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Welcome to our recap of Email Camp MessageMania 2024! This year’s event brought together email professionals to explore the latest trends and strategies in email marketing.
From actionable tips on increasing your email marketing ROI to getting down to advanced localization and multilingual campaigns, you can use this information to elevate your email campaigns.
So, grab a drink and buckle up for a long (but insightful) journey!
Or, you can jump straight to the part that interests you the most:
Jessica Best, Owner & Chief Strategist at Better Ave
Consider this: 17% of legitimate emails don’t make it to the inbox.
Consider also: email has the highest ROI of any channel — $20-100 for every dollar spent (according to Jessica Best’s experience for the last 15 years).
How to explore its full potential?
When you spot inactive subscribers, re-engage them explicitly or subtly using a campaign that consists of three emails and send it every 3 months/6 months/20 sends, depending on your buying cycle. After that, remove those who didn’t engage to cut your losses, but send an “see you” note first (you might still retain some of your inactive subscribers!).
Introduce welcome emails or campaigns for when people are more likely to celebrate something or interact with your brand.
Collect data and use it wisely to make your emails more relevant and raise response rate and ROI.
Test different marketing and messaging mechanisms, not just adjusting copy or button color. Test 10 things a year/one thing a month.
Travis Hazlewood, Head of Email Deliverability at Ortto
Definition of spam has evolved over time. It’s now not just about unsolicited, but also malicious and even just irrelevant messages. It is anything that’s not explicitly asked for, what subscribers are no longer engaged with, or offensive and annoying. In other words, content that earns either apathy or outrage.
Are you a spammer? Even if you use double opt-in and send 100% legit emails, a lack of regular engagement from your audience can make you one.
Spam folder red flags:
How to get back into the inbox:
How to stay in the inbox:
Ashley Rodriguez, Deliverability Engineer at Sinch Mailgun
Think of email list hygiene as the practices you implement to keep your email list healthy and engaged. A well-maintained list is made up of people who actually want to hear from you, which is crucial for driving traffic and conversions.
When your email hygiene is poor, you might experience higher bounce rates, more spam complaints, and a drop in engagement. This not only affects your campaigns but can also put your domain and IP at risk of being blacklisted.
Good email hygiene leads to better deliverability, higher open rates, and an improved sender reputation. All of this translates into enhanced engagement and ultimately more sales.
Here are some effective strategies for cleaning your lists:
Best practices for list building:
Segment your attack:
Maintain your victory list:
Finally, don’t forget to maintain your “victory list”. Tools like Google Postmaster can help you monitor your sender reputation and deliverability rates. And always keep yourself updated on legal requirements like CAN-SPAM and GDPR to ensure compliance.
LB Blair, Chief Strategy Officer at Email Industries
Scammers are always there, aiming for maximum financial gain with minimal effort on their part.
In fact, a staggering 91% of hacking attempts start via email. Scammers employ various techniques, including phishing, pre-texting (trying to infiltrate existing business communications), sketchy websites, infected documents, copycat sites, and even blackmail.
So how do we protect ourselves? Enter spam filters.
How do spam filters benefit email marketers?
What if you are falsely accused as a spammer? Don’t panic!
Spam filters might seem like our opponents, but they provide us with continual support. By understanding how they work, we can create a safer and more effective email marketing environment together.
Greg Zakowicz, Sr. E-commerce Expert at Omnisend
Mike Nelson, Co-founder & Head of Growth at Really Good Emails / Beefree.io
Trends won’t save your business, fix issues with your business before trying to apply trends. Still, trendy designs can help you better communicate your message.
Principles to follow:
Trends to make your emails stand out in 2024 and beyond:
Honorable mentions: choose your own adventure (non-interactive quizzes), blurred product photos before launch.
Julia Papanek, Senior Email Developer & Designer at Hims & Hers
A design system is a set of building blocks and standards that create a unified framework to maintain consistency, reduce errors, and streamline workflows. It offers a set of reusable visual elements that accelerate the design process and allow brands to scale.
Foundation elements often already exist in a digital design system:
Modules are building blocks that are specific to email:
If you are only starting to fill your modules library, audit your top-performing email designs and look for common elements to convert to reusable modules.
After modules, come fully pre-made templates that act as wireframes for your most typically used templates. For example, you can have templates for a letter, reviews, simple reminders, zig-zag type designs, etc.
The last element of an email design system is documentation explaining how to use those elements.
Tips to make your email design system dominate inboxes:
Rob Gaer, Senior Software Engineer at Miro
Miro sends over 35 million transactional and marketing emails per month to over 70 million users. With its broad scope and reach, email is a good experimentation ground.
Why experiment:
Why A/B test specifically:
The project team for such experiments includes two marketing managers, a designer, a copywriter, an analyst, a front-end engineer, and a back-end engineer.
