<h1>Triggered email campaigns 101</h1> Marketers report up to <a href="https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/knowledge-base/what-is-triggered-email-marketing-and-why-does-it-matter/" target="_blank">50% conversion rates</a> on automated emails. Think of a triggered email campaign as a map for your customer journey. You’re sending a message based on an event and/or a segment. “If this happens, then we’ll send this specific email.” An event-based email campaign relies on customer engagement, an action that the customer takes. An event could be someone subscribing to your newsletter, purchasing a product on your website. You can create <a href="https://www.omnisend.com/blog/trigger-emailing/" target="_blank">triggered email campaigns</a> based on user engagement and behavior to send a targeted message. Robot-built campaigns can be robotic and more human with personalized content, such as purchase type, similar items other people purchased, and rewards activity. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/bonus-points-are-the-new-thank-you" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/7470dd0dca124473b6706910aae29858"></a> A segment-based email campaign will be triggered based on customer conditions, such as a customer signing up for a Premium Plan or purchasing a product during your company’s anniversary sale. Triggered email campaigns can help increase customer engagement to nurture your relationship with your audience. Let’s dive into some different types of triggered email campaigns. <h1>Types of triggered email campaigns</h1> <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/welcome" target="_blank">Welcome Emails</a></h2> The welcome email introduces the brand, the people, the product, and what your audience can expect from you. A quick hey, hi, how are ya welcome email should be scheduled to send immediately after customers subscribe to your emails or make a purchase. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/welcome-to-the-bright-side" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/f357d10a2d824b47b71632d5d9e1977b"></a> Depending on your company and the goal of your welcome email, you might include a discount for e-commerce emails, a sequence of blog posts, or something else in the email to get customers excited to interact with you. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/subscription-confirmed " target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/9dbfe68b554347d8bd1617559ffe6f96"></a> <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/onboarding" target="_blank">Onboarding Emails</a></h2> Onboarding emails can be especially helpful for SaaS companies. Show your audience how to use the software. Walk through how customers can set up their accounts with strong visual content. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/get-started-with-paste " target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/8f50d32a3a0b456c8a3b4279d5481bf2"></a> Create an email series with images, quick tips, and GIFs of the setup, and point them to your website for more detailed support and instructions. One of the main jobs of an onboarding email is showing customers what’s next. What should they do now that they signed up? Remind them so they get the most value out of their signup/purchase. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/welcome-to-truebill-lets-start-saving" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/a64b5fdd19a54dd7bd5e73af7a192da2"></a> Ad:<a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=prodban&amp;utm_campaign=automation" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/007d8929a8e3464cad19fcf2a19d153b"></a> <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/confirmation" target="_blank">Confirmation Emails</a></h2> Transactional emails like a purchase confirmation, signup confirmation, and shipping confirmation help your audience understand where they’re at in the process of interacting with your brand. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-gsp-sfo-trip-details " target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/499a63d52f564b15971177e22670dcec"></a> When a customer makes a purchase, send a triggered email campaign or an SMS campaign confirming the purchase, personalized with the customer’s name, what’s next, and recommend similar products the customer can purchase (an <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/upselling" target="_blank">upsell email</a>). <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-instacart-order-receipt" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/9f9a389ba46c4eadbbd0b770fc859cfc"></a> Next in the purchase confirmation series, send a shipping confirmation email where customers can track their package. Then, send a delivery confirmation email once the item arrives. Finally, send a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/survey-feedback" target="_blank">survey email</a> to get their take on their experience. That one confirmation email can be the first in a sequence of triggered emails to give the customer all the information they need and to keep them coming back for more because of the experience you’ve created for them. <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/upselling" target="_blank">Upsell Emails</a></h2> An upsell email can give your customer additional options. “Since you looked at these pants, you might also like this shirt to match” or “People who bought this planner also bought this gel pen.” <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/upselling-harrys" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/139abeece2164772bf553c7fe0b8470b"></a> An upsell email should create curiosity, leading to an additional purchase or an upgraded purchase. “You can upgrade to Premium for only $15 more, plus get a free month on us.” Sharing a discount can make the deal that much sweeter for your customers. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/year-end-offer-buy-1-year-get-6-extra-months" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/4cc49e25428b42308fc91052c728e8e5"></a> <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/back-in-stock" target="_blank">Back in Stock Emails</a></h2> When your customers love an out-of-stock item, create an option for them to be notified when it’s back in the store. Asking people to get on the list creates urgency. When the item returns, you want to persuade customers to make that purchase more than ever. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/thanks-for-signing-up-well-be-in-touch" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e6a20514b1d64a29b7a4809726719ad4"></a> Using verbiage such as “Get it now before it’s gone,” “While supplies last,” and “Limited quantities available” can help guide customers toward purchasing the item so they don’t miss out before it’s gone again. Show them the value in returning to buy the item. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/restock-alert-your-favorites-are-back" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/1ff7d7ee5e184c7fafd339edb7bc80f9"></a> <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/loyalty-rewards" target="_blank">Loyalty Emails</a></h2> Loyalty emails are another way to create a sense of urgency and customer appreciation with milestones. “Once you spend X amount of money, you’ll earn this freebie.” <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/its-triple-star-thursday-tomorrow" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/1a72be4f9bac4674b35cf3c23385ec1d"></a> You can create triggered emails based on customers signing up for a new loyalty account, showing them how they can earn rewards and save money on future purchases, and send an alert when reward points are expiring. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/what-would-you-do-for-the-last-slice" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/7f38390218d6448c9b71fc31fbbfadf0"></a> <a href="https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/352767/TLR%202019/Bond_US%20TLR19%20Exec%20Summary%20Launch%20Edition.pdf" target="_blank">Loyalty Report</a> found that only 22% of consumers surveyed were very satisfied with the level of personalization in their loyalty program communications. People love to save money and work toward freebies, so have fun with the content. Customize the emails with your customer’s first name, reward amount, strong product photography, or an illustration, and show how close they are to hitting the next reward milestone. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/youve-struck-gold" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e93976a4bf7f48a0ad2ea32faba4c325"></a> <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/retention-reactivation" target="_blank">Re-engagement Emails</a></h2> A re-engagement email can be targeted toward customers who aren’t actively engaging with a product or aren’t taking action on your emails (ex: segmented based on the condition of 0 clicks or 0 opens within the last 3 months). Show what they’re missing out on by showing the product in action. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/21-reasons-to-give-dropbox-paper-another-try" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/38861aa84f724d1499a774d774afb520"></a> You can also offer a promotion, such as an extended trial or a percentage discount on a product. A re-engagement email gives the customer another chance to explore the product, and the customer’s activity can notify the company to continue sending emails, or remove this subscriber due to inactivity. Give them a reason to come back. It needs to be worth the customer’s time and money. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/3-ingredient-cocktails-to-try-this-summer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/1487f4655933423785764f996cc2651a"></a> <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/abandoned-cart" target="_blank">Abandoned Cart Emails</a></h2> Your customers loved the item but walked away from their cart. Or they exited out of the window. Or maybe they need a discount to come back. An abandoned cart email is a great way to remind customers, “Don’t forget this awesome thing you left in your cart - come back!” <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/cart-reserved-with-the-best-offer-available" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/7eba2e3540184f3797a47c2bcda1849b"></a> Some brands create a series of abandoned cart emails. For example: “If the customer clicks on doesn’t make a purchase, then we’ll send a 30% discount.” A discount can be an incentive for the customer to go through with making a purchase. You can also entice customers to return to make a purchase by sharing social proof. People trust reviews and referrals from other people, so this is another way to show the product’s value. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/i-know-who-i-want-to-take-me-home" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/c3b4d0eff6f2439f8aca452ae362a82b"></a> <h2><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/event-conference-trade-show" target="_blank">Event Emails</a></h2> An event email series is a whole other topic in itself, so here’s a quick look at some triggered email campaigns that could help with your event communications. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/announcing-synapse-speaker-fatemeh-khatibloo-of-forrester" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/ebb9b2d3a0b943039a23fcf10d0aab5e"></a> <h2>How to use an event platform</h2> If you’re hosting your event on an event platform other than Zoom, there’s usually an option for attendees to create a profile with their headshot, bio, and links to their social media profiles. It’s like a virtual business card. Sending an email trigger when attendees register for your event can guide them to create a profile to interact with attendees and speakers during the event. You can also create a series to show registrants how to use the event platform so they’re prepped and ready to go on the event day. <h2>Event reminders</h2> We’re all signing up for who knows how many webinars, workshops, and virtual coffee chats. An event reminder can help your event stand out, remind people to show up to your party, and it serves as a helpful resource, including the time and date of the event, info about the speakers, how to watch the event, and if it will be recorded. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/the-wait-is-over-day-1-of-think-in-color-is-here" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/0cdb7f45223d421a9d60a42f1a1b1783"></a> <h2>Survey/Feedback</h2> Create an <a href="https://www.litmus.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-interactive-forms-in-email/" target="_blank">interactive form</a> in an email, or link to an <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-surveymonkey" target="_blank">external survey</a> asking about your attendees’ experiences. What did they like about the event? What could be improved? If an attendee didn’t have a great experience, getting this feedback is an opportunity for you to follow up with the attendee and learn how to improve the process. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/thanks-for-joining-us-at-activate-live" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/44a7394674894293a7d593b54b3c189c"></a> <h1>Personalize Your Messaging, and Test Your Campaigns Often</h1> Automations are customized, targeted messages that need to be updated frequently. When you meet people virtually, you might have a stock intro that you share in a networking group. Your intro can change as you grow personally and professionally. Update your <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/keep-email-automations-in-check" target="_blank">automations</a> as your messaging changes like you would with your own intro. Set it and don’t forget it - update your triggered email campaigns often! Keep your personalized messages up-to-date as your message and goals change, and test these campaigns to consistently provide an awesome experience for your audience. Need more email inspiration? <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/signup" target="_blank">Sign up</a> for a Really Good Emails account or <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/signin" target="_blank">sign in</a> and <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/collections" target="_blank">create collections</a> of your favorite emails. Ad:<a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=tanban&amp;utm_campaign=automation" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/28411c3b7dd1474ea3e0b4ff07c614d7"></a>

Think of a triggered email campaign as a map for your customer journey. You’re sending a message based on an event and/or a segment. “If this happens, then we’ll send this specific email.”

