Litmus Live Day Highlights: Are you getting the most out of your tech? Let’s find out.

Email marketers can engage with dozens of different technologies to build and launch campaigns. Having a strategic approach to using these tools not only maximizes the investment, but also allows for innovation and messages that your subscribers will look forward to receiving.

This month featured sessions on operating tools in your marketing stack and a tactical-level approach to creating Dark Mode experiences that take your design to the next level. We pulled together a few insights from each of our presenters to keep in mind as you log in and out of your platforms each day.

Set yourself up for success with your marketing tech stack

With thousands of technologies in the world, a marketer’s natural inclination may be to invest in a new service to solve problems or answer questions. Moni Oloyede, Sr. Marketing Operations Manager at Fidelis Cybersecurity, instead reviewed 5 steps to evaluate and future-proof your current investments.

1. Refocus your approach. Keep recipient ease of use with your message front and center, not ROI. This approach will help you create messages that subscribers will want to engage in, and those ROI numbers will follow naturally.
2. Establish goals. Use of your technology is a trackable exercise. Set quantifiable goals like number of people in the tool, date to implement new features, and number of support tickets created.
3. Set up an evaluation process. Having a repeatable process that reviews your technology’s maintenance as well as internal campaign and database health will help stave off future issues, saving your team time and money.
4. Be forward thinking. Monitor your team’s campaign needs for the next few months, and also trends in your industry, and scale your approach to using your current tools accordingly.
5. Know when to add to your tech stack. Remember that a new technology will always be more than just the dollar amount on the contract. Plan time for your team to get up to speed and support accordingly.

Moni also recommended making quick friends with the customer support and services teams in your technologies. Getting your internal teams certified in its operation is a great first step, but for ongoing questions and deeper dives, or if budget for ongoing training is a hurdle, these teams are great places to create relationships that support your team’s initiatives to get the most from your investment.

News flash: Dark Mode isn’t going anywhere

Litmus’s own Alice Li joined the conversation to shine a light on Dark Mode in email—not only the how-to methods to support subscribers who have this setting enabled, but also some behavioral characteristics of what makes this preferred by users around the world. To highlight 3 key takeaways from her session:

1. Dark Mode may not be as new as you think. Electronic screens are naturally dark, and have been since the earliest computers were manufactured. Light mode was fashioned by designers to mimic a sheet of paper, and can be problematic for users as more rays of light are reflected back into your eyes.
2. Yep, email is quirky yet again. Technically, you don’t have to write in any bit of code into a template to convert your message into Dark Mode, but you probably should. The default style in email clients may simply darken light aspects of the message with deeper tones in the same hue, but this can cause rendering issues with your copy and images if the contrast is not drastic enough. (How to check for these issues? Test!)
3. Don’t forget your images. Images are subject to being adjusted by Dark Mode preferences; Alice recommends using visuals with transparent backgrounds. If your image includes text, work with your design team to create a backup version that has at least the text in a light or nearly white shade, or add a light outline around areas that you wish to remain legible.

If you want to brush up on your skills, Alice shared her own code to use in your templates. Bookmark and revisit periodically to get the latest and greatest in efficient Dark Mode creation.

Next up: all about collaboration

The next Litmus Live Day on Tuesday, August 18th, features sessions all about collaboration in email marketing. From using templates to speed up time-to-market and maintain brand consistency to educating stakeholders on the performance of your email campaigns and tips on creating effective email briefs, we’ll have you covered with tips and ideas to increase effectiveness of your team. Details on the sessions and presenters are coming soon!

Want to catch up on past Litmus Live Days? Of course you do—you can watch the May and June sessions any time.