Litmus Live Week
September 14-18

Monday, September 14

KICKOFF & WELCOME!

Melissa Sargeant, Litmus

Welcome to Litmus Live Week! Join Melissa Sargeant, CMO at Litmus, to hear all about what we've got planned.

How to Create an Email Newsletter People Will Clear Their Calendars to Read: 7 Lessons from the Past 7 Months

Ann Handley

For the past year, Ann Handley has been obsessed with elevating the profile of the humble newsletter. The past 7 pandemicked months have only heightened that obsession: What’s the real role of an email newsletter in Covid times? What goes into a must-read email newsletter? What do you leave OUT?

Here at Litmus Live Ann will share with you her best tips, secrets, examples to help you create and write an email newsletter that gets real results in 2020. You’ll learn how we make email newsletters work more effectively for our company, brands, ourselves, an inside look at companies doing it right, how the smartest brands have shifted their approach during the pandemic, and (bonus!) tips and tricks to inspire your best work.

Online Tools, Offline Conversions: How Policygenius & RedFin Found Success

Jessica Owen, Policygenius
Katie Raynolds, RedFin

Some of the biggest decisions you make in life usually don't happen overnight, especially when it comes to big purchases like life insurance or a new home. Lifecycle marketers Jessica Owen from Policygenius and Katie Raynolds from Redfin, will present case studies and best practices on mixing email and online marketing with offline touches to create robust, effective customer journeys that make purchasing decisions like these easier for customers.

LIVE OPTIMIZATION: NEWSLETTER EDITION

Litmus

Live Optimization is back! The first session focuses on improving the performance of your newsletters. From content and CTAs to design, source ideas and tips for your next newsletter send—right from the email community!

Learn more about Live Optimization and how to submit your emails on our blog.

Proper Grammar Ain't Always Proper: Writing What's Best for Your Audience

Whitney Rudeseal Peet, Litmus

Proper or standard grammar are often touted as hard and fast rules, but in reality, they're more like guidelines. Just because someone speaks or writes in contractions, emojis, or slang doesn't necessarily make them wrong. In this session, Whitney Rudeseal Peet from Litmus will help you learn learn how to find out how your audience speaks and how to write content that resonates with them.

Building a Newsletter that's Strange and Wonderful

Chris Vasquez, AWeber

Newsletters are having a bit of a renaissance, but it might be difficult to find a new idea to create something that people care about when it seems like every possible topic and viewpoint has been shared. Chris Vasquez from AWeber will help identify ways to make something novel and meaningful by identifying and embracing the weirdest things about you or your brand. He'll cover everything from how to identify your unique attributes, mapping them to a content or format that fits your subscriber's needs, and share some examples of "strange" newsletters that also serve a purpose.

Overlays and Absolute Positioning in Email

Steven Sayo, Mainline Menswear

It's true–no more slicing and dicing your images to create an overlay effect. Steven Sayo from Mainline Menswear will demonstrate the absolute positioning method of email design, walking you through the overlay code technique in a few scenarios, all while keeping live text and accessibility top of mind.

Using All Channels in Concert

Evi Katsoulieri, AdRoll

Marketers who are using email just to keep in touch with their customers and subscribers are missing out on huge opportunities to create consistent, customer-first experiences. Now more than ever, email should be treated as a channel that can spin the marketing flywheel, from personalizing the onboarding message using insights from lead ads or website quizzes to launching prospect nurturing campaigns based on the lead source. Evi Katsoulieri from AdRoll will focus on why email is the core component of your marketing strategy, how exactly email integrates with other channels you may use, and how email is central to successful conversion, onboarding, and retention programs.

Expanding Email's Relevance for Gen Z
(and Whatever Comes After Z?)

April Mullen & Amie Durr, SparkPost

Email isn't going anywhere. In fact, with Gen Z, a whopping 58% check email multiple times per day. How do we as email marketers resonate with generations that grew up in the digital and post-digital age that expect experiences to be easy and engaging? This session, presented by April Mullen and Amie Durr of SparkPost, is told from the email strategist and email technology perspectives, and is all about where you focus your tests and learn budget to explore the needs of your subscribers--especially the young'uns!