Maximize Customer Happiness with Triggered Email Campaigns

Running all the things in your email marketing strategy might seem like both a blessing and a curse. You have to keep an eye on 100 different things on a daily basis. Test. Double-check. Test again. And...again. The good news is it doesn’t have to be complicated when you’re planning your email campaigns. Here are 8 steps to get your game plan together and create a really good email campaign. <h2>Step 1: Figure out who you’re sending the email campaign to</h2> One of the most important factors to figure out with your campaign is whose inbox you’re showing up in. This can help you decide on the tone of the email and what message you want to craft. Creating customer personas can help you picture the people you’re talking to and what their personalities are like. What are their interests? Who do they spend their time with? Are they down for some Jeni’s ice cream? Understanding your audience will help you figure out what action you want them to take. Plus, you can <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/lessons-learned-withings" target="_blank">segment</a> your list to send messages to specific groups of people and make this line of communication that much more personalized. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/you-re-the-best " target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/b77a08ad8c544059afcb54c8de606340"></a> DAVIDsTEA celebrated the company’s anniversary with a personalized email based on subscriber engagement. <h2>Step 2: Think about how you can serve your audience</h2> If email is <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/mental-inbox-with-matthew-smith-from-really-good-emails" target="_blank">relationship designed</a>, think about the value you bring to your audience and how you can deliver that to them in your message. Give readers a behind-the-scenes look at your team. Share product updates with them. Invite them to watch a movie with you. Ask yourself, what’s the purpose of this email? What’s the problem I’m trying to solve for my audience? Try brainstorming your ideas somewhere outside of the ESP to eliminate distractions. Use a site like <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/evernote" target="_blank">Evernote</a>, <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/google" target="_blank">Google Docs</a>, <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/notion" target="_blank">Notion</a>, or <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/asana" target="_blank">Asana</a>, or take out a notebook and pen to write down your thoughts. Think about the goal of the email and what action you want to drive your audience toward. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/actionrocket" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/489b217829954be4b124058f7949bb22"></a> <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/actionrocket" target="_blank">ActionRocket</a> shared team photos in this holiday/year-end email. <h2>Step 3: What type of email campaign are you sending?</h2> You might need to send more than one email to get your audience to the right place (and consider setting up an <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/keep-email-automations-in-check" target="_blank">automation</a>). The type of email campaign will depend on your goal for your audience and the message you want to send. Here are a few campaign ideas to get you started: <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/welcome" target="_blank">Welcome Email</a>As soon as someone signs up for your emails, send them a quick hello or a promised discount. Invite them into your virtual home. A welcome email serves as a first impression for your audience. These emails also tend to result in high open and clickthrough rates. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/thanks-for-joining-us-g2 " target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/610ecd012dd642a5a99272b7cee88e45"></a> G2’s welcome email. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/newsletter" target="_blank">Newsletter Email</a>Send a regular, personalized message with industry news, company and product updates, memes, fun GIFs, and what playlist you’re listening to lately. This is a great way for your audience to get to know the faces behind the branding, to learn something new, and build a personal connection. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/fall-asleep-with-sam-smith" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/93d0741969e44e2fb54fe11e58763425"></a> Calm’s newsletter featuring a Sam Smith recommendation for maximum relaxation. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/promotional" target="_blank">Promotional Email</a>Showcase products, services, a new video, or a sale with a promotional email. This is also a great opportunity to share customer testimonials, using social proof to back up why people should buy what you’re selling. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/hey-there-dont-miss-out-on-10" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/d9101b0e5099442cadc14ea01d82f3fd"></a> Onsen’s promotional email with a review and a discount. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/announcement" target="_blank">Announcement Email</a>Share product releases, features, updates, and company news in an announcement email. You can also run a giveaway, announce a fundraising cause, or reveal a product launch. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/introducing-google-pixel-buds" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/fadab5266dde45458ab30022c672d878"></a> Google included interactive elements where readers could click to change the color of their earbuds in this announcement email. <h2>Step 4: Build the email template</h2> When you’re building your email template, think about the <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/images-in-email-creating-bffs" target="_blank">inverted pyramid</a>. The most important email elements are at the top of the email (think logo, hero image, and/or headline), followed by supporting blocks of content (body copy, supporting images, CTAs). Keep your subject line at 9 words max and 40 to 60 characters. For preview text, it’s recommended to keep the text at 85 - 100 characters. Make it both enticing and snappy! Aim to create an email template that’s <a href="https://blog.mailtrap.io/email-template-size/" target="_blank">under 102KB</a>. Fewer blocks of content and smaller images can help optimize your file size. Responsive design, mobile-friendly, easy to read text on mobile and desktop. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/the-most-important-vote-of-the-year" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/93ab3dfec4a54c5dad4a97bec4d06909"></a> Make sure your email can be <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/email-accessibility-looks-arent-everything" target="_blank">seen and heard by as many people as possible</a>. Add alt-text to all images and use as much live text as possible in your email. Include images to <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/images-in-email-creating-bffs" target="_blank">complement your message</a> and make your email pop, but steer clear of an all-image email. Subscribers with images disabled might miss out on your message in an all-image email. Include a clear call to action. Think about where you want to take your audience. This might be a button that leads to a product on your website, a link to watch your <a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzxszDYZCMQ3mVUDYR8L_T1hH4xOyfIi-" target="_blank">latest video</a> or a text link to a blog post. This is also where tracking links and UTM codes come into play. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/a600f26887ad431da58426e02a69b394"> A UTM code is a code snippet you can add at the end of a URL. There’s a handy <a href="https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/" target="_blank">URL builder</a> to add URL parameters and track campaign results in Google Analytics so you can keep track of where people are coming from (ex:&nbsp;ESPs like <a href="https://support.omnisend.com/en/articles/4365152-utm-tags" target="_blank">Omnisend</a> and <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-are-utm-tracking-codes-ht" target="_blank">HubSpot</a> also have UTM code builders. Ad:<a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=grnban&amp;utm_campaign=campaigns" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/4c1d94421f974d1e83561a3095969415"></a> <h2>Step 5: Test your email template</h2> Make sure your email layout looks good on multiple devices and email clients. You can use an email preview tool like <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/litmus" target="_blank">Litmus</a> or <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/email-on-acid" target="_blank">Email On Acid</a> to test your emails and make updates, or you can manually send tests to people in your company. A few things to keep in mind when you’re sending test emails: <ul><li>Make sure the text is large enough to read on mobile devices</li><li>Confirm the email is responsive with images and text adjusting to the correct sizes on desktop and mobile devices</li><li>Test the links in your email</li><li>Make sure the email doesn’t get clipped (if it does, the email file size might be too large)</li></ul> <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/introducing-litmus-proof " target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/16f1122aa659469bae7e4bc19d045528"></a> <h2>Step 6: Schedule your email campaign</h2> The best time to send your email campaign can differ based on <a href="https://www.litmus.com/blog/whats-the-best-time-to-send-email-we-analyzed-billions-of-email-opens-to-find-out/" target="_blank">location</a> and your audience’s engagement. Keep an eye on when your audience is most active with your emails and schedule campaigns to go out based on that activity. Even if you need to send an email immediately, it’s best to schedule the email with some buffer time in case a last-minute change pops up or you realize that the “Hello [LNAME]” merge tag needs to be updated. <h2>Step 7: Review your email campaign analytics</h2> You’ve done all the work of planning, creating, and sending the email campaign. Now what? Check out the <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/email-analytics-to-track" target="_blank">email reports</a> to see what worked and what could be improved. At the minimum, review your clickthrough rates to see what people engaged with the most in your email. From there, you can adjust your campaign strategy for follow-up campaigns <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/weekly-sumome-stats" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/2f9ddcee0b2f4676884e9ee68e5d59ca"></a> <h2>Step 8: Rinse and repeat!</h2> Once you’ve got this process down for planning and sending your email campaigns, do it all over again! You don’t need to reinvent the wheel for every campaign. Serve your audience. Think about what problem you’re going to solve for them, and then switch up the email contents according to that message and your campaign analytics. <h2>Bonus: Document the process</h2> Streamlining your email campaign process can save you time and free up your brainpower to be creative. Create an internal checklist so you can jump right into the planning process for each new campaign. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-documents-just-got-superpowers-thanks-to-the-new-quip" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/f2e0d3193b044b35b36b537c225ec8ab"></a> Documenting the process can also help when you’re out of the office or training new teammates.&nbsp; Think about: <ul><li>Who’s involved in the campaign creation and approval process?</li><li>Who writes the email copy?</li><li>Who creates the graphics and design assets?</li><li>Who builds the email templates?</li><li>What links do you need to include in the email?</li><li>Who’s QA’ing the email?</li><li>Who’s scheduling the email?</li><li>Who’s reviewing the analytics and when?</li><li>What steps does your team need to take to wrap up campaigns within your deadline?</li></ul> <h2>Get inspired</h2> If you’re hitting a creative block or need some email design inspiration, <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/signup" target="_blank">create a Really Good Emails account</a> and start collecting emails (or submit your own!). With thousands of the web's best and most attractive emails, there’s something for everyone. Ad:<a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=grnban&amp;utm_campaign=campaigns" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/3bb25133eaf841b691f5c11cc645dea4"></a>

Running all the things in your email marketing strategy might seem like both a blessing and a curse. You have to keep an eye on 100 different things on a daily basis. Test. Double-check. Test again. And...again. The good news is it doesn’t have to be complicated when you’re planning your email campaigns. Here are 8 steps to get your game plan together and create a really good email campaign.

Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Email Campaigns

“What You See Is What You Get” is more than a Britney Spears song about being true to who you are. WYSIWYG, pronounced “wiz-ee-wig,” is a design tool you can use to build email templates, websites, and other content in a drag and drop editor. It’s a friendly way to create and edit content without getting into the nitty-gritty of coding from scratch and instead choosing blocks of content to upload images, add text, and customize your branding. Think Omnisend, BEE, and Mailchimp for email templates, Wix and Squarespace for websites. <h2>What’s in a WYSIWYG editor when it comes to email marketing?</h2> There’s usually two to three options in building your email in a platform that supports WYSIWYG: 1) Drag and drop editor, 2) Import an HTML file, 3) Paste code. In the drag and drop editor, you’ll select content blocks, including text, images, divider lines, spaces, a menu, social media icons, and other elements. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/0f5b712047b04dacbd22efa12182de51"> <h2>Content Blocks</h2> WYSIWYG blocks help you build an email like a puzzle. Click and drag a block from the panel to the email canvas to add a hero image, newsletter text, images, and a footer. These are all placeholder sections in your email until you fill the blocks with content. You can spice things up with divider lines, padding, and CTA buttons, and then align blocks, upload images, and customize background colors.&nbsp; Keep in mind, blocks can weigh down your email. The fewer blocks you have in your email, the smaller your email file size will be, which will be better for email loading times and for your audience’s experience. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/78bf8945d44a49019dde61b8ca7daef3"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/d36f77f854b5415687d62988d3d0c24c"> <h2>Text</h2> Click and drag a text block into your email to add live text (<a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-aero" target="_blank">we love live text at RGE</a>). You can customize the font styles, font family, alignment, add bullet points, create a list, link text, and underline links within the text block editor. If you have a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/ecommerce" target="_blank">store</a>, you can add in prices and “Shop Now” buttons for your customers to purchase items on your site. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/fc30cf6306ac4a5785f20f4b832cd241"> <h2>Images</h2> Before you upload an image to the WYSIWYG Media Library, name your image files in an <a href="https://www.mailigen.com/blog/5-ways-email-marketing-can-help-your-seo-efforts/" target="_blank">SEO-friendly way</a>. For example: “Really-Good-Emails-WYSIWYG-editor-example.png”. This can help index elements of your email for search engines and help people find your email if you archive your emails. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/d8523e7e498340048f0dd66309e7320c"> Be sure to add alt-text to image blocks too! Adding alt-text helps with email accessibility for screen readers and for subscribers who disable loading image emails by default. Click on an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUkVC7fck8E" target="_blank">image</a> in the template, and then describe the image using alt-text. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/62bf8408533a410fb99ec3f8982ed9ad"> Ad: <a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=grnban&amp;utm_campaign=WYSIWYG" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e54e0982635b48c8a8683d62061e212a"></a> <h2>The benefits of building an email in a WYSIWYG editor</h2> <ul><li>It’s a friendly option for non-coders.</li><li>You can edit the email content without breaking the code.</li><li>It’s a quick and easy option to build a template when you’re short on time.</li><li>Some WYSIWYG editors give you access to edit HTML OR add a block of HTML without breaking the structure of the email code.</li><li>You can save blocks in the email editor with your <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-fontshop" target="_blank">branding</a> to add consistent, templated content in other emails.</li></ul> <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/15b943f9918b4c2898f58246a58c069f"> <h2>Watch out for these when you’re using a drag and drop editor</h2> <ul><li>The more content blocks in the template, the larger the email file size, and the slower the message load time.</li><li>If you export the WYSIWYG template code to use it elsewhere, you might need to update the code to make the design look correct (and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzaxVWV3f4" target="_blank">responsive</a>).</li><li>There might be limited customization options, such as limited font size and style options.</li><li>WYSIWYG templates might not be optimized for all devices.</li><li>Removing built-in blocks, like a CTA button, might remove it from the editor, but the button might still appear in your audience’s email unless you update the HTML.</li><li>Outdated media: Some editors might use an old version of a social media logo (ran into this in the past), so if you plan to include social media icons or other elements, make sure these elements are up-to-date.</li><li>If your team decides to import an HTML file instead of using the drag and drop, that might disable the option to use the WYSIWYG editor, and you’ll need to edit the template using HTML and CSS.</li></ul> <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/6ccf32c333cd4c7faabd07db93c92f23"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/5ca30584838d4cf8a0a2c00992596b53"> <h2>Cover your assets with best practices</h2> With any email you’re building, think about: <ol><li>Who’s your audience?</li><li>What’s your message?</li><li>How can you serve your audience with this email?</li></ol> Create <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_XH6PKo0pI" target="_blank">accessible emails</a> by adding image alt-text and underlining links in the editor. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/f391c9aa78bf4794bfc2b9f4207d9f10"> Test all email templates on multiple devices in different email clients. If you catch anything in the testing process, maybe a misplaced CTA button or text that’s too small on mobile, you can quickly update it in the editor before sending out the real thing to your audience. But remember, you want to create a seamless experience for your readers from email to website to <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-brooks-running" target="_blank">social media</a> so it’s a consistent experience wherever you share your message or however it is built.&nbsp; Ad:<a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=tanban&amp;utm_campaign=WYSIWYG" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/1d3456f91d6b4bab875c837342e6f41a"></a>

“What You See Is What You Get” is more than a Britney Spears song about being true to who you are. WYSIWYG, pronounced “wiz-ee-wig,” is a design tool you can use to build email templates, websites, and other content in a drag and drop editor.

