Email Marketing Kickoff for 2018

Email Marketing
Kickoff for 2018
Start your program off right in the New Year

Like previous years, 2018 will be a year of
change for the email marketers. Our industry
is constantly shifting as it adapts to
consumer, business, and technological
changes.
#LitmusLive @LitmusApp @ChadSWhite @BettinaSpecht

Litmus wants to help you get off on the right
foot in 2018 with a 3-point plan that entails:
1.Doing a program assessment
2.Addressing challenges
3.Seizing opportunities

Over the next 45 minutes, we’ll discuss each
of those points. Along the way, we’ll share
research and advice that will help you and
your team develop a success plan for the
year.

Chad S. White
Research Director at Litmus
Author of Email Marketing Rules
Bettina Specht
Content Marketing Manager
Litmus

How can I improve visibility
into the past and present
so I can plan for the future?

1. Benchmark Your Audience
What do you know about your subscribers?
How did your audience change over the
course of the past year?

1. Benchmark Your Audience
Preferences &
Interests
Demographics
Acquisition
Sources
Lifecycle Stage
Reading
Environment

Demographics
Where are
your subscribers
based?

Reading Environment
How do your subscribers
read your emails?

Get to Know
Your Audience
Optimize your campaigns with
subscriber-level insights to improve
segmentation and targeting
strategies.
Learn more →

2. Document Successes and Failures
Recap the most and least successful
campaigns of the past year, and find out
what made them successful (or not).

Campaign recap: Successes & Failures
Successes Failures
Highest open rate Why? Lowest open rate Why?
Highest click-through rate Why? Lowest click-through rate Why?
Lowest unsubscribe rate Why? Highest unsubscribe rate Why?
Highest ROI Why? Lowest ROI Why?
Most forwards Why Least Forwards Why?
Most fun to execute Why? Least fun to execute Why?

Take an extra close look at email mistakes:
● What happened?
● Why did it happen?
● How can we avoid errors like this?

For an in-depth look at how to reduce
errors and bounce back from mistakes with
grace, check out our How to Recover from
Email Marketing Mistakes report.

3. Look at Your Analytics Capabilities
Do you have access to the data you need to
analyze your program’s performance? What
insights are missing from your ESP?

Successful email marketing programs are
23% more likely than less successful
programs to use additional analytics to
supplement what’s provided by their ESP
(68.0% vs. 55.5%).

4. Benchmark Your Email Workflow,
Deliverability, and Creative Strategy
Litmus surveyed more than 3,500 marketers
as part of our State of Email research series.

State of Email Creative

State of Email Deliverability

State of Email Workflows

RECAP
Assess Your
Email Program
❏ Benchmark your audience
❏ Document successes and
failures
❏ Look at your analytics
capabilities
❏ Benchmark your email
workflow, deliverability, and
creative strategy

What are the biggest
challenges facing email
marketers?

Marketers identified “Poor coordination
between other departments, channels,
etc.” as their top challenge.

What happens in the email channel affects
other channels and vice versa, because
customers don’t stay in just one channel. So
all channels must work together to create
an optimized, cohesive customer experience.

4 Cross-Channel Opportunities:
1.Create more multichannel customers
through cross-promotion of channels
● Use email channel to promote
social, catalogs, SMS, etc.—
and vice versa

2.Create multi-touch campaigns
across channels
● Break through the noise by
coordinating messaging across
email, direct, social, web, and
other channels

3.Exploit content optimization
opportunities across channels
● Use email to inform messaging in
slower channels like mail and print
● Use faster channels like site
search and social to inform email

4.Leverage subscriber email addresses
as a unique identifier
● Use email addresses to help target
subscribers and lookalikes in
social and other channels

Marketers identified “Insufficient staffing”
as their No. 2 challenge. From previous
research, we know this is a widespread
problem that hampers email marketing
success.

Address staffing issues by making the
case for:
● More internal headcount
● Using agencies or freelancers
● New time-saving tools
● Removing process bottlenecks

For an in-depth look at the challenges
ahead for email marketers this year, check
out The Biggest Email Marketing Challenges
of 2018 on the Litmus blog.

What are the biggest risks
that email marketers face
in 2018?

GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation
goes into effect on May 25, 2018.
Organizations in breach of GDPR can be
fined up to 4% of annual global turnover
or €20 Million (whichever is greater)

Consent Requirements under GDPR
❏ Consent requires a positive opt-in. Don’t use pre-ticked boxes.
❏ Keep consent requests separate from other terms & conditions.
❏ Make it easy for people to withdraw consent.
❏ Keep records of all consents.
❏ Check existing consents. Refresh consents if they don’t meet
the GDPR standard.

For an in-depth look at GDPR, check out
● GDPR: What Europe’s New Privacy Law
Means for Email Marketers
● 5 Things You Must Know about Email
Consent under GDPR

RECAP
Overcome Key
Challenges
Internal
❏ Address the particular
challenges facing your email
program
External
❏ Identify your industry’s
challenges
❏ Become GDPR-compliant

What are the biggest
opportunities for email
marketers in 2018?

1. Structure Your Program for Success
● Make data-driven decisions.
○ Review the performance of every email
you send with your team.
○ Give designers, copywriters, and
coders access to performance data.

● Foster a culture of testing.
○ Compared to less successful email
programs, successful ones are...
■ 95% more likely to A/B test their
transactional emails at least once a
year (33% vs. 17%).

automated emails at least once a
year (43% vs. 26%).
broadcast and segmented emails at
least once a quarter (71% vs. 54%).

For an in-depth look at ways to structure
your email marketing program for success,
check out 5 Tactics for Nurturing Email
Marketing Innovation on the Litmus blog.

2. Get More Budget for Email Marketing
Even if your budget is “locked in” for the year,
it’s not too late to potentially get more money
allocated to your email program.

● Promote “sexier” adjacent activities.
○ Marketing automation, customer
journeys, Big Data, and omnichannel
marketing are all “shinier” than email—
but all involve email in some way.

● Leverage transformative initiatives.
○ Make sure email program improvements
are part of any large-scale CRM rollout.
○ Are your email capabilities aligned with
other upcoming capabilities?

● Leverage regulatory and brand
compliance requirements.
○ ...like GDPR
○ Also, re-brandings, website and mobile
app redesigns, etc.

For an in-depth look at ways to increase
your email marketing budget, check out
8 Ways to Get Executive Buy-In for Larger
Email Marketing Budgets, Besides ROI on
the Litmus blog.

3. Focus on Successful Behaviors
We recommend following the footsteps of
successful email marketing programs and
adopting the behaviors and tactics that are
clearly working for them.

● Pre-Send Checklists
Emails have many individual elements that
can go wrong, including functionality, links,
rendering, analytics tracking, and images.
Using an extensive pre-send checklist
ensures you don’t miss something critical.

programs to use an extensive pre-send
checklist as part of their QA process (28.1%
vs. 12.1%).

Send With Confidence
Get a guided check of the critical elements that affect email
performance before sending with Litmus Checklist.

● Email Briefs
What is the goal of your email? Who is it
being sent to? When will it be sent? How will
success be measured? An email brief
answers these questions and more to ensure
your team is aligned and focused.

programs to create an email brief for every
email they produce (24.5% vs. 11.0%).

For an email brief
template, download
our Email Strategy
Planning Brief
workbook.

● Automated Emails
Triggered emails are highly relevant because
they’re sent at a time when recipients are
most receptive to the message, which also
tends to be personalized. This makes their
ROI multifold higher than mass emails.

109% more likely than less successful ones
to generate at least half their email marketing
revenue from automated emails (17.1% vs.
8.2%).

For an in-depth look at the biggest
opportunities identified by our State of Email
research series, check out 20 Things
Successful Email Marketing Programs Do on
the Litmus blog.

❏ Structure your program for
success
❏ Get more budget for your
email program
❏ Focus on successful
behaviors
RECAP
Seize
Opportunities

1. Do a Program Assessment
2. Address Key Challenges
3. Seize Opportunities
Action Items and
Priorities for 2018
Our 3-Point Email Marketing Kickoff Plan

Mark Your Calendar!
Our next webinar is on March 1 at 1pm ET.
Be the first to know all the details by
signing up for Litmus’ newsletter at
litmus.com/subscribe

Thank You!
Any Questions?
Check out the Litmus Blog for the
recording and slides for this webinar.

Email Marketing Kickoff for 2018

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