What Happens When the Doors are Shut: A Fireside Chat with the Adler Planetarium

Megan Lothamer, Adler Planetarium

The Adler Planetarium in Chicago, like countless organizations around the world, was shuttered in early March due to COVID-19. We'll chat with Megan Lothamer to uncover insights from the shift in their email strategy and how they've used humor and personality to provide educational experiences to their subscribers.

Email for Enterprises

Anitra Fenderson, Capital One

Whatever the industry, enterprise organizations have unique needs when it comes to email marketing, serving a varied customer base and internal stakeholder teams. Anitra Fenderson speaks on how Capital One approaches their email strategy, covering the evolution of her team to prioritizing testing plans and communicating wins across the organization.

Tuesday, September 15

Getting the Green Light: How to Build Messages People Say Yes To

Tamsen Webster

No matter your role, you're often in the business of changing behavior. Often that means you need to change beliefs first. Or do you? What if some of the age-old wisdom around driving action actually works against creating real change? By the end of this keynote, you'll be able to analyze your messages for the "red lights" that lead to "NO”, identify the three key concepts every message needs to get a “YES" (and know how to find them in your own), and tie those concepts to the "green lights" your brand is built on (and connect your audiences more tightly to them, too).

Designing Emails for Equity & Inclusion

Leslie LeCroy, Ansira
Kathryn Colohan, Ansira

From the photos and the illustration styles we use, to the alt text we write, making email design more inclusive needs to be intentional with every email send. And sometimes that intention raises questions that can be answered in numerous ways. Leslie LeCroy and Kathryn Colohan from Ansira will walk you through tips on how to design, think, and art direct so that all intended (and unintended) audiences can read and connect to your message.

Optimizing the Sales & Marketing Partnership: A Fireside Chat with Outreach

Harmony Anderson, Outreach

It's not a new concept that sales and marketing teams knowing each other's priorities makes for a more engaging–and productive–customer experience, but the ways to make the most out of this cross-functional partnership can be a bit difficult to uncover. Join Cynthia Price as she talks with Harmony Anderson from Outreach, discussing everything from how to make a plain-text email stand out, the intersection of marketing support and sales content, and ways to structure ownership of projects to increase success.

Live Optimization

Litmus

Stuck on ideas on how to make your emails stand out in the inbox and move the needle on your goals? Submit your email to Live Optimization and leverage the thoughts and expertise of the email community to inspire your next send.

Learn more about Live Optimization and how to submit your emails on our blog.

What Alexa Can Learn from Email Marketers

Davida Gaffney, Storage Mart

Email marketing is the perfect background when thinking about adding voice to your brand's cross channel strategy. Through Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and Bixby we have the capability to communicate in a more dynamic, natural, conversational way than most channels are capable of... but to realize the potential of this channel we need to see it for its strengths and weaknesses, and it cannot live on its own. Davida Gaffney from Storage Mart will cover a basic overview of these voice and home assistants, as well as share her experience with creating skills for these technUCLA School of Nursings and how email accessibility is strengthened when using assistants.

Courage to Fail: Why & How to Take Risks in Your Email Copy

Nikki Elbaz, Copyhackers

You likely fine-tune and test your email copy to find the right words and phrases that make your audience take action, but there's something to be said for not being afraid to take (smart) risks when writing. Join Nikki Elbaz from Copyhackers to learn what exactly a smart risk is, developing criteria to examine if this copy is a smart risk, and places to find inspiration to kick-start your own ideas.

Proactivity for the (Deliverability) Win!

Lauren Meyer, Kickbox

Lauren Meyer from Kickbox has spent over 13 years sending emails and helping customers send their emails to recipients all over the world, and through this, she's learned that when it comes to deliverability, proactivity is key to success. She's at Litmus Live Week to walk you through ways to be proactive, not reactive, discussing which best practices must be a part of their email program in order to achieve consistent inbox placement and help their future selves solve deliverability issues by preventing them from even happening.

Email Workflow: More than Just a Process

Jon May, RAC

Email workflow: It's always something that can stand to be improved and find a few ways to increase efficiency, but finding the time to review your process and ways to optimize is typically near the bottom of your to-do list. Jon May from RAC will walk you through a case study on why they made examining process a priority, how his organization used this as a way to upskill and educate stakeholders, and ways to approach change management to make it as painless as possible.