The process for A/B testing looks more like a circle than a straight line:
Miro has a diverse audience across different team roles (product management, marketing, IT, etc.), plan types (free/paid ones), seniority levels (executives, managers, etc.), and use cases (process mapping, strategy & planning, etc.). Each of these users receives a welcome email which makes it a great candidate for A/B testing.
Welcome email tests are based on two segments: new Creators and new Collaborators. Creators are those who create boards and invite Collaborators. They tend to have specific product use cases while Collaborators are using Miro because of the Creator’s use case.
Many Collaborators don’t do anything in Miro within 24 hours after registration. The Miro team decided to create a welcome email to encourage this user segment’s engagement.
The hypothesis was that a higher CTA placement would increase clicks.
This experiment was successful: the variant saw an 8% increase in new Collaborator activity but also a decrease in new Creator activity, and a 2% CTR uplift. The insight after this experiment was that new Collaborators react positively to a clear CTA higher in the email design.
The hypothesis was that a full-width hero design would increase clicks and user engagement on new Collaborators’ part. In the variant, the hero section was expanded and sprinkled with a confetti animation.
The experiment email variant performed worse than the control version with a regular hero. New Collaborators’ activity decreased by 6% while new Creators’ activity actually increased. Every other metric including CTR, increased. Although a failure, it led to an understanding that the Creator and Collaborator segments behave very differently, so a split welcome flow might be effective.
The variant email was split into three steps, and the flow was designed differently for the segments of Collaborators and Creators. The success criteria remained an increase in new Collaborator activity on their first session in Miro.
This experiment was a success with both Collaborator and Creator activity increasing as well as a CTR uplift. The insight was that users responded positively to more personalized and simplified content.
How Miro builds these tests:
Occasionally, the team needs to test content that requires more customization. To understand whether this is worthy of engineering resources, the team assesses these changes using an effort vs. impact matrix.
The user journey test is set up using the ESP’s journey tool managing the user flow. The segments are randomized into a 50/50 split which is then broken down into subdivisions for each segmented content.
To conduct transactional email tests, Miro uses Split.io to manage 50/50 audience splits. This service first gets API information from a notification email service, then does the split, then routes the API payload back to the notification email service. This allows for inline testing in real-time in a single transactional template.
The duration of tests depends on the statistical significance, so, essentially, on the sample size. For a larger audience, the run time is shorter, and for a smaller audience, the run time is longer.
When the test achieves statistical significance, the team closes it. Cohorts are analyzed based on activities during the experiment, recommendations are given for the next steps and hypotheses, and the experiment gets cleaned from the template.
The variant email was designed to have a grid background and cursor designs on the head module. The success criteria were the same — an increase in new Collaborators’ activity on their first session in the product.
The results again were different for new Collaborators whose activities decreased and new Creators, whose activities actually increased. The CTR slightly decreased while the CTR on the hero CTA increased by 14%. The insight showed that including Miro board elements in the welcome email motivates new Creators but creates friction for new Collaborators.
By that point, the welcome flow was already split, so the experimental version of the email was pushed live for new Creators while new Collaborators continued to receive the original version of that email.
During these four experiments, previous learnings directed further testing:
After these tests, the experimentation at Miro continues.
As open rates and click rates are unreliable, it’s better to find another metric that the email A/B test is trying to improve. In the case of Miro, this was board activity.
Julia Ritter, Sr. Email Marketing Manager at Sinch Mailjet and Megan Boshuyzen, Sr. Email Developer at Sinch Email On Acid
Naomi West, Administrator at Email Markup Consortium; Alice Li, Administrator at Email Markup Consortium and Megan Boshuyzen, Sr. Email Developer at Sinch Email On Acid
According to the Email Markup Consortium, in 2024, 99.9% of emails tested had “critical” or “serious” accessibility issues. Only 28 emails from 2 brands out of more than 400 thousand tested had no accessibility issues.
Accessibility was previously seen as an edge case. It seemed like marketers shouldn’t spend a lot of time making the emails accessible to a small percentage of the receivers. However, not only people with disabilities or those who face specific challenges use accessibility tools. For example, some just use a voiceover feature on their Macbooks to hear the emails read out loud because sometimes listening is easier than reading. Plus, as the digital native generation ages, we need to understand how we can continue to access web-based information like email.
In 2024, the color contrast parameter was added to the Accessibility report. About 17% of the tested emails didn’t pass this test. This highlighted the amount of links that can’t be distinguished from body text because a lot of people rely just on color. At the same time, both types of text need to contrast against the background. An easy fix for that is to just underline the link texts to show that it’s clickable or add a hover effect. Dark mode needs to also satisfy this parameter.
