Your boss tells you they're planning to switch ESPs. Do you have all your ducks in a row for the migration or do you split to fly back up north for the summer? Mike from our team chatted with Bailey Busch, senior client success manager at Cordial, about the good, the bad, and the beautiful parts of migrating ESPs. At the end of the day, don't sweat it. It's all about what matters most in your company, how to work with different messaging platforms, and viewing your ESP as your partner in crime.

Really Good Migrations Webinar with Cordial

Typeform. Google Forms. Survey forms. Gym form. Collecting feedback can help quantify the customer experience. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the fuzzy, feel-good part of doing the thing, like making the product, baking the bread, and hosting the event, forgetting how important the results are.&nbsp; We also need to know if the shirt fits true to size, how well the bread was toasted, and what people loved (or didn’t love) about an event to continuously improve the experience. Surveys measure your relationship with your customers, making the results crucial to growing your company, products, and services. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/a-quick-question-for-you" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/f5f1091506794ff6855c28d0715419db"></a> <h1>Building your survey</h1>With most builders, you can start on a free plan and upgrade for advanced features. There are tons of form builders out there, so here’s a few examples to get you started: <h2><a href="https://www.typeform.com/" target="_blank">Typeform</a></h2>Typeform offers a sleek interface with answer-one-question-at-a-time templates. You can create three forms per account on the free plan, a limited number of questions, and 100 responses per month. Typeform integrates with Salesforce, Zapier, MailerLite, Zoho CRM, Shopify, HubSpot, and more. <h2><a href="https://www.google.com/forms/about/" target="_blank">Google Forms</a></h2>Google Forms is always free and gives you eleven different field options for your forms. You can easily share forms with your team, export survey responses to Google Sheets, and fully integrate these forms with your Gmail or Google Workspace account. Google Forms integrates with Slack, Mailchimp, Salesforce, HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, and more. Keep in mind that you have the option to make form responses public or private. So, if you don’t want customers seeing each other’s answers, make sure you check that setting!<h2> </h2><h2><a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/" target="_blank">SurveyMonkey</a></h2>Create an unlimited number of surveys on all plans, ten questions per survey on the free Basic plan, and view a set number of responses per survey on each plan. SurveyMonkey integrates with Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, DataHero, and more to analyze survey reports a step further. Ad:<a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=grnban&amp;utm_campaign=forms" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/52045ea229dd4f3098b69efe56efb040"></a><h2> </h2><h2><a href="https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing/forms" target="_blank">HubSpot Form Builder</a></h2>If you’re using HubSpot CRM, you can create a standard form or a pop-up form with the HubSpot Form Builder. HubSpot offers a few form templates, or you can build a form from scratch. People who fill out your form will be added to or updated in your HubSpot contacts database so you can manage your contacts from there. <h2><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/online-surveys-polls-quizzes" target="_blank">Microsoft Forms</a></h2>Another free option, you can add multiple choice questions, ratings, or text questions with Microsoft Forms. Then, you can link to the survey in an email, embed the survey form on your website, or embed the form in an app called Microsoft Sway, where you can share reports with your team. <h2><a href="https://mailchimp.com/help/use-surveys-mailchimp/" target="_blank">Mailchimp</a></h2>You can create a survey landing page in your Mailchimp account. Then, add Mailchimp merge tags to your email template to add a poll or survey question in your email. When subscribers click on an answer to your poll or survey question, that link will redirect them to your survey landing page. Creating a survey landing page is available on both a free Mailchimp plan and upgraded plans. When you create a survey in your Mailchimp account, you can choose whether to let your audience fill out the survey anonymously or connect responses to specific contacts. <h1>Encouraging subscribers to fill out your survey</h1>Once you create the survey, tell the world about it. 1) Create a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/survey-feedback" target="_blank">survey email</a>. Keep the text short and sweet, and add a button, image, or underlined text that links to the survey as the CTA. Your CTA will take subscribers to your survey landing page to complete the survey. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/a-couple-of-questions-for-you " target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/5822d0fc8e9045e596ae744576328d88"></a> <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/matthew-share-your-thoughts-and-get-a-chance-at-a-200-gift-card" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/16e45b93c5dd41d68320768c63006009"></a> 2) In the survey email, offer an incentive to your audience for providing feedback, such as a percentage off their next purchase, a gift card, or a virtual high-five. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/really-good-emails-what-do-you-hate-most-about-cleaning" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/0ddb9456eb4e4bf5b17a12cd3b57db33"></a> 3) Send a survey invitation from your survey host. For example, you can choose “Send by Email” in SurveyMonkey’s interface on a paid plan. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-surveymonkey" target="_blank">SurveyMonkey</a> will send an email to your audience from your sending address (an address that you choose). Plus, you can personalize the message requesting feedback from your audience. 4) Embed a survey form in your email so subscribers can update their preferences or complete the survey without leaving the inbox. <h2>Embedding a form in an email</h2>If you want to get fancy, you can embed a form in an email template. Interactive forms make it easy for subscribers to fill out a form right there in the email instead of being redirected to an external form. The less work your subscribers have to do, the easier it is for them to complete the survey. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/15bfc6324cce466da5055b4777365c2a"> 4 of the 5 top email clients support interactive forms, including Gmail, iOS Mail, Apple Mail, and Yahoo! Mail. Check out <a href="https://www.litmus.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-interactive-forms-in-email/" target="_blank">Litmus’s handy guide to interactive forms</a> for a more in-depth look at building an interactive form for your emails. <h2>Adding user-generated content by sharing survey responses in your emails</h2>Chris Vasquez from <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/aweber" target="_blank">AWeber</a>, and the survey pro behind the Would You Rather newsletter, shared the power of user-generated content (UGC) with us on <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/school/feedback-friday-would-you-rather" target="_blank">Feedback Friday</a>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/szzDTSQ8KHk" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/szzDTSQ8KHk&nbsp;</a> “One of the biggest things I learned, and something that I think other folks could adopt when they're sharing UGC like this, it's the community leaving their answer and why they left it,” Chris said. “I found that people got really stoked when I would include their comment and a link to their Twitter profile or Instagram. So you'll see there's an opportunity in the survey that people click through to leave a contact, either Instagram handle or a Twitter handle or something, and folks get really excited.” <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/heads-or-tails" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/9d22f1cb437e4995b3ad77b9389fd556"></a> Chris asks, “Would you rather...A or B?” in his newsletters (“Would you rather have: A dog body or a dog head?”) and then shares survey responses in future newsletters. The “Best Darn Responses” section gives his audience something to look for to see if they’ll be featured and how other people responded. Like what Chris does with <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/wyr" target="_blank">Would You Rather</a>, you can include survey responses - anonymous responses or using someone’s first name next to the response quote - to create a unique experience for your audience. Collect survey data, and then share that information. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/heres-the-goop" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/81fc8aa0b6444c1e8800a74fa48d02f8"></a> <h2>Capturing feedback during a live virtual event</h2>You can also capture data by serving up polls during a virtual event. For example, Zoom offers polls in meetings and webinars (on a paid plan). You can ask your audience how many people are watching (if they’re sharing their computer screen with someone in their household) and throw in trivia questions for audience engagement. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/dcadb06cdb5d4104818acca6b588c58e"> If you’re hosting a larger event, such as a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/event-conference-trade-show" target="_blank">conference</a>, you can capture that data with live polling and surveys. Platforms like Hopin and Bizzabo offer real-time polling and results.&nbsp; You can also use a tool like <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-first-slido-is-ready-now-lets-set-it-up-for-success" target="_blank">Slido</a> to customize live event Q&amp;As for meetings and events in Hopin, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and more. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/beb6dbebdc7940c2a84c90824c962a24"> <h2>Make it easy</h2>Wherever you collect feedback, the key is to choose a tool that works for your organization and a tool that’s easy for your audience to use.&nbsp; Keep it simple. Know your audience. Keep the conversation going by including survey responses in future emails and follow up with your customers to nurture your relationship with them. <h2>Take the RGE UNSPAM2021 survey</h2>Speaking of surveys and forms, we couldn’t help but drop in our own survey here. We want to hear from you on a possible UNSPAM 2021. What do you want to get out of the event? What are you most curious about? Would you rather have cheese or pepperoni pizza at our booth? (Disclaimer: We’re not promising pizza, but it can’t hurt to know, right?) <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/friends" target="_blank">Tell us what you’re thinking here.</a> Ad:<a href="https://www.omnisend.com/?utm_source=RGE&amp;utm_medium=grnban&amp;utm_campaign=forms" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/36cfc59b02e049168328bcf029126a35"></a>

