As email geeks, we love to obsess over exciting email designs and funky new coding tricks. But the real reason we send emails? To build relationships that drive business results.

To make email marketing work as a channel, you need to perform in three main areas: Deliverability, engagement, and value.

That’s why we hosted a Litmus Talks webinar called “Embrace the Email Performance Trifecta and See Major Results.” Together, we honed in on the elements that have the most impact when it comes to reaching the inbox, encouraging consistent engagement, and sending relevant emails your subscribers actually want to read.

Read on for nine ways to improve your email performance, and catch all their insights on-demand with the full webinar.

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What would your email marketing team do with $650,000?

Whether you’re a hundred-strong team or a scrappy team of one, that’s a lot of moolah.

That’s the amount of an FTC settlement against Experian Consumer Services for violating CAN-SPAM by confusing transactional and commercial emails. The issue was not that their emails included colorful designs or even that it included information about Experian products.

It was that they did not allow members to opt-out of their emails.

Don’t make the same mistake.

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There are many major holidays marketers circle on their campaign calendars, as they are dependable revenue drivers to count on every year.

These holidays require solidified weeks-long marketing campaigns, like Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and the winter holidays.

But what about those holidays in between, the “fun holidays”?

These are those holidays that pop up in entertaining marketing campaigns, like National Donut Day (June 7th, by the way 🍩) and National Pet Day.

Many marketing teams may waffle around the idea of whether or not to do a campaign around these fun holidays. In a time when marketers know how important it is to make every email send count, the question is, no matter your industry, how can you make a relatable, engaging and fun holiday email campaigns—that convert—for your subscribers?

Let’s take a look at my own inbox to answer that question! Over the course of a few weeks, three “fun holidays” stood out to me:

• Leap Day (Feb 29)
• Pi Day (March 14)
• April Fools Day (April 1)

I wondered, how many brands would take advantage of Leap Day as it only happens once every four years? Or April Fools Day (that maybe we wish didn’t come every year…), as an opportunity to catch my eye in a very busy inbox.

So I dug into my inbox to pinpoint some of my favorite trends I saw with these holidays and how brands were celebrating them. In this blog post, I’ve shared a few of my favorites, and suggest ways marketers can make the most of these opportunities to engage subscribers.

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Social proof is a powerful way to boost brand trust and engagement in your email campaigns. In this post, we’ll share what it is, why (and how) it works, and ways to do it, with 12 examples to inspire your own campaigns.

What is social proof?

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon that explains how “human beings often make choices about what to think, and what to do, based on the thoughts and actions of others.” It’s one of the six key principles underlying the science of persuasion, through the lens of social psychology.

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Picture this: you put all your creative energy into writing a great marketing email. You choose every word carefully and create a beautiful design to appeal to your target audience. Finally, you hit the send button, sit back, and sip your coffee, ready for the responses to pour in. But your inbox stays empty. 

Sooner or later, this scenario happens to every business. You might wonder if you made a mistake with your email. (Maybe that pun-filled subject line wasn’t as funny as you thought?) But even the best emails can get overlooked or lost in crowded inboxes. In fact, 80% of customers ignore marketing emails at least half the time. 

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Imagine writing an email that’s so effective it lands you a job at the White House.

Well, that’s what happened to Maya Shankar, a PhD cognitive neuroscientist. In 2014, the Department of Veterans Affairs asked her to help increase signups in their veteran benefit scheme.

Maya had a plan. She was well aware of a cognitive bias that affects us all—the endowment effect. This bias suggests that people value items higher if they own them. So, she changed the subject line in the Veterans’ enrollment email.

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“As a marketing executive, you know how important it is to have a strong email list. A newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with your audience, promote your content, and generate leads. But growing your newsletter subscriber base can be a challenge.

There are a lot of different ways to grow your newsletter subscriber base, but not all methods are created equal. Some methods, like running giveaways, can attract a lot of subscribers, but they may not be all that targeted. If you’re not careful, you could end up with a list of subscribers who aren’t interested in your content or who you can’t reach with your marketing messages.”

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“The email marketing landscape in 2023 was tumultuous to say the least. Amidst the ever present buzz of a looming recession, marketers navigated a world where email volume was on the rise, new AI-powered innovations were front and center, and subscriber expectations were skyrocketing. On top of this, increasing data privacy regulations heightened the need for marketers to lean into first-party data. There’s no denying that all marketers felt compelled to do more with less.”

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