It’s shaping up to be a crazy holiday season for, well, just about everyone. But especially for email marketers. Thanks to supply chain woes, consumers are eager to start buying, it only means that the holiday rush is starting earlier and running longer, with the extra workload falling on marketing teams.

What does this mean for you? It means now is the time to start crafting holiday email marketing messages. In fact, email open rates start to spike before Halloween is even over.

We’ve updated this post for 2021, and even included some bonus holiday email marketing campaigns curated just for you.

To provide you some inspiration, here are 75 holiday subject line examples from B2C, B2B, and nonprofits that are perfect for your holiday email campaigns.

B2C email subject lines

1. Rip Curl: 5 reasons you need a SearchGPS this Xmas
2. Rapha: Black Friday – coming soon
3. Italic: Last chance for free shipping
4. Freshbooks: Deliver Some Cheer this Holiday Season
5. Food & Wine: 27 Recipes for a Holiday Cocktail Bash
6. Joss & Main: Jingle Belles: Gifts for her, best-selling bedding & more on sale today
7. Dot & Bo: Ring In The New Year – Plus: 12 Days of Christmas Gifting Starts Now
8. Kate Spade: Last day! 30% off everything with our Cyber Monday sale
9. Emergency Essentials: Black Friday Sale! Check Back Tomorrow To View the Deals!
10. Steve Madden: Cyber Tuesday – 50% Off Clearance!
11. Sports Authority: Hurry, Only Hours Left for Cyber Monday Savings!
12. BevMo!: $20 Coupon! Save Big on Cyber Monday.
13. Seafolly: All she wants for Christmas is S E A F O L L Y
14. Birchbox: Free Boxes. Ohh Yeah.
15. Skechers: Get BLACK FRIDAY savings all weekend at Skechers.com!
16. Steve Madden: If You Open One Email This Black Friday…
17. Finish Line: Black Friday Doorbusters END TODAY. Snag ’em before it slams shut.
18. San Diego Chargers: Share the Joy, Bring a Toy To The Chargers Game
19. J. Crew: It’s OK to have seconds (or thirds) of this sale
20. Provisions by Food52: Gifting Made Easy: Free Shipping + Discounted Gift Cards + Our Best Picks
21. Finish Line: Black Friday Doorbusters start now. Put down the drumstick.
22. Vacationist: Gobble Up These Deals!
23. Orbitz: Good gravy! 20% off
24. Food & Wine: 15 Thanksgiving Drinks to Start on While Cooking
25. Nordstrom: Black Friday Is Here Early
26. Patagonia: You donate, we’ll match
27. Lyft: Join #GivingTuesday with Lyft
28. Instacart: This week’s forecast? Stress-free holiday grocery shopping!
29. Southwest: Snow Fare Like A Low Fare!
30. De Beers: There’s still time…
31. One Kings Lane: Post-Christmas grab bag: pick a present for yourself
32. Anthropologie: Thanksgiving hosting, toasting & roasting must-haves
33. Rapha: Last express shipping days for Rapha Gifts
34. Monoprice: 10% OFF Site-Wide + Shop Our Holiday Gift Guide!
35. Shutterfly: Just 3 days: get 50% off + NEW Disney Frozen Stockings
36. Capsule: Christmas Deadline: TODAY – Best stocking stuffer ever!
37. Lululemon: Best. (Cyber) Monday. Ever.
38. Musician’s Friend: Perfect last-minute gift–a gift certificate
39. Papa Murphy’s: Don’t Get Your Tinsel in a Tangle…Let Us Help with Dinner!
40. Groupon: Groupon’s Most Wanted This Holiday Season
41. JetBlue: Up to 50% bonus – ’tis better to give AND receive!
42. KSL Deals: Save 10% with Promo Code: Christmas10
43. Utah Valley Massage Therapy: Last Minute Stocking Stuffer Ideas
44. Bass Pro Shops: Final Hours! Stretch your payments for 6 months
45. KSL Deals: 14 Awesome Gift Ideas
46. Guitar Center: 12 Deals of Christmas—Updated Daily
47. Cabela’s: You’ve made your list…
48. Backcountry.com: For the Person that Has Everything
49. Musician’s Friend: St. Nick’s here with two ways to save
50. Audible.com: A Free Holiday Gift Just for Our Members
51. Ancestry.com: Save big for Cyber Monday – give the gift of family
52. Target: Pssst! Get the scoop on Black Friday
53. De Beers: Find the Perfect Gift
54. Bass Pro Shops: Save up to 25% on Santa’s Toy Shop!
55. Monoprice: Holiday Gift Guide – Headphones & Earphones Starting Under $10
56. Homestead Resort: Home for the Holidays at Homestead Resort
57. Moovly: Create your own Season’s Greetings video in 10 steps
58. Guitar Center: Alert: Cyber Monday Has Been Extended
59. BarkBox: Dog people give the best gifts
60. Waves Audio: Waves’ Black Friday Sale Starts Now – Get a Free New Plugin
61. ProAudioStar: ProAudioStar Will Beat ANY Black Friday Price PLUS Give You 15% Off Your Next Purchase

