The Fox and Forth team took in MailCon 2023 in fabulous Las Vegas last month! We learned a ton of things about increasing ROI and open rates on email campaigns, and most importantly, how email is NOT dead! All of this and more is discussed between Brittini and Dana, live from Las Vegas on this episode of The Brand Burrow podcast!
What is MailCon anyway?
Other than the largest email marketing conference in the world, MailCon serves a niche community that connects marketing professionals with the latest tech, trends and strategies in email marketing. Every year, the conference is designed for marketers alike to learn, connect and build lasting relationships with fellow marketers in the industry.
This year, the conference took place in the gorgeous Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, Nevada. Each talk we attended was something to behold; everything from the impact that personalizing your campaigns has on your audience, to using BS to increase your open rates. And by BS, we mean behavioural science 😉.
Email is NOT dead!
Throughout the conference, we learned that email is in fact NOT dead! If it’s something that just isn’t working for you, there’s likely a reason why. We took in two very interesting talks that were put on by Nancy Harhut, the co-founder and CEO of HBT Marketing, and Brian Minik, the COO of ZeroBounce. First, we learned about how to use behavioural science in your email marketing, courtesy of Nancy Harhut. When you write emails using behavioural science (BS), you increase your response rates. Why? Because you take advantage of the scientifically proven decision-making shortcuts, people use when deciding what to open and read. These hardwired behaviours result in automatic, reflexive responses, which means you can prompt people to engage with your email without giving it a second thought. During Nancy’s talk, we discovered that the use of numeral numbers (1, 2, 3, etc), trigger words and phrases such as “exclusive”, “don’t miss out”, and “limited time only”, and the effect that authority principle can have on your email marketing is substantial. One of the key takeaways that we learned from Nancy during this session was to implement the use of the 5W’s + 1H. Second, we learned that hitting “Send” on an email doesn’t guarantee it’s reached someone’s inbox. To our surprise, we learned that about 16% of all emails go to the spam folder and more than 30 billion bounce daily. Poor email deliverability prevents businesses from communicating with their customers and can put a major damper on ROI. In this session, Brian Minick discussed what causes email deliverability issues and shared five steps that email marketers can use to boost their inbox reach.
The five steps that Brian explained to us were:
1. Email lists need to be healthy.
2. Keep spam complaints at bay.
3. Segment your email list.
4. Segment your most active subscribers.
5. Test your email deliverability.
Bonus 6. Monitor your IP and domain for potential blacklisting.
Each of these steps holds a significant amount of information that we’re looking really forward to sharing with you… In another blog 😉. Throughout Brian’s presentation, we learned that email deliverability and email delivered mean two very different things. To have an email delivered simply means that it’s reached a mailbox, but… That mailbox could be spam. While email deliverability means that your email has landed in someone's actual inbox. By understanding these six key points, email marketers can ensure that their open rates will skyrocket, and their customers will remain loyal to the brand they’re choosing to receive emails from.
Overall, the conference was a hit with our team, and we're thoroughly looking forward to what MailCon 2024 has in store!
Check out Brittini & Dana's video recap of Las Vegas and MailCon below!
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Get in touch with us today to take your marketing to the next level. www.foxandforth.com