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.
As a cost-effective channel, email has long been the uncelebrated workhorse of many marketing programs. Sales took a dive? Send an email. Running a special promotion on toasters? Send an email. Need to push more web traffic? That’s right—you send an email. It is true that email delivers astonishingly high ROI (up to $38 according to a 2015 VentureBeat study), but the appetite for and… Read more »
One reason that email is an enduring, powerful channel for marketers: the ability to prove itself with numbers. If you aren’t using the phrase, “Let’s test into it!” on a daily basis, you’re doing it wrong. Testing can be daunting when terms like “statistical significance,” “holdout group” and “hypothesis” are thrown around, but it is truly one of the most powerful tools for optimizing your… Read more »
We fancy ourselves experts in the big marketing clouds (Adobe, IBM, Oracle and Salesforce, to name a few), building and deploying beautiful, functional emails, and uploading and segmenting complex data—all the while providing insights on ISP and recipient actions for those emails. However, sometimes we need a little help that the cloud can’t provide. This help might be in the form of advanced features,… Read more »
Newsflash, email marketers: ESP tightening and new Canada anti-SPAM regulations are taking effect soon that a savvy email marketer will not want to ignore. With Google and Microsoft both updating their DMARC, or email authentication, policies on July 1, 2016 deliverability rates could take a hit for those who aren’t in compliance. (Hint: if you don’t know what that is, take a peek at this… Read more »
It’s enough to make an email marketer cringe. An unchecked subject line with a blatant spelling error. An ESP mishap that results in pushing send—to thousands of the wrong audience. This is the dark side of the inbox. The good news: all of these blunders, and countless others, are avoidable. The first step is knowing the mistake and why it’s important to be cautious…. Read more »
As BrightWavers, we love to geek out over the most innovative ideas in the marketing industry. This year our teams came out in numbers for the mammoth industry conferences: IBM Amplify, Salesforce Connections and Oracle’s Modern Marketing Experience. After rocking out to Stevie Wonder and fraternizing with Fabio, we got to work. We were schooled on the importance of effective consumer communication and the powerful… Read more »
“Right Message, Right Person, Right Time” has long been the mantra guiding strategic email marketing. With the emergence of multi-channel marketing over the last few years, we’ve also added “Right Channel” to the mix. While this is fundamentally sound advice, another piece of the puzzle has recently entered the spotlight – the customer journey. This approach serves to tie every step of the lifecycle together… Read more »
We attend festivals with unfamiliar bands, put our names on month-long restaurant waiting lists and stand in line for hours just to get inside a bar. Even as adults, we are constantly experiencing FOMO – the fear of missing out. FOMO that something is going to happen that you wish you were a part of, so with little hesitation you join the crowd. The same… Read more »
As mobile email opens continue to grow, the challenge of converting glances to skims, skims to reads, and reads to clicks is ever-challenging. Enter: Kinetic Design, a coding technique for creating high-impact interactive emails—right in the inbox. For those looking for that X-Factor to bring their emails up a level, look no further. Hover over animations and carousels of hero images are tell-tail signs that… Read more »
We all know that popups can be annoying. You have found a news article or blog post that has you glued to the screen when suddenly you are pulled away by a box asking you to take some action. You quickly close the popup window and try to find where you left off before you were so rudely interrupted. You give up after 10 seconds… Read more »
BrightWave has been an outstanding strategic partner for Aflac, helping us optimize our complicated, multi-dimensional email programs. As a result, we’ve taken immediate action that positively impacts our business.
