.7%).
65. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Dynamic content allows marketers to
personalize their emails, which makes them
more relevance for subscribers and
increases performance for brands.
67. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Successful email programs are 68% more
likely than less successful programs to use
dynamic content always or often in their
emails (50% vs. 30%).
68. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Dynamic content has a bright future. It will
benefit tremendously from other major
marketing and business trends, such as Big
Data, AI, machine learning, omnichannel
integration, and customer-centricity.
78. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Analytics allow marketers to listen to their
subscribers and collect feedback. A/B testing
allows marketers to listen to their subscribers
in a much more targeted way and iterate on
feedback much more quickly.
79. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Brands are much more likely to A/B test their
broadcast and segmented promotional
emails than they are their automated and
transactional emails. However, successful
email programs are more likely to test their
automated and transactional emails.
83. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
39% of email programs generate 25% or
more of their email marketing revenue from
automated and transactional emails; 13%
generate 50% or more. That trend makes
A/B testing these emails even more critical.
84. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
Most email A/B testing is focused on high-
yield elements like subject lines and calls-
to-action. However, there are many
opportunities further down the value chain.
87. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
When doing email A/B testing:
1. Focus your email A/B testing efforts on
campaign elements that are most likely to
move the needle on performance, such as
subject lines, calls-to-action, hero images,
and heads.
88. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
2. Understand whether your testing will get
you closer to a local or global maximum.
Janie Clarke of Indeed recommends A/B
testing small, medium, and large changes to
find both your local and global maximums.
90. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
3. Have a clear hypothesis.
4. Choose a testing victory metric that is
aligned with your campaign goal.
91. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
5. Use test segments of active subscribers.
6. Test similar groups of subscribers.
7. Ensure your testing groups are big enough
to produce statistically significant results.
Consider abtestguide.com/calc/
92. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
8. Use holdout groups when appropriate.
9. Create test plan and record test results.
10. Confirm results of tests.
93. #LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @KevinMandeville
11. Share the results of your email A/B tests
with other channel owners at your company.
Jonathan Pay of Holistic Email Marketing
recommends sharing email A/B testing insights
with your web, social media, and ad teams.