Last week we wrapped up our webinar “Email Design & Marketing Masterclass”, joined by guest Magith Noohukhan from our partners at Braze.com. It was a phenomenal webinar, bringing together great content, guests, and audience. In fact, the audience participation was so great we just had to write a follow up post that captured some of the best questions, as well as our own personal takeaways.
Our key takeaways from Braze’s marketing trends
Honestly, takeaways can’t do this webinar justice – go watch it now! Need extra convincing? Here’s what we thought.
- Braze recently released their 2023 Global Customer Engagement Review, featuring insights from 1,500 VP+ Marketing Decision Makers and 1,700+ Braze customers globally – (learn more here)
This report was immensely helpful in centering our conversation around the current marketing trends facing us today, and give context for how email design can be most impactful.
- Retention is the name of the game for 2023
It might not surprise anyone, but given our current geo-economic status, most businesses are focused on retention, some putting almost 50% of marketing budget towards it.
- Everybody is struggling with data
The struggle continues, but it has changed! The problem most marketers face today isn’t necessarily collecting more data, it’s making it useful.
- Siloed teams are a barrier to progress that must be addressed
A problem formerly reserved for enterprise organizations is trickling down to companies of all sizes, and is being exacerbated by market conditions and the new focus on retention.
So what’s a marketer to do? Email design in action
- You can’t move fast unless you can move fast
A little tongue in cheek, but a key weakness that Braze identified was the challenge that marketing teams are having leveraging data and personalization effectively in their email marketing. Email Production Platforms like Dyspatch enable you to pre-create modules that have personalization baked in, so when you’re building a campaign and want to leverage all that juicy data, you can do it. Fast. - Email design has changed, but it’s still complicated
If you look at emails from a cross-section of top brands, you’ll see some really stunning designs that might not have been feasible a few years ago. We highlight some great ones in the webinar (go watch it!). That said, these advancements do require complex email code or an experienced email developer, which not everyone has on hand. That’s another superpower of Dyspatch, enabling you to leverage cutting edge design trends without having to know any of the coding. - Quick collaboration is key
These days you don’t have time to forward your email design to all stakeholders and sit back and wait while they give you feedback. Email design, copywriting, and QA need to be done in real time. That’s how you attack the challenge of siloed teams in your organization, and it’s where Dyspatch excels. You don’t want your Sales Director or Legal team logging into Marketing Cloud? Instead, how about somewhere like Dyspatch where they can quickly sign off on content? We got you covered.
I do hope you watch the full webinar because there were too many highlights, data tidbits, and design trends to cover here. Most important is to give space to some of the amazing audience questions that came in at the end. Here’s a selection of some of our favorites!
Questions from the audience
AMP - AMP has no traction in North America, thoughts?
- Not so fast. It all comes down to email clients, so we recommend that you check what your recipients are using to view your emails. If your clients are opening your emails in Gmail, you can guarantee that AMP will be a huge ROI for you.
Dark mode - An agency told our company that we should be sending image-based emails to avoid dark mode messing with our designs. What’s your opinion?
- We really don’t recommend this, for a few reasons. Image-based emails feel like a cheat, but in reality they create more problems than they solve. By designing and coding emails specifically for dark mode, you ensure that your emails score high marks for accessibility, and that they look great no matter the device or email client used to open them. And also, if a customer is using dark mode, and you send an image-based white email, you’ll definitely annoy them.
B2B - What’s the best strategy for B2B marketing, how can we utilize it? Any other tips for B2B communication?
- We always point to Canva as a shining example, since they prove that being B2B doesn’t mean you can’t use the same approaches as B2C marketers. We recommend that you think about your brand voice and how that translates to email. It helps to be engaging and playful, so be creative. You could also try sending from a company wide account, or try sending from a company mascot, for example.
- And keep in mind that personalization can be used in B2B emails as well. In fact, it’s one of the best techniques. Remember to leverage key product metrics or product activity in email to track value you’re creating.
- Finally remember that everyone opening your emails is a human, so think about how you can bring relevant content to them at this particular stage in the customer lifecycle. This will instill trust and build lasting relationships.
Recruitment Emails - Any advice with recruitment marketing emails?
- This will depend on what side of the market you are in. If you’re the one emailing applicants, personalization is the biggest trick. Ensuring that the job postings you are sending out are highly relevant to the folks you’re sending them to.
- Zillow is a great example to look to for inspiration: their apartment and housing listing emails can be very similar to recruitment and job posting emails. So, think about what you can take from those in your recruitment emails.
- And to applicants, be very relevant! Job hunting is really stressful, ensure that everything you’re sending is relevant. That means asking candidates for their preferences, including what kind of roles, titles, and salary they’re looking for, and only sending them emails with content where everything matches their criteria.
- If you have an account manager on your side assigned to each applicant, personalize any email with their name and contact information. This applies in any B2B context, even your automated emails can highlight that the customer has a personal concierge ready to help out if needed.
Email Length - Do you lean towards longer content email or shorter emails closer to social media?
- We recommend that you test both, and see what works with your audience. That, and keep in mind that you can mix and match over time as well. Don’t let your content get stale, keep experimenting as what performs well could change over time.