Typeform. Google Forms. Gym form. Collecting feedback can help quantify the customer experience. We need to know if the shirt fits true to size, how well the bread was toasted, and what people loved (or didn’t love) about an event to continuously improve the experience. Surveys measure your relationship with your customers, making the results crucial to growing your company, products, and services.

How to Measure Customer Relationships with Survey Forms

Members. Non-members. Gold members. Lapsed members. Your audience is full of them. And by segmenting and creating different content according to status, you're one step closer to sending the right message at the right time to the right people.&nbsp; It's this targeted message that starts in the inbox and leads your varying loyal readers to your different part of your website, a purposeful landing page, a thoughtful article, an exclusive behind-the-scenes video, and other personalized places to entice them to take a further journey into your product, service, or content. Here are a few good ideas on how to get started, starting with the most loyal down to your newest members. <h2>Members: Give them the VIP treatment</h2> When people sign up for a membership, they’ve given you their information, their time, and maybe their money in exchange for a unique experience. Whether that’s free shipping, an exclusive local guide in the newsletter, or a coaching call once a month, build a memorable experience that will entice people to sign up, keep them coming back, and sharing your product. One way for product-based businesses to give people the VIP treatment is by giving subscribers early access to limited edition products. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/671c2b5b5fd1488294b7a8c2e85a0ce0"> Target releases exclusive toys and other products like the red metallic Mando, giving RedCard holders early access to preview and buy the exclusives first. Sending out promotions for store-exclusives, member/cardholder previews, and early access options all create urgency for loyal customers who love the brand. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/birthday-suit-on" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/751d1ca7b3f344069cf8841a71d6ade2"></a> Company: theSkimmSubject Line: Birthday suit, on theSkimm newsletter rewards their subscribers for sharing the inbox love, referring to their brand ambassadors as “<a href="https://www.theskimm.com/general/skimmbassadors-5er7Uanv5uK6eQYMiOsmaU-post" target="_blank">Skimm’bassadors</a>.” Subscribers can earn swag with newsletter referrals and share their input about the newsletter or events, giving readers a say in the content and an incentive to share. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/23725d29a69545cf9af97fa7c2f70fb4"> Company: Morning BrewSubject Line: Caution: Morning Brew coming in hot Morning Brew also incentivizes sharing its tech newsletter, assigning a referral link to each subscriber, and rewarding them with Brew swag like sweatpants and mugs when subscribers reach a certain number of referrals. 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/cd4cd4a5965b48749b110a00535b6107"></a> <h2>Non-members: Show them what they’re missing</h2> We say this a lot at RGE: Show your audience the value of your products and services. Don’t just tell them you’re funny. Tell them a joke. Keep subscribers in the know with membership updates on an FAQ page on your website or by answering questions in an email specifically for non-members. Include descriptive visuals like graphics and photos of people using your product. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/you-asked-we-answered-what-do-i-get-as-a-member" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/75e3d1416c47430bb0105ca540f84287"></a>Company: Thrive MarketSubject Line: You asked, we answered: What do I get as a member? Thrive Market takes the initiative in this message to non-members. They kick it off by putting the reader in the email with the subject line: “You asked, we answered…” Thrive Market shows that people consider them a trusted company based on the number of dedicated members (650,000+), who Thrive is, and how signing up for a membership can benefit the reader. You can also send non-member emails as an opportunity to upsell non-members. If they’re using the freemium version of your product, encourage them to take the leap to a paid membership or a paid service plan by offering an incentive like a trial, discount, or a free gift. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/rock-your-next-project-take-50-off-the-plan-of-your-choice" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/c1180e8aa3b9491d8892b1d4fc53c683"></a> Company: GrammarlySubject Line: Rock Your Next Project. Take 50% OFF the Plan of Your Choice Grammarly shows an upgraded version of its product in action (suggesting how to adjust a sentence written in the passive voice). This email leads the reader’s eyes from the subtle 50% off discount in the top right corner, to the product, then the larger discount sticker, and then all the way down to the main CTA button, encouraging the reader to upgrade. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/become-a-member-to-upgrade-your-apps" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/4440ac79850c4db1b4c2cc56d5081bb3"></a>Company: GlitchSubject Line: Become a member to upgrade your apps In another example of showing the value of upgrading, Glitch shares a quick look at why subscribers should upgrade, and how it can help them in a playful way “Give your apps superpowers....” <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/0a1e30b2cc8a49f7993f7e700a86d9cf"> Company: The New TropicSubject Line: 🍄 The Magic City may be getting magic mushrooms The New Tropic, a daily newsletter with news, events, and stories for Miami residents showcases this “members get it” section to show non-members what they’ll get by joining. They let the member quote showcase the value of the membership, adding a human touch to the membership ask. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/what-chime-members-are-saying" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/ab240f4fdd5447e198e422260769f9e0"></a> Company: ChimeSubject Line: What Chime Members Are Saying Show non-members what they’re missing and add social proof. What are people saying about your exclusive content? Why did they join? What do they love? People love reading reviews. These experiences help other people decide if they want to take the leap and join based on what other people are saying. <h2>Trial membership campaigns</h2> Sending out emails to encourage subscribers to try your product is a great way for people to test the waters of what being a member is like. People like free things. Offer a free trial of your product, software, services, whatever it is that you’re advertising to non-members, and serve your audience a <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/categories/retention-reactivation" target="_blank">retention message</a> once the trial's up. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-free-grubhub+-membership-starts-now" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/45f493ea7aa44b5cbece2305092069f5"></a> Company: GrubhubSubject Line: Your free Grubhub+ membership starts now! Grubhub shows the value of their upgraded membership with a fun GIF at the top of the email - food delivery rolling up on a scooter - a personalized “Thanks for joining” message, mentioning exclusive benefits, and all the info the reader would need to get started with their order. The email is bright, fun, and direct - a great way to welcome someone who wants to try Grubhub’s membership. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/free-trial-of-premium-membership" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/bbb2fe308b5b45c9813d43ff5f3d64ce"></a> Company: Scott’s Cheap FlightsSubject Line: Free trial of Premium membership Scott’s Cheap Flights highlights the benefits of a premium membership with fun graphics and minimal text, showing subscribers the value. The email also includes screenshots of reviews on why people love the premium membership, leading right to the main CTA to encourage readers to upgrade to a premium membership.<h2> </h2><h2>Help Subscribers Feel Like They’re Part of the Club</h2> Whether people are cruising on a freemium version of your product or they’re early adopters of your products, craft every email message with a clear intention. Get to know your audience through signup forms, ask for direct replies and surveys, and use that data to personalize your emails. The more invested you are in your audience and the more that you vocalize that, the more valued your subscribers will feel, and the more likely they’ll want to upgrade or become a member when the timing is right. 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/e281d024865b4047a19029db11184573"></a>

Members. Non-members. Gold members. Lapsed members. Your audience is full of them. And by segmenting and creating different content according to status, you're one step closer to sending the right message at the right time to the right people.

