Jason Rodriguez
Latest posts:
6 Steps to a Powerful Email Design System Your Team Loves
Learn what an email design system is, why it works, and the 6 steps you need to create an effective email design system your team will actually use.
Email marketing assumptions: Emails have to be designed with tables
Coding emails with HTML tables has been the gold standard for a long time. But as email clients have evolved, are tables still the best way to build emails?
How to create marketing that sings—with the most effective marketing personas
Find out what makes a good marketing persona and common pitfalls to avoid so you can create successful campaigns in email marketing and beyond.
Email marketing assumptions: I need to keep email content above the fold
Let’s break down the email marketing assumption: “I need to keep important content above the fold.” Does it still matter? How can you get people scrolling?
Introducing the Dark Mode Toolkit
We’ve talked a lot about Dark Mode in the past. We even released an ebook going over everything you need to know about Dark Mode emails. But not everyone can go from zero to full Dark Mode support, even with the help of a comprehensive ebook.
Confessions of a marketer: Webinar recording + Q&A
We spent some time talking through marketing confessions in our latest webinar. Whether it’s those acronyms you have to look up every time or that completely blank email you sent to 200,000 people, we covered some of the biggest email marketing mistakes we’ve seen (and made ourselves).
Email client market share in April 2021: What to focus on
View the top email clients by email opens from April 2021. And find out how it’s changed and what may be causing the changes.
Email marketing assumptions: I need to use double opt-in for all signups
We're revisiting some of our own email marketing assumptions to see if they still hold up. Starting with our email marketing opt-in strategy.
How to make the world’s worst (or best?) email accessible
Accessible emails can work well and look good (or terrible, depending on your tastes).
Using humor in email marketing: webinar recording + Q&A
Everyone loves a funny email. But a lot of companies fall flat when trying to use humor in their own campaigns, leaving their subscribers groaning and their metrics tanking.
Making the most of a limited budget: webinar recording + Q&A
Email marketers are routinely tempted by hundreds of tools promising to help them build more effective campaigns faster.
Meet the new Litmus: webinar recording + Q&A
In our latest webinar, the Litmus team walked through the new, unified workflow and tools in Litmus to show customers how to build better campaigns, faster.
Are you investing in or spending your email subscribers’ trust?
The idea of a trust bank is simple: Every brand has a figurative bank in which people can deposit (or withdraw) their trust.
Team Spotlight: Meet Carin Slater
Meet Carin Slater, an Email Marketing Specialist at Litmus. Carin's the one behind all the code in Litmus emails and works hard to make sure every campaign renders across email clients while staying accessible for all of our subscribers.
What’s new in Litmus: webinar recording + Q&A
A lot of people feel like they’re drowning in email. That's why the latest release from Litmus is all about empowering you to create emails more efficiently.
What is an email template?
We break down exactly what makes an email template a template, dispelling some of the confusion around these extremely useful tools for email marketers.
Email Resolutions for 2021: Webinar Recording + Q&A
Like most people, we kicked off 2021 with a bunch of resolutions for our own email marketing program. But we wanted to hear from other marketers, too.
What Are Your New Year’s Resolutions for Email?
We’d love to hear what you’re resolving to change in 2021. Leave a comment and let us know.
The Litmus Live Events That Got Us Through 2020
Rewatch the 5 Litmus Live events that really seemed to resonate with email geeks around the world in 2020.
Our Top 5 Webinars from 2020
Here are the top 5 most popular webinars from this past year. Revisit for tips to help with your email marketing.
Live Optimization Workbook: Newsletters
We’ve collected some of our favorite email newsletters from past Live Optimization sessions—and feedback from email experts—and wrapped it up into a handy guide for you and your team.
The Ultimate Guide to Dark Mode Email
Dark Mode doesn’t need to be confusing. With a basic understanding of support and a few simple design guidelines, every email marketer can lean into this increasingly popular trend.
More Industry Heavyweights Announce Support for AMP for Email
Last week, Google hosted AMP Fest, a conference dedicated to all things AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) wherein they detailed changes to AMP features, updated developers on upcoming plans, and shared a bunch of success stories from AMP campaigns from a wide variety of industries.
New in Litmus: Extended Dark Mode Testing
While we have supported Dark Mode testing on some clients for a while, our latest release extends Dark Mode testing to both the Gmail App on Android 10 and iOS, as well as in Outlook.com on Chrome and Firefox. Here's what you can expect from these popular clients.
[Ebook] Scale Your Retail Campaigns With a Solid Email Template Strategy
In this special Retail Edition of our Ultimate Guide to Email Templates, we identify the key components to a successful retail email template—one that enables you to build emails quickly and reliably, while creating personalized campaigns and reacting to changes in the market faster than ever before.