WYSIWYG: A Friendly, No-Code Option to Build Your Emails

RGE sees a lot of email designs. If you remember from last year, <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/9-of-the-biggest-email-design-trends-from-the-past-year" target="_blank">we predicted and mapped out</a> a few design trends that made their way into our collective inboxes, such as wiggly blogs, beige backgrounds, big a** type, overlapping squares, transparent illustrations, 3D GIFs, big circular bullet points, night mode, and plant accents.&nbsp; There’s a bit of pattern recognition and confirmation bias in this research we do every year, but in 2020 we approved over 2,000 new email designs to hit reallygoodemails.com – giving us a whole gambit of submissions from plain text to brutalism to hand drawings and everything in between. As we head into 2021, there are some clear trends that we expect to take a deeper hold in email design for the next year based on the tens of thousands of emails we’ve looked at in the past 12 months. Here are the top 10 leading design trends in the pack: 1. Softer Background Colors: Late 2019 and a lot of 2020 saw a huge increase in beige backgrounds, which we believe will become even more widely used in the next year. It’s soft on the eyes, a little more organic and approachable, and still a little different than the bleached white background that most people send. We’re also expecting to see more muted and pastel backgrounds for similar reasons, and have already seen an uptick in their use over the past few months.&nbsp; <img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Yz1iCdMkvURGJy62DE5_IsFTe1rTQQtGAbgQlg2y4i1LXkvPJQQaPanPYxX421ADSXIqPQ3aqPg4GJlgjSYpIauV6RPc0SK_6yZCrgS1zAlXmzRLA5Z2sS_oiKqAlwv1FZO5IHe7"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/qeoG4IVokeEwk5NOyytF" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> 2. Black &amp; White Photos: We’ve pretty much seen the death of the duotone filter since Shopify made it popular in 2015. With a few <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/the-most-value-we-offer" target="_blank">exceptions</a>, designers have gone back to the original monochromatic way of showing off images with Black &amp; White. This has been particularly strong with people’s faces and photoshoots. <img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/kdz5fdAgZAJR7bECMLf-38-C2HH8m-fZbDeh2j_yktNlzM465NQDJtWuJGkxz5qoDRmk4qJg_loowSwj_KEUIk0yHcZE4CnIsOQvMS644F3CUfFpv0eWaoTQRIa4JSYoYflLTAPk"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/GZe7YEI9DmPyVXxwFgpV" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> 3. Photo Album Grids: Maybe it is because we spend more these days on Zoom and are served up a grid of familiar faces to stare at, but packing in more than a couple images into a tight area is becoming more of the norm. This was becoming more popular with real estate, hotels, events and fashion, but we’ve seen it being adopted by more lifestyle brands, B2B, and technology.&nbsp; <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/nkW6aEfaCc4FuSxOVQxSBZy1kR101k0sYTF5LlQcSC9kLA0GFnkOE2DOu52_XIvmwW5MIpY6cyR47PXmCzqIRYnrtyfJ787yjPH7IKnlaaylzYfFclVHV8IL7-LGgL8bfppO7CYN"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/4t19o67WAnpAZ6nd1ukN" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> 4. Representation: With a large focus on racial injustice in 2020, we not only believe that we’ll see more people of color represented in emails, but also people of varying abilities, ages, sexual preferences and religious backgrounds. As the world comes together to heal over such a hard year, companies will also show off their commitments made during the Black Lives Movement and other values. <img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/NkWT9Np8GY-gpapAX5cdhuonUh4p8ZrCzUiuUTaxj-WQfKmeSB2cZ9w4h4xVB9BZOsjcwPp9_aTjnxWUOO8_J9mVA4jQ7HdZV3clmsJz1lAr4W7fKQSK5_3h6hGakQTN_LmKBMhj"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/SwlAAPBzAbsUDFNa4urK" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> 5. Info Cards and Call-outs: Visually these blocks break up the content, but they are used to add more context, pro-tips, or something else that aids the reader with the concept they are looking at. It reminds us of the textbooks we used to read. <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/huHaqgwsM0k2PylU9ePemd9ty-TIpDj0iEc6hHiP8EH2fbRZuIjJ59rpbclD5YJAv22ESEFpZZfbGkXtrhECIYETIl4dzCQjwpsxyBuiB0ZygrIqiBM13aYkgWheGe86p8uV68W8"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/90yHuuD4JNFajUZYyylH" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> 6. Data Regurgitation: Even more than we saw in the past few years, data being tied to individual’s profiles allows emailers to be much more targeted with their messaging. While there’s a whole thing we could write about personalization, this is a design article - which means that we’re pointing out how visualization of that data is making its way into our inbox. But on the other said of the data side, we also expect that companies will double down on using non-personalized data to grab the attention of the reader with things like end-of-year reports, aggregated ratings, customer research surveys, and beautiful graphs and pie charts. It's all about making that data front and center for the readers to impress them. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/75da2d7ab41849a1a425cc262c2a1deb"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/0BT78YtGhVqDPhdAERNo" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> <hr>Speaking of personalizing emails, here's an ad for our sponsor, <a href="https://niftyimages.com/?utm_source=Really_Good_Emails&amp;utm_campaign=Article&amp;utm_medium=Referral" target="_blank">Nifty Images</a>, which RGE uses on "the reg" to bring that extra magic to our own emails. Check 'em out.<a href="https://niftyimages.com/?utm_source=Really_Good_Emails&amp;utm_campaign=Article&amp;utm_medium=Referral" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/16eb16d3e669435cb51b39a17952092f"></a><hr>7. Long Shadows: Gone are the days that people photoshop out the shadow of a product or apply a lot of different lights to erase a shadow completely. It is much cooler now to keep it in and use it for some dramatic elements of photography. <img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/CFhopWaNYbaY3gXil__uAxO4laxDRkC3R6S-bGZkvy25XT94Es6Mio3wRpUXF6P-uMp0wApIntimG24rMYdcVx7OT7yyfGr_BvdzNinlV1sG_P_ZWiWw6XyGZBkf-2S2m_lH7eOs"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/PNiq2lBUejNdpov29v1o" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> 8. Going Retro: Maybe it is the good feelings that come with nostalgia, maybe it is a way to look different than other designs, but there’s been an increase in emails pulling elements from the past and updating them for their own brand or campaigns. <img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/AwFU6tDKwhXaZ9qB61MAHZCg6sP4X-BBccm9Rvi2Tn5yqxiI2mc4iHz9SAtIu53zMx5Bv_k3w1hHwBg_raEO_k-P3tMIRaANsKV0IDrIy-vTB0SZD1J-LrBJ5zWC5ahNKPz9rDjl"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/XIedtXlEj3OUHRatWyev" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> 9. Emphasis on Science: As the world looks for more fact-based claims and eyes at the advancement of technology and science, brands have been putting this into practice with scientific illustrations, graphs, and equations within the email. We can probably thank <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY1kMZp36IQSyNx_9h4mpCg" target="_blank">Mark Rober</a> for making science cool again. <img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/K6mTBT9fsiD641NBt9skord6UdKt8L6jq26m0AhpKDQ_vc1lEg_6edksvXMtJjvlr9YMRBr6Ho6YcOhtAd31sWsItgkkv2oOJMnUWOAUJ8KKDSlQvmKYjx8DpAUWxyXSaQH9G3_u"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/NzCHITRchZJ1UOb6xfyo" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> 10. Fade to Black: Dark mode (aka Night Mode for some) has rooted itself with designs as more and more operating systems allow for this feature, but this is being used to draw people in from an image down into the body copy of an email. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/bc05b84a696d42b79d8f68ebd3e56c78"><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/IyWybd3Hvxg0r4qwTjPz" target="_blank">Take a look at the examples here.</a> And as if that were not enough, here are a couple predictions that aren’t trends yet, but we’ve seen some cool things with these and would love to see more of it: <ul><li><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/qvUFu7rjkkBZO9F1v0mb" target="_blank">Comic Strips</a> - we said the same thing last year, but only a few emails hit our inbox in 2020 with this style. Perhaps it is because of their all-image nature or people not feeling confident with their artistic skills, but this format is powerful in getting people to read an entire message with a story-like methodology.&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/mike/collections/BgOzj6PfsoOzLXR6db40" target="_blank">Mixed-Media Collages</a> - It takes a little more time to design on a computer, but this will possibly get emails to stand out more because they are not used by a lot of other brands.</li><li><a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/more-stores-are-open-to-serve-you" target="_blank">Masks &amp; Health Reminders</a> - a simple icon, footer, or blurb about how the company expects customers to behave when interacting in person. Similarly, steps they are taking to make people feel safe when someone touches their products.</li></ul> We all know that 2020 was a crazy year for everyone. Here's to a more inclusive, empathetic year filled with great designs that surprise and delight readers of all kinds. P.S. Don't forget to submit your own really good email. Create an account and then hit "Submit Email" to get it into the review queue.

RGE sees a lot of email designs. If you remember from last year, we predicted and mapped out a few design trends that made their way into our collective inboxes, such as wiggly blogs, beige backgrounds, and more. This year is different.