How to Personalize Email Content Based on Membership Status

<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

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://us.netcorecloud.com/superior-email-delivery" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netcore</a>. Revolutionize email experiences with the only email delivery platform that leverages AI to power deliverability and increased customer engagement. <hr> Matt Helbig: What's up, Email Geeks? Welcome back to another episode of Feedback Friday, this week with an amazing guest. How's it going, Andy? Andy McCutcheon: Hey, it's going well, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Matt Helbig: Your <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/vacasa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Vacasa</a> emails caught our eye on <a href="https://www.reallygoodemails.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reallygoodemails.com</a>. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and maybe a little bit about this brand? Andy McCutcheon: I'm the Email Marketing Manager at Vacasa, which is North America's largest vacation rental management platform. We manage 30,000 homes across 400 different markets as well as rent out the homes that we manage for homeowners. I am the Email Marketing Manager, touching everything from marketing to transactional emails and everything in between. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NU4a_k0YvfM" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/NU4a_k0YvfM</a> Matt Helbig: I was hoping that we could walk through some of these and maybe talk about what you like. Andy McCutcheon: Yeah. This was a little bit of a different kind of promotional email that we sent. All of our promotional marketing emails go out to previous reservation guests, so they are folks who are fairly knowledgeable or at least aware of Vacasa as a brand and have had a previous stay with us. We do a lot of unit personalization, pulling in dynamic unit recommendations into emails.&nbsp; <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-highway-101-road-trip-atlas" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/be140421ac814f6abe88fd258ccc584d"></a> With this one, we wanted to do something a little bit different and really lean into one of the biggest travel trends of the last year, which is driving to destinations. Driving has been super popular with everything happening and folks being hesitant to fly and being able to go somewhere that they can hop in their car and have a little bit more control over their destination and how they get there. Rather than packing this full of personalized unit recommendations and things like that, we wanted to do something a little bit more fun, and softer, and a little bit broader. We tried to kind of recreate this road trip down the West Coast, highlighting a few of our favorite markets that we have homes to rent in. Matt Helbig: Even at this top section, a lot of things are standing out to me, a nice color palette, great use of live text. I even noticed on mobile that you left-aligned this content soit's a lot easier to read on that smaller screen.&nbsp; Andy McCutcheon: One of my biggest collaborators at Vacasa is a developer, Taylor Campbell, and he built the email workflow that we use. It's incredibly reusable and customizable with huge base components that we can use and then customize as needed. Then, it's got tons of styles and classes built into it as well, so doing things like taking text from center to left-aligned on desktop and mobile is really, really easy. We've also tried to be really strong advocates of accessibility in email, and always rely on live text as much as possible. Matt Helbig: Is there anything you might want to improve on this email? I know it's pretty polished. It's kind of a long scroll, but I do like how you use these graphics to bring your eye down the email. Andy McCutcheon: Yeah, I’m super happy with how this came out. One of the tricky parts was navigating how much white space we've generated around the dashed lines with the icons. Especially on desktop, I feel like they almost look like they're floating. In a perfect world, we could tuck those dashed lines up underneath the sections above and below them. However, wanting to keep live text and all of those kinds of things in space and consistent, we had to keep them above the sections. Overall, I'm super happy with how this came out. Matt Helbig: Nice. Could you tell me a little bit about this one? <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/beverlys-oasis-is-still-available" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/5ab79c024148455fb6044f31ed23e0b9"></a> Andy McCutcheon: This is our checkout abandonment email. This is one of a couple of different checkout abandonment emails we have. This is a user who starts the checkout process for a particular unit and then abandons it before completing. We resurface that unit that they were looking at and link back to it in a few different places, trying to encourage them to complete that reservation. We've done a lot of testing on the CTA. “Make it Yours” is the current CTA. Previously, we were just doing “Book Now.” We've tried a few different variants, and “Make it Yours” was the highest performer of the last round of testing that we did.&nbsp; Then, we recently onboarded a firm as a payment method partner, and we're all super excited about offering that. That was something that we felt made a lot of sense to surface in this email where somebody possibly got to the payment screen and felt a little bit unsure about making that last click. So, we surface this as a flexible payment option. I think this was a great recent addition that's only been in this template for a couple of months. Matt Helbig: Yeah, I like bringing in that level of personalization, and utilizing that live text to maybe do that as well. It’s cool to see. Then whenever you can use, I'm guessing these great images or things like that, especially with travel emails, it's nice to see, bringing those in and letting them go full width on mobile and stuff. I think on mobile, this one's optimized and would definitely catch my attention in the inbox. Andy McCutcheon: It makes our job a lot easier when we have phenomenal images of homes like this one. It makes it easy for us to pull in the primary image of the unit that they were looking at and make it pop. We make sure to use the default image for that home so that it's instantly recognizable from that session that they had on the site so they’ll know what we're reaching back out to them about. Matt Helbig: I'm curious, is there a reason why you don't show prices in this email? Andy McCutcheon: Yeah, that's a good point. We did an A/B test last year. It's been probably about six months so it might be time to revisit, but we did have a version of this that had the reservation details with the home’s name, the check-in, and check-out dates, as well as the price that they were seeing in their cart when they abandoned. We had a couple of different breakdowns of just the total price, and then, the rent plus fees, plus tax, and then a subtotal. We had the highest click-through rate and the highest post-click conversion rate from this one, that was a little bit more simple and clean so that's what we ended up going with. Matt Helbig: Thanks for sharing those learnings. It’s super cool to see testing emails like this that are maybe a more triggered email that can make you a lot of money long term.&nbsp; Then this last one caught my eye with this wave breaking up the color here. Great photography, great use of live text. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/time-to-start-planning-that-oregon-coast-trip" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/04cc87a6fad1478da07cbdeda4b96cd1"></a> Andy McCutcheon: This was something where again we're trying to lead into accessible destinations for folks. This was sent to users in our database that live in Washington, Oregon, or Idaho, where traveling to the Oregon coast is pretty accessible. Obviously, the waves, trying to be on theme with the Oregon coast. Our email designer and developer, Rachel, came up with this design and the waves to break up the depth of field almost in the header. That was something I saw on <a href="https://www.reallygoodemails.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Really Good Emails</a> that stood out to me. I shared it with the team as an example of how we could use live text as the main header title of the email and then have the image below it, and then do something underneath the image to break it up and give a little bit of a sense of depth to it, while still making my main image pop. Matt Helbig: It definitely stands out to me. I’m a big fan of these colors working together. It's cool to see a ghost button test to see if that would maybe perform a little bit better than an all-white button. However, I think it works for something like this, where there's a little bit more text leading you into that CTA. Andy McCutcheon: I think if we had gone with our traditional yellow CTA with that accent line directly beneath it, it might have been a little bit overpowering. I like the ghost button for this section as well and had I been thinking a little bit more strategically at the time, I probably would have liked to have done a direct A/B test, but something to think about for the future.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Anything else with these emails? Anything that's exciting with email? Anything upcoming? Andy McCutcheon: We're trying to keep being innovative and keep trying to take advantage of a lot of the great visual assets that we, as a vacation rental company, have access to.&nbsp; It makes our job easier when we have great assets, but then it's also on us to take it to the next level. That's always a challenge with email because you want it to be easily scrollable and not be visually overwhelming and not get in the way of the objective of the email. That's something that I think that we're constantly striving for, is how can we make this visual and really pop to the recipient, but also not be overwhelming and be clean, easy to scroll through, and easy to navigate. Matt Helbig: Amazing work. I like experimenting with these different layouts and designs. They all still feel like they're part of the same brand and the same design system. Thanks for jumping on and walking through these with us! Andy McCutcheon: Cool, thank you. It's so good to talk to you.