• Bonus — Magic Spoon Cereal: We never do this
• Bonus — hims: keep your holiday candle lit
• Bonus — Madewell: New arrivals +gift guide = ?
• Bonus — Everlane: No Sale Today. Here’s Why.
• Bonus: — Article: This weekend only: please don’t shop

B2B email subject lines

62. Team Tony Robbins: Your last chance to save in time for the holidays.
63. Dale Carnegie Training: Be Bold This Holiday Season with Powerful Conversations
64. Pureleverage.com: Your $1.00 Cyber Monday sale!!
65. Voices.com: Cyber Monday Deal from Voices.com Coming Soon
66. 3 Key Elements: Stressed Out by the Holidays? Body Language Tools to the Rescue!
67. Pinterest Partner Team: This week: Create holiday boards and plan Pinteresty events

Nonprofit email subject lines

68. SF-Marin Food Bank: Today is #GivingTuesday
69. California Academy of Sciences: Unique Holiday Gifts for Everyone on Your List!
70. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: #GivingTuesday is today!
71. Friends of the Sea Otter: Adorable Sea Otter Gifts Available on Giving Tuesday
72. Monterey Bay Aquarium: Today is #GivingTuesday: Donate now and become part of a new tradition.
73. The Marine Mammal Center: A Special Gift to Thank You for All You Do
74. Just Give: Gifts that do good…and feel good
75. Susan G. Komen: Holiday gift deadline is tomorrow

While these holiday subject lines certainly spark inspiration, you’ll want to put your own creativity and message into your subject lines. Here are some tips to help you create holiday subject lines that will shine.

Get our Ultimate Guide to Holiday Email Marketing and crush your holiday goals. 

Tips for writing your best holiday subject lines

Now that you’ve looked at some amazing holiday subject line examples, have a look at some of these tips and best practices that you can filter your own subject lines through as you’re writing.

1. Use words that increase conversions and top holiday words

It may be tempting to get extra creative when it comes to creating fun subject lines for email marketing messages, but it’s also important to remember that there are specific data-backed words that increase conversions. Here are some of the top words to use in subject lines that can boost your conversions:

• Sale
• Off
• Now
• Thank you
• You
• New
• Exclusive
• Discover
• Be the first
• Instantly

You’ll notice that each of these words evoke either a feeling of connection, persuasion, urgency, or interest—all of which are necessary to help you make holiday sales.

You should also consider using emojis in your subject lines. The playfulness of an emoji is a good complement to festive holiday subject lines and can help your email stand out in inboxes.

2. Pique interest with holiday words

Not only will you want to use proven data-driven words that convert, but you will also want to use some of the top holiday words to remind subscribers you’re offering special deals that are only available during the holidays. As you read through all the fun holiday subject lines above, you’ll notice a few words consistently stand out including the following:

• Holiday
• Christmas
• Black Friday
• Thanksgiving
• Gift/Give
• Shopping
• Last Chance/Minute
• Special
• Deals
• Save

When you can, work both these top converting words and top holiday email marketing words into your subject lines, and you’ll enjoy the benefits that come from writing excellent holiday marketing email copy.

3. Promote your offer in the subject line

Another common theme shared by good holiday email copy is stating the offer in the subject line. Chandon does this in their pre-Thanksgiving email campaign offering free ground shipping — enabling their subscribers to stock up on bubbly for their celebrations. The subject line simply states that ground shipping is included, and the headline reinforces the offer.