Facing the Challenges of Holiday Email Planning in 2020: Webinar Recording + Q&A
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.
Looking to Improve Email Team Collaboration? Here Are 7 Litmus Features that Make It Easy.
It's rare that an email marketer works in a complete vacuum. At Litmus, we recognize the increasing importance of collaboration in marketing, email or otherwise. We also recognize the challenges collaboration presents. That's why we've invested so heavily in making Litmus a truly collaborative platform.
6 Takeaways from the UNSPAM 2020 Conference
While it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the current crisis, it’s more important to stay connected to your community and continue learning from and helping each other. With that in mind, Whitney and Jason wanted to take some time to reflect on what they learned from our email friends at the UNSPAM conference.
Litmus Live Spotlight: Sarah Esterman on How to Work With People
Like any other profession or pursuit, most of what we do in the email industry comes down to our relationships with others. Whether it’s our subscribers or stakeholders, how we communicate with people, our daily interactions, and what we learn from each other is what really matters. See how Litmus Live speaker Sarah Esterman learned how to work better with people in this exclusive conference spotlight.
New in Litmus: Outlook for Office 365 + Dark Mode
Microsoft Outlook has been around for decades. Although it's gone through countless iterations, it remains one of the most popular email clients around, currently placing #4 in our email client market share. The latest update to Outlook on desktop, made available to users of Microsoft's Office 365 subscription, continues in the same vein as prior versions but introduces a few challenges for email marketers, especially around Dark Mode.Curious what Outlook for Office 365 has in store? Read on to learn more about Microsoft's latest release.
The Litmus Live 2019 Agendas Are Here
We’ve been fielding a lot of questions about the agendas for Litmus Live 2019. As you can imagine, it’s a lot of work to go through dozens and dozens of submissions from an incredibly smart group of email marketers. While it’s been a long time coming, we’re thrilled to release the (mostly complete) agendas for all three Litmus Live conferences this year!
Our Favorite Trends from Litmus Live
Revisit some of our favorite themes from Litmus Live and get a sneak peek at how those trends are influencing this year's agendas.
Understanding Structured Data in Email Marketing
The typical email marketing campaign includes a lot of information. From subject lines to unsubscribe links, hero images to headlines, copy and calls-to-action, it’s a lot for a subscriber to take in. With so much data floating around a campaign, why would email marketers send even more?
How to Craft the Perfect Speaking Proposal for Litmus Live
We want to hear from you, #emailgeeks! Here's your ultimate how-to for crafting a speaker proposal for #LitmusLive. We hope to see you in 2019!
Litmus Live 2019: The Topics We Want to See On Stage
We pride ourselves on creating a community-driven conference. Litmus Live is attended by some of the most passionate email geeks in the world. Perhaps more importantly, the speakers in all three cities are pulled from the community, too. The folks you see on stage are the same people who spend their working lives in the email weeds. They are the ones thinking through campaigns, strategizing, writing, designing, developing, and analyzing emails every day of the week. We’re looking for people like you!
Save the Date for Litmus Live 2019
A lot of you have been asking—whether over Slack, Twitter, …
Microsoft Expands Animated GIF Support with Outlook 365
Learn about animated GIF support with email client Outlook 365.
Are voice assistants the future of email marketing?
Most in the industry seem bullish on the prospects of voice assistants and email. They're excited about this young technology and the possibilities it could theoretically afford. Others cite privacy concerns and usability issues as downsides to catering to voice assistants in email marketing. All of these differing opinions have left us asking the question: What do voice assistants mean for email marketers?
Understanding Retina Images in HTML Email
As high DPI displays become more common the need for retina images increases. Learn how to use retina images in email campaigns.
What’s on the Horizon for Outlook.com
If you’ve been keeping an eye on Microsoft Outlook over the last few years, you’ll have noticed that the Outlook team has been making some great improvements. With all of the work going into Outlook, email marketers are left with one question: What’s next? Here’s what you can look forward to from Microsoft.
3 Mega-Trends from Litmus Live 2018
Our yearly series of conferences on all things email—Litmus Live—has come to an end. It’s been a whirlwind across three cities, with dozens of speakers and over a thousand attendees. While it’s always bittersweet to close out Litmus Live for the year, it’s exciting to get back to work and start implementing some of the amazing ideas seen on stage.