Do you map out every single step of a trip right down to the rest stops, or are you up for randomly stopping off at a local diner for some good and greasy food to pull an all-night drive? (Yeah, us too.) While emails should be more planned out than late-night road trip stops, you can easily customize your message by pulling in dynamic content. Andy McCutcheon, email marketing manager at Vacasa, walks us through some customized email templates with built-in styles, classes, and our favorite: live text.

How to Personalize the Travel Experience with Vacasa

This FF episode was sponsored by <a href="https://us.netcorecloud.com/superior-email-delivery" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netcore</a>. Revolutionize email experiences with the only email delivery platform that leverages AI to power deliverability and increased customer engagement.<hr> Matt Helbig: What's up Email Geeks? Welcome back to another episode of Feedback Friday, this week with a special guest. How's it going?&nbsp; Avi Goldman: I'm doing alright. How are you doing?&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Good. We've been a big fan of <a href="https://useparcel.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Parcel</a>, so I was interested a little bit about this tool and your background Avi. Avi Goldman: For sure. I’m an Email Geek, first and foremost, that's kind of where I've been for the past five years. I've done some software engineering, marketing, product management, and everything that I do, I love to tie back into email. That's kind of who I am at this point.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: We have some <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/poolside-fm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Poolside FM</a> emails today, a very nice chill vacation vibe for the summer. I'm excited to walk through these and get your opinions on them.&nbsp; Avi Goldman: These are gorgeous.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: We're actually in Parcel right now. It's a pretty interesting, cool text editor for HTML, email development. I’m digging the scalable windows here and the different viewports. I think we can go to the desktop view, and we can walk through this one.&nbsp; Avi Goldman: Let's do it.&nbsp; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ayhFSwABBSU" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/ayhFSwABBSU</a> Matt Helbig: Sweet. What stood out to you on some of these? Avi Goldman: The thing that first struck me was just the colors, they fit so well with what I expect from the brand. They feel calming, that blue, and think about the colors, we'll see, they just feel like a vacation to me. That was the biggest thing for me, was just that it covers the entire screen, they don't have any width of 600, they filled up the entire email. They still have a really good text width, which is really important since they’re using that monospace. It creates a gorgeous feeling when I open the email, that was the biggest thing for me.&nbsp; <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/poolside-fm-launches-sunscreen-company-vacation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/a55eebbfeeb848bdbf018b9fb7cbdfc6"></a> Matt Helbig: I'm liking how the colors are working together with this nice, big sort of eye-catching GIF. It’s sort of a one-column email using some live text here, with that custom font for the intro. I like the reverse-pyramid right down into this copy. Yeah, we don't see a lot of mono type space like this. (Monospace font is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space.) Matt Helbig: It fits their brand, more like a code-y developer sort of vibe. I'm a fan.&nbsp; Avi Goldman: Me too. Also, it's the 80’s feel too. The graphic at the top of the 80’s typeface too, like a no-text terminal kind of computer.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Yeah, and then right into that “Reserve Yours” CTA. I'm also a fan of how these colors are working together. Scrolling down to the second section, there is a fun little GIF talking about an honorary position at “Vacation Inc.” Avi Goldman: Amazing. It's fun. They've put a little bit of a game inside the email to engage you. It catches your eye.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Going down into this bottom section with the social, I think this is something that we call out a lot, sort of having a preview of these Instagram posts. I think it works pretty well here, just giving you a little teaser about content that they're sharing on Instagram. Then, there are some simple icons on the bottom. I was interested actually in some of these accessibility tools that you've built into Parcel here like we had blurred vision. Avi Goldman: The goal was to cover a wide range of accessibility issues. The first one that I wanted to tackle was visual impairments. My dad and my brother are both colorblind, I have really bad vision, and my apartment has windows that get glare all the time. There's both the situational disability as well as one that you just have. It's really important to keep that sort of thing in mind and that's kind of what I want to cover here.&nbsp; My vision tends to be almost black and white, especially when I have a glare on my laptop, so that one was important to me, even though it is probably the least common visual accessibility issue. Personally, the blurred screens, without my glasses, tend to be like that as well. I wanted to make it easy to see what that was like. Then, we can kind of see what that looks like here with blurred vision, that monospace font and at that 14 point font, it does make it difficult to see. Definitely, without my glasses, I wouldn't be reading this email. Matt Helbig: I know there are some tools out there that simulate this for you, for the web, but it's nice to have something like this built-in with that accessibility in mind. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/mixtapes-poolchat-keychains" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/81096e1f483d4f78b14f347ac9642269"></a> This is an ad for a mixtape. I like this throwback window here, and again, with that monotype, some interesting background colors, and just being consistent. I guess these GIFs specifically stand out to me.&nbsp; Avi Goldman: The thing that stood out for me in this email was their brand voice. It fits so well with their website, and with the design of it, it's a very fun, free flow, kind of human voice. It's easy to connect with it, it's easy to see that. If you're listening through to the mixtape, you will probably relate to the way they’re talking to you. They’ve tailored their brand voice to their audience well.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: I think some of these headlines could be a little larger to break up these sections. I think the bold is an indicator of that, maybe on mobile, it's a little clearer. Overall, I think they could make that a tad bit bigger here to break up these sections. I’m a fan of how this one goes through, and it's a rare strike through which I always like. It's a weird thing to include in email. With the all caps too, they're bringing in that fun tone voice as you said. I think this one's a pretty fun little newsletter. I guess I might have a problem with all this stuff being centered text, especially on some of these longer sections, it might get a little bit hard to read. I'd be interested in seeing this left-aligned, just on the accessibility side.&nbsp; Avi Goldman: Actually, can we try toggling the images off to see what their alt text looks like?&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Sure. Not the best, or at all. Avi Goldman: Yeah, I think that was something that jumped out at me when I was looking at these emails earlier. A lot of their headings are well designed with the typography, and they’ve used images to keep that, which is a totally valid thing to do, but when you have images off, when you're using a screen reader, and there's nothing there, that makes it hard to use for some folks. I think it's a really important, and pretty straightforward, step especially when the entire image is just a piece of text. Matt Helbig: Having this text be alt tags, you could even do a fun-styled alt text. You could probably create something a little bit similar to this in the email so that if those images are turned off, or are loading a little slow, you can get something with this before everything loads.&nbsp; Avi Goldman: I think mixing both an image CTA with a completely coated live text CTA at the bottom there. If you use the second item, over the little crosshairs, and go ahead and click on that, it makes it easy to see that, and the beauty of live text makes it easy to change. It’s really easy to jump in and pull that over. There are a few other tools up there on the right that make it easy to just go ahead and make the changes to your email right there.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Even this hover is impressive and useful.&nbsp; Avi Goldman: Another nice thing that we could do with this email, is this one is most definitely going to get clipped in Gmail with the current size of it. However, there's a lot of whitespace in this email, a lot of bad formatting. If you click on the “zero transformers” at the bottom left, head over to formatting, and go ahead and minify it, then, we can see in the bottom left now that it dropped 38%, from 122 kilobytes to 76. Now, this email is almost definitely not going to get clipped down. By turning that on, we can save ourselves from potentially not letting our subscribers see our full message. If you want to see the minified version, you can click on “source” next to “preview”. There is all the spacing, any unnecessary new lines, any HTML comments that aren’t MSO comments, all get stripped out. You're good to grab this code and send it off. This email is now safe, and it's going to fall under that Gmail limit. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/poolside-fm-for-mac-out-now" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/29cf400a6c7d49b0af10b8a5d8b3e7e5"></a> Matt Helbig: Another 80’s themed image here. Avi Goldman: Again with that consistency. Matt Helbig: Nice, they're just going again with these really large headlines with that type. I like how big this App Store button is. Usually, you see it sort of tucked away at the bottom, but I like that being the main CTA. For some reason, it's more fun or on-brand for me, than just a “download now” CTA. Avi Goldman: It feels integrated with the Apple system, it’s using their CTA as your CTA.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Again, a fun little GIF driving into that “App Store” CTA. Avi Goldman: A small thing that I liked that they did here is near the bottom, when they say, “Follow us on Insta”, they've got the link bolded, there’s a color change, and it’s underlined so it’s really clear that that's a link. We as the industry will sometimes hide links, the unsubscribe link, or something like that, and that can sometimes bleed over into link fatality. Having that small, that secondary CTA, of following them on Instagram, but still making it clear that you can click there, I think is nice.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: When I try to create links, I always think about if someone clicks this, will they be surprised? When I land on a page, I don't like being surprised. This is very clear that this is a link, it’s going to their Instagram, and this is their handle. Even though it's a small thing, I think it does help you eliminate that confusion of knowing when you click on something exactly where you're going to land. Tell me why I'm clicking this link and where I'm going to go.&nbsp; Then, you've also launched <a href="https://emailresourc.es/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Email Resources</a>, which is a very comprehensive list of email resources. What made you want to put all this together?&nbsp; Avi Goldman: With Email Resources, the name kind of explains what it is, right? It's a list of resources focused on email. What it was, is that I had a big spreadsheet myself of email resources that I’ve collected, it was probably 100+ resources, and I have people asking me for recommendations and suggestions all the time. I figured why not share the list directly? I figured it would be a great place for adult people to find the tools that will do the job that they have, and also learn about categories of tools that they might not have known existed. If you don't know that there are minifiers, discovery is a big thing.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: This is my favorite one right here, I think. Avi Goldman: I agree that's marked as a favorite. Definitely top three.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: I know we're always looking to send someone a link with all the resources that we've collected or looked at over the years. This is a lot of work and thank you for putting this together because it's a very comprehensive guide, especially for someone starting with email development or design or copywriting, or marketing. Even when I go through, I'm still finding out cool new things to try out and learn from. Thanks for putting this together.&nbsp; Avi Goldman: My absolute pleasure.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Where can we find you online?&nbsp; Avi Goldman: You can find me on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/theavigoldman" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@theavigoldman</a>. You can also check out the Parcel account, which is <a href="https://twitter.com/useparcel" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@useparcel</a>. I'm in the <a href="https://email.geeks.chat/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Email Geeks Slack</a> as AGoldman so if you've got any questions or you want to just chat, hit me up on any of those platforms.&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Thanks for joining us this week. A big fan of these emails and a big fan of this tool. Avi Goldman: Thanks, Matt.

