1. The document discusses how email marketing has evolved since 2010 to become more "sexy" or effective.
2. Three main factors that have driven this evolution are the rise of mobile/smartphones, use of behavioral data and automation, and focus on sender reputation.
3. Additional changes like improved design capabilities, video/animation, and new email clients are expanding what is possible with email marketing into the future.
4. Four years ago Email Radio did a show about the
future of email - yes there was an email podcast
before Litmus’s.
On the show there were no two better people
qualified to speak on the subject: Mr Influence Bill
McCloskey and the legend of Mark Brownlow.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
6. The future of email will be defined by more by Mobile
than anything else along with ways of email
separating itself from being lost in social.
The discussion moved to be about why email was
not getting the respect it deserved in the digital
marketing industry and in brands as far as budget
and priority was concerned.
The general census was that Email had been a
victim of it’s own success: cheap, robust, consistent,
‘easy’ and of course there is spam and list purchase.
Image blocking and Outlook using Word to render
had allegedly “ripped the guts out of email design”
according to Bill.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
7. Medium Brand
Search Google
Facebook Facebook
Twitter Twitter
Email Er ... Outlook?
www.pure360.com @Pure360
8. Email was not sexy like the brands, who were also
mediums,
even though email still delivered the best ROI,
content was put everywhere, if you saw it in realtime
on twitter, you won’t open the email about it.
Email was competing and losing to the brands of
search and social
You could look back to design, but of course Outlook
had “ripped the guts out of email design” by using
Word.
There was no exclusivity to being on “the List” so the
medium delivering the most was getting everything
last. As Seth Godin put it, email needed a Purple
Cow!
I wanted to find something sexy about email and
promote it…
www.pure360.com @Pure360
9. Shexzy
Email!
Jordie van Rijn / @jvanrijn
Famous Dutch Email Marketer
www.pure360.com @Pure360
10. The three
Elements of the
Evolution of
Shexzy Email
www.pure360.com @Pure360
11. At the time there wasn’t much to go on but
today there is so much more … So how did
email recover from that...
I see three main elements which have made
email marketing what it is today and what
makes it shexzy…
www.pure360.com @Pure360
12. A lot has happened since 2010…
www.pure360.com @Pure360
x 4000+
13. A lot has happened since, way to much to
cover but some notable ones include HTML
& CSS being able to a lot more, 8+ iPhones,
getting bigger & bendier, Outlook finding
new ways to rip the guts out of Email HTML,
Gmail tabs, new types of spam trap, the
Spamhaus ddos attack slowing down the
internet, Samsung using clips from 2001 to
show that Apple didn’t invent the tablet
design.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
15. IPs were the main filters but IPv4 was running
out and ESPs were using shared pools so ISPs
needed more to track a sender.
Then v4 IPs were given to fridges, then the
credit crunch kicked in and low permission
blasts from larger brands who could no longer
afford TV & print took to solus and affiliates to
get their brand out there, rose to a point where
the ISP s were struggling with the volumes.
Instead of getting more boxes ISPs turned on
reputation and everything changed.
It was harder to get delivered, you had to care
about all recipient reactions and deliverability
was born into a new era.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
17. Email Intelligence was born, we have
software to tell you what everyone was
doing, how ISPs saw you, clean your list,
preview your emails in every inbox before
you send it.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
19. A catch phrase that didn’t bring anything new
as far as functionality - single customer view &
data mining etc. have been around for a long
time, but it was always seen a so very
expensive.
This made it Shexzy and less scary and
brought smaller tools to our attention to solve
one data problem for far less cost. Much of it
was inspired by the need to track social alone.
Email tracking software collects so much data
but you only got opens and click etc. the need
to track behaviour and engagement was
needed and now you can have it all.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
21. A catch phrase that didn’t bring anything new
as far as functionality - single customer view &
data mining etc. have been around for a long
time, but it was always seen a so very
expensive.
This made it Shexzy and less scary and
brought smaller tools to our attention to solve
one data problem for far less cost. Much of it
was inspired by the need to track social alone.
Email tracking software collects so much data
but you only got opens and click etc. the need
to track behaviour and engagement was
needed and now you can have it all.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
23. Open reach is a great strategy to apply even to
your bread and butter newsletter list.
Aim to get every person on your list to open at
least one email a year, track the behaviour and
as people drift down the time line, target them
differently to wake them up.
Once they pass the year mark, then you get
into reengagement.
You will also eventually need to make a
decision about dropping them all together.
It helps to track additional touch points, link
email subscribers to their social profiles, to
browsing your site, all is achievable now.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
25. Bar far the biggest influence to email’s
shexzy factor is smart phones.
Initially the iPhone’s email app rendering
everything brought design back and devs no
longer had to dial themselves back to the
nineties to build an email
www.pure360.com @Pure360
27. One of the biggest changes to email is
opening times, we used to just have to time
it so people were in front of their computers,
now everyone gets to see every email
almost as soon as we send it.