Two of the most common and most critical aspects to fix are also the easiest:
Even just adding alt text can easily improve the situation, as well as adding an alt-attribute to the tracking pixels. Read Sarah Gallardo and Dan Oshinsky about alt-text tips.
Another easy thing to fix is to include a level one heading as a heading in the code. A lack of semantics in an email is easy to fix.
To be an accessibility advocate, you have to “yell” about a problem. Show what percentage of the audience is affected and tie it back to business impact. You can also highlight potential legal issues other companies faced because of the lack of accessibility.
Luke Glasner, Consultant/Owner at Glasner Consulting
Subscribers use dark mode to:
Out of Luke Glasner’s clients, 52% to 65% use dark more.
Email clients that support dark mode:
Desktop/Web clients | Mobile apps |
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Check out the dark mode support table on Email on Acid for specifics.
Dark mode is enabled by adding meta tags to the header section, then adding classes to control colors and content. This works very similar to how you make design responsive, it’s all controlled in the header CSS. So, pro tip: when coding for dark mode, instead of making 10 new classes and then double-tagging everything, use the same names of classes that are used in the responsive design.
Code separate different style blocks as sections. This way, if a specific style block isn’t working on Gmail, the email client won’t ignore the rest of the code and only skip a specific style section.
One way to deal with images is to enable image swaps for dark mode. It’s done in the CSS in the header section and then called in the body of the email.
Tips for images in dark mode:
Tips for dark mode in Gmail:
If your email gets too long, it may get clipped. One way to prevent that is to remove extraneous code aka reduce code bloat. For that, simplify your code, use as little of it as possible:
Simplifying the code also helps to prevent issues in edge cases. At the same time, focus on the top clients your audience uses and don’t worry about a 1% edge case.
In the near future, legacy Outlook is expected to be retired, and Microsoft is going to release a new version of Outlook. It means that email coders may stop coding like it’s 1999 and start coding like it’s our millennium.
Ralitsa Minkova, Email Strategist & Conversion Copywriter
When focusing on sales, you might forget about what happens after a purchase. Think about the post-purchase stage as less of a transaction and more as an experience, an opportunity to create more meaningful interactions with new or repeat customers.
Although emails are good for sales, it is also one of the most personal channels. The words we use really matter: they spark different associations, reflect brand values and culture, voice our perceptions and help shape the outcomes. A customer-centric approach anticipates the needs of customers instead of treating them just as order IDs to fulfill.
After purchase, customers care about order updates, returns and exchanges, and delivery estimates. They may also feel buyer’s remorse, and it’s the brand’s job to ride the wave of excitement instead of one of regret.
To ace the post-purchase experience, combine these three:
Inspiration and opportunities for growth can be found outside a specific niche. For example, a typical onboarding is linked to SAAS products, but it can also be adapted for other industries.
Creating delight in customers’ experiences is about thinking and planning ten steps ahead, using collected data in a meaningful way, and keeping the customers in the spotlight. Genuine delight can only be achieved when we minimize customer effort.
Ryan McCutcheon, Product Manager at Sinch and Joachim Jonkers, Director of Product — AI at Sinch
According to OpenAI, in 2023, over 80% of Fortune 500 companies had teams using ChatGPT or similar technology.
🙋 Champs — know AI’s benefits and limitations and how to use it.
🤦 Chumps — use AI like a hammer, often resulting in worse results.
🤦 Chumps rely on AI for all their writing, copy and paste texts from ChatGPT.
🙋 Champs tailor AI to match their brand’s voice and use it for brainstorming and drafting and not the final versions. They also use more bespoke tools like Jasper.
Good example: dbrand probably uses human-written content. For example, “Always judge a book by its cover” for Macbook Air M3 covers.
🙋 Champs know that AI can create both messes and masterpieces. AI-generated images tips:
If you feed AI the right information, it can create bespoke messages for each individual customer.
🤦 Chumps hope that generative AI will save them from cleaning up their core data. Bad data can result in poor AI segmentation and erroneous messages.
🙋 Champs know that high-quality data is key to personalization. You can use generative AI to write unique messages to each customer and predictive AI to reveal valuable segments.
🤦 Chumps don’t experiment.
🙋 Champs use AI to quickly create quality variants for testing (e.g. subject lines) not only for email marketing but across channels.
Lee Munroe, Head of Design at OneSignal
Email faces many challenges and tough competition. Omnichannel messaging is one of the ways to differentiate and compete. According to OneSignal, using more than one messaging channel increases average engagement by 35%.
You need to think beyond one channel and create a unified customer journey across:
Brands that do omnichannel right:
According to OneSignal, 76% of people believe that push notifications are the highest-performing channel in the first month after an app download. Push also has a high opt-in rate (over 60% across iOS and Android), doesn’t require personal information, it’s cheap, and quick to send.