If an email is sent and no one added alt text, does it reach the inbox? Descriptive alt text is just one thing to keep in mind to serve up accessible emails. We talk mixtapes and Macintosh with Avi Goldman, founder of Parcel and curator of Email Resources, putting these e-commerce emails to the accessibility test in Parcel’s interface.

How to Bring Nostalgia and Accessibility to E-Commerce with Poolside FM

This FF episode was sponsored by&nbsp;<a href="https://us.netcorecloud.com/superior-email-delivery" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netcore</a>. Revolutionize email experiences with the only email delivery platform that leverages AI to power deliverability and increased customer engagement. <hr> Kelly Lamano: Hey there Email Geeks! Welcome back to another episode of Feedback Friday. This week we've got a special guest, Aysha Marie Zouain. She's a senior consultant specializing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud at Deloitte Digital. Welcome, Aysha, how are you? Aysha Marie Zouain: Hi, doing good, doing good. Happy to be here.&nbsp; Kelly Lamano: Yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Aysha Marie Zouain: I am a designer-developer strategy combo. That’s what I do at Deloitte Digital currently. I play all day in Content Builder, but I also work with others and train them into doing awesome work all over the platform. Whether it's in automations, cloud pages, or anything else like that. Kelly Lamano: You're also involved in Women of Email too? Aysha Marie Zouain: Yes, I am now a board member, but I've been with Women of Email now for four years. I’ve been a board member for about three.&nbsp; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UuwNPsmxZpY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/UuwNPsmxZpY</a> Kelly Lamano: That's great. Email is a great way to meet people and share different experiences too and different backgrounds. Today we're going to talk about some of your work as an email developer with Apartment Guide, which falls under RentPath. Tell us a little bit about your experience there and the different versions of the emails that you created. Aysha Marie Zouain: On a day-to-day basis, I would get different projects coming in from different departments, and they would send them via our project management software. I know that we hopped around several different ones and I think we were on Asana. We would get different requests from stakeholders. We had a very strict form that asked, ”How do you want this to look? What's the cadence? Do you have the art files? Do you want it to be done by the email developer?”. Generally, I didn't have enough time to do the design. Occasionally I did do it, but for the most part, I was far too busy to be doing any design work anymore.&nbsp; This one, I’ll be showing iteration number one, and then iteration number two. I believe now it is on iteration number three, I just haven't checked recently for Apartment Guide. Generally, I worked on three brands, but because RentPath itself had an overarching brand, I would say it was four brands within RentPath that I worked on. Kelly Lamano: Tell us a little bit about this first version here. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/fa9a6e57904c42b4979edc418d1efb7b"> Aysha Marie Zouain: For version one, if you look at the backend of the code, I based it out of Cerberus, and I learned quite a bit.&nbsp; We put different things in here. I like to start with a good base template, and then code it to make it my own. With this template, the ask was very little. This version was very basic. They wanted something like a cityscape. This content team requested a blog email that would be coming out as a newsletter every week, and this was the welcome series. The welcome series was only one email, and I hope that it expanded. If not, it was what it was, but this was the first version of it.&nbsp; It had different copy compared to version two, and a slightly different style. This version sets you up to know how the cadence is because it says, “Look for an email once a week”. We talk about what the subject is going to be about, besides just being a renter. We talk about amenities, smart apartments, and what kind of streaming services are the best. Also, this was before the site was redesigned. Once the site was redesigned and deployed, that’s why we did a second version. Kelly Lamano: Sounds like as the website was updated so were the email templates to keep it consistent across the channels. Aysha Marie Zouain: Yeah. We had something called “My Saved Places” and “Manage My Preferences”. I had just started learning how to do hover, so that was the first time I dipped my toes into doing more interesting stuff with my code. Kelly Lamano: Yeah, that's a nice effect there. A subtle sort of surprise for the subscriber. Aysha Marie Zouain: Yeah. I know that it changes significantly. At the bottom, you also have the Equal Opportunity Housing disclaimer. I think it's awesome and really important that companies like RentPath make sure that they show that they are because it kind of puts the user at ease to know they have an equal opportunity. The company itself was very much invested in us always needing to have that in our emails because we are always advocating for everyone to have an equal housing opportunity. RentPath has an arm for volunteering that I've always enjoyed, and it shows in some of the content that we post, or at least when I was a part of it. Kelly Lamano: Let's hop over to version two. <img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/c537f832472c43c7a570dd318aaefed4"> Aysha Marie Zouain: This one I feel is a lot stronger. I wanted to make it even fancier, it was my own idea to keep it updated. I told the team, “Hey guys, why don't we keep it more like the way that the site looks”, and they agreed. It's not the real money driver, it’s more just nice to have. The main driver was the transactional emails.&nbsp; Specifically, this was nice to have, but at the same time, this was also the unifying kind of codebase that you can see here. We had already done a design system with Trendline and this was using part of their base code. I customized it so if I ever did something cool, I could bring that over to other templates and swap in anything else I wanted. Everything was table-based, so it wasn't “TDTR”, it was “Table Table Table, Table”. You can easily make it modular and even though TDTR’s is modular, we had the preference to make it into tables. That's how I built this one out and customized it to make it look like the branding for the new site.&nbsp; We still kept the top, everything else from that logo down was of my own making, except for the footer, because the footer was the designers over at Trendline. Kelly Lamano: It looks like with the copy you also added in a couple of links. In the first version, it looked like it was more text-based, and it didn't link out, but here it's more specifically linking to “streaming services”, “smart apartments”, and “rent control”. It helps guide the subscriber in that sense. Aysha Marie Zouain: Yeah, I think the most important thing when you're working with teams is that not everyone's going to know as much as you, as the email marketer or email developer, or whatever your title is, or specialist. They're not quite going to know or appreciate as much as you so you're always the educator. Here I was like, “Hey let's link it back out to the site so people won't completely ignore this little welcome email. Let's keep it a little bit more entertaining.” Even though I didn't win out the battle of having cool graphics, at least I was able to win them over by saying, “Look, let's link out streaming services, smart apartments, and rent control” because those are things that are important to renters, at least in a cursory manner.&nbsp; Kelly Lamano: I think you made a great point about being an educator, and how sometimes when you're working with companies, they are really looking to you to be that guide, or maybe they don't know, “this should be the CTA” or “this is what should we be linking out to”. You come in as an expert saying, “Hey I think that renters would like this, and we might get more engagement” or something like that. In the instance of building these, what is something that you've carried with you, either something that you learned or something that you would change from building these? Aysha Marie Zouain: A lot of emails that I created at RentPath gave emails more breathing room than I did before. There's a lot more whitespace, but you can digest the content a lot better. Kelly Lamano: What are some of your favorite resources for coding? Aysha Marie Zouain: I'm following a bunch of people on Twitter, that's actually what's been helping me out more because I'm not on Email Geek’s Slack quite as much, but I also like to learn from my co-workers. A lot of us are stuck in the trenches and aren't famous for what we do, but we're still happy to share and learn what we've been experimenting with. Kelly Lamano: It's cool to see the different versions and then hearing the different resources that you use, even after building these, again with the progression of that, and how you learn from other people. I think that we are all in this to where we all share resources and we all kind of cheer each other on, or that's the goal. It's cool to hear the different resources that you use. Thanks for sharing everything today, Aysha. Where can we find you outside of Email Geeks and the email world? Aysha Marie Zouain: You can find my Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/blackendhonesty" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@blackenedhonesty</a>. I'm always sharing either jobs or cool things I found out to do.&nbsp; Kelly Lamano: Everyone, go follow Ayesha, support her work. Check out Women of Email. Maybe we'll see you on a future episode! Aysha Marie Zouain: Definitely, and have a good one, everyone.&nbsp; Kelly Lamano: Happy Friday.&nbsp; Aysha Marie Zouain: Happy Friday.

When your newsletter isn't a top priority for your business, does that mean it isn't worth having one at all? We chatted with Aysha Marie Zouain, a senior email consultant specializing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud at Deloitte Digital, about why it's good to revisit older email strategies from time to time. Just like the housing market, a little remodeling can do wonders for your entire property value (even if all you remodel is your front door).

How Updating Welcome Emails Can Improve the Customer Experience with Apartment Guide

