Fellowemail marketers: we're lovingthe content you're publishing lately! We've read some really stellar posts, so we decided to round up all thetheories, stats, trends, and tips we'veseen in one place. Check out what we learned here, and let us know if we missed anything great!
CTA Buttons Are Definitely Still Important
Mike Nelson of Really Good Emails took it upon himself to collect data on call-to-action buttons in every email submitted to ReallyGoodEmails.com in 2016. The time-intensiveness of the task was pretty intense. In his own words: "It sucked." But, thanks to Mike, we have a beautiful breakdown of everything there is to know about CTA buttons, like:
- The most popular size
- The most popular color
- The most popular shape
- The most popular frequency
- The most popular placement
- The most popular wording used
- The most popular character length
It's fascinating to read what Mike discovered, like how blue is the most popular CTA button color and "get" is the most-used verb. We'll definitely be using this data as we make decisions about our own emails.
The Future of Marketing Will Involve Handling Data Differently
As email geeks, we love data. But get a load of this: the digital universe is doubling in size every two years, and by 2020,it willreach44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes.What's an email marketer to do with all that data?Shashi Upadhyay and Nipul Chokshi shared their insights with DataInformed. Turns out,there are nearly4,000 marketing technologiesavailable today, all designed to collect data and translate it into actionable insights. But just having access to these platforms isnot enough. To manage higher and higher amounts of data, marketers must be strategic about integration, which the authors say is "the future of marketing."Marketers should adopt a few niche solutions from the thousands available in an effort to create"a seamless, data-enhanced workflow in which marketers no longer need to toggle between several different applications." Reading this post definitely got us thinking about email efficiency.
Marketing Automation Can Be More Accessible to Small Businesses
According to Campaign Monitor, there's a huge disparity in how companies adopt marketing automation. Automation hasamassed over 60% adoptionamongFortune 1000 companies, but less than 5% among small and mid-sized companies.Campaign Monitor's solution for bridging the gap is through a new version of theirVisual Journey Designer, a platform that allows marketers to trigger automated campaigns.The platform is currently live and available to select clients, and it may really empower email marketers.
There Is Power in Triggered Email Campaigns
Triggered emails aremessages sent based on specific consumer actions (like apurchase) or events (like a birthday). New research from MarketingProfs reveals big news about triggered emails: theyreceive significantly more engagement than other emails.According to the research, welcome emails are the most popular type of trigger emails from email marketers (they're deployed by 72% of brands), followed by reactivations andabandoned cart emails. The datais definitely powerful and can change your email campaign strategy.
Email Marketing Can Change in the Travel Industry
A new whitepaper from Email Monks looks at trends in travel email marketing, like how some of the highest email open rates—up to 57%—show how a lot of travelers go on a "digital journey" in the vacation-planning process. Of course, there are still plenty of challenges, like maintaining long-term relationships with clients and capturing readers' attention during off-seasons, but there are also useful insights that are applicable to all email marketers, not just to those in travel.
Email Marketers Are Transforming Political Campaigns
We're all probably a little tired of politics at the moment. But,EContent's research on how email marketing is impacting political campaigns is seriously interesting.Political email marketing has come a long way since it firsttook off with the 2008 Obama campaign. Nonetheless, "Donald Trump has done email marketing all wrong," EContent says, pointing out high spam rates and low open rates. EContent believes Hillary Clinton's campaign, on the other hand, has done a better job embracing data-driven strategies. They cite digital, analytics, and engineering job openings posted for the campaign,includingan email writer.So what can welearn from the candidates? EContent tells email marketers to focus campaigns on two main things:targeting key issues and personalizingcontent for each individual.
What have you been reading?
Email marketers, what have you been reading? Let us know in the comments!SaveSave
