Key Takeaways From October’s Litmus Live Day

Approaching email marketing plans for next year may be a bit different than the past—now that we all know that even with the most well-organized plans and calendars, unexpected elements will arise that change our strategy. At October’s Litmus Live Day, we welcomed two experts with years of experience in planning and reviewing robust email programs for both B2B and B2C companies, and provided tips on how to balance the need to plan with the inevitable content pivot.

Adapting B2C strategies for B2B marketing teams

Emily McGuire owns email agency Flourish & Grit, helping clients in both the retail/eCommerce space and B2B verticals. Early in her session, she shared a way for B2B teams to adapt a popular retail campaign strategy, the abandoned cart:

1. Seek out data points on how your email subscribers are interacting with your website.
2. Identify the most frequently viewed pages or paths that visitors take before completing your goal action such as filling out a form.
3. Send messages to people who start but don’t complete the form.

An added bonus is the ability to optimize and build lead nurturing journeys based on those most used pages. Using historical information on the actions of visitors on your website that starts from your email send is a solid base to build into a campaign strategy.

From a design and content perspective, keep in mind that your subscribers enjoy engaging with messages that show the personality of the brand behind them. Emily helped us remember that at the end of the day, we’re humans talking to humans.

“Just have fun with your copy . . . for some reason in the B2B world, we feel like we have to be super dry, but you’re still talking to people with real personalities. Being more personable helps establish and nurture that relationship.”

Email audits: necessary + informative

Our second session focused on the benefits of creating and scaling an email audit process. Kitty Bates, Content and Email Executive at The Typeface Group, has been part of creating these processes for both in-house and agency clients, and provided a few tips to make the audit less daunting.

Tip 1: Examine your emails in a time frame that makes sense to your organization.

For agencies, this may mean at the times when you’re onboarding a new client, and then repeating each quarter. Brand marketing teams may see a benefit from auditing their key emails every six months, with a full audit of everything once a year.

Tip 2: Break your reviews into focusing on two key sets of messages, and three areas for each.

Start by examining your standard marketing campaigns and your transactional emails. Look at their headers and footers, button sizing, and send time. These are easy areas to look at on each message you send and will also likely have easily found data points to help inform changes for future template updates.

Tip 3: Include members outside of your email team, and make information findable.

Strategically including members of your marketing team, and even other departments like support and customer experience, will help you overcome assumptions and give you a new set of ideas for updates.

Approaching the email audit process with a defined set of questions or problems to identify keeps everyone involved on the same page and working on a defined goal. Kitty provided an easy-to-use email audit template for teams who are just getting started on their auditing journey as well as those looking for a way to refresh their existing process to make sure major elements are being identified.

What’s next for Litmus Live Day in November?

Elements such as email audits, template designs, and budget all play a role in November’s Litmus Live Day theme: Smart Strategies for ESP Migrations.

The new year might be bringing this seemingly daunting project to your workload, but our Litmus Live Day sessions on November 17th will get you ready. We’ll equip you with ways to present a successful case when you recognize the need to change platforms. And you’ll learn insights from marketers who have been through the migration process so you can get your project started on the best foot.

Keep your eyes peeled for more information!