Here's some recommended reading for you:

• Personalisation: where to start and what's to come 
• Email segmentation and targeting options  
• Call-to-Action Button Copy: How to reduce clickthrough rate by 26%  
• 5 Examples of Using Special Characters from 100 Inspiring Subject Lines  
• What I’ve Learned from 100 Responsive Emails 
• Email Design Toolkit 
• How to use video in email marketing in 2014  
• All You Need To Know About Gmail’s Feedback Loop Offering 
• Gmail's Unsubscribe Function: What You Need to Know 
• Tactics To Reduce Email Address Churn

I share a lot of interesting articles via Twitter and LinkedIn, so make sure to follow me there as well!

I remember we were discussing bringing the Email Insider Summit over to Europe already 5 years ago and now it's finally happening! I'm so excited!!

As usual, the Email Insider Summit has a VIP program and they've asked me to be the EU contact person for this.

Insider Summits are complimentary to Brand Marketers who meet our requirements.

Do you qualify as a VIP for this event?

To qualify, you must:

• Control the Email strategy and budget at your company
• Currently work at a well-known consumer brand
• Serve as Senior Level Management or above
• Agree to attend all sessions and all 3 days of the Summit

Complimentary Brand Marketer pass includes:

• Summit registration ($2995 value)
• Accommodations at the Resort for three nights 
• No Charge Activities
• Meals, drinks and functions over three days

So if you (think) you qualify for the VIP program, shoot me an email.

Here's a great 2-minute video that explains the anatomy of the perfect email design by the folks at Lyris. 

 

Have you seen (or created) other short educational videos on email marketing? Send me the link and I'll feature them on this blog. 

In Econsultancy's latest Email Marketing Census marketers claim that Email Marketing delivers the best return on investment.

For the past 8 years Email Marketing has consistantly been cited by marketers as having delivered the highest or second highest ROI compared to other channels such as PPC, Search, Direct Marketing, Social Media, Content Marketing and Mobile Marketing. 

And when asked the same question, the agencies have reported an even better return on investment as shown below.

What continually astounds me every time I see results such as this, is just how little marketers are utilising the strengths of this channel - yet despite this, Email Marketing is still coming on top for ROI.

This begs the question; what if we were to begin to really maximise the strengths of email marketing - or even performed the most basic processes to ensure maximum results from this channel?

To me, this is what makes email marketing very exciting. As marketers we're not yet leveraging all that the email channel has to offer, yet it's delivering the highest ROI - and even that isn't acounting for all the results it delivers.  It also delivers results that aren't attributed to it.  It drives traffic to other channels including offline and in-store and is one of the main drivers of traffic to a website.

As you can see in the below chart, some of the key processes or factors of an email campaign are getting very little attention - especially when compared to a typical campaign in other channels. 29% of marketers aren't optimising their campaigns and the shocking thing to note (as seen in the report) is that his hasn't really changed from the results of the 2008 census. 

 You can access the full Econsultancy Email Marketing Census 2014 Report here.

How often have you abandoned a checkout due to a confusing and difficult experience? Unfortunately this is more common than it should be and we lose customer's during the checkout process. In fact you're average abandon rate is around 80%!

Plan to Engage recently  hosted a webinar with conversion expert James Critchley of cloud.IQ and provided 3 keys to leverage in order to prevent abandonment of the shopping cart process. 

 The 3 Keys discussed are based on BJ Fogg's Behavioural Model which shows that 3 elements must converge at the same moment for a behaviour to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger.

In this webinar we detailed each of these elements and look to see how we can apply this model to our customer's checkout process  in order to refine and optimise the experience, resulting in increased conversions. 

Interested in seeing more? The please view the slides of the presentation below, alternatively you can watch the actual webinar here. 

So - Gmail has in beta mode a new feature in the Gmail Promotions tab, which picks out images from your emails and presents them in a visual tile layout. This is the next step from having recently made images visible by default (and now we can begin to see why they did so).

If you haven't yet received this feature - you can apply for it here and be part of the trial.

The good news is that our friend Justin Khoo over at Freshinbox has created a cool new tool to be able to test what your emails may look like to ensure you're now leveraging this fresh and potentially valuable way of presenting your email. So - if you're wanting to tweak your emails so they benefit from this - then shoot over there now!

A comprehensive coverage of all blogs and related information about this new feature was very kindly putting together by our good friend Jordie van Rijn over at emailMonday - so check we recommend that you check this out.