Email Design Trends for 2021

Since the dumpster fire of 2020 is over, everything changes, right? Maybe it’s not that simple, but you can kick off the year by reviewing last year’s email analytics to get this year’s strategy into shape (gym membership not required). <h1>9 Email Analytics to Keep an Eye On</h1> <h2>1) Clickthrough Rates</h2> One of the top email reports for every marketer is email clickthrough rate (CTR), the percentage of links clicked in an email. Your email message and design should persuade your audience to do something: visit your website, fill out a survey, make a purchase, or do a little dance. You can take your email click reports one step further by reviewing an email’s click map or heat map. This map is a great visual to see where people are clicking (or where they aren’t clicking) in the email template. Are your subscribers loving your CTA buttons, or are they clicking on more of your plain-text links? <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/b2dbc764258c4e57a617aff7095a6322"> What about those social media icons – are those serving your audience or are those an afterthought in the footer? Use these analytics as a tool to decide what to keep, change, or get rid of in your email content. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/9dab1c53a8b244148832b456cd167eaa"> <h2>2) Return on Investment (ROI)</h2> The ROI of an email shows you and the higher-ups in your company the value of email marketing. This is the big picture sales number that everyone likes to see to understand what worked in an email campaign, and how much additional money it generated for the company (minus the dollar amount your company invested in the email campaign). ROI is a crucial metric in sales, retail, e-commerce, small businesses, large corporations…everyone in the company is happy to hear these analytics. <h2>3) Conversion Rate</h2> An email’s conversion rate is the percentage of subscribers who clicked a link in the email and completed an action, such as filling out a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/do-email-pop-ups-work" target="_blank">form</a> or buying a pair of shoes.To track these conversions, you could add an integration like Google Analytics and set up a goal to track when people fill out that form on your contact page or buy those shoes. You can also add <a href="https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/" target="_blank">UTM parameters</a> – in your own email and especially when your link is included in another company’s campaign – to track your campaigns. You’ll add campaign variables, including the source (“newsletter”), medium (“email”), and name (“rge_promo”) to track where people are coming from and how they’re converting. Ad: <a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=tanban&amp;utm_campaign=reporting" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/1bd2720096604eca98e70bd97b350b08"></a> <h2>4) Open Rates</h2> The open rate is the percentage of emails your audience opens. Factors like subject line, preview text, email sender name, and the “from” email address can affect open rates. An “open” counts when someone clicks to open an email – before clicking any links – and if images are enabled. Be mindful when you’re analyzing this metric because if a subscriber who blocks images opens the email, that open might not be included in the campaign’s open rate (but if they click links within that email, these will count in the CTR). Digging deeper into open rates, you can review email client opens, mobile opens versus desktop opens and update your design and send strategy from there. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/42fd17ff03c84508b2b8fcf547d13d24"> <h2>5) Engagement</h2> Email engagement helps you determine how often subscribers are opening and clicking your emails. This helps all sorts of industries get the most out of their email lists, from <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/ecommerce" target="_blank">e-commerce</a> to <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/retail" target="_blank">retail</a>, personal <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/newsletter" target="_blank">newsletters</a>, and industry-specific <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/product-update-new-feature" target="_blank">updates</a>. Think about:<ul><li>Who’s visiting your site?</li><li>Are shoppers using your promo codes?</li><li>Who’s replying directly to your emails?</li><li>How many people are clicking the header link in the email?</li><li>Who’s signing up for a free trial?</li><li>How many people aren’t opening or clicking?</li><li>Why aren’t they interacting with our content?</li><li>If there’s a large number of subscribers who aren’t very engaged with your content, then you can think about creating a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/retention-reactivation" target="_blank">re-engagement campaign</a> to get them interested in your product or your content again.</li></ul> <h2>6) Delivery Rates</h2> Your delivery rate is just a small piece of the big picture, but it’s still an important metric to make sure people receive your message. If you notice a dip in delivery rates, there are a few things you can check: <ul><li>Sending Address – where you’re sending the email from</li><li>From Email Address (hello@support.youraddress.com) and From Name (Really Good Emails -or- Mike at Really Good Emails)</li><li>If you’re sending from a custom domain (preferably a subdomain, but not required), make sure you’ve authenticated that domain with your ESP and your domain provider (SPF and/or DKIM records).</li><li>Email Sending IP – If your IP is new to sending emails, send out small batches of emails to start to build a trusty sending IP.</li><li>Complaint Feedback Loops – when people mark your email as spam, this counts as a complaint against you as a sender, which could hurt your sending reputation</li></ul> <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/aca05c5477d34b26bbac6b06681f46fc"> <a href="https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/email-deliverability-test/" target="_blank">14.8% of all emails</a> might not be delivered, getting caught in the spam folder or disappearing for some unknown reason. You can increase your deliverability rates by sending personalized, targeted emails, engaging your audience, and sending from a custom domain that’s been authenticated. <h2>7) Bounce Rates</h2> The bounce rate is the number of emails that couldn’t be delivered to email recipients. You’ll see two types of bounce rates in your email analytics: soft bounce and hard bounce, depending on the delivery failure reason. A soft bounce is a temporary email delivery failure. This could be caused by a full mailbox, a busy email server, or if the mailbox isn’t set up correctly, if an ESP is trying to send too many emails at once to a single email client. A soft bounce is common when you’re sending a large volume of emails to an email client such as AOL, Yahoo, and Comcast. If you’re seeing a high rate of soft bounced emails, try throttling an email campaign to send a smaller number of emails per hour. For example, if you’re sending 100,000 emails to a lot of AOL addresses, throttle the campaign to send 1,000 emails per hour. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/745e11880bbc40e58a2fe6f44ca3632f"> A hard bounce is a permanent email delivery failure. An email could result in a hard bounce due to a bad email address, bad domain, the email address no longer exists, or an email server is blocking the email from being delivered. The best thing is you can do with hard bounced email addresses is to remove or archive these contacts and keep your list squeaky clean. <h2>8) Subscriber Count</h2> Keeping an eye on your subscriber count can help you track your list growth. When your subscriber count increases, analyze why there’s an increase. Did you add a new signup form on your website? Were you running a promotion during that month? <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/d116144ecbe24e2398ae8673f73b0261"> If your subscriber count decreases, take a minute to question what you could improve with how you’re getting subscribers in the door, and how you’re enticing them to stay. <a href="https://youtu.be/4dtirA7g6Wg?t=319" target="_blank">Ask your subscribers</a> what they love about your emails and question what they don’t love. Send an email to a select group of subscribers or ask them to reply directly to your email. Keep the line of communication open. <h2>9) Unsubscribe Rate</h2> The <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/unsubscribe" target="_blank">unsubscribe</a> rate is the percentage of email recipients on your list who opt out of receiving future emails from you. A <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/7-really-good-unsubscribe-pages-preference-centers" target="_blank">preference center</a> can help your subscribers choose what emails they want to continue receiving if they don’t want to unsubscribe altogether. (If you use a preference center, it’s a good complement to an unsubscribe link, not a replacement.) HubSpot mentions it’s helpful to keep an eye on the unsubscribe rate, but your <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blog-subscriber-graymail-purge" target="_blank">subscriber engagement</a> is more important. Focus on who’s opening and clicking on your emails and who’s not engaging with your emails. This is an opportunity for you to <a href="https://youtu.be/dmpXi_ErBc8" target="_blank">re-engage</a> inactive subscribers before they opt out. <h2>Compare Email Analytics</h2> Keep track of your team’s objectives and your campaign progress. If you don’t have a method to the madness like a spreadsheet or automated reporting system, this is a great time to get to it! Start fresh. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/9ee20102b69f401d828ab728e9065913"> When I fell into email marketing, I inherited a hefty old spreadsheet and kept track of these analytics on a monthly basis: <ul><li>Total number of emails sent (#,###,###)</li><li>Emails delivered (%)</li><li>Open rates (%)</li><li>Clickthrough rates (%)</li><li>Opt-outs (%)</li></ul> There were 3 sheets in the spreadsheet: 1) Metrics for all clients, 2) Metrics for one of the company’s largest clients (sort of a big gaming magazine published in different countries), and 3) Metrics for internal company campaigns. This helped the company and me see how much revenue the email department (audience of one) generated each month, and if we needed to ramp up on email clients. <h2>Keep Track of Email Analytics with a System that Works for You</h2> Every company and every marketer will have a different goal with their email marketing. Find something that works for you. Whatever <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/report-infographic-case-study" target="_blank">reporting</a> system you create, make sure it’s WELL-documented – in work tickets, an internal wiki, everywhere. If you were to call out of work tomorrow, leave your email position, or train someone, keeping an organized reporting system in place helps for a smooth transition. When you look at all these different analytics, you can really help your company, your clients, and yourself to see what’s working, what you need to switch up and create a campaign strategy from there. Create emails that align with your goals, your message, and your audience. Ad: <a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=prodban&amp;utm_campaign=reporting" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/f91a281429714e46a8c6df37743a0421"></a>

Since the dumpster fire of 2020 is over, everything changes, right? Maybe it’s not that simple, but you can kick off the year by reviewing last year’s email analytics to get this year’s strategy into shape (gym membership not required).

9 Really Good Email Analytics to Keep Track Of

Segmentation is really just another way of spelling “personalization.” It’s a strategy in building and maintaining relationships with your customers based on how they interact with your site and your products. Marketers have seen as much as a <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats" target="_blank">760% increase in revenue</a> thanks to segmenting their campaigns. Audience segmentation comes down to reviewing customer engagement, personalizing the experience, and reflecting on behavioral stats to keep the conversation going. <h2>Check out your audience’s engagement</h2> Customers are looking for the right companies to commit to while companies analyze customer engagement. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/webinar-keep-customers-and-build-brand-love-with-email" target="_blank">Build a relationship</a> with your audience as soon as they show an interest in you. Think about custom send dates and times based on when your audience is most active with your content or based on their location. Your audience will be more excited about your content when you send it at a time that’s convenient for them. Add tags, create subscriber groups, and work with the information that you have to personalize the inbox experience. Do what works best for you and your audience based on the data you have. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/a6c37bb09d9c4078903d54518cbf41ba"> You can use data such as when a customer signed up on your site to send an <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/anniversary" target="_blank">anniversary email</a>. Send a personalized <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/engagement" target="_blank">engagement email</a> based on their activity on your site like Spotify does with users' favorite artists and song play counts. Send a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/product-sale" target="_blank">product sale email</a> based on a customer’s last order date, the purchase amount, and purchase type. You can use this for lapsed customers who haven't placed an order in a certain period of time as part of a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/retention-reactivation" target="_blank">re-engagement</a> campaign. Depending on the data that’s available to you and the email provider you use, you can be very broad or very detailed in your segmentation strategies. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/088d4aec13674a3599b0cfbc645f6f95"> Ad: <a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=prodban&amp;utm_campaign=segmentation" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e6510b29a45f4443bea0417ea35158f2"></a><h2> </h2><h2>Personalize every message (not just the welcome email)</h2> Customers love good news and progress reports. They want to know how many miles they ran, if they beat their friends in a challenge, and if they’re on the right track with their goals. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/fitbit" target="_blank">Fitbit</a> sends weekly stat emails like this based on user activity. The user tracks their fitness activity on their device or in the app and can customize their goals in their profile. This personalization is a great example of how to keep your audience coming back for more with your products. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-weekly-progress-report-from-fitbit" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/51263cd7691f4df49077cff783852d5a"></a> Create buckets based on user activity for different audience segments. In Fitbit's case, they might bucket their audience into extra active runners, average walkers, and people who need more motivation, and then personalize the messaging to those segments. You can bucket your audience based on user profiles and how they interact with your product. By doing so, you can see how tailoring messaging related to those buckets on a personalized level impacts user behavior and activity later. <h2>Celebrate your anniversary</h2> Customers want to know they’re more than just dollars in a company’s pocket. Why do you think <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAPcHdlB7MM" target="_blank">Chipotle</a> and <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/taco-bell" target="_blank">Taco Bell</a> released branded swag? They know their customers love their brand and people love a comfy burrito sweatshirt.&nbsp; Celebrate customer milestones, including when they signed up for your platform or when they made their first purchase. Add fun, behavioral data in your emails, such as how many hours your customers perused your blog, what their favorite store candle scent from your store is, and if they finally caught up on the Mandalorian. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/happy-1st-playstationversary" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/619c9c9ceafc47c081f4cb0956c8c5af"></a> An anniversary email is a great way to keep customers engaged, or to re-engage them if they haven’t made a purchase or haven’t visited your site in a while. Using a re-engagement segmentation like this would be based on lapsed users or the time elapsed between purchases. Make sure the messaging is clear like the <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/playstation" target="_blank">PlayStation</a> email above. Otherwise, subscribers might be confused about whether you’re celebrating <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-surveymonkey" target="_blank">their account anniversary or your company’s anniversary</a>. Ad: <a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=grnban&amp;utm_campaign=segmentation" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/ee5fdd9a0e15426bb0c8683effe0bccf"></a> Here’s another example where <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/careof" target="_blank">Care/of</a> makes it clear that they’re celebrating the company’s birthday. They share internal milestones while encouraging the reader to join the fun by downloading the app or taking a quiz. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/its-our-birthday" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/ace3465d657540b58095b015201558e3"></a> <h2>Expand on customer behavior stats</h2> Jeff Rossi, previously Spotify’s Global Director of Business Marketing, mentioned that <a href="https://www.marketingmag.com.au/hubs-c/spotifys-head-b2b-marketing-keeping-rising-advertiser-expectations/" target="_blank">one out of every two Spotify streams</a> is initiated by the user. When users dig a platform, they’ll spend more time interacting with the content and searching for what they like, giving companies the opportunity to segment and reciprocate that interaction. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/spotify" target="_blank">Spotify</a> segments their emails according to user location and user behavior in the app and on the website. This Time Capsule email leads the user to a personalized playlist, created by Spotify, based on throwback songs and artists that the user listened to most often. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/remember-santeria-by-sublime" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/ea420c8593e14ac4b72611a1e542d96b"></a> Spotify also sends a handy “Upcoming concerts near you” email, pulling updated artist info, venues, and show dates based on user location and streaming activity. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/upcoming-shows-near-greenville-aziz-ansari-east-forest-and-more" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/17c1845b1e9d41ac8ecd3e8bdc9b7415"></a> In a third example, Spotify shares how many minutes users streamed audio on Spotify and/or how many different songs they listened to. When users click the CTA button, Spotify sends them to a customized playlist based on the songs and podcasts they listened to the most that year. All of these examples personalize the experience, bringing people back to Spotify’s platform. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/spotify" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/41ae05edd61d4b1a87d35213ed0d0cc7"></a> <h2>Segment your audience based on previous purchases</h2> When a customer walks out of a brick and mortar, that could be the end of the company-customer relationship unless they hit it off one-on-one. But if a customer signs up with their email address or phone number (in-store and online), that’s an opportunity to continue the relationship based on a customer’s <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/recent-purchase" target="_blank">purchase activity</a>. You have the opportunity to ask for feedback. Request a product review after the customer buys that swanky chair. Or send a survey to get feedback on their shopping experience. You can also send follow-up emails for a customer to buy an item again, purchase a refill (hello, fridge water filters), or renew their membership. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/what-did-you-think-of-your-recent-order-65006006500600" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/7adb2626cdf640b8bc63eeb8de92a355"></a> If a customer hasn’t purchased from you in a certain amount of time, or if they’ve left an item in their online cart, this is a great opportunity to check back in with that customer. You don’t want them to leave you on read without taking action. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/b2397483b7324203a9bfba845ce55746"> They might still be interested in that product, but they got distracted. Life got busy and they exited all tabs instead of just the tab with all the annoying notifications. Sending a personalized email based on customer purchase behavior is key to bringing them back to your site. <h2>Segmentation can save you money, especially with SMS marketing</h2> When you send a targeted message to a specific group of people, you can save money by sending fewer emails or fewer SMS messages. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-postscript" target="_blank">SMS marketing</a> is a solid way to reach your customers (as a complement to emails) when you’re ready to take the customer relationship to the next level. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-postscript" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e93cddcaf5464638a26f8a4f3d98c2c9"></a> You can use SMS marketing to send a quick and concise message, sharing a product launch or a promo code. Keep in mind, you might have more opt-outs in SMS marketing than email marketing due to the personal nature of SMS messages. Make sure you send engaging messages that benefit the person on the other side of the screen. You have a lot of options to segment your SMS messaging:<ul><li>New customers</li><li>Returning customers</li><li>VIP memberships</li><li>Number of purchases</li><li>Purchase type</li><li>Last purchase date</li><li>Abandoned cart customers (new vs. returning customers)</li></ul> These are all opportunities for re-engagement and win-back campaigns. Make every message relevant. Track customer activity and integrate with tools like Zapier, CartHook, Omnisend, and Klaviyo to filter that activity and adjust your SMS campaigns. <h2>Build a solid plan for your audience segmentation and stick with it.</h2> At the end of the day, segmentation is really just checking in with your customers, reminding them to return to what they love. Think about what they’re interested in, what they’re buying, and what they’re interacting with on your site. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-filmsupply" target="_blank">Email is landing pages delivered</a>. Guide your customers with personalized messaging based on their behavior, and deliver that experience in the best way possible. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/76dd783a268741dba17501b028d8e875"> Ad: <a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=tanban&amp;utm_campaign=segmentation" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e8241f5bdfcf4f9084f68aaf7ee1daca"></a>

