Email Bridges Multiple Channels: EEC Conference Wrap-up

Last week, Delivra exhibited and attended the EEC’s Email Experience Evolution Conference in Miami.  The conference was a chance to meet email marketers from around the world and hear their best practice insights for email marketing.  The event was an excellent chance for us to learn what email marketers are doing and what works.  The overriding theme of the event was email best practices and how email can serve as a bridge to multiple channels.  Here is a Top 5 List of what we learned at the event.

The conference opened with Brian Harniman of Kayak speaking about how they have used email marketing to efficiently communicate with travel subscribers around the world.  A relative newcomer to the travel marketplace, Kayak has to attract new customers in a highly competitive marketplace, but also do so efficiently given their size and resources.  A veteran to email marketing, Brian outlined how Kayak has built their email marketing efforts through the use of testing.  He emphasized that testing is one of the most important methods to employ to ensure you are engaging your audience regardless of size.

As the conference progressed, there were a number of helpful sessions outlining email best practices in testing, design, optimization, list management, incorporating new medias along with numerous case study presentations from companies successfully using email to generate ROI for their organizations.  The key takeaways from these sessions for me were:

Sometimes the largest list is not always best. The key is to ensure that you have engaged recipients and to do that, email marketers often have to trim their lists for best results.

Building a list is easiest when you engage your audience. Mailing to recipients that have requested your email is the BEST way to drive action from your email campaigns.

Testing is probably one of the most underutilized resources that an email marketer has to use. Testing for subject line, content and design are all important and should not be overlooked.  While this effort does take a little additional time, it can increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns ten fold.

Measurement of email success should be measured at every stage throughout the campaign. It is so much more than simply opens and click-through rates.  How effective is your email in driving action?  In driving results? Measure that and you will learn ways to make improvements and changes with every email campaign that will meet what your audience wants.

With all of the various methods to market, email STILL is one of the more effective ones out there. New medias are having an impact on email campaigns, but only if they are integrated throughout the marketing strategy.  Social media, video, rich media landing pages and other methods are all ways to further engage your audience and grow your list.  However, they cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather as part of a whole.

There you have it, Email Evolution 2010 in a nutshell.  Surprisingly, even with the wide spectrum of attendees, email marketers are all facing many of the same issues.  The takeaways may seem simple and common sense, but remember that when employed efficiently and integrated throughout your marketing strategy, they will drive results.  Which is after all why you try to engage your audience through your email.

Wrapping up the conference, Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon led a lively session titled “Email Idol” where a team of expert email designers evaluated two email campaigns (one for USA Funds and the other for National Geographic).  In their review, the team was challenged to review the email campaigns, redesign the email layout, call to action and update any content to ensure a higher success rate.  Interestingly enough some of the improvements made to the winning emails were simple changes, yet they changed the impact of each email entirely.  The team recommended the use of pre-headers in each email to ensure that regardless of rendering, the email’s purpose is clearly understood.  Simplicity is better in both design and content.  Using too much information can often cause confusion and dilute the call-to-action within the campaign.  Keep it simple whether it is in your navigation, look and feel or even in your text.  Test multiple versions of a campaign with a sample of your audience to see what messaging and imagery speaks to your audience.  Mighty Interactive led the Email Idol face-off with clean and simple design that illustrated that less is truly more.

Closing the conference, Don Shula spoke to the attendees and covered the importance of setting and achieving goals. During his entertaining presentation Shula outlined his gameplan for success.  His quote,  “Strive for perfection and settle for excellence” couldn’t be more relevant to marketers today.

Last, but certainly not least, Ali Swerdlow of the Email Experience Council awarded the 2010 EEC People’s Choice Award to Mighty Interactive.  Congratulations to a clear leader in email marketing design and best practices!  To view additional coverage of the conference, read The Email Guide’s Wrapup Report , the Retail Email Blog, or view the Twitter feed at #EEC10.

Excellent conference with so many resources available to marketers.  I hope this wrap-up provides you a glimpse of the event along with a wealth of actionable information you can use to improve your marketing efforts.  Looking forward to next year’s event.

Carissa Newton | Marketing