As an email marketing agency, we need consumers to open our emails. And then we need them to want to read them. What’s going to set our clients apart from the other senders in your inbox and the other billion things vying for your attention? According to a recent post over on the Email Monks blog, minimalism is the answer. Drawing from our own experience designing… Read more »
Our second-ever issue of What’s Up in Email? has arrived! There won’t be another round-up like this until after our EiQ event has passed us by – meaning, if you get through all these posts now, you should have plenty to talk about during the conference at the end of the month. More details on that (and on how to register) here. In this month’s… Read more »
“Computers were created to do tedious and annoying things” – Me, remembering why I love my job A few weeks ago, I was assigned a data cleansing, standardization and manipulations task for one of our clients, a B2B start-up with a relatively young email program. There were some 16,000 records in the file and they needed all of these normalized and squeaky-clean in order to… Read more »
Late last year, Chick-fil-A came to us seeking new ways to drive downloads for their new Chick-fil-A One app while providing a relevant and engaging experience—but they were faced with a few challenges. Find out how we overcame those challenges to drive more downloads than ever in this case study presented by our pals from Movable Ink. THE CHALLENGE The Chick-fil-A team didn’t have readily… Read more »
Email nerds have been using animation to take their visuals to the next level of greatness for some time now. Typically, integrating any kind of animation involves GIFs. A lot of them. But with a little CSS finagling, a single image can infuse your email with panning, scrolling, looping effects–without the file size limitations and other strife of GIF-making. If you’re looking to quickly add… Read more »
EiQ, the intelligent email gathering, is our newest brainchild and rapidly approaching liftoff. On March 30, in Atlanta, quite possibly the email capital of the world (more on that later), we will bring the digital marketing community together to celebrate the power of email and discuss which major trends are propelling the channel towards further greatness. There will be no talks about whether or not… Read more »
Rheem recently came to BrightWave with a question – How do we easily provide our trade customers with valuable information such as product news, promotions and monthly highlights so that they feel enabled to pass this on to their customers? As the world’s-only producer of heating, cooling, water heating, pool/spa heating and commercial refrigeration products, Rheem has a lot of information to share. The trick… Read more »
There were several lofty predictions for email in 2016! We reviewed five of our favorites and determined where 2016 lived up to the hype and where it fell short. Prediction #1: Gmail won’t start supporting media queries. Made by Chad White at Litmus The email world rejoiced in September when Google announced that Gmail now supports embedded styles and media queries. This change enabled responsive… Read more »
It’s been an action packed, exciting and genuinely fantastic year on all fronts. In fact, 2016 once again will take the cake as the best year ever for BrightWave when it comes to all performance metrics. Not bad for a company approaching its 14th anniversary. Let’s get to the highlight reel. Named the Leading Independent Email Marketing Agency – the Best of the Best – by… Read more »
Gone are the days of carefully planning your Black Friday shopping schedule, fighting crowds and figuring out just how to get that 65” 4K TV into your car. Black Friday 2016 e-commerce revenue reached $3.34 billion, and that doesn’t even include Thanksgiving Day sales! So how was that $3.34 billion generated? It’s no surprise that Search (Black Friday: 38.5%; Cyber Monday: 35.5%) and Direct (Black… Read more »
If 2016 was the big year of “what if,” 2017 looks to be the year of “what works?” The 2016 Forrester Wave report stated that 70% of brands will increase investment in email strategy to operationalize efforts towards customer obsession,” but there are bound to be missteps. Those brands that flew too close to the sun with complex, budget-busting programs will seek a more methodical… Read more »
It’s almost time to start thinking up new campaigns and strategies for 2017. As we (frighteningly quickly) draw near the end of this year, we think there’s no better time than now to ask ourselves some hard questions about email–where’s it’s going, what it should do and how it should do it. We came up with six hard-hitting marketing questions and tossed them over to… Read more »
Email marketing isn’t going anywhere. We’ve known that for years (despite claims to the contrary)–and we’ve got the research to back it up. In our recently released white paper, original BrightWave research found that email is the number one channel that Millennials prefer brands to get in touch. (Don’t have time to dig into the white paper? Check out our infographic.) For this webinar, originally delivered… Read more »
Newsflash: It’s 2016. Designing for desktop only is a sure-fire way to land your email in the trash and irritate your audience. Making emails that function as well on mobile as they do on desktop should be a standard practice for your team because scalability matters—particularly to hard-to-please Millennials, as we found out in our recent original research on Millennials and email. We recognize two… Read more »
Even with brands they like or do business with, the number one reason that Millennials unsubscribe is because they receive emails too often. Nearly half of the nice, young folk we surveyed earlier this year told us that this is the reason they opt out of a program–and there’s a good chance this audience makes up the bulk of your list. If not now, soon…. Read more »
We’ve already revealed that Millennials prefer email to most other forms of brand communication. Naturally, this got us wondering why that is. Can a platform as seemingly utilitarian as email really be the hot thing among such a finicky demographic? Email outranks other outreach efforts for a number of reasons but the biggest reason is scheduling. Specifically, the power to fit email anywhere in one’s… Read more »
Millennials just love social media, right? Aren’t they the generation for whom if you don’t share it, it didn’t happen? Well, our recent research most definitely debunked the myth that social is always important for Millennials–particularly in our fine channel of choice. A meager 8.7% of Millennials say that relevant, engaging content would make them want to share an email. Despite their deep love of… Read more »
In the age of “clicks and bricks,” the digital experience for customers needs to be as polished as their experience would be in store. Imagine that the welcome email is the first time your customer walks into your store. What do you want them to see? What do you want them to feel? These are elements that must be considered when crafting an effective welcome… Read more »
Okay! You’ve spent the last three weeks ideating, creating mock-ups and identifying the perfect audience segmentation. You’ve built the email creative…and tested to ensure that the best email ever devised looks pristine from Lotus Notes 2 through the Gmail app. You send the email and wait 24 hours to look at the reporting metrics… A 0.2% open rate? WHY?? There are several reasons why this… Read more »
BrightWave has conducted extensive primary research that shows something we’ve long sensed: Millennials prefer email as the channel for keeping in touch. Here’s a visual guide to engaging this growing part of your audience. Intrigued? Read our full white paper to get five actionable insights on Millennials and email. DOWNLOAD THE WHITE PAPER.
Our BrightWave team is incredibly responsive to our needs and is critical in helping us drive and measure positive customer engagement during a pivotal time in our business.