4. Offer Solutions

Not only is it important to mention deals and promotions in your subject lines, but it’s also important to solve customers’ holiday shopping problems. For example, some people might not know what to put in their spouse’s stocking, what to serve for Christmas dinner, or how to find the perfect gift for their mother-in-law. Offering solutions to these types of problems as well as a promotion can bring satisfying and unexpected conversions.

This example from Birchbox promises to alleviate holiday stress and links to their holiday shop with gifts broken down by price point.

Gift guides are another effective way to help customers. Curating your products by interest or use case also helps direct buyers in the right direction.

Wrap up

As you prepare your holiday email marketing strategy, remember to keep these tips in mind. As inboxes get more and more crowded as the holiday season arrives, your subject lines will be pivotal in making your messages stand out to your email list.

There isn’t much time, but you can still get ready. Make sure to check out our holiday guide for more email marketing tips that will hopefully lead to increased revenue and a very happy holiday season.

The post 75 Holiday Email Subject Lines to Light Up Inboxes This Christmas Season appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Are your subscribers as active as they could be? Read on to learn how to identify who’s still paying attention, use re-engagement techniques for those who aren’t, and improve the relationship you have with the people on your lists.

All email marketers have inactive subscribers who haunt lists and cost money with seemingly little return. Having a subscriber with no opens recorded can mean a number of things. Regardless of the reasons for staying quiet, having too many subscribers not engaging with your campaigns—that is, opening, clicking, and more—can be costly.

Conversely, engaged lists mean better inbox placement and return on your email spend (ROI). Let’s walk through how to measure engagement, how engagement affects ROI, and how to create a re-engagement campaign.

How engaged are your subscriber lists?

Good email marketing is about sending high-quality content to a list of people who’ve chosen to receive content from you. “Engagement” is its measure. Most frequently, it’s represented by the ratio of opens and clicks over a period of time.

We took a look at 18,000 active subscriber lists (being those that were used to send a campaign in 2013) and categorized them with a couple of novel names, to help you identify different levels of engagement in your own lists. Note that subscribers who hadn’t been sent a campaign yet weren’t included:

It’s pretty shocking to see that, on average, 40% of subscribers can be classed as “Zombies”—that is, they’re perpetually unengaged—likely because they’ve abandoned their email address, left a job, or filter their mail overzealously. While this is concerning, it also means that there’s a lot of room to improve your engagement rates and your return on email spend (ROI).

Getting more value from your campaigns

The link between having list engagement and ROI is fairly straightforward. An engaged list loves the content you’re sending and, as a result, opens, clicks, and visits your site. So what if you measured your list and have found it to be teeming with Zombies? It’s time to actively re-engage subscribers.

Using this 5-step re-engagement plan, you can get back into your subscribers’ good books. It may seem like a little work, but the results can be totally worth it—with less money being spent on inactive subscribers and higher engagement.

Our 5-step re-engagement plan

In order to properly re-engage email subscribers, you’ll need to have a plan in place. Here at Campaign Monitor, we have a simple 5-step re-engagement plan that we want to share with you.

Step 1: Go Zombie hunting.

Identify any subscribers who haven’t opened one of your campaigns in 12 months (assuming you’ve sent a few in this time)—you can segment them using custom fields.

Step 2: Send a reconfirmation campaign.

Put your best foot forward and send a “we want to make sure you still want to hear from us” reconfirmation campaign to these subscribers. For example, you can send a special promo, a thank you note, or actively ask for their feedback. Keep in mind this should be a pull-out-all-the-stops, best content, best offer kind of email, because this is the last chance you have to impress.

Step 3: Pat yourself on the back.

Following the re-engagement campaign, it’s time to turn to your reports. If a couple of subscribers have engaged with the email, well done. We’ll hopefully see activity from them in the future.

Step 4: Say goodbye.

If your Zombie subscribers don’t open or click on the re-engagement campaign, it’s time to say goodbye. It may seem like you’re getting rid of potential customers or “hard-earned signups”, but the reality is that they’re likely doing more harm than good by hanging around.

While one benefit to cleaning up this group is that you’re saving money by not sending to people who aren’t interested, the main upside is that you’re removing the deadweight from affecting the performance of the rest of your list. The engagement level of your list as a whole will improve, which should result in better inbox placement. That means your emails have a better chance of being seen by those who’re interested in what you’ve got to say, which you should see reflected in your open and click-through rates.

Step 5: Revisit your content.