Personalizing the customer experience from the moment you lay eyes on their email address can set you both up for a wonderful relationship.

Delight your customers with audience segmentation

Data-driven email marketing begins with a reliable CRM system. But when it comes to how a CRM is built, customized, and maintained, marketers often don’t know what to ask for. This workshop is designed to teach email marketers and data-driven marketers how to navigate CRM systems so that they can have access to the data they need to successfully segment, trigger, and personalize their email campaigns. You’ll learn how to:· Understand CRM fields in terms of their purpose and your marketing goals· Ask for integrations to make CRM the single source of truth· Use CRM data to trigger automated marketing campaigns· Easily prove the ROI of marketing campaigns Who should come?Email marketers, data-driven marketers, B2B marketers Who should maybe skip this one?Designers, copywriters, email newbies Natalie Jackson is the Marketing Director for the emfluence Marketing Platform and for emfluence's Digital Marketing. She has nearly a decade of experience in B2B marketing and in digital marketing, including more than eight years of geeking out over all things email and marketing automation strategy. Natalie has spoken on email marketing, CRM strategy, and content marketing for storytellers at Digital Summit Kansas City and Digital Summit At Home, Microsoft Dynamics CRMUG Summit, emfluence’s And Then Some Conference, and for countless local marketing organizations. *All classes are recorded and will be sent out to all registrants for those that can't attend live and/or want to rewatch over and over again (who wouldn't?!) **By joining us for this class, you’ll also get free newsletters from Really Good Emails and Emfluence (if you aren't already). You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time.

For data-driven marketers to learn how to navigate CRM systems in order to successfully segment, trigger, and personalize campaigns.

The 7 Things That Belong on Every Email Marketer’s CRM Wish List

When building a first-class customer experience, every little detail counts. Leaders like Spotify, Amazon and Netflix have ushered in a new era of convenience and personalization we didn’t know was possible. Now it’s on all brands to live up to these high standards. Though challenging, there’s hope—83% of consumers will share their data in return for more personalized experiences. This where Iterable can help! In this class, experts from the Iterable team will reveal how to achieve advanced cross-channel personalization by building individualized recommendations and dynamic content based on product metadata. You’ll learn how to:<ul><li>Sort and filter dynamic content groupings using multi-attribute criteria</li><li>Create localized recommendations, like “5-star restaurants, in my price range, near me”</li><li>Use Iterable Catalog to build personalized content collections and automate messages in real time</li></ul> Who should come?B2C marketers that focus on customer lifecycle / retention / CRM Email, mobile and cross-channel strategists Verticals: retail/e-commerce, subscription services, media &amp; entertainment, food &amp; beverage, travel, consumer tech Enterprise businesses looking to replace a legacy marketing cloud People looking to see what Iterable is capable of Who should maybe skip this one?B2B marketers, Small businesses, Marketers in highly regulated industries (healthcare, finance, etc.), developers and designers who strictly write code and design from scratch Note:This class is part 3 in a 3-part series. While you're encouraged to attend all 3 classes, each class stands well on its own. Choose 1, 2, or all 3! Alyssa Jarrett is Head of Brand &amp; Content at Iterable, where she specializes in creating data-driven content to educate growth marketers on how to develop world-class customer engagement. She has previously served in marketing roles for companies in SaaS and big data, including Ripple, Objectivity, Splice Machine, and Cray. Katie Barends is a New Jersey native turned California girl now living in Denver (with a few years in Florida along the way). Katie got her start in journalism, focusing on communicating and storytelling in every interaction. She has a knack for strategic conversations and helping others realize and achieve their goals. She's been in the tech world for the last 5 years working with Fortune 100 and C-Suite decision-makers across all industries. In that time, Katie has held a variety of roles in solutions consulting, sales coaching, and product and customer marketing to support both not only customers and prospects but also internal partners. *All classes are recorded and will be sent out to all registrants for those that can't attend live and/or want to rewatch over and over again (who wouldn't?!) **By joining us for this class, you’ll also get free newsletters from Really Good Emails and Iterable(if you aren't already). You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time.

In part 3 of this 3-part series, you'll learn advanced personalization using product metadata.

Metadata: A 3-Step Plan to Cross-Channel Personalization (3 of 3)

Email campaigns are an exercise in relationship building. When done right, a well-mapped email program can bring in more sales and help you transform your existing client base into a community. But building a successful email strategy isn’t just selling things—by applying analytics to your customer journey, you can gather valuable intelligence about your prospect and customer base that can help you transform how clients experience your brand.In this class, we’ll talk about how to build targeted email campaigns for every step of the customer journey, with hands-on tips for deciding who to nurture, when to nurture them, what to say in your messaging, and how to measure email success. You’ll learn how to:· Map your email strategy to your customer journey· Grow beyond sales-oriented emails and into relationship nurtures· Use CRM data to determine who should receive which emails and when Who should come?Email marketers, data-driven marketers, client success teams Who should maybe skip this one?Designers, coders Natalie Jackson is the Marketing Director for the emfluence Marketing Platform and for emfluence's Digital Marketing. She has nearly a decade of experience in B2B marketing and in digital marketing, including more than eight years of geeking out over all things email and marketing automation strategy. Natalie has spoken on email marketing, CRM strategy, and content marketing for storytellers at Digital Summit Kansas City and Digital Summit At Home, Microsoft Dynamics CRMUG Summit, emfluence’s And Then Some Conference, and for countless local marketing organizations. *All classes are recorded and will be sent out to all registrants for those that can't attend live and/or want to rewatch over and over again (who wouldn't?!) **By joining us for this class, you’ll also get free newsletters from Really Good Emails and Emfluence (if you aren't already). You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time.

Building a successful email strategy isn’t just selling things—you have the power to transform how clients experience your brand.

Building Better Relationships with Email

B2B email doesn’t have to be boring. In this workshop, we’ll talk about how to jazz up your B2B email strategy and better leverage your CRM data to improve your recipient relationships. We’ll take lessons from B2C email strategies and discuss how they can be applied to B2B relationships, see what B2B marketers can learn from ecommerce email, and open up the possibilities of B2B email beyond the standard newsletter. You’ll learn how to:· Explore new ways to use email as a B2B relationship tool· Experiment with fresh email designs, strategies, and messaging for the B2B inbox· Work within the Outlook inbox Who should come?Email marketers, data-driven marketers, B2B marketers Who should maybe skip this one?B2C email marketers Natalie Jackson is the Marketing Director for the emfluence Marketing Platform and for emfluence's Digital Marketing. She has nearly a decade of experience in B2B marketing and in digital marketing, including more than eight years of geeking out over all things email and marketing automation strategy. Natalie has spoken on email marketing, CRM strategy, and content marketing for storytellers at Digital Summit Kansas City and Digital Summit At Home, Microsoft Dynamics CRMUG Summit, emfluence’s And Then Some Conference, and for countless local marketing organizations. *All classes are recorded and will be sent out to all registrants for those that can't attend live and/or want to rewatch over and over again (who wouldn't?!) **By joining us for this class, you’ll also get free newsletters from Really Good Emails and Emfluence (if you aren't already). You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time.

B2B email doesn’t have to be boring. It's time to open up the possibilities of B2B email beyond the standard newsletter.

The B2B Marketer’s Guide to Better Email

When building a first-class customer experience, every little detail counts. Leaders like Spotify, Amazon and Netflix have ushered in a new era of convenience and personalization we didn’t know was possible. Now it’s on all brands to live up to these high standards. Though challenging, there’s hope—83% of consumers will share their data in return for more personalized experiences. This is where Iterable can help! In this class, experts from the Iterable team will dive deep into all things data feeds between your ESP and outside sources. By mastering data feeds, you’ll be able to send time-sensitive content at the perfect moment for each customer. You’ll learn how to:<ul><li>Use data feeds to personalize campaigns, like active offers and blog newsletters</li><li>Differentiate public and managed data feeds and how to leverage them</li><li>Create individualized email templates using Iterable’s handlebars logic</li></ul> Who should come?B2C marketers that focus on customer lifecycle / retention / CRMEmail, mobile and cross-channel strategistsVerticals: retail/e-commerce, subscription services, media &amp; entertainment, food &amp; beverage, travel, consumer techEnterprise businesses looking to replace a legacy marketing cloudPeople looking to see what Iterable is capable of Who should maybe skip this one?B2B marketers, Small businesses, Marketers in highly regulated industries (healthcare, finance, etc.), developers and designers who strictly write code and design from scratch Note:This class is part 2 in a 3-part series. While you're encouraged to attend all 3 classes, each class stands well on its own. Choose 1, 2, or all 3! Alyssa Jarrett is Head of Brand &amp; Content at Iterable, where she specializes in creating data-driven content to educate growth marketers on how to develop world-class customer engagement. She has previously served in marketing roles for companies in SaaS and big data, including Ripple, Objectivity, Splice Machine, and Cray. Katie Barends is a New Jersey native turned California girl now living in Denver (with a few years in Florida along the way). Katie got her start in journalism, focusing on communicating and storytelling in every interaction. She has a knack for strategic conversations and helping others realize and achieve their goals. She's been in the tech world for the last 5 years working with Fortune 100 and C-Suite decision-makers across all industries. In that time, Katie has held a variety of roles in solutions consulting, sales coaching, and product and customer marketing to support both not only customers and prospects but also internal partners. *All classes are recorded and will be sent out to all registrants for those that can't attend live and/or want to rewatch over and over again (who wouldn't?!) **By joining us for this class, you’ll also get free newsletters from Really Good Emails and Iterable(if you aren't already). You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time.