Strategizing Email Marketing Towards Your Marketing Goals

Marco Noceda, Chronos

There's a good chance you have larger goals for your marketing efforts than just your email campaigns, but that doesn't mean that working toward these goals has to be done in a silo. Marco Noceda from Chronos Agency will walk through making data-driven analysis a key strategy driver for your email campaigns, including everything from frequency, segmentation, template design, as well as calibrating your email calendar to help meet your goals.

Improving Your Production Process with an Email Design System

Paris Fisher, Taxi for Email

True or false? Only email developers need to know what an Email Design System is, and will be the only ones to use them. False! Paris Fisher of Taxi for Email is on hand to walk through how Email Design Systems are used by every stakeholder in your email team and how using one can improve the email production process. She'll break down how it affects each role in this process, including communication between these roles, with each attendee leaving with specific advice that they can implement the next day at work.

Why Your Abandoned Cart Emails are Abandoning You

Samar Owais

Ever abandoned a cart and received an email that said... "Forgot something?" and felt less than great about getting that email? Everyone talks about the statistics behind Abandoned Cart sequences but no one talks about the tone-deaf way those emails are mapped and sent. Samar Owais presents a customer-focused approach to abandoned cart emails that don't creep customers out, respects customer decisions to not make the purchase, and provides options for next steps. All while building trust with your customer and helping to recover sales.

An Email Marketer's Blindspot

Leah Lloyd, Tinuiti

A strong marketer will know the foundation of an email program and which automations to prioritize–it's often an easy win and a necessary first step to building a much larger and sophisticated program. However, getting these built and launched is only a piece of the puzzle...you still need to monitor and optimize these automations to see what you might be missing. Leah Lloyd of Tinuiti will walk through examples of some of these automations that are key to retail success, as well as identifying strategies and starting points to build and prioritize within your customer journeys.

Wednesday, September 16

Going Agile: The New Standard for Email Efficiency and Success

Lauren Smith, Litmus
Magan Le, Litmus

Right now, marketers are under immense pressure to do more with less, while still hitting business goals. In order to be successful in this ever-changing climate, marketers must say goodbye to long, linear processes and focus on efficiency. Enter the agile email workflow. Join Magan Le and Lauren Smith from Litmus for a first look at this new standard for email processes, and discover micro-efficiencies at every step of the way.

Interactivity Insights: A Fireside Chat with Salesforce

Jason Rodriguez, Litmus
Joe Teplow, Salesforce

Interactivity: arguably one of the most powerful components of an email campaign, but also one of the more difficult ones to get right. From planning to testing, deploying and subscriber use, success in using these elements takes diligence and a knowledge of what will make your recipient's lives easier. This fireside chat combines the knowledge of Litmus and Salesforce, plus insights of marketers like you, and will include discussion on what makes a good interactive experience, how to plan and test, and ways to analyze to know that your time was well-spent.

The Conversational Case: How to script the stories that sell ideas

Tamsen Webster

You know getting your big idea out into the world means having to make the case for it. You need clients and customers to see your idea as the right one for them. But even though you know it’s the right answer, how can you make them see that, too? Even more, how do you do that when time —and attention — is limited? You script the story they’ll tell themselves. In this interactive session, join change communications expert and 20-year message strategist Tamsen Webster as she shows you how to do just that.

As a result of this workshop you’ll be able to identify the three critical elements of attention that create compelling content, capture those elements in your core story, using a simple framework, and adapt that story to multiple audiences and applications.

Live Optimization

Litmus

Stuck on ideas on how to make your emails stand out in the inbox and move the needle on your goals? Submit your email to Live Optimization and leverage the thoughts and expertise of the email community to inspire your next send.

Learn more about Live Optimization and how to submit your emails on our blog.

Lessons Learned: How to Create a Successful Newsletter on the Fly

Meagan McGinnes, WBUR

Meagan McGinnes is no stranger to having a less-than-optimal timeframe to launch a newsletter campaign. WBUR launched a newsletter in just two days in early March to help their readers and listeners stay up-to-date with the fast-changing news of the local outbreak of COVID-19. Learn from WBUR's playbook to create new content and campaigns in an expedited time frame. Meagan's talk will cover listening to your audience to guide content and cadence, establishing new voices and personalities to set your campaign apart, and working collaboratively across departments for success.