As they say, prevention is better than the cure, so it’s time to up your game and give subscribers less reason to go quiet in the first place. In particular, the first 90 days following a signup are critical, so it’s very important to focus on whether you’re communicating effectively with new subscribers in this courting period. Are you inviting them in, showing them around, making them feel comfortable and being a good host? Using autoresponders to send a welcome series of emails, or post-purchase follow-ups can automate this process, as well as be very effective.

Tips to make your re-engagement campaign count

Now that you’ve had a chance to digest our 5-step system to re-engage email subscribers, it’s time to take some actions to make your re-engagement efforts truly count.

Identify when to mark a subscriber as inactive.

The first step to re-engaging your readers is to define what an “inactive” subscriber is. Earlier, we broke down the varying levels of inactivity. However, those metrics can vary depending on the brand. Generally speaking, an “inactive,” subscriber is often described as someone who hasn’t clicked to open an email campaign in six or more months.

While that’s a reasonable place to start, it can be difficult to tell if that’s when you should start targeting those subscribers with a re-engagement email campaign. Again, the definition of an inactive subscriber really comes down to the individual brand’s audience and how often the brand is sending out campaigns.

For example, if you’re only sending out a monthly newsletter and they miss two of them in a row, does that really define the subscriber as inactive? When compared to someone who sends out a bi-weekly newsletter, those two missed emails doesn’t seem nearly as drastic.

So take the time to truly identify what it means for your subscribers to be “inactive” and then, before deciding on whether or not to remove them from your list, give them the option to tell you what they want.

Source: Really Good Emails

Be honest and tell subscribers that you’ve missed them.

Honesty is the best policy—especially when it comes to potentially losing a valuable subscriber.

It costs 5 times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one, so tell your inactive subscribers just how much they mean to you.

Honesty is the best policy—especially when it comes to potentially losing a valuable subscriber.

Source: Emma

Knowing that a brand cares is essential to keeping a subscriber engaged. This is why personalizing your re-engagement emails is so vital. Personalized email messages help improve click-through rates by 14%, on average, and, by giving your readers a call to action to have them re-engage, it’ll help increase the chances of bringing that customer back.

Don’t forget, including an incentive for your reader is another great way to get them to not only open their re-engagement email but to move them from “subscriber” to “customer.” Giving them a special discount is a great way to tell readers that they’ve been missed and that you want them back.

Create a feedback survey to help identify what readers expect from you.

If you’re noticing that your subscribers are increasingly growing quiet, then it may be time to ask them directly what it is you’re doing wrong.

Feedback surveys are an excellent way to get subscribers involved and to figure out why they aren’t actively participating as much as they may have in the past.

Source: Really Good Emails

This allows subscribers the chance to be heard and will help them feel as if their opinions truly matter. Of course, offering them a little something extra for their time is an excellent way to get subscribers involved.

Wrap up

Overall, there’s absolutely no substitute for solid content. Furthermore, solid content means nothing if it isn’t worth your reader’s time to open and read. So ensure that your content is personalized to them to ensure they’ll want to read it.

Need help personalizing your emails to your subscriber’s needs? Then you’ll want to check out why personalized email marketing is essential to customer retention.

The post 5 Steps for Re-engaging Your Subscriber Lists (and Saving Money) appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

The weather is heating up, and summer consumer spending is significantly increasing. What does this mean for you? It means it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to promote your brand through smart email marketing campaigns designed for everyone’s favorite season.

Before sharing some examples of summer email subject lines, refresh yourself on these subject line faux pas that all brands should work to avoid.

Faux pas #1: The blank subject line

The first brand in question sent an email with the subject line totally blank. Studies show 47% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone, while nearly 70% mark emails as spam depending on the subject line. This blank subject line gave me no indication of what was in the email, and I deleted it immediately, as I am sure many other recipients did. Mistakes happen to even the best email marketers, but make sure you always test your emails before sending to avoid glaring issues like this one.

Tip: Don’t miss an opportunity to use your subject line to capitalize on a hot spending season by leaving it blank.

Faux pas #2: The regarding-absolutely-nothing subject line

The second brand sent an email with the subject line that simply said “RE.” I have never sent an email to this particular brand, so the email they sent me was regarding nothing.

I typically really enjoy marketing emails from this company, but the subject line “RE” immediately set off the spam alarm in my brain. In fact, I was about to mark this email as spam until I realized this email was actually from a brand whose email promotions I use quite often to purchase products I love online.