You can use push notifications for:
Best practices for push notifications:
Katie Brennan, Director of Marketing, NA at Sinch and Isabella Rahm, Product Marketing at Sinch
RCS stands for Reach Communication Services and is a messaging protocol. It’s like SMS, but with more advanced features. Until very recently, only Android supported it, but Apple included RCS in the iOS 18 version.
RCS business messaging (RBM) is a commercial version of RCS that enables communication between businesses and consumers. This is similar to A2P (application to person) SMS. Apple is expected to support RBM in a few markets by the end of 2024, and it will continue to grow in 2025.
SMS has the biggest reach and highest engagement among channels with a 98% open rate. RCS is meant to meet modern customer needs and business expectations that SMS can’t, having app-like capabilities combined with the reach of SMS.
RCS functions:
RCS values are trust, customer experience (CX), and efficiency:
Cat Mears, Business Strategist at Stitch
Multi-channel (or cross-channel) is another term that describes omnichannel. According to Braze, when brands embrace cross-channel, they can increase users’ lifetimes by 76%.
The messaging matrix explains which channels you should use to communicate to customers depending on the urgency and complexity of a message.
To map your messages, start with either simplicity or urgency and move from there. When it comes to urgency, think about whether the message can potentially annoy your customers.
Best practices:
Dating app Hinge used email, in-app, and push notifications about new matches. In emails, the winning strategy was to show a photo of a new match instead of blurring it like it was done before. The company saw a 200% click-through rate uptick thanks to a multi-channel approach.
Alfredo Salkeld, Brand Director at Sinch SimpleTexting
Text messages from brands were previously associated with spam. Now mainstream brands leverage SMS as a two-way communication channel. To compete in the realm of texting, you don’t need to offer a bigger discount than others, you don’t need to text more often. You need to stand out from the rest.
Every SMS marketing campaign consists of 3 elements:
Zesty Urban Farms used tiny billboards and the SMS program to advertise their tiny product with promotional but also educational messages. There are “Farm to Phone” updates about the growth process of microgreens and SMS with links to recipes people can try.
Makers Collective encouraged their Craft Parade event attendees to sign up for SMS to get a map of the booths and information about future discounts, branded as an Indie artists’ insiders club. For example, some subscribers received invitations to become the event’s jury and decide what artists could attend. SMS was also used for two-way communication with artist takeovers. Subscribers were told to send their favorite photos to be speed-drawn by an artist taking over this channel for the next 30 minutes. In the first month of the SMS program, 491 people subscribed. The average opt-out rate was below 1%.
Blue Barn Pet & Hobby Farm had a sizable but not segmented list, so different pet owners received generic messages. The company started to collect phone numbers by asking people to send photos of their pets in exchange for AI-generated poems about the pets and some exclusive deals (ChatGPT was connected to the SMS service via Zapier). This helped to collect customer data and was also a source of UGC for social media.
Gramercy Atelier used SMS to follow up with leads who came in through the ads. The brand started using the channel to set up drip campaigns and educate prospects on unique aspects of the business.
Questions to stimulate creativity:
Elizabeth Jacobi, Founder at MochaBear Marketing
Both email and SMS are about the right message via the right channel at the right time. SMS has a 98% open rate, and 85% of those who opt in for SMS also opt in for email.
Why use email and SMS together:
Case study: a brand wanted to complement the email program by SMS but avoid batch texting. The email audience had strong engagement and conversion rates. At first, the SMS program was only advertised to email subscribers. After the launch, the SMS engagement was high, people were replying to messages.
Among buyers:
The batch approach for both SMS and email no longer works. Instead, you need to focus on strategy, keeping your audience and the message types (abandoned cart, win-back, general marketing) in mind. For audience segmentation, coordinate both channels to complement each other using data from both. Make sure both channels work together on the same platform or via integrations. Consider automations, flows, and journeys in a unified way. Monitor your strategy, track results, and optimize.
Anna Levitin, CRM & Lifecycle Marketing Lead at DoorLoop
Localization is the key to personalization. 40% of consumers say they won’t buy in another language, and more than half of people prioritize content in their native language over lower prices.
If you want to create a perfect customer experience, there are more aspects to localization than mere content translation:
Other important elements:
A safe date and time format you can use across different languages and markets is “September 26, 2024.”
Localization should extend beyond email:
How to begin the localization process:
To start localizing your emails, you need internal support. Build a case for your localization efforts by aligning it with company goals:
Others just make a list of ways. We actually explain how to make the most of each way.
21 surefire ways to grow your email list with detailed explanations and hand-picked examples. Based on research and 10+ years experience in email marketing.