Process Makes Perfect (At Least in Email)

Ruth DeFeo & Hamilton Pytluk, T3

A key, but often overlooked, component of a successful email marketing program is process. Getting it right is hard. Whether in-house or agency, there are multiple stakeholders, teams, assets and more to coordinate, and for most of these stakeholders, email is an afterthought. Establishing a repeatable but flexible process is important, but making it fit the bandwidth and skill sets of your team is just as crucial. Ruth DeFeo and Hamilton Pytluk from T3 will share their experiences of workflow and process optimization and provide you with a set of objectives to keep in mind as you work through building efficiency within your organization.

Brand Protection through Source Control and Continuous Deployment

Nick Goldsberry, Principal Financial Group

Campaign management is the backbone of brand risk mitigation, and entire technology stacks have been developed to prevent damage from human error. Yet, most email development teams still introduce unnecessary risk; they manually copy-paste code and attempt to prevent overwrites by simply coordinating schedules. Nick Goldsberry from Principal Financial Group will walk through the implementation of two DevOps principles—source control and continuous deployment—to extend risk mitigation to the email development lifecycle. Using GitHub and Marketing Cloud's APIs, Nick will demonstrate how to create a Heroku pipeline using Node to automatically deploy production code. You will also leave with a templated GitHub repository with instructions so you can implement your own pipeline today.

Centralized Communication in Higher Education: Pros and Cons

Samantha Metzroth, University of Southern Queensland

Samantha Metzroth from the University of Southern Queensland is an email geek through and through, and knows all about the power of engagement within your audience's inbox. She's prioritized centralizing communications at her college, and will walk through ways to make a centralized model work even in enterprise organizations, especially when using customer data to inform retention or non-marketing activities to continually provide a consistent and personalized user experience at all touchpoints with your brand.

Snip It Before You Ship It

Wilbert Heinen, e-Village

No marketer, regardless of the size of their team, wants to repeat the same process over and over to send their emails. Wilbert Heinen from e-Village agrees. He'll be presenting how his team has automated parts of their email process to reduce manual builds by using snippets (and, a few ways on how Litmus Builder has helped him achieve these goals), as well as talk on why reducing the weight of your HTML code is important.

The Right Content, the Right Channel, the Right Time: A Fireside Chat with Independent Femail

Caitlin Pfitzer & Kaitlin Provencher, Independent Femail

The duo of Caitlin Pfitzer and Kaitlin Provencher from Independent Femail specialize in helping higher education institutions come up with compelling emails for both prospective and current students–and they know the content isn't the same for both audiences. They'll provide tips on crafting the right content for both groups, using examples of their work, and also touch on what needs to be considered to create a unified experience outside the inbox.

Measuring Email’s Impact Against Your Goals: A Fireside Chat with SAP

Kosta Triantafillou, SAP Marketing Cloud

Have you ever been asked to provide the ROI of a specific email campaign you’ve sent–or been the person asking that question–but had trouble coming up with an answer? You’re not alone. Getting to a quantifiable number, and creating models to find these metrics depends on the data you have access to. Kosta Triantafillou from SAP Marketing Cloud is on hand to provide you with ways to get the details you need to truly talk about the impact of your email program, as well as ways to set up accessible and reliable closed-loop reporting.

Making an Impact with Dynamic Content

Rachel Boyles, Salesforce
Karin Holmgren, Pitney Bowes
Corinna Cohen, Caleres
Whitney Rudeseal Peet, Litmus

Focusing more on personalization and dynamic content’ was the #1 email design trend for 2019 as voted by 200+ email marketers and published in our Top Email Design Trends. It’s a top priority, so let’s dive into how to do it better and get insight from the experts. You'll hear from marketers in the wild on how they’re successfully making an impact with dynamic content and personalization in their email programs and how they plan to evolve it in the coming year. If up-leveling personalization and dynamic content are in your priorities for this year, this session is for you!

Thursday, September 17

Do Email Subscription Pop-Ups Work?