This FF episode was sponsored by <a href="https://more.emfluence.com/really-good-emails" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">emfluence</a>. Get paired with a marketer to see how your strategy will work in the emfluence Marketing Platform. <hr> Matt Helbig: What’s up, Email Geeks. Welcome back to another episode of Feedback Friday, this week with Kelly Lamano, content master of Really Good Emails, writer of newsletters. How's it going, Kelly? Kelly Lamano: Hey Matt, it’s going pretty great. That was quite the intro. Thank you. Matt Helbig: Do you have a better title for yourself? Kelly Lamano: No. I mean, that set the bar right there. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iK_MNbgr6ls" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/iK_MNbgr6ls</a>&nbsp; Matt Helbig: These are some Disney+ emails. These are Matthew's picks, and I thought we could walk through them and talk about what we like. So, this first one looks like an onboarding email, trying to get you to try this GroupWatch feature. And I really liked this layout. It's pretty unique from what we usually see. They're using live text here, which is really awesome to see. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/introducing-groupwatch" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/73861f5520d44dc4905e132085b92e2b"></a> Kelly Lamano: Yeah. I really liked that. They use a mix of live text and images. They could have just placed blocks of images for everything, but it's kind of unique how they have the CTA right at the top of the email. So it's kind of like, Hey, try GroupWatch…if you're not ready to try it, you can scroll down and see how it works. And then they have that consistent CTA at the bottom with Start GroupWatch. So, it's the same button at the top and the bottom, keeping it very consistent, but also walking you through the steps of how to use it. Matt Helbig: It looks like this is almost a mobile-first email in general, keeping everything pretty optimized for mobile, not having too long of a text leading people into that CTA.I think that they use a nice balance of colors to sort of break up the sections as well. Overall, I’m a fan of this one. Moving on to the next one, another Mandalorian GroupWatch email. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/groupwatch-the-mandalorian" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e52a2cd7c77d47ddabd253699406298e"></a> Kelly Lamano: The Mandalorian was the reason why I tried Disney+. It was my intro to Star Wars, never watched the series until then, but I think it's really cool that they highlight that throughout the entire email. So, it's kind of like they're pushing Disney+ as a product, but they're also pushing The Mandalorian as a show. So, it's like double advertisement and it's kind of cool how they draw you into the email, even at the top with This is the Way, the motto of the Mandalorian. It's cool how they show you, you can watch the show together. I'm kind of curious to know the reasoning behind the side-by-side CTAs. That's kind of unique. So, the Start Streaming and the GroupWatch. I'd be interested to know what the results were behind that. Did they have more people click Start Streaming or did they have more for the GroupWatch? I’m definitely interested in the science behind that. Matt Helbig: I think we usually see these, what we call ghost buttons that are just an outline perform a little less when they're the main CTA, but as a secondary CTA, it works well if you really wanted to have these next together. I think the Start Streaming being that very clear CTA, that blue color stands out, and then the secondary GroupWatch matches the UI of the product, and it's more like a secondary CTA.I'm a fan of the gradient on the CTA. I'm sure this might just be an image and kind of hard to do with actual CSS, but I think this is a good solution to this problem of showing them next to each other, versus stacking them, they might look a little awkward. I liked this GIF. I think it is just the right amount of time. It's a little bit flashy, but it draws your eye in, very optimized for this mobile view. Again, pointing you toward that double CTA with the main CTA watching the trailer and that secondary, adding it to a Watchlist. It would be cool to see if they had a play button here that might make you want to watch this trailer, a little bit clearer if that's the main CTA they want to use. Kelly Lamano: I am curious about the Follow Us buttons. I noticed that on a lot of their emails toward the footer, they just have Follow Us and then the three buttons there. Like what you and Matthew have said before, I'd like to see more of why should we follow them? Continuing the conversation, or interacting with other viewers - why should we follow them? I’d want to see that in the future. Matt Helbig: These are sort of paired down. There aren't a hundred icons and they're pretty big, so they're pretty clickable on mobile. And then on desktop, it might be fun to add some hover effects on some of these CTAs, an opacity hover effect might be a cool little touch for those desktop users. Moving on to this next one, it’s more of an upsell email. They want you to buy into this package, upgrading your subscription. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/switch-to-the-disney-bundle-and-save" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e52b7bed2210417d934ac6a3dcb259d7"></a> Kelly Lamano: I really like how they opened the email with a bunch of different titles, showcasing that in a visual way and that covers a wide variety of audiences. So, if you like sports, you might want to watch the Dwyane Wade documentary. If you like comedy or Disney films, you might want to watch Toy Story 4 or The Simpsons. I think it's cool how they kind of open that up, so they reach a broad audience. I like how, again, they use a lot of live text here and highlighting the logos of the companies that are partnering together, and then using that consistent CTA again. It seems like a lot of the time they have that blue button, and they keep it very consistent. So, it's teaching the reader what to look for. Matt Helbig: I also liked the very descriptive CTA copy and not repeating it here as well. I think that it's smart rather than a Buy Now. I think this Bundle and Save 25%, and Upgrade Your Subscription early are powerful CTAs. They are so close together that even if they're leading to the same page, updating the copy and targeting toward that section really supports that message. This next one has a very good use of GIFs. Some WandaVision. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/this-week-on-disney-wanda-vision" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/d6f969eb888c4f5cacf655bc7fea7645"></a> Kelly Lamano: Yeah, that one's a really cool GIF. I like how everything is kind of moving in that picture. It definitely catches your eye. I think that Disney really touches on how they can reach such a wide range of people, showing all the different movies, all the different TV shows, all the different ages that they reach. It's good to highlight different options. I think even in the future if they don't already do this, it'd be cool to see some sort of personalization. So, instead of seeing a bunch of different titles, maybe personalizing it to what's already on your Watchlist and then a follow-up to that would be cool to see. Matt Helbig: I think they really have to compete with some of these other streaming services like Netflix and Hulu who seem to do a lot of personalization when it comes to their emails, HBO Max as well. They've stood out to me on bringing a more simplistic, very friendly communication about focusing on these titles, having these nice, actionable Watchlist CTAs. I think they're trying to cater to a wide audience with their product and maybe even a younger audience. Hopefully, they can learn a little bit about your streaming preferences and try to personalize this when they can, but they do have a lot of content to serve you, and how they do that in these emails is cool. This last one really stood out to me. I really liked all the colors working together, leading down into this section with this GIF CTA. This one really caught my eye in the inbox. I think it stands out, and we don't really get to see a GIF CTA very often that's not totally crazy or annoying. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/get-early-access-to-mulan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/7a89cb9689124c54a8ebe39d4fbc8483"></a> Kelly Lamano: Yeah. I love that GIF CTA. That definitely drew me in. I don't see a lot of that. It's really cool to see that moving, and I feel like that pushes the audience to click even more because it’s like, Oh, this is nice. And it's really cool how everything is centered. I think it works well here because they don't have a ton of text on each line. They keep it simple, and I think it really works just drawing your eyes all the way down. Matt Helbig: Cool. Well, nice work Disney+, definitely a brand to follow. I'm going to have to watch some of these. Thanks for coming on, Kelly. Have a happy Friday. Kelly Lamano: Thanks, Matt. Happy Friday. Matt Helbig: See ya.

This week, we're diving into some entertainment emails from Disney+. Should you use side-by-side CTA buttons? GIFs in the header? What about a 50-year-old who’s a former Jedi youngling? Email marketing is a complicated profession. Disney+ simplifies how they promote their streaming services by highlighting titles to watch and balancing live text with images.

How to Promote Digital Services, plus Doubling Up on CTAs with Disney+

Do you remember your first letter? Maybe you found a pen pal across the world. Or you just got a letter from some guy in a green striped shirt with a bowl cut and wondered who it was from. We chatted about promotional emails from Postable with Emily Ryan, a Mailchimp Pro Partner, owner of the agency Westfield Creative, and taco lover.

