The State of Email 2016 - Year in Review

2016
The State of Email
@ChadSWhite @LitmusApp #LitmusLive
Email Marketing Insights on
Design, Production, & Salaries

Litmus surveyed more than
900 marketers about how they
design, create, approve, and
send email campaigns—plus
how much they were paid.

Over the next 45 minutes, we’ll
share actionable tips from…

Chad White
• Research Director at Litmus
• Author of Email Marketing Rules
• Written over 3,000 posts and
articles on email marketing
• Quoted in over 100
publications, including
The New York Times and
The Wall Street Journal

The State of Email
DESIGN

Must-Subscribe
Brands

Retina-Optimized
Images

This became an issue when
Apple introduced the iPhone 4 in
2010, which had a Retina screen
with four times the pixel density
of previous screens. Now high-
DPI screens are everywhere.

One downside is that images
become heavy. Consider
compressing your images with
ImageOptim, Compressor.io,
JPEGmini, TinyPNG, Kraken,
or Pied Piper.

ALT Text

Despite Gmail now enabling
images in email by default,
image blocking is still common.
ALT text allows text to be
displayed when an image is not.

Without ALT text:

With ALT text:

With Styled ALT text:

Font properties supported in
clients displaying styled ALT text:
• font-family
• font-size
• font-weight
• color
• font-style

#LitmusLive
Images
on
Images
off

Preview Text

Use preview text like a
“second subject line” to
support and extend your
subject line.

Responsive
Design

Mobile-friendly design techniques:
1. Mobile-Aware Design uses basic
coding techniques to create a single
email rendering that’s suitable for a
range of screen sizes, but is
deferential to smartphones

Mobile-friendly design techniques:
2. Responsive Design uses media
queries and other progressive
enhancement techniques to control
the formatting, layout, and display
of email content depending on the
subscriber’s screen size

All of the growth in email
mobile-friendliness was the
result of growing use of
mobile-aware and
responsive-aware design.

Responsive-Aware
Email Design

The growth in mobile-aware
and responsive-aware shows
that marketers are focusing
on production efficiency.

Animated Gifs

Animated gifs are the most
common way to add motion
to an email because most
email clients support them.

Animated gifs can…
1. Catch the eye and add intrigue
2. Entertain and add humor
3. Draw attention to primary CTA
4. Highlight assortments or
product options
5. Demonstrate how a product works

Animated gifs can also…
1. Distract subscribers
2. Slow email load times
So…
1. Don’t use too many close together
2. Associate them with key CTAs

The State of Email
PRODUCTION

Content Planning

Without proper planning, it’s
difficult to…
1. Ramp up email production volume
for peak seasons
2. Plan sophisticated one-off emails
3. Make seasonal updates to
templates and triggered emails

The vast majority of marketers
are planning their email
campaign calendar using…
1. Google and Microsoft suites
2. Basecamp
3. Trello

Checklists

Avoidable failures are
common and persistent, not
to mention demoralizing and
frustrating, across many
fields… And the reason is
increasingly evident:

The volume and complexity
of what we know has
exceeded our individual
ability to deliver its benefits
correctly, safely, or reliably.

Pre-send Checklist: Do you have…
1. Right send date?
2. Right list or trigger logic?
3. Right sender name and subject line?
4. Right rendering and functionality?
5. Right personalization and defaults?
6. Right landing pages?

The State of Email
Mistakes
Better known as…
Many Email Marketing Mistakes
Going Undetected

Apology Emails

So while it seems that half
of brands are successfully
avoiding errors, unfortunately
it’s far more likely that they’re
just not able to successfully
detect their mistakes.

The State of Email
AGENCIES

Agencies invest
significantly more in every
aspect of email creation,
spending more time and
achieving greater efficiencies
through technology.

The State of Email
SALARIES & JOBS

Put that all together, and
the easiest way to identify
companies that value email
marketing is to look for
complexity.

Marketers should consider
those factors when evaluating
jobs, and brands should ask
themselves if they’re sending
the right cues to potential
email marketing employees.

Before I get to
your questions…

Please participate in our
2017 State of Email Survey:
surveymonkey.com/r/StateOfEmail2017
1. You will help power another year of
research-driven insights from Litmus.

2. You’ll uncover new opportunities for
improvements in your email program.

3. You’ll may win to win a ticket to
TEDC or a Mystery Litmus Swag Pack!

Thank You!

The State of Email 2016 - Year in Review

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