Before making a mistake of this caliber, remember how many emails are marked as spam based solely on subject line. Using a potentially misleading subject line is a great way to look like spam, which can substantially impact your open rate.

Tip: As you prepare your summer marketing subject lines, make sure they offer information about your hot summer promotions. You’ll want to avoid misleading subject lines or subject lines that sound like clickbait.

Faux pas #3: The forgot-to-replace-the-default-text subject line

The final faux pas was an email in which the retail subject line read: “Enter your subject line here.”

As a person whose career revolves around knowing the ins and outs of email marketing, I immediately recognized what had happened. This business forgot to replace the default text in the subject line of the template they selected.

Tip: While it’s easy for any brand to make a simple marketing mistake here and there, it’s also imperative to remember that subject lines greatly influence open rates. Remember that subject lines are used to pique consumer interest, develop trust, offer value, and, ultimately, keep your customers interested in your brand, so you must pay attention to them.

How do I write a good subject line?

As we approach summer, you want to not only avoid these potential subject line faux pas, but increase open rates by taking your email subject lines to the next level. This is the season to boost your sales by customizing email subject lines to show off the content of your email. Keep the following tips in mind to get the most out of your email campaigns.

1. Make it personal

Your subject lines, like your emails, need to be tailored to the recipient if you want to increase the odds that your message will be opened and read. Emails that offer a personalized subject line are 26% more likely to be opened than those with a generic subject line. Personalization begins with segmenting your customers so your messages can be specific to their interests, needs, and buying patterns. By breaking down customers into smaller, more precise groups, you can tailor your marketing to customers that are most willing to make a purchase.

2. Keep it playful

Summer is the season for fun, so let your email subject line reflect the lighthearted mood of the season. Play with your word choices and don’t be afraid to be creative or even silly with your tags. You might want to schedule a brainstorming session to go over the season’s sales and specials, finding ways to plug in the summer theme to your announcements. Don’t be afraid to toss in an emoji or two, as these convey fun while increasing open rates.

3. Take advantage of the summer holidays

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the summer offers more retail opportunities with Father’s Day in June and the Fourth of July. In 2017 alone, Americans spent $7.1 billion on barbecues and cookouts. Father’s Day follows with $15.3 billion expected spent in 2018, which breaks down to about $188 per person. In addition to spending patterns, these holidays present fabulous opportunities for word play or other gimmicks for effective subject lines.

4. Promote special offers and events

Summer is the perfect time to schedule special offers and events. In addition to having more free time on their hands, many customers are also more eager to make purchases. When you send an email campaign to promote these once-a-year occasions, create a subject line that captures interest and compels your customer to open your message to learn more.

75 summer subject lines for retailers

Are you ready to kick your summer campaigns into full swing? To help get you inspired for the season, here are 75 summer and end-of-summer email subject lines that are currently heating up inboxes. Let other companies take the lead with their own brand of attention-grabbers or choose from a selection of generic lines that can be customized to fit with nearly any business:

Stars, Stripes, and Sales

Who’s Your Daddy (Father’s Day sale line)

Summer Gets Better

Get a Head Start on Summer

Summer is Getting Closer: Grab a Deal Now

Our Holiday Deals? Summer Pretty Good

Yelp: Rise and Shine, It’s Beach Time

Swimwear 365: Seas the Day

LOFT: Meet Your Summer Loves

ShopBop: The Go-To Summer Shoe

REI: Make Summer Epic

Kate Spade: Hello Sailor

Supergoop: Summer Workout Goals

Free People: re: The Heat Wave

LOFT: Summer’s “It” color is…

Rip Curl: Earn Your Stars & Stripes

Chandon: Don’t Miss Our Summer Party!

Topshop: The five shoes of summer

Virgin America: Float away this summer with fares from $69 one way

Kate Spade: Your summer style muse (and her chicest secret weapon)

CB2: jumpstart summer with these 3 hot offers

THACKER NYC: The B I G B A N G Sale Starts Now! ??

Topshop: Kendall + Kylie swimwear has landed

Birchbox: What’s Your Biggest Summer Beauty Bummer?

Food52: We pledge allegiance to the picnic.

Rent the Runway: A sale that’s better than fireworks

Rip Curl: Made For Independence Day

Unison: Red White +Blue Cool

Whole Foods Market: Beer Cocktails and Grilled Pizza? Hello, Summer!