In part 2 of this 3-part series, you'll learn intermediate personalization using data feeds and other 3rd-party integrations.

Data Feeds: A 3-Step Plan to Cross-Channel Personalization (2 of 3)

When building a first-class customer experience, every little detail counts. Leaders like Spotify, Amazon and Netflix have ushered in a new era of convenience and personalization we didn’t know was possible. Now it’s on all brands to live up to these high standards. Though challenging, there’s hope—83% of consumers will share their data in return for more personalized experiences.In this class, experts from the Iterable team will cover the basics of how to user profile and event data to create personalized email and cross-channel messaging that supports a best-in-class customer experience. You’ll learn how to:<ul><li>Create custom events for lifecycle milestones, like downloading an app or visiting a high-intent webpage</li><li>Build the perfect email template that incorporates hyper-specific user profile data</li><li>Launch a foolproof campaign that delivers individualized customer messaging</li></ul> Who should come?B2C marketers that focus on customer lifecycle / retention / CRM Email, mobile and cross-channel strategists Verticals: retail/e-commerce, subscription services, media &amp; entertainment, food &amp; beverage, travel, consumer tech Enterprise businesses looking to replace a legacy marketing cloud People looking to see what Iterable is capable of Who should maybe skip this one?B2B marketers, Small businesses, Marketers in highly regulated industries (healthcare, finance, etc.), developers and designers who strictly write code and design from scratch Note:This class is part 1 in a 3-part series. While you're encouraged to attend all 3 classes, each class stands well on its own. Choose 1, 2, or all 3! Alyssa Jarrett is Head of Brand &amp; Content at Iterable, where she specializes in creating data-driven content to educate growth marketers on how to develop world-class customer engagement. She has previously served in marketing roles for companies in SaaS and big data, including Ripple, Objectivity, Splice Machine, and Cray. Katie Barends is a New Jersey native turned California girl now living in Denver (with a few years in Florida along the way). Katie got her start in journalism, focusing on communicating and storytelling in every interaction. She has a knack for strategic conversations and helping others realize and achieve their goals. She's been in the tech world for the last 5 years working with Fortune 100 and C-Suite decision-makers across all industries. In that time, Katie has held a variety of roles in solutions consulting, sales coaching, and product and customer marketing to support both not only customers and prospects but also internal partners. *All classes are recorded and will be sent out to all registrants for those that can't attend live and/or want to rewatch over and over again (who wouldn't?!) **By joining us for this class, you’ll also get free newsletters from Really Good Emails and Iterable(if you aren't already). You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time.

In part 1 of this 3-part series, you'll learn basic personalization using user profile and demographic data!

User & Event Data: A 3-Step Plan to Cross-Channel Personalization (1 of 3)

This FF episode was sponsored by <a href="https://more.emfluence.com/really-good-emails" target="_blank">emfluence</a>. Get paired with a marketer to see how your strategy will work in the emfluence Marketing Platform. <hr> 📋 TL;DR key takeaways from this episode: 1. Email can be an extension of a product. High-quality email design can give the customer an experience, setting the expectation for a high-quality product. 2. Imagery showcases how the product is made and the quality it's made with. Include product photography and visual content to show the product and entice your audience to buy the product. 3. Use A/B testing with your email imagery to see what works for your audience, like including photos with people in the email vs. photos of the product by itself. *BONUS* Use a GIF to preview a video of the product in action. Keep the GIF light on size (aim for 600KB) to keep the email light. <hr>Matthew Smith: Happy Feedback Friday, everybody. I'm hungry. Let's talk about some June cooking. Matt Helbig: What's up, Email Geeks? Welcome back to another episode of Feedback Friday. This week, we're looking at smart ovens. Matthew Smith: Are they smart, though? I think these are pretty cool. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eKbPFt1Pw_g" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/eKbPFt1Pw_g</a> The branding work on June is really attractive. Primarily it's beautiful product photography. And being able to move through some interesting visual content that they've got to show me and entice me into cooking with June. This is the kind of thing that us lazy Americans are getting more and more interested in where it's like, let's put something in the oven before I go to work and then have it ready for me, and my neat little app tells me it's done. Yay! This is part of that mix, and I think June has done a really nice job. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/if-easy-does-it-then-june-does-it-too" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/ddd6df61b81a48c882c28d0190dc973a"></a> One of the things that’s working really well is this live text, and it allows for a very convenient way to model it out here on mobile. I would probably change the heading size on mobile, just a little smaller so you can fit more words per line. It's a little hard to read in this context. But the body copy is great, and they do this throughout some of their other emails as well. Again, this product photography is really great. It's not that expensive to get fantastic product photography in the long run. You can get it done. It doesn't always meet the highest standards, but several hundred dollars and you're off to the races. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/mouth-prepare-to-water" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/d302eb0b01264cbd877cd23035c1ee0a"></a> They did a nice job here and I think it makes a huge difference. It’s giving me inspiration about what I could cook using June, and then seeing this beautiful imagery of the oven itself makes me want to go get it. You can see, again, they start going after some holiday giving. This would have been done probably in the fall last year, and we start seeing “15% off,” a really nice big callout for that. And then we also get to see imagery here to let us know a little bit more about how June is made and the quality with which it's made. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/smell-that-junes-cooking-up-15-off-for-black-friday-" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/aacafcdf1f9a4659abe55489e56ebd61"></a> Everything just feels really well thought out and designed. I'm impressed. You see this on every one of their emails. This is a GIF that's digging me into a potential video. I know that there's Sendspark that you can put video in email for the email clients that allow for it. But driving with a GIF and a video play button so that I want to go find out more about June. This is a great way to do it. I can tell from the GIF that this is a pretty lightweight GIF. It's not overly heavy, which is important. Giving me this indication about some of these icons that they've created for it. It's a great visual into your experience and what you expect from June. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/so-much-more-than-a-smart-oven" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/c8df1052a2ed48fdb36e931ef7f5a416"></a> Everything's so refined. You really start to expect this is going to be a high-quality product. If the email were not designed this well, you wouldn't get that sensibility.What do you think could be improved on this, Matt? Matt Helbig: I really appreciate how premium these emails feel. I feel like that’s them really understanding their audience on what they're expecting. And I think you've said this in previous episodes that email can really be an extension of product. For these emails, that really feels like that. I'm actually kind of interested in getting these types of emails and I'm really interested in what other sort of triggered emails they might have. When they use live text like that, I was actually taken aback just because it looks so premium and it feels so thought out and great. There isn't a lot to really change. Maybe some of the copywriting and the offer stuff, getting in sync with those customers even more about what they're really wanting to see if it's more recipes or things like that. Maybe with that product photography, they could try to bring in some user-generated content as well to make it feel a little bit more testimonial-driven when it comes to making you want to buy this product or subscribe or something. But overall, I think they've done a really good job on taking the time with these templates and really building a design system so that they can put in different content and use their product imagery effectively to get that message across. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/make-your-kitchen-your-happy-place" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/81f64787058344b0a695d5cfc44c70fe"></a> Matthew Smith: Yeah, I agree. I think one of the things that would be interesting too would be to split test different types of imagery. Seeing the oven over and over is helpful and it's interesting, but what about if I saw the net effect more as part of it, which is being around my family more because I'm not having to spend as much time in the oven maybe. And some of the intelligence quality of the smart part, being able to give me that human interaction. Maybe seeing some faces of people could be an interesting split test to try that out. I think they've done a really nice job. As usual, I'm always talking about design golf, and you can see, except for things like visuals like this, their primary colors might be four or five at the most. And they've just done a really nice job of keeping that limited. And same with their typography. It feels really balanced and helps this feel premium. Well done, June. Looking forward to having some good food now because of all this. I'm looking forward to a good weekend. Happy Friday, Email Geeks. We'll talk to you soon. Matt Helbig: See ya.

How do you entice your audience to learn more about a product - or better, buy the product - with high-quality email design? This week, we're checking out some product emails from June.

Designs fresh out the oven with June

Knak sponsored this FF episode. <a href="https://info.knak.com/really-good-emails.html?utm_source=rge-school&amp;utm_medium=influencer&amp;utm_campaign=rge" target="_blank">Schedule a demo</a> to build your own really good emails and get them to market in minutes. <hr> 📋 TL;DR key takeaways from this episode: 1. Show how to use a website or product with simple images and text in an onboarding email. Follow a simple hierarchy, such as using one heading, then a slightly smaller heading style to talk about the product contents, and then readable, less contrasting paragraph text with more info. 2. Be careful in using too much contrasting text and colored boxes all in one email. If there’s too much going on at once, this can be difficult to read and even distracting for your audience. 3. Driving your audience toward one simple CTA can help keep a giveaway email focused. Try using one headline, one image, and one CTA. <hr>Matthew Smith: Hey, happy Friday, Matt Helbig. It's another feedback Friday where we can talk about some sick little emails from Honey. How you doing? Matt Helbig: I'm doing great. I'm excited to jump in and look at these <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/honey" target="_blank">Honey</a> emails. Matthew Smith: Thanks, Honey. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EKXbGHs-VzY" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/EKXbGHs-VzY</a> Yeah, man, I'm pretty interested in what they're doing here. Honey is a tiny little company worth...not very much money. Not true, but they've done a nice job of showing me how I can use Honey, how it can be effective, and what I can do here.I'm not often a fan of the zigzag approach. It can get overused because it's hard to do right. But they've done a really nice job here. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/big-deals-are-coming-october-13-are-you-ready" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/450ccb3cbaed45798b07582ab1c4b50f"></a> One of the things that makes this work is they also have live text - nice job folks. They use this same heading style for one, two, three, and then a slightly smaller heading style to talk about the contents. And then there’s a nice kind of gray readable, but less contrasting text. So, I get to go, Oh, shop like normal on my laptop &gt; add items &gt; price drop alert. I get to see the flow of how this works, and if I really want to read in, I can. And then these circular image types work really well to not feel too heavy and blocky. The whole focus here is to add a droplist. Right. So, if I want to start shopping for specific things, I can create a droplist so that I can get those updates. It makes a lot of sense. I really liked the way that they move through this email and then that's it. Just, “create a droplist.” Okay. You want to know how that works? Cool. You think this one’s working? Matt Helbig: Yeah, I've been using Honey for a long time and I feel earlier on, they didn't have emails like this. There were more plain text emails. So, it was interesting to me to see them now invest more and try out more of this content and email that they have that channel to promote, rather than just this being a plain text email. They're really smart with the notifications they send when you add things to your droplist. So, I think they have a pretty robust email program and it probably drives a lot of sales for them. Matthew Smith: Yeah, I think you're probably right. This is another good example where they use a not uncomplex layout. It has some complexity to it, but they do a nice job of keeping it pretty simple, straightforward, and using a two-column grid to make it readable and easy to digest. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/before-we-completely-block-out-2020" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/1b1b310802d5446ebbef824d566eead8"></a> So, they start out with this big header image. Notice little things like this gold that shimmers every now and then. It's just really fun the way that that happens. That little GIF can add a lot of detail. Same with a little image like this where this number is shifting. That's pretty powerful and interesting. They do a nice job with their type of graphic hierarchy. Headings that are nice and dark. And then your subtexts, that's a lighter-weight font. And on other emails, they had the gray text here. So, this may be an older one or a newer one. The only thing that happens here is I get a little overwhelmed by these big colors and imagery. I feel like I need to read each of these things. I wonder how much actual readability they get from it. Matt Helbig: Yeah. This is a popular category of these recap report emails on our site. So, it's interesting to see their take on it. I think the mobile view is probably a little bit better for me, having a little bit more white space and letting those big blocky images breathe a little bit. But I think as a scannable report, I think it works pretty well. I guess they could really decide which of these metrics are the most important because they are throwing a lot of information at you and maybe you only care about one specific thing.I would love personalization, like how much money you saved. I think that would be really cool if they could do that for each user. I know they're bringing in your Honey Gold, but if this was personalized to you rather than the community of their members, I think that could be a little bit more personal for sure. Matthew Smith: I agree. Here's an interesting holiday one where they just get people into “giftway.” These are tough. Giveaway type of things, you have to have a lot of legalese or people do a lot of legalese, whether you have to have it or not is per company, probably. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/honey-is-dropping-1-million-to-help-pay-for-gifts-this-year-want-some" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/fca9ce611a4147fb9585cbd05385a64a"></a> But I think that they did a pretty nice job of giving as much attention to a simple thing as possible and driving toward that one simple “Enter holiday giftaway” where a lot of people end up adding much more to this than they really need. I think they did a nice, nice job. Have you seen anything different done well in this kind of category? Matt Helbig: Yeah, these contest ones are kind of hard because sometimes they feel a little spammy or it feels like they're just partnering with someone to get some more information about you. So maybe just that caveat of when you're doing some of these giveaways, or giftaway in this case, try to make them feel a little bit more natural and less salesy or scammy.I think this one does a pretty good job of it being short and to the point, but seeing this in my inbox, I always kind of feel like, Why am I getting this? Or something like that. Matthew Smith: Good, good. Got a couple of more here. Look at these really nice views of almost a receipt-oriented way of thinking. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/you-just-earned-honey-gold-from-homage" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/d04443f9b38c4ab280b2d4cddcc29f46"></a> I'm really impressed with how easy to read this is on mobile and on desktop. And then there’s more of this consistent content. This is more of a newsletter with some content that they've got going on. Really impressed. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/welcome-to-honey" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/b6802fd939e94325b3e394c044df01c7"></a> Well done, Honey. I think you all are really killing it. If you want to sponsor us with some of that special money, feel free. We're just happy to be here. Happy to have some good emails going on here. Thanks for being here, everybody. Happy Friday. Hope you have a great one. Matt Helbig: See ya.