How to Customize the Subscriber Experience with Postable

This FF episode was sponsored by&nbsp;<a href="https://more.emfluence.com/really-good-emails" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">emfluence</a>. Get paired with a marketer to see how your strategy will work in the emfluence Marketing Platform. <hr> Matthew Smith: Hey, it's Feedback Friday. What's up, Matt Helbig? What's up, Email Geeks? Matt Helbig: What's up, Email Geeks. Welcome back to another episode of Feedback Friday. Matthew and Matt, back together at last. Matthew Smith: The reunion tour. Awesome. Yeah, I've been neck-deep in working on Really Good Emails’ new product that we’re working hard on. Can't wait to show everybody.&nbsp; But in the meantime, <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/postmates" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Postmates</a> got acquired by Uber, and some shift up in their emails. Should we talk about it? Matt Helbig: Yeah, I was really excited. I feel like they've brought a whole brand-new voice to their emails. We were a fan of their emails in the past, but someone had a meeting somewhere and these emails are looking pretty good. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9hCa3VN3HI8" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/embed/9hCa3VN3HI8</a> Matthew Smith: I think you're right, Matt Helbig, that somebody had a meeting and there's a lot more entertainment.&nbsp; This photography - I'm going to be a dad here - it's out of this world. It's just really interesting to see what's happening. There's a lot of art direction in each of these emails that is really unique. The last time I've seen something at this level was in MailChimp. They were doing some really sick stuff with photography and product photography that I think takes things to a whole new level and just makes it really interesting. This is just fun, some kind of wild, mesmerizing GIF. They also have this very different…it leans on what's almost a brutalist style. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/soup-fans-this-is-your-moment" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/912ac500bb5f4f5895e03ff4b992df60"></a> There's this thing that brutalism did recently in the last, I dunno, let's call it three or four years that brought up big, bold colors, flashy content. This is not brutalist design, but I'd say it's influenced by that. It's pretty interesting. So you can see overall it’s a completely different aesthetic with different sort of ideas happening here.&nbsp; What do you think? What's their motivation behind it?&nbsp; <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/were-feelin-foolish" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/8f2016a9137241c88cca397fa242412b"></a> Matt Helbig: I think it's maybe trying to do something new. Food delivery is pretty competitive. I think Postmates is on the lower end. I'm actually a Caviar user. I'm not trying to be a food delivery elitist, but I think they’re trying to make it more like a fun experience.You know, food delivery is an automatic sort of thing. And I think this may add some fun and gamification to this, to let you discover new foods and things like that. So other than the push notifications that they send you probably every day around a specific time letting you know you should place an order, I think they're using email to bring you back into the product or open up the app again. And I think that it's just a successful way to do that.&nbsp; I really think they're focusing on that mobile user having really big CTAs on some of these, and it's trying to drive people back into the app and make it a fun experience of ordering food rather than just a horrible waiting delivery. Matthew Smith: I think you're probably right. I like all your comments. One of the thoughts for me is just that their previous brand was pretty utilitarian, really easy to understand. And they've maintained some of that with really clear hierarchy.&nbsp; This is one of the things that most of the people that submit emails to Really Good Emails I think get wrong, which is not clear enough hierarchy. Hierarchy being really clear, bold headings, nice subheadings that are easy to read, clear CTA, and then more information again, really big, bold heading, and then a nice, easy-to-read paragraph and a CTA.&nbsp; Just let your email get done quickly. And you can see in each of these, they're doing the same thing over and over, and that kind of consistent experience throughout these, I'm pretty impressed by it. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/hungry-but-cant-decide" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/e380ed31bf1049079e4c3c7bd6f2fcba"></a> I am really into this little lockup here. You know, it's a bummer. These are mostly image emails. They're not entire image, but they're mostly image emails, which is a bummer for all the reasons I've ever talked about before. But it is interesting to engage somebody in something like this, which is sort of a decision matrix tree. I would say most people can probably relate to pizza, tacos, and burgers being kind of a strong American delivery food, but it's fun. This is a fun way to go about it. Fun way to think through it.&nbsp; One of the things I think is interesting is that they're doing different typography for several of these emails. This is a unique piece of typography compared to this one. Is that the same? It might be of the same family, but this is a condensed version. And that is probably the same version, but they've really done something unique here, but it still feels within the family. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/donuts-make-it-better-" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/c66351e09db4415ea1a640941d23e31e"></a> And they've just done a nice job with their content, getting people excited. It's pretty interesting too, leading with these coupons on getting people into that order now fast, instead of putting it down here, which is what most people would do.&nbsp; What do you think about that as a strategy? Matt Helbig: Yeah. I wonder if that's dynamic based on if you've shared recently or haven't shared recently, but I think referral is a great lead-in to a lot of these emails and a reminder that you can share this product. It’s almost a better way than something like a social share.But I think a lot of these ideas are not super new. It's just really cool to see them all put together in a nice consumable package and then really throwing a lot of different types of content and colors and ideas at you and not really repeating a lot of stuff. So that's cool to see. And I think it was a really interesting shift. I think this newsletter is a little bit of a new one. I've seen a lot of brands trying to have a more curated newsletter feel that brings a unique personality to the brand, other than just having a promotional email once a week. Matthew Smith: One of the ways that I think that people can do that, and they're doing it here, that I just think is brilliant…my friend, Tina from <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/tattly" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tattly</a>, she does this really well. She curates links. You think about curation as a service, right? That's what they're doing here is they're curating these things that are not necessarily all about food, right? It actually covers a lot of ground. It's a service people get to enjoy. Oh man, actually, the Postmates links are pretty sick. You know, it's a fun thing to go check out new stuff. All of this just feels like a brand I want to be a part of. It's interesting. It's fun. It involves food. I can even get into a food cookbook. I'm assuming something about this is ways to put to-go orders or takeout orders with maybe stuff you have at home.