Mike Nelson, Really Good Emails

Are pop-ups annoying? You betcha. Do readers hate them? You know it. So why are they so effective and what should your pop-ups be doing for your email strategy? Mike Nelson will discuss what exactly these pop-ups are, the best way to implement them, and smart strategies to nurture subscribers.

Cause and Effect: A Fireside Chat on Inclusivity in Marketing

Kevin Tyler, UCLA School of Nursing

"When you make a dollar, you can also make some change." Kevin Tyler, Insights Director at UCLA School of Nursing, joins Cynthia Price in an interactive fireside chat. Kevin will speak to the importance of prioritizing inclusiveness in every aspect of your marketing strategy and the responsibility of brands to showcase diverse voices, and finding those viewpoints that support your company's mission and values.

LOOK, SQUIRREL! Beyond the Shiny New Thing to the Marketing Mindset for the Modern Digital World

Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist

With new technology, marketers have the ability to connect with consumers more directly and deeply than ever before. But our marketing mindset has not kept up with that potential. Many marketers still follow a Mad Men-era playbook that can create even greater distance between brands and consumers. In this keynote talk, Tom will use cartoons to show how brands can connect and engage in moments that matter, how to avoid “marketing funnel vision”, how to be data-driven without being data-blinded, and how to bring the right mindset to take full advantage of email as a marketing channel.

Live Optimization-Focus on Interactivity

Litmus

Our final Live Optimization session is all about finding ways to make your interactive elements work better in your emails. The Litmus team–and email community–will provide tips to make interactivity work efficiently for you, and suggest what elements you may want to think about including in the future.

Learn more about Live Optimization and how to submit your emails on our blog.

AMP Up Email Interactivity to the Next Level

Dave Stys & Jeni McGuigan, AWeber

We've finally arrived–static emails are officially a thing of the past. Email recipients can RSVP to events, answer a survey, leave a review, take a quiz or submit a question, without ever leaving the inbox. But, if you want to take email interactivity to the next level, then you need to leverage AMP for Email. In this session, Dave Stys and Jeni McGuigan from AWeber, combine forces to share their learnings on incorporating AMP for EMail into their weekly newsletter and provide a pleathora of examples from a variety of industries. They'll also demonstrate an easy way for you to get started with AMP attributes in your emails, letting you take the benefits directly to practice.

Dropping the <img> Tag: Data Visualization Without Images

Benjamin Djang, Talent Inc

Data visualization continues to be a hot topic amongst email marketers, with the ability to be used in nearly any email campaign. Benjamin Djang from Talent Inc. will walk you through a technique for displaying data using code instead of images. He'll cover a quick way to figure out when to use image vs. building with HTML/CSS, and demonstrate using simple table elements and some coding tricks to build horizontal and vertical data bars, detailed progress bars, and interactive data tables with hover states, plus cover a use case on how he's made corresponding with his team more effective with these code-based visualizations.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Prospecting or Personalization Without Data

Samantha Kiley, LogMeIn

For all the information we have on our subscribers and customers, we all have experienced moments where we just didn't have the right details to really personalize an email. Samantha Kiley from LogMeIn is here to share tactics to personalize emails when data is sensitive or limited in a "choose your own adventure" example. She'll detail how to determine your segments, build your program, optimize and expand this once you have the information you're looking for, and how to learn from your prospects.

Make Every Email a Unicorn

Savannah Kringlie, Homie

Our email campaigns often go through a few iterations before being sent, which can also sometimes lead to confusion on the objective or goal for the message and a minimized overall story. Savannah Kringlie from Homie has been through this, but has come out the other side and is here to help with tips on making this happen less with your campaigns. She'll walk you through ways to be proactive, not reactive, diving into which best practices must be a part of every email program in order to achieve consistent inbox placement. Plus, she'll cover ways to help your future self solve deliverability issues by preventing them from even happening.

Using Email as a Virtual Venue

Kirk Bentley, WordFly

Imagine if the goods and services you sell everyday through email marketing were suddenly and completely unavailable to the public. Cue the global pandemic of 2020, and that's exactly what's happened to the live entertainment industry. Kirk Bentley from WordFly speaks on how a group of adventurous email marketers responded to COVID19 by turning their email program into a virtual venue of sorts. By changing the content, segmentation and cadence of their campaigns, they've turned their most powerful channel, email marketing, into a new way to engage with subscribers and in turn, found a whole new audience clamoring to interact with them online.