Crate and Barrel: Let the fireworks begin

Minibar Delivery: Red, White & Brews ?? ?

Name Bubbles: Before you head off to that BBQ…

DAVIDsTEA: Your summer iced tea is on us.

Topshop: The big summer sale edit

rag & bone: Summer Whites

Weekend Sherpa: Beaches & Beverages

Gap Kids: this is BIG (for sandcastles & pool parties)

RON ROBINSON: Swim Into Summer

Pharmaca: Shop EWG-approved sun care, on sale now!

DSW: Sandals $29.95 & under = a happy closet

Tory Burch: The Miller Sandal: Pick a new shade for summer

Etienne Aigner: Everything You Need For A Stylish Summer Getaway

Sloat Garden Center: Birds, bees, and warm weather color!

Real Simple: How to Plan the Perfect Summer Getaway

Bloomingdale’s: Quick! Save 50% on Women’s Swimsuits & Cover Ups

Charming Charlie: NEW crossbodies & summer dresses. Yes & yes!

Chandon: Perfect Summer Party Day 1: Sparkling Red Snow Cone

AliExpress: Heads up: Get your hands on the hottest gadgets

Rip Curl: WAVE THE FLAG

The Music Zoo: 30 Red, White and Blue Guitars & Basses for Summer

lucy: Summer’s on sale. up to 40% off

Del Mar Racing: Summer is Heating Up

Pottery Barn: July 4th Savings + Free Shipping

J.C. Penney: Under $10 summer styles for the family—polos, tees & more

J.Crew Factory: Get extra 30% off these summer MVPs

Blaster Tag: Blaster Tag Summer Hours & Mobile Parties

CustomInk: You could win a summer prize pack or an iPad!

Toms: Take your toes on an adventure | Beach-ready styles

Gap Kids: rarely on sale! stock up on summer must-haves

lucy: Cool. Carefree. Capris.

DSW: Big brands. New sandals. $29.95 & under prices.

Bloomingdale’s: Sun’s Out! 10 Beach-Bound Essentials for Him & Her

DAVIDsTEA: It’s time for something exotic…

Banana Republic: Summer dresses to wear everywhere

The Stationery Studio: Up to $25 Off Patriotic Parties

NORDSTROM: Sun’s out: Pop-In@Nordstrom de Soleil

Pottery Barn Kids: Summer-ready savings! 20% OFF all tabletop + more saving

Etsy: 4th of July decor

Food52: The holy trinity of summer salad tricks.

Neiman Marcus: Try out a lighter palette for summer

The Land of Nod: Games for All Summer Long

Guitar Center: Fun in the Sun Savings End Today

Whole Foods Market: 8 Summertime Sips That Sparkle

Old Navy: 60% OFF your summer essential

katespade.com: our take on beach essentials (plus, a present for you!)

Wrap up

As you prepare for the summer email campaign season, remember to avoid potential subject line faux pas and craft your subject lines to convey summer excitement, pique consumer interest, and develop a relationship of continued trust.

You can also use our powerful Shopify integration to send smart email campaigns throughout the summer months or any time of year.

The post 75 Sizzling Summer Email Subject Lines for Retailers appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

The first time I came across a video within an email was in 2011 when I received a Game of Thrones email from Sky TV in the UK. Even though I was using Outlook 2007 at the time and had images blocked, I was still pretty amazed to see a real working video when I clicked on the “Can’t view this email” link.

As a fairly geeky email marketer, I viewed the source code to see what magic was going on.

I quickly identified something that looked like this:

<video width="640" height="360" poster="https://mysite.com/uploads/fallback.jpg" controls="controls">

<source src="https://mysite.com/videoname.mp4" type="video/mp4" />

<a href="https://mysite.com/"><img src="https://mysite.com/uploads/fallback.jpg" width="640" height="360" /></a> </video>

If you’re wondering what that code is, it’s actually HTML5 video tag, which was very advanced at the time. Campaign Monitor co-founder, Dave Greiner, blogged about this snippet of code back in 2009 and came to the conclusion that it was the best way to embed a video within an email, but it still lacks support from most email clients.

Can a video play in an email?

Research by Wordstream shows the power of video marketing. They discovered that marketers who use video are likely to grow their revenue 49% faster than those who don’t. This is what has fueled the implementation of videos in email.

But can a video play right within an email?