But on a mobile, they very rarely click
straight away because they don’t want to
waste their killing time waiting for a page to
load. more on Mobile Inbox Triage…
www.pure360.com @Pure360
29. Mainly on the iPhone though but we can now make
emails automatically alter their content structure on
the fly based on screen size.
It’s popular to take the desktop version where media
queries are not supported then add styles to make
them change on a mobile where they are.
And ironically many of the code we use to organise
content responsively is very very old.
Media queries are not vital to making an email auto-arrange
itself on a smaller screen but it gives you
most control.
You can build an email to roll down into a single
column without the need for media queries and then
add them to neaten it up where they are rendered.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
31. One of the coolest things we’ve discovered is the how
the hover style works on a mobile.
Part of the reason why Flash was ignored by apple was
because much of its UI was about hovering and a touch
screen does not have a hover.
However, when you do tap an element with a hover, it will
stay hovered, so you can make the email interactive and
show & hide content without them leaving their inbox.
Initially this was rolled out as progressive disclosure
because it was presented as a contents list but a recent
effort from B&Q did a whole lot more.
More and more techniques are emerging to capitalise on
the dynamic option in a mobile inbox by twisting the
purpose and the effect on commonly used web
techniques and how they actually work on a phone.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
33. HTML5 brought the video tag!
iPhones would render the video tag, in fact I even
managed to get Hotmail to play a video.
The fact that you could get video working in an inbox
was very popular but eventually very complex due to
the video file types preferred by each browser.
But animation stayed popular and software evolved
which could push videos through a jpeg image.
Lots more people went for the animated gif and to
save image weight on high quality images the
“cinemagraph” was born, which only animates a
small section of the image.
This House of cards emails was very popular and an
iPad app called Echograph was a very cheeky tool to
convert videos into gifs but only animate a small
section, like a wine pouring or a candle flickering etc.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
34. www.pure360.com @Pure360
What’s in Store
• More phones
• Wearables - plain text for watches
• More email clients / function over render
• Less Spam
• More data
• Shexzier Emails
35. We have all of these very cool things at our disposal now and there is more to
come.
Phone will continue to appear as software pushes the hardware,
As phones get bigger, too big to hold, wearable emerge for easy access; the
apple watch’s inbox is rumoured to show only the plain text, so now that old
thing is back!
As Gmail adds more features, more email clients are appearing, to help people
better organise their busy inbox, a good example is Mailbox from the guys at
Dropbox with a built in snooze feature to allow you to quickly get to inbox zero
now and see the stuff you want to read later, appear back in your inbox later.
Incidentally, this does not render media queries, so you only get the desktop
version, not unlike the Gmail app, but the organisation features still seem to
attract users, like the Gmail app. Definitely something worth keeping an eye on.
There are more and more spam traps, especially zombie traps as emails
expire, so using your data and keeping your list fresh will be more and more
important,
so you’ll need more data to stay relevant and more data you shall have as
ESPs develop and integrate with best of breed tools.
So right now you get to make your emails relevant in content, timing and
rapport and you get to make them fit on any screen and tweak them for the
features of different inboxes, that’s shexzy and there’s more to come.
www.pure360.com @Pure360
36. IT’S A GREAT TIME
TO BE IN EMAIL
www.pure360.com @Pure360
Four years ago Email Radio did a show about the future of email - yes there was an email podcast before Litmus’s.
On the show there were no two better people qualified to speak on the subject:
Mr Influence Bill McCloskey and the legend of Mark Brownlow.
The future of email will be defined by more by Mobile than anything else along with ways of email separating itself from being lost in social.
The discussion moved to be about why email was not getting the respect it deserved in the digital marketing industry and in brands as far as budget and priority was concerned.
The general census was that Email had been a victim of it’s own success: cheap, robust, consistent, ‘easy’ and of course there is spam and list purchase.
Image blocking and Outlook using Word to render had allegedly “ripped the guts out of email design” according to Bill.
Email was not sexy like the brands, who were also mediums,even though email still delivered the best ROI, content was put everywhere, if you saw it in realtime on twitter, you won’t open the email about it.
Email was competing and losing to the brands of search and social
You could look back to design, but of course Outlook had “ripped the guts out of email design” by using Word.There was no exclusivity to being on “the List” so the medium delivering the most was getting everything last. As Seth Godin put it, email needed a Purple Cow!
I wanted to find something sexy about email and promote it…
Jordie told me I was spelling it wrong
At the time there wasn’t much to go on but today there is so much more … So how did email recover from that...
I see three main elements which have made email marketing what it is today and what makes it shexzy…
A lot has happened since, way to much to cover but some notable ones include HTML & CSS being able to a lot more, 8+ iPhones, getting bigger & bendier, Outlook finding new ways to rip the guts out of Email HTML, Gmail tabs, new types of spam trap, the Spamhaus ddos attack slowing down the internet, Samsung using clips from 2001 to show that Apple didn’t invent the tablet design.