Microsoft Outlook 2019: Here’s What’s New
We’re thrilled to announce that Microsoft’s latest desktop version of its popular email client—Outlook 2019—is now available for testing in Litmus Email Previews. The new Outlook comes with better fallbacks when using web fonts, SVG support, and more. Microsoft Outlook is comprised of several versions of the email client. Collectively, those clients rank #4 in email client market share, with 9% of all email subscribers tracked opening in some version of Outlook. The latest version, Outlook 2019, is an update to the desktop edition that is bundled with Microsoft Office. Although Outlook 2019 is a new release, it should be noted that it largely implements some of the features that have been in use in Office 365 subscriptions. The good news for email marketers is that Outlook 2019 doesn’t come with any major surprises. Here’s what we found while looking at the latest version of Microsoft Outlook.
How to Manage Teams with Litmus for Enterprise
Litmus users run the gamut. Everyone from freelancers to huge companies, agencies to non-profits, use Litmus to send better email campaigns every day. And every user has their own needs when it comes to managing who has access to their account. See how Litmus for Enterprise makes user control and team management easy, regardless of how your team, company, or clients are structured.
What Is Emmet?
In the quest to reduce the time between brainstorm and send, email marketers are on the hunt for tools to speed up their workflows. In this post, we look at how a tool called Emmet can help email designers code their campaigns faster than ever before.
The Challenges, Opportunities, and Speakers You’ll See at Litmus Live 2018
Every year at Litmus Live, we identify the biggest challenges facing the industry and invite the brilliant email marketers that are facing those challenges to share their hard-won insights with attendees. Topics run the gamut from workflows and email creation to strategy, automation, communication, and more. Here’s a sneak peak at what we’re planning for Litmus Live 2018.
Do email marketers and designers still need to inline CSS?
We explore the pros and cons of inline CSS in email, and whether it's still necessary today.
The State of Email in 2018: Webinar Recording + Q&A
The email landscape is constantly changing, making it harder than ever to create high-performing email programs. New email clients, devices, unsubscribe functionality, and privacy laws will have an impact on your 2018 marketing programs. In this webinar, the Litmus marketing team talked about what you need to succeed in a volatile industry, including our five key insights from the State of Email 2018 Report.
Understanding Media Queries in Email
Email designers have long sought to build campaigns for every device. Especially today, when roughly half of all email opens happen on mobile devices, it’s important to design an experience that works well across different form factors. While this used to be a difficult task (and still is for some email clients), media queries can make this task easier.
HTML Tables in Email: What could possibly go wrong?
If you’ve been in the email industry for any amount of time, you’ve likely experienced a number of problems with your email campaigns. From missing images to deliverability problems, email marketing is fraught with challenges. Something you may not have considered, though, is what can go wrong with the tables—the actual code—that is at the foundation of your emails.
This Month in Community: Accessible Emails, Black Friday + Coding Standards
The Litmus Community is more active than ever. In case you missed anything, here’s some of the stuff that happened this month in the Community.
Community Contest: Learning from Email Mistakes
Email is a fast-moving, easily-broken medium. From bad links to wrong lists, there is a lot that can go wrong. And, while mistakes are not uncommon in email marketing, the speed at which most of us work means that we largely ignore mistakes when they happen and—more importantly—the lessons we can learn from them.So, we asked Community members to share their biggest, scariest email marketing mistakes, along with their hard-won lessons. Here’s our favorite.
Community Spotlight: Jaina Mistry
In this new blog series, we talk to some of the amazing Litmus Community members. Get an inside look at what they do, how they do it, and their thoughts on the future of email marketing and design.
Community Spotlight: Mark Robbins
In this new blog series, we talk to some of the amazing Litmus Community members. Get an inside look at what they do, how they do it, and their thoughts on the future of email marketing and design.
This Is The Future Of Email Design
Despite outcries against old markup from decades past, the email world is changing fast. Long gone are the days where email designers were truly limited by the constraints of technology. See what the future has in store for the email world.
This Month in Community: Contests, Accessibility, and Favicons
This past month in the Litmus Community, we were treated to some amazing navigation concepts in email and questioned the use of favicons and paragraph tags in campaigns. Check out the recap to find out more.
4 Typography Tips for Email Designers
If we’ve learned anything as email designers over the past …
Fixing Table Alignment in Yahoo Mail
Email clients constantly make updates that affect how emails are displayed. Recently, Yahoo Mail made one such update and left designers in the dark. Here's the lowdown on exactly what changed and how to fix it.
Scalable, Fluid or Responsive: Understanding Mobile Email Approaches
Mobile is a wildly popular topic in email design, which …
What You Need To Know About Image Caching In Gmail
Google has introduced a number of features to Gmail lately. Along with tabs in the new inbox and an updated mobile client, you can add image caching to the list of changes that affect email marketers. Image caching and how it affects email tracking can be a confusing topic. We take a look at Gmail's changes and what it means for email marketers.