&nbsp; I don't know exactly, but I like the idea of don't cook. They're really going after it. They were just making it work. I think one of these things that I get kind of funny about is this sort of legal text. They've done an interesting thing here where they're bringing their legal text up in the email further. It's not quite hardcore legal, but you can see on several of these emails, they're doing that. Most people would put it down here below the footer or in the footer in really low contrast. And they've not done that here.&nbsp; What do you think that's about? Do you have any thoughts about it? Matt Helbig: I think I liked that placement. I kind of like the universal footer. It's a pretty clean well-thought-out outfitter. I think it's similar to almost an Uber footer, in my opinion, where they're putting some of these helpful links. These aren't a navigation bar, but they kind of have this group of links at the bottom that could help you, be a referral link or upsell, or unsubscribe in this group of text. And I think putting illegal under that would kind of break the flow of people wanting to click those bottom links if they need to. So I think this placement is right. I think maybe we would hope that they could link out to some sort of page and it was maybe a few lines that are right underneath the CTA potentially.&nbsp; But I think these are enough out of their way to let you know that they have to be there, and they're not the best, but I think the placement is alright. I kind of liked that they had this bottom footer that's universal across every email and is really out of the way and clean. Matthew Smith: I think if this text got to be too much longer, it would be pretty weird. But the fact that it's not absurd, it probably works. I always feel like a lot of this stuff can be pushed further down the line, like put into a webpage or things like that. But it sounds like something about their legal, they felt that it needed to be up here. So if you have to show legal, get a copywriter to work on stuff and try and make it as readable as possible, which I think they've done. I'm pretty impressed with these. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to get these to be live text, and I think that's definitely something that they could look at. You can see in some of these that the text gets quite small. I think this is live text, and they haven't done anything with mobile styles down here, at least that we're seeing. Some of those kinds of things would be good to update and make it a really good email.&nbsp; But overall, this is killer. And I think this photography shows that if you're willing to invest in it at a brand level, it can just really stick out and make something special. It's cool.&nbsp; Anything you would change about these?&nbsp; Matt Helbig: Maybe they could take a note from <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/uber" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Uber</a> or even <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/lyft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lyft</a> and try to pull in some more personalization when it comes to what your previous orders are or where you live.I think including city in the subject line is a really cool way to do some level of personalization that's beyond just first name and it really brings you in. I think even <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/yelp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Yelp</a> has&nbsp;done a lot where it's like, here are some trending restaurants in your city. And I think that personalization really grabs people's attention and wants to click in. So if they could try to create some one-off emails like that and experiment and see if those are a little bit better than these overall promotional ones. I think that’d be a cool thing to see. Matthew Smith: I think that it's hard to know if we're just not in this funnel or in this grouping, but it sure would be cool to also say, Oh, it looks like you ordered pizza from Geraldi's this last time. Have you tried Sidewall? They've got a 10% sale. Or some of those kinds of things where it looks like you might be a pizza person, and giving me a little bit of opportunity to say, not pizza tonight, taco…give me some sushi, and be able to change it up and begin to identify my food tastes or things like that. And the other thing too would be being able to start to specify. I want to see if I'm a vegan, this kind of email is going to come across as no bueno. With something as sensitive as food, I think sometimes food is as sensitive as religion or politics to some people, and so you gotta be careful. <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/one-giant-bite-for-mankind" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.reallygoodemails.com/blogContentImages/170d2aaaa251472ab5955e66b0191a5f"></a> It could be interesting to get a little bit more personalized there. I think that's a good call, man. But overall, these are killer. So, hey Postmates team, good work. Reach out and let us know what you're learning about it. We would love to hear from you.&nbsp; If you have emails like this, that you want to celebrate with us and push toward us, we would love to see them. You can upload your own emails for submission to <a href="https://reallygoodemails.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Really Good Emails</a> or upload submissions of other people's and rock and roll on the site. So let us know how we can help.&nbsp; Good week ahead for everybody. Matt Helbig, you doing anything fun this weekend? Matt Helbig: I'm going to order something from Postmates, have a little staycation. I think tacos are sounding pretty good. Matthew Smith: I'm looking forward to some dim sum. We've got them some coming into Greenville and I'm thinking, that's what I'm talking about. Matt Helbig: Nice. Have a great Friday, Matthew.&nbsp; Matthew Smith: Yeah. You too. Ciao, ciao, ciao!&nbsp; Matt Helbig: See ya!

Postmates is turning up the heat with gamification in its promotional emails. From Pac-Man spinoff GIFs to mysterious blurry images, we're covering some really good Postmates emails on this episode of Feedback Friday. Order something good for yourself while you're watching. (If you can't finish the food, we can help with that.)