IPs were the main filters but IPv4 was running out and ESPs were using shared pools so ISPs needed more to track a sender.
Then v4 Ips were given to fridges, then the credit crunch kicked in and low permission blasts from larger brands who could no longer afford TV & print took to solus and affiliates to get their brand out there, rose to a point where the ISP s were struggling with the volumes.
Instead of getting more boxes they turned on reputation and everything changed.
It was harder to get delivered, you had to care about all recipient reactions and deliverability was born into a new era.
Email Intelligence was born, we have software to tell you what everyone was doing, how ISPs saw you, clean your list, preview your emails in every inbox before you send it
A catch phrase that didn’t bring anything new as far as functionality - single customer view & data mining etc. have been around for a long time, but it was always seen a so very expensive.
This made it shexzy and less scary and brought smaller tools to our attention to solve one data problem for far less cost. Much of it was inspired by the need to track social alone.
Email tracking software collects so much data but you only got opens and click etc. the need to track behaviour and engagement was needed and now you can have it all.
With all of this data, system can now automate your use of it: tell systems who you want to send to and when and what to send, hit save and sit back…
Welcome messages are vital for the “momentum of engagement”
Birthday’s a re an easy win
Cart Abandonment has proven a very cost effective way of saving lost revenue
Recently Viewed items from a web-shop is a step back rom the cart but can maintain interest and momentum
Product Recommendations from ether “people who also bought this…” to crowd sourced popular products in general can easily help personalise an email.
Open reach is a great strategy to apply even to your bread and butter newsletter list.
Aim to get every person on your list to open at least one email a year, track the behaviour and as people drift down the time line, target them differently to wake them up.
Once they pass the year mark, then you get into reengagement.
You will also eventually need to make a decision about dropping them all together.
It helps to track additional touch points, link email subscribers to their social profiles, to browsing your site, all is achievable now.
Bar far the biggest influence to email’s shexzy factor is smart phones.
Initially the iPhone’s email app rendering everything brought design back and devs no longer had to dial themselves back to the nineties to build an email
One of the biggest changes to email is opening times, we used to just have to time it so people were in front of their computers, now everyone gets to see every email almost as soon as we send it.
But on a mobile, they very rarely click straight away because they don’t want to waste their killing time waiting for a page to load.
Mainly on the iPhone though but we can now make emails automatically alter their content structure on the fly based on screen size.
It’s popular to take the desktop version where media queries are not supported then add styles to make them change on a mobile where they are.
And ironically many of the code we use to organise content responsively is very very old.
Media queries are not vital to making an email auto-arrange itself on a smaller screen but it gives you most control.
You can build an email to roll down into a single column without the need for media queries and then add them to neaten it up where they are rendered.
One of the coolest things we’ve discovered is the how the hover style works on a mobile.
Part of the reason why Flash was ignored by apple was because much of its UI was about hovering and a touch screen does not have a hover.
However, when you do tap an element with a hover, it will stay hovered, so you can make the email interactive and show & hide content without them leaving their inbox.
Initially this was rolled out as progressive disclosure because it was presented as a contents list but a recent effort from B&Q did a whole lot more.
More and more techniques are emerging to capitalise on the dynamic option in a mobile inbox by twisting the purpose and the effect on commonly used web techniques and how they actually work on a phone.
HTML5 brought the video tag!
iPhones would render the video tag, in fact I even managed to get Hotmail to play a video.
The fact that you could get video working in an inbox was very popular but eventually very complex due to the video file types prefered by each browser.
But animation stayed popular and software evolved which could push videos through a jpeg image.
Lots more people went for the animated gif and to save image weight on high quality images the “cinemagraph” was born, which only animates a small sectoin of the image.
This House of cards emails was very popular and an iPad app called Echograph was a very cheeky tool to convert videos into gifs but only animate a small section, like a wine pouring or a candle flickering etc.
We have all of these very cool things at our disposal now and there is more to come.
Phone will continue to appear as software pushes the hardware,
As phones get bigger, too big to hold, wearable emerge for easy access; the apple watch’s inbox is rumoured to show only the plain text, so now that old thing is back!
As Gmail adds more features, more email clients are appearing, to help people better organise their busy inbox, a good example is Mailbox from the guys at Dropbox with a built in snooze feature to allow you to quickly get to inbox zero now and see the stuff you want to read later, appear back in your inbox later. Incidentally, this does not render media queries, so you only get the desktop version, not unlike the Gmail app, but the organisation features still seem to attract users, like the Gmail app. Definitely something worth keeping an eye on.
There are more and more spam traps, especially zombie traps as emails expire, so using your data and keeping your list fresh will be more and more important,
so you’ll need more data to stay relevant and more data you shall have as ESPs develop and integrate with best of breed tools.
So right now you get to make your emails relevant in content, timing and rapport and you get to make them fit on any screen and tweak them for the features of different inboxes, that’s shexzy and there’s more to come.