You may think that email is pretty much what it is…. a tweak here or there but mostly the same as it ever was. There’s a misconception that the email channel hasn’t really changed in decades, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Email is constantly evolving and changing. Best practices come and go in reaction to shifts in subscriber preferences, policy changes, and products made by Google, Microsoft, and many more major players. So if you want to make the most of email as a marketing channel, knowing exactly what these email moves are and their impact on your company’s email initiatives is not an optional exercise (or at least it shouldn’t be). For this webinar, we teamed up with Jay Baer from Convince & Convert to walk through the 9 big changes to email you really need to know—and two you might not need to spend as much time on.
Didn’t have a chance to watch the webinar live? Don’t worry. You can access the full recording at any time and read the Q&A below.
Q&A
A big thank you to everyone who chimed in during the webinar with a question! Here’s a recap of our answers to the most popular questions, along with our take on some of the questions we didn’t get to during the webinar. Have any additional questions? Please leave them in the comments.
How much email is too much email?
Jay Baer: You can send emails as often as you can until your audience says its too much. If you’re sending too many emails, it will become readily apparent in your statistics. Send email as often as you have something to say—no more, no less.
Cynthia Price: Completely agree with Jay. If you have something really valuable to say and people want to hear it from you every day, then you can say it every day. It’s unusual, but there are audiences that enjoy getting daily emails. For most brands, that’s tricky to do, so you just want to make sure everything you’re sending provides value for your subscribers.
Of the 9 big changes you walked through, is there one you would recommend prioritizing?
Cynthia: It’s imperative that you start to understand your audience a little bit better. This list of email subscribers has raised their hand and said “market to me.” Understanding who they are—and what about them is making them want to hear from you—helps you not only grow your audience but also get more out of that relationship in general.
Understanding your audience (and your team!) is also the first step to making a decision on what trends to focus on. You see the majority of subscribers open your emails in Gmail? In that case, experimenting with Gmail’s Promotion Tab improvements should be on top of your list. Your team is struggling with lengthy approval processes and keeps missing deadlines because of that? In that case, fixing your review and approval process should be a priority.
We only ask our subscribers for their email, but we have a declining subscriber base. How do we get to know them better?
Whitney Rudeseal Peet: I always say when in doubt, who knows your subscribers better than they do? If you want to know more about them, simply ask them. Maybe that means asking them how often they want to hear from you, what kind of things they’d like to know more about, what kind of products they want to see more of—if you open up that conversation between you and your subscribers, they’ll start seeing more relevant content in their inbox—and you’ll start to see your subscriber base grow.
My company is from Canada. Are there any differences between Canadian and US data?
Cynthia: We do see differences in how subscribers in different geolocations interact with email. I highly recommend downloading the State of Email Engagement report that tracks opens by time of day in different countries, including Canada. For example, we found that people in the UK opens emails during afternoon tea time more often, and Americans are more likely to open emails in the morning with their coffee.
Where can I get my copy of the State of Email report?
Our 2019 State of Email report is jam-packed with email client news, market share insights, and key industry updates from the past year—including GIF support in Outlook, email interactivity, and global privacy regulations.
Want to be notified when we release the 2020 State of Email report? Subscribe to Litmus News to get the latest ebooks and webinars, industry news, and our monthly newsletter.
Whitney Rudeseal Peet is a Freelance Proofreader at Book Launchers.