How can you communicate your message clearly while keeping your emails short and sweet? This week, we're diving into some onboarding and summary emails from Honey.

Keeping the message short and sweet with Honey

This FF episode was sponsored by <a href="https://more.emfluence.com/really-good-emails" target="_blank">emfluence</a>. Get paired with a marketer to see how your strategy will work in the emfluence Marketing Platform. <hr>📋 TL;DR key takeaways from this episode: 1. Help your audience focus on a specific goal per email. With e-commerce, keep the design focused and simple with the combination of design colors and product photography. 2. Invite your customers to make a buying decision on a landing page rather than trying to immediately convert them in an email. Bring in personalized, dynamic content to speak directly to your audience. 3. If you’re sending an all-image email, think about accessibility. Make sure text is easy to read on mobile, include alt-text, and be consistent. <hr>Matthew Smith: Happy Feedback Friday, everybody. It's another good day to be here with Matt Helbig. How are you?&nbsp; Matt Helbig: What's up, email geeks? Welcome back to another Feedback Friday with Matthew Smith.&nbsp; Matthew Smith: Well, today I've got some of my favorites. I don't know if you knew, but preparation is the way, and <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/judy-co" target="_blank">JUDY</a> is how that gets done. I had an enjoyable time going through their brand. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-ZiNiu_naEQ" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/-ZiNiu_naEQ</a> They popped up as just an excellent brand not long ago. And of course, during COVID, all this stuff got pretty interesting. I think it's an exciting brand to follow, but they have some exciting emails. I thought I'd take us through a couple of these. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/1a42577efc47414bb797b24d70a82398"> They're not just talking about what happens if you're in a pandemic, but also what happens if you're in storms? How ready are you? What is the problem? Is preparation a real thing? <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/97e765cadc7442548c249b3b2bb1077f"> They're trying to legitimize preparation where many people think about preppers out there being a little bit cuckoo. They're making us think a little differently.<img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/d8a4d461d81a4b8b87d44a8a29f5eac0">I'm pretty interested in what they're doing and on an email level they check off many boxes for me. Simplicity and a focused number of colors. What's working for you? What are you noticing? Matt Helbig: Interesting to see their email strategy because I've been targeted online on Instagram a bunch with a lot of their advertising. I think they are leaning into the branding aspect of this brand. Their email strategy is similar to their Instagram, which is getting some excellent product photography, bringing some cool layouts. I think many of these emails are pretty image-heavy, but I think they stand out by trying to use different fonts and unique designs to make their creative stand out compared to some of these other brands that might not be so flashy. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/0affe55cc5d543c0a3a8ff428c2602db"> Matthew Smith: If you're going to do all image, one of the main critiques that we've had has been that all image emails tend to be small. Several levels of accessibility:<ul><li>Is it responsive so that people can just read it in a different environment than your desktop?</li><li>Can somebody who has temporary sight impairment, read it and get access to it?</li><li>Can somebody who has permanent sight impairment, do they have access to it?</li></ul> They're covering their ground, at least on the first one, where these type sizes are readable in a mobile context. I've been pretty happy with that portion. I would love to look at their copy and their strategy. I think these are smart. They play on this idea of the fear of missing out and being prepared, which is an integral part of their brand. They do things like, "Don't miss your chance to make a choice." Somebody has done some excellent work with the copy on something like that. They always have this consistent CTA in black and this great use of orange and sometimes yellow. I think that this gets the point across so well. It's just super consistent. The type sizes are consistent. There's very little that's getting in my way here to make a purchase. I love that. I'm interested in their strategy on this one, how they've captured this idea of like in the car, on the go, hunkering at home—these different levels of kits that you can get. Whereas prepping, in general, can seem overwhelming, they've done an excellent job of making it seem pretty accessible just to be prepared and a lot less cuckoo feeling. So, what would you change, if anything? Matt Helbig: I appreciate how short and to the point these are.&nbsp;They don't dive in too much about what's in the packs, at least in this series. They're just inviting you to a landing page and letting you know what you need to know when it comes to these products. I appreciate it's this invitation to a click to go to a landing page to make a buying decision rather than convert you into the email. These are pretty hard creatives to make fully live text and fully accessible. Even if they spent all that time doing that, I'm not sure if the ROI would be there for them. I think optimizing for mobile is probably the best thing they can do with these. Maybe they could try to bring in some more personalization or dynamic content or something, depending on the different segments they have in their audience.&nbsp; Overall, I feel like they're doing a pretty great job with the products that they have and how they're marketing them using email, social, and different channels to do that. Matthew Smith:&nbsp; I'm pretty impressed. One of the things I particularly liked, too, is using these notifications to drive people into traffic. Good work, JUDY folks. Come check out the emails on <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/" target="_blank">reallygoodemails.com</a> and see how they're doing some of this stuff. The driving points that you can walk away with are: JUDY has done a great job with simplicity and playing design golf, getting down to the simplest number of colors, and the least amount of differences to focus the user on a specific goal job email so you know what you need to do in each of these emails very quickly. Well done, JUDY. Thank you for being a good inspiration. See you on the flip side. Matt Helbig: Peace. Matthew Smith: Happy Friday. Talk soon.

How do you focus on one goal (one "job") in messaging that speaks directly to your audience? This week, we're taking a look at some e-commerce emails with JUDY.

Keep calm and design on with JUDY

Knak sponsored this FF episode. <a href="https://info.knak.com/really-good-emails.html?utm_source=rge-school&amp;utm_medium=influencer&amp;utm_campaign=rge" target="_blank">Schedule a demo</a> to build your own really good emails and get them to market in minutes. <hr>📋 TL;DR key takeaways from this episode: 1. If you’re going to include navigation options, consider moving the nav lower in the email, like the footer, so it’s useful, mobile-optimized, and doesn’t distract from the main product shot. 2. Explain unique concepts like shipping ice cream. Tell this story by including visuals and a brief explainer in the email. 3. Centered text works here because the text is large and simple. There aren’t too many lines of text and the leading is at a reasonable place. <hr> Matthew Smith:&nbsp; Hey, happy Friday, Matt Helbig. It's Feedback Friday, where we're going to talk about some Jeni's ice cream. Matt Helbig: What's up, email geeks, another Valentine's day, another pint of ice cream. That's my date. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9wf6jcJ1MBw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/9wf6jcJ1MBw</a> Matthew Smith: I'm a sucker for Jeni's. Good ice cream, especially after I quit drinking, ice creams where it's at, man. Jeni's does a really neat job. I signed up recently when I got up ice cream for friends as a holiday gift that I could send, which is weird that you can do that in 2021. I did that, and I started getting these emails, and I thought, man, they're pretty nice. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/5ba3e70aada5464bad61ef55d063b486"> One of the things I love about them is there's nice, big text, real easy to read. And as I often talk about, they drive towards simplicity and a really simple way of thinking. These are landing pages for ice cream. Now, I don't know what the hell is going on with everything, bagel, flavor, ice cream. That is some crazy shit as far as I'm concerned, but they're doing a good job trying to sell this. Smash hit. So weird, it must be delicious.&nbsp;This is an excellent example of just really driving in with something straightforward, get into the product. It's beautiful product photography. Last chance that helps me know, Hey, this is limited time, get in here and get this order now and get done. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/98dde5f9488648808a903bb840ec6def"> No big, long emails that are complicating things or adding complexity, same kind of stuff here. Just a fun GIF. On-brand messaging drive through to get people to order some ice cream. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/80575390a08c45ee9b990758ffa172a9"> Another version of this, everything bagel, one of the things you can switch back and forth here, you can see, I like that they can change up their style slightly with this background shift that allows for some additional content. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/47c500fb35c3467cb2f77efda6e954ac"> Suppose they had kept all of that white. It would not be enough change amid the content shift, but I like that. Do you think that's working?&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Yeah. I mean, I think it works. I would love to design an email for ice cream. That sounds pretty great. Like that sounds like a fun, exciting challenge. But to your point, I don't think they need to like sell it too much. I think they can put a product as the main focus of these emails and do pretty well. To me, it is still kind of weird that you can go online and order a pint of ice cream. That seems kind of funny to me, for some reason. I don't know what Jeni's can do to improve. It's like diminishing returns on how much time they spend on some of this stuff. I think it just gets people excited about the product. I know they'd probably going on social media or something and looking up on Instagram and seeing people trying these wild and crazy flavors. Maybe they could bring some of that social aspect into these emails to make it more feel like a community thing, like sharing different things. But overall, I think pretty straightforward, and the branding is consistent with their website, and they're doing some exciting stuff here. Matthew Smith: One thing that I think they could do would be to explain in these emails in, these could be forwarded to other people pretty easily. What do you mean shipping, ice cream, some of those things that seem nonsensical, and if you signed up for Jeni's newsletter, somewhere along the line, getting a picture of, Oh, they ship it in this container with frozen blocks and so on. And figuring out how that works so they could explain some things like that. I think they could also tell a little bit about the story or have some jump-offs at the bottom of the email that tells the story. Jeni's has kind of a neat story. Matt Helbig: I've met Jeni. Matthew Smith: Have you? That's fantastic. You know, stuff like that. These I've heard different people. I suggest that these can do well or poorly. I would say that is missing out here because these are image-based, then in mobile, you have to drop one to keep them readable. So at least they did that where they kept them readable. They have to drop scoop shops here in this case. If they were texts, they could have modified it a little differently. Anything else that you would change or things that you would add for brands like this? Matt Helbig: For your navigation part, I think I like brands that put some of that stuff lower in the email, like in the footer, having a more mobile-optimized email, especially here on mobile.Like you're repeating the snippet, you have your view in the browser. Some of those nav links can be useful, but if you don't see many clicks on them, maybe that's some information you can put lower in the email if you want to focus that message have that. It doesn't distract anything from this main product shot and hero copy. Matthew Smith: Another thing, the, in terms of sending stuff to the bottom or hiding them is I'm pretty sure that this would be a pre-header type of text that they're putting up there. And there are many techniques to be able to hide something like that if it's not necessary. So right now, especially on mobile, this feels crowded. If you're on mobile, this is the main thing, like I want to see that ice cream first thing and Jeni's logo. Some of this information, there are techniques to hide this pre-header. I think the view in the browser link is still important for accessibility in some of those things. It's just something to think about. So maybe rearranging some of that information. I think Jeni's does a great job of something important to me, which is to get simple. Keep that text nice and clear. Often I make a note with people that centered text is not very readable in this case. It works because it's so large and simple, and that's what makes it work. It barely works. It's not too many lines.&nbsp;It's nice and big with lots of letting in between. So that's what makes it work. But overall, just straightforward, very focused emails. Well done, Jeni's. I'm hungry. How about you? Matt Helbig: I know. We'll have to get an everything bagel pint of ice cream and split it or something. Matthew Smith: Nice, man. All right, have a fantastic Friday. Email geeks, we'll see you next time. Matt Helbig: Peace.

