In his Wrapping Your Head Around Modern Email talk at Digital Summit Detroit 2015, Jason Rodriguez discussed what modern email is, how to improve the subscriber experience, and shared tips for email design.
Rodriguez is an email advocate, community manager at Litmus, and has written two books about email design.
Here are my notes from his talk:
- Modern email considers the entire subscriber experience. Rather than thinking of email as a “blast” to subscribers, we need to think of engaging with subscribers in a more personal way.
- Email is not dead. It’s a valuable channel, and has high return on investment (ROI)
- Make your “From name” memorable and recognizable. Don’t create HTML email with a name your subscriber doesn’t recognize. Use around 25 characters.
- For the “Subject line,” use around 35 characters to create an interesting subject that relates to the content
- Preheader text is critical to getting subscribers to open your email. Use it in tandem with your email subject line. Limit preheader text to around 85 characters.
- Make sure the tone of your email matches the tone of your web presence.
- Use short, clear copy (plain language!)
- Stop using “click” or “click here” in your emails; no one can click on a phone
- Create meaningful call to action (CTA)
- Email design is not like modern web design. Rather it uses table-based markup (unfortunately, email applications don’t support modern web design markup)
- Since 2011, there’s been a 512 percent growth in mobile email opens. Mobile email accounts for 51 percent of all opened email
- Email design has three different approaches: mobile-first (one layout for all screens, single column design, large text and buttons), fluid (percentage-based widths, adapts to fit screen, text wraps automatically, but may result in long line lengths), and responsive (resizes content, hides content on mobile, stacks content)
- Responsive email design is split into two types: traditional responsive (relies on media queries, fluid images/tables on mobile, no Gmail support) and spongy (sometimes called fluid hybrid, conditional tables for Outlook, no media queries, supports Gmail)
- For successful emails, you need to meet your subscribers where they are (which today, means mobile)
- Test everything! Don’t limit yourself to tracking opens, unsubscribes, and click rates. Look at conversions, enquiries, direct feedback. Also, email length, subject lines, copy changes, preheader text, personalization, design elements, responsive design
- By testing and iterating, you can improve subscriber experience
- Think you’re limited to text and images in your HTML emails? Think again. In the past year, HTML emails have included live Twitter feeds as well as video and hidden Easter eggs.
Social Conversation
Here’s some of the social conversation and takeaways from Jason’s talk:
https://twitter.com/RodriguezCommaJ/status/646669183573446656
https://twitter.com/karlcordes/status/646673576851079169
https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/646676355422253056
https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/646677203770544128
https://twitter.com/RAnkney/status/646680219420631040
https://twitter.com/ChillJoy_Me/status/646680601710493696
https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/646685977705058304
Thanks to Jason for publishing the slides from his presentation on SpeakerDeck.