EMAILS DONE RIGHT: A 3-STEP PROCESS TO CONVERSION

Samar Owais

Samar Owais is an email conversion strategist and consultant for eCommerce brands who regularly conflicts with her clients on focusing on customer journey and experience BEFORE focusing on email metrics, something every brand has likely experienced over the years. She'll be on hand to work through her three-step process, focusing on designing the customer journey, building the customer experience, and mapping out customer-focused emails with tactics and ideas that every program can benefit from to become efficient and consistent with each new launch.

CSS Art in Email

Mark Robbins, Salesforce

It's no secret that images play a key role in helping your email tell a story, but how do you move away from the .jpg and .png files and create these visual pieces with code? Mark Robbins from Salesforce will walk through drawing basic shapes (squares, circles, triangles), then look at how to put those shapes together to create more complex designs, logos, cute animals, etc. He'll also review ways to make sure your code-based images are supported in nearly every email client using VML, with hacks and shortcuts to make that process easier.

Panel Discussion: Email Marketing in the Nonprofit World

Jasmine Penny, DonorsChoose Taylor Rapalyea, Act Blue Kristin Bond, Girl Scouts of America

Email marketing in the nonprofit world comes with a unique set of challenges, oftentimes with teams working diligently to create the personalized, impactful experiences that subscribers demand with a limited set of resources or bandwidth. We've put together a panel of nonprofit email all-stars to share their thoughts on what makes a successful message, how to work around hurdles, and why the process of testing and experimentation plays such a pivotal role.

Friday, September 18

The Factors that Affect Email Deliverability

Chad S. White, Oracle

Inbox placement often feels like it's out of marketers' hands. However, the truth is that businesses have a tremendous amount of control as to whether inbox providers view their emails as safe or spam.

In this session, Oracle Consulting's Chad S. White will discuss the seven factors that affect sender reputations and detail exactly what is included in each factor. Because email marketing is constantly evolving, he'll also point out how each of the factors has changed over the years and debunk some myths about deliverability. When the session is done, you'll have a clear understanding of exactly what actions to take and which to avoid in order to have your emails reach your subscribers' inboxes more consistently.

Becoming an Email Personalization Hero with AMPScript

Najee Bartley, US Bank

In this energetic and informative session, Najee Bartley will show you how to create a 100% dynamic content message with AMPScript in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. See how to get time back in your day and create true 1:1 emails for your subscribers.

Email First Award Winners & Litmus Certified Celebration

Lauren Kremer, Litmus

Help us close out Litmus Live Week 2020 with a socially distant celebration! We're crowning the winners of the inaugural Email First Awards, and recognizing our first class of Litmus Certified email marketers and designers. Take part in honoring the work of your email peers. Plus, see what we have in store for the next Litmus Live...

Creating Opportunity in the face of a New Normal: A Fireside Chat with Oracle

Heike Neumann, Oracle

Demand Generation in 2020 has been a non-stop rollercoaster for everyone involved. Teams are navigating changing budgets, channels, environments and workloads and the best marketers are getting agile and creative in response. Heike Neumann, VP of Integrated Marketing Campaigns at Oracle will sit down with us for a discussion on preparing, pivoting, and planning for 2021.

Scrappy & From Scratch: Building an Email Production System as a 1-Person Team

Emily Schickli, Course Hero

You've inherited clunky, non-responsive email templates that are desperate for some design and coding love, but it's been impossible to get buy-in for a full-scale cross-functional effort (sigh). As a one-person email team that's now scaled to 5 people at Course Hero, Emily has been there. The good news: you can absolutely level-up your email creatives and build a development system that's ready to scale when you do without getting side-eye from stakeholders. This session will give you practical tips on how to keep your one-person team process efficient and build a system that grows as your team does.

3 Things to Keep Your Subscribers Engaged When They're Distracted

Hank Hoffmeier, j2 Global/iContact

Working from home might mean spending more time in your inbox, but that doesn't equate to an increase in engagement. Hank Hoffmeier from iContact will review three ways on how email marketers can increase brand recognition and ROI in campaigns, creating experiences in the inbox that subscribers will engage with, even in moments of distraction.