How do you explain a product to your audience like Everything Bagel ice cream that you can ship to friends? This week, we're scooping up some fun product emails from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream.

Creating sweet product emails with Jeni's Ice Creams

This FF episode was sponsored by <a href="https://more.emfluence.com/really-good-emails" target="_blank">emfluence</a>. Get paired with a marketer to see how your strategy will work in the emfluence Marketing Platform. <hr>📋 TL;DR key takeaways from this episode: 1. Get creative with your CTA buttons. Use different text for each button and make the button stand out with some interactivity or an eye-catching design. 2. Using dynamic content in loyalty emails - like including offer expiration dates - can help personalize the experience for your audience and create urgency to make a purchase. 3. Add a GIF that showcases your menu or product offerings so your audience can visualize items they’re interested in purchasing or ordering. <hr>Matt Helbig:&nbsp; What's up, email geeks? Welcome back to another Feedback Friday. This week we have Kelly Lamano of Really Good Emails fame. How's it going, Kelly? Kelly Lamano:&nbsp; It's going great. How are you? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/64XHhETWI0I" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/64XHhETWI0I</a> Matt Helbig: Great. I'm excited to look at some <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/starbucks" target="_blank">Starbucks</a> emails. It's a little later in the day; otherwise, I'd have a cup of coffee.&nbsp; Kelly Lamano: Awesome. Yeah. I went and got the Baby Yoda, which is one of the secret Starbucks drinks. So I figured I'd try that.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Okay. Well, we have some super emails from Starbucks. I'm excited to look at these. So let's jump right in. Okay, Kelly, the first one looks like a fall email. They have a lot of retro vibes here in the email, lots of live text. We are a big fan of that. Nice color palettes. What else stood out to you in this first example? <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/ed969600e19c42b6be5b58ad2b16a619"> Kelly Lamano: Yeah, definitely the retro colors, the fall all around, like all of the oranges, the beige, I think they do an excellent job of showcasing a couple of different things throughout the emails. So they have the product photography showing you immediately like, Hey, this is something you want to go in the store and order, like, we don't just have coffee. We also have these protein bites and stuff like that. I think it's cool that they also highlight that they have like a credit card and other stuff. So it's going outside of just the coffee. It's like, here's what else the brand has to offer. Matt Helbig: I think what stood out to me is the color palette and then the CTAs. I feel like we haven't seen ghost buttons like this in a minute on some of these emails. But I think they make it work. In some of these, the main CTA people will be clicking on is this image of the drinks versus the actual button. I would say they could perhaps try testing a more solid CTA down here, but I think with these product shots being the main focus of these cards, that's probably still all right. I am impressed with the product photography. I'm guessing Starbucks has a big studio to shoot all these different things, but these are appealing. I liked this very simple one-column layout where this text is short enough to be centered. It scrolls down, especially easy to read on mobile. Kelly Lamano: Going back up to the top I just noticed that sort of retro design that they have there. It reminds me of the drizzle that's on top of the drink. So I think that's clever and creative—definitely eye-catching. I agree with you. It's very easy to skim through the text on both desktop and mobile. It's nice how they have everything centered. It's just really easy to consume. Matt Helbig: I like how they create some spatial stuff with the long shadows here. They are making it a little bit more exciting with this retro drizzle like you said. I guess their emails are doing a fair amount with promoting the different offers they have, but it's nice to see how this is plugged in here, plugging their credit card. Their templates are pretty flexible on accepting many different modules, and playing with these different CTAs adds some variety to these various offers. The food ones have a specific CTA, and then these more app ones have a particular CTA, and these have a little different style. Allowing those styles on these different cards is a cool way to make the content feel slightly different. Well, we have another one. So what stood out to you on this one? <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e7705edb9a984279bdeef1990ab692e4"> Kelly Lamano: The GIF. I think that one's fun because I think there's something for everyone. Like there's tea, there's coffee, frappuccino, all the different sort of drink options. It flows nicely. I think having "Free" at the very top makes it very clear for the customer to see, like Hey, this is why I opened this email. I'm getting something. This is what I'm getting. It's very clear. The CTA is also very clear. Having just that one "Order" CTA is nice because it's very focused, and you don't have to worry about any distractions or anything. Your eye goes right down free and then the gift, and then pretty much what the expiration date is, qualifying item, order. So I think it's very linear, and it leads you right down to that button. Matt Helbig: It gets the message across. I think the GIF is of excellent quality. I think the whole message is just pretty simple. I guess this would be an example where this could maybe be a solid color versus the ghost CTA here. I also just noticed they don't have social icons. It looks like their legal footer links out to a lot of these terms of use and the privacy stuff, rather than putting everything here. That's interesting to me, you know, how in other brands we might see it a lot more social icons or longer text, especially where if they're giving you something away or a coupon, they might have to include that. Kelly Lamano: That's true.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: A pretty simple one. I think it caught our eye, just having a nice GIF and having a direct message. Kelly Lamano: This one is more of a subtle GIF, but I feel like it still works. I like how even at the top of the email, they've got "heartbeat flutters," and then it kind of flows down into that heart GIF. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/b16742d4f375432eb1ec8f900fc7d642"> Overall it's evident what they're going for here with all of the different products. I think they do a great job with the product photography again cause they're showing like the coffee and then heart cookie, cake, and stuff like that. So I think they do an excellent job with the presentation overall, and it's very focused. Matt Helbig: I think I noticed in this one that these are images versus the other one that was more bulletproof. They look a little pixelated. It's nice to see that on some of their newer emails, even some of these headlines, I think they figured out how to include more live text.I think they keep it pretty fun and focused on the product. Not overly promotional, at least not right away.&nbsp;It leads you down to this e-gift, which is a pretty nice CTA as a way to send a gift.&nbsp; Kelly Lamano: I wonder on the happy hour text if maybe that could be updated. What if I opened the email tomorrow? Like is it still a happy hour at 3:00 PM? Is that every single day? Is that a specific day? So I might want to see more of a particular date on that just if I miss it and I can still take advantage of the offer. Matt Helbig: We were looking at the code a little earlier, and we saw some <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/movable-ink" target="_blank">Moveable Ink</a> snippets in there. So that maybe is an opportunity for them to create some dynamic piece here that maybe pulls in your nearest store or, as you said, have a specific time that's tied to your zip code or something like that. That would be a nice, subtle touch. Anytime you can bring in some local information, that's a nice touch. So this looks like some gamification here a little bit. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/4fdf11ceb56c41d68e99ad5fc43eedec"> Kelly Lamano: I think we picked many emails that had the GIFs right off the bat and went into what the reward system is like. So I liked that they mostly use live text in this, at least for the paragraph text. I would like to see that split into maybe two paragraphs. Perhaps it's picky, but it would be nice just to kind of chop that up a little bit more to break it up. But I liked that they explain, like, what do the stars do? Like what does that mean? And they explained that you could use that towards a beverage purchase. I think it's very focused again with just that one CTA button. Matt Helbig: Yeah, I think this one's pretty simple. I guess it would be cool if they showed you some more information in the email, but I also liked that it's pretty short and sweet and pointing you towards either a landing page or their app to enter. That makes sense for this one. Excellent use of GIF. Pretty cool way to maybe bring in some gamification or just a general contest email to possibly replicate for your brand. This one is for Christmas. That Iconic Christmas cup. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/2fffaac3104e41fcb658ef9519e78470"> Kelly Lamano: What's doing it for you on this one? Matt Helbig: I think the color. I think it's hard to effectively use this red without it being a little too much, but I think it works for their brand. It's almost like their signature Christmas color at this point. Everyone knows the red cup, and I think they bring some nice Christmas-y vibes to the email without being too overbearing. It's nice to see the different imagery they're pulling in as you scroll down. So I think what's interesting with some of these longer-form emails is how they organize content and how they maybe try to serve you these modules in a specific order of what's most important to maybe least important. Kelly Lamano: I agree with that. It's interesting how they have the different blocks of content. Sometimes that can weigh down the email to where it could make the file size larger, but it's nice how they keep everything very organized. And like you said, they keep the most important part of the email at the top. I love the gradient colors.&nbsp;It's just cool. They keep everything very focused, and the CTAs are very focused. Again, it's interesting that they have that ghost button. So I would almost like to see a white button with red text, or even this will sound crazy, but maybe like a candy cane sort of design. I know that's maybe taking it too far, but just making that stand out just a little bit more, but I do like how they organize all the different sections.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Maybe like a hover effect or something if they could pull it off where if you hover over this, it does something fun to the cup. Like it rotates or something. Add some interactivity to it. I agree with you. I think the gradient makes it fun, and they seem to care about their emails. They add a lot of custom imagery. I think something like this <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/uber" target="_blank">Uber</a> Eats bag with the "Happy Holidays" and the Starbucks cup is a nice little touch. I think they have a very nice palette of colors that they use pretty consistently. Overall, I think these emails turn out pretty great. I think they could make them even better. Every time we look at their emails when they're submitted to the site, they get a little better each time. Kelly Lamano: It's always interesting to see their holiday emails cause they always do something fun. This is another fun one. I like how they have the single product shot, and it's just enough to where you can see the coffee cup holder with the logo on it. It's very warm. Like it makes you feel like you're there getting a nice warm cup of coffee. They have a very focused CTA "order ahead now." They have these cool kind of illustrations there that are interesting. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/2352b9a52ec442329bdc5e3062c5967b"> I would have liked to see a header to break up the two sections. So it's like the first section is the rewards tip and then driving people to order. Then what's this next part? It's going further into why you should order ahead and explaining that, but it might be kind of cool to have that as a header to guide the reader. Matt Helbig: This transition maybe is a little awkward to me. Perhaps that's because it's changing where that text is too. I do like this custom hand-drawn illustration of the different cups. It matches their branding and still adds a little fun piece to this email. Kelly Lamano: Yeah. On the cassette is says PSL faves too. So it just shows you the attention to detail. It's interesting how they have the same CTA text for both buttons. So it would be kind of cool, like you said, to see something dynamic or something different. Matt Helbig: Great job, Starbucks. I know we're a big fan of your emails. They seem to be learning a lot from the different emails that they're sending. So it's cool to see the evolution of this brand and how they're using their email program. Well, have a fantastic Friday, Kelly. Kelly Lamano: You too, Matt. Matt Helbig: All right. See ya.

How can you give customers a unique experience with rewards emails? This week, we're mixing things up with some loyalty and seasonal emails from Starbucks (plus a Baby Yoda drink).

Going back to basics with Starbucks

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