According to our friends at Email on Acid, videos in email will work in Apple Mail, older iOS versions of the iPhone, and Outlook.com. So, if you happen to have a high number of subscribers using one of those email clients, you can consider including a video within your emails. Otherwise, it’s not something we would recommend. You can easily check what the most popular email clients and devices are among your subscribers with our email client usage report.

To solve for all the other email clients, we have some alternative options for using video in email in this post.

Updates for 2019

If you’re looking to create impactful emails, video is an excellent choice for 2019. However, video in email isn’t something entirely new. Marketers have been trying to combine these two marketing tactics for quite some time now.

The reason for that is simple: Videos in email are known to increase open rates by 19% and click-through rates by as much as 65%. With such high engagement rates, videos should be included in your email marketing strategy.

How are successful email marketers implementing video in their emails? Let’s look at a few best practices that professionals are using today.

Host the video on your real estate

One clever way email marketers are avoiding the embarrassment of video playback errors in an email is through hosting the video on a dedicated landing page. Especially if the video is hosted on a platform other than your own (like YouTube), sending your subscribers there could result in them forgetting about your original email offer.

It’s recommended to host videos on your own website to not only drive additional traffic to your website, but also to give the user the ability to choose to play the video on their own time.

Turn off autoplay

Another good practice when you want to use videos in email is to always make sure autoplay is off. Most email opens take place on mobile devices, meaning your subscriber can open your email from anywhere, at any time.

This is why you should give subscribers control of video playback.

Embed your video after your text

Embedding videos in email, as we have seen, boosts open rates. However, there’s a caveat: The video might distract from your main message if not used well. This is why it’s advisable that you embed your video after your message.

Here’s a great example from Lego:

Source: Really Good Emails

Notice how they pitch their product first before directing the reader to the video. In this example, the video is designed to beautifully seal the deal.

Utilize strong messaging first, and then embed your video to increase overall engagement, ROI, and brand awareness.

Test – before and after

Particularly if you’re new to embedding videos in emails, test to see how your audience will respond to video in your emails. Simply send two versions of the same email—one with an embedded video and the other with a static image. This split test should reveal how your subscribers will respond to your video marketing campaigns.

As with everything you do in your email marketing campaigns, testing how your video will work from the recipients’ point of view is important. Before sending out your blockbuster video email, test it as much as possible (and on as many devices) to ensure that it’ll play well.

Optimizing your video for email

If you determine that you have a large Apple Mail/Outlook.com subscriber base and you want to try embedding an HTML5 video in your email, there are a number of things you can do to optimize the experience for your subscribers.

Keep it short

It’s likely that half of the subscribers who open your emails spend less than 10 seconds reading them. Don’t bother trying to display a full feature film within your email. It’s a good idea to keep your video under 60 seconds.

Keep file size low

Another good reason to keep your video short is that you also want to try and keep the file size as low as possible so that the video doesn’t need to buffer to start playing. Keep in mind that many people open your emails on mobile devices, which might not have the fastest download speed.

Turn the sound off

People don’t expect sound to come out of their emails. So make sure that you turn the mute sound option on within your code.

Use video for the right reasons

Don’t use a video in your email just for the sake of doing it. Make sure that you have the right audience for the video and that it actually adds value to the email. Some good use cases might include event announcements, new product launches, exclusive interviews, etc.

What’s the alternative to embedding video in your email?

While embedding video in email isn’t a great idea for most, due to the lack of support across email clients, there are other solutions you can use to bring videos to your emails, including the following:

Animated GIFs

The obvious alternative to video within email is to use an animated GIF. These are easy to make, lightweight, and are supported by most email clients. That’s why so many emails you receive from retailers includes an animated GIF of some sort.

Static image with play button

Using a play button on top of a static image is an incredibly easy way to link to video content hosted on sites like Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo. Like the animated GIF option, this is a great lightweight solution. And, unlike embedding your video in the email, you’ll be able to track your clicks to see how many people are viewing the video from the email.

We did this recently in our Campaign Monitor newsletter with a slick video for Jaybird.

Animated play button

To add a little extra emphasis to their play button, Harley Davidson of Australia & NZ used an animated play button to draw attention to the video in their email campaign:

Using these alternatives is very easy and has none of the drawbacks of embedding video in email.

Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraphs are another cool and very effective alternative to embedding video in email. These are simply images that have one or two moving elements that give the impression of the image being a video. The rest of the image is static. Here’s a really cool example from Squarespace:

Source: Really Good Emails

Cinemagraphs have a peculiar allure to them that many people just can’t resist, making them a powerful medium to help you convey your message effectively. And that, for a marketer, leads to more conversions.

How do you email a video that is too large?

What happens when a video file is too large to send the conventional way? With many email clients restricting the amount of data you can include in an email, sending large videos becomes a problem. And, because there’s no standard file size to dictate the limits across email clients, what may be an acceptable file size on one client can be too large on another.

By far, the easiest way to go about this is to save your video in cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or any other cloud service you use. Doing this will allow you to share the link with your recipient, who can then either download the video to their computer or simply watch it from the cloud service.

Wrap up

Video in email is not just a gimmick you can opt to use. It’s quickly becoming a key factor to running successful email marketing campaigns.

Whether you choose to get more technical and use HTML5 video in your email or choose to use one of the alternatives outlined in this post, using video in email can be an engaging way to bring compelling content to your subscribers. Be sure to check out our video in email guide to learn more.

The post How to Use Video in Email appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

The following is a technique discovered while we were working on Canvas. While it didn’t make it into the final product, we think it’s worth sharing anyway.

Getting responsive emails to look nice in the Gmail app is a never-ending challenge due to its infamous lack of support for media queries. I’ve previously blogged and written about ways to get a fluid email to look great in the app, but it comes at a design cost; you have to keep one column fairly narrow so that the other column will be wider than a mobile viewport and, thus, when viewed on a mobile screen, take up 100% of the screen.

But what everyone wants is equal-width columns that stack. Often, this is achieved by using the align attribute to ‘float’ one table to the left and one to the right, but, when viewed in the Gmail app (especially on larger mobiles), these aligned tables retain their positions, with undesirable results:

The solution that we discovered is to use display:inline-block in combination with text-align:center to get your elements to behave as if they are floating but centered. This just takes a little bit of fiddling to your overall template to get this to work.

Start with the fluid method

You need to create a table that is 100% wide with a max-width of your desired size on desktop.

<table class="container" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width: 600px;">
	<tr>
		<td>
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Then, to appease Apple Mail, which doesn’t respect max-width, create a media query to limit that table’s size on desktop:

@media screen and (min-width: 601px) {
	.container {
		width: 600px!important;
	}
}

And wrap the whole table in some conditional code to appease Outlook, Lotus Notes and clients that render with IE:

<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
<table width="600" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
	<tr>
		<td>
<![endif]-->

(your table here)

<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>
<![endif]-->

Our secret weapons:
Using text-align:center and display:inline-block

Add the following styles to the TD of the ‘container’ table:

<td style="text-align: center; vertical-align: top; font-size: 0;">

The text-align: center is simply to get the contents of the cell to be centered (our desired effect), and the vertical-align property is your choice of value. The font-size: 0 is to fix a spacing bug where space can sometimes appear between inline-block elements, which we’ll be placing inside.

Now we need to start another table for Outlook/IE inside this cell. We’ll add another conditional table the same as our first:

<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
<table width="100%" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
	<tr>
		<td>
<![endif]-->

Now, inside our cell (and our conditional cell), we’re going to place some divs with a display: inline-block property. As inline-block elements, they’ll obey the text-align property on the containing cell (text-align affects all inline or inline-block elements in a container).

<div style="width: 300px; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top;"></div>

The most important things are to set a width (no more than half the width of the container) and to set the display to inline-block. The vertical-align is up to you depending on your layout.

Then inside this div, you can place your content inside a table.

<table width="100%">
	<tr>
		<td style="font-size: 12px;">
			Hello!
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

You will need to apply a font-size to your table contents because we set it to zero on the container cell.

In between each of these divs, we’re going to pretend to Outlook that we’re closing our conditional table’s cell and opening a new one:

<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
</td><td>
<![endif]-->

Then repeat your div to create another column. In our case we are creating two, so we’ll add one more.

Finally, we’ll close our conditional table

<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>
<![endif]-->

Now you have multiple blocks inside a cell that will reflow to fit the viewport. You can add as many inline-block divs as you like, but if you add multiple rows’ worth, you will need to start a new conditional row for our Outlook table by inserting this code:

<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]></td></tr><tr><td><![endif]-->

Magic!

The example below shows how to visualize our conditional design:

See this in JSFiddle

And now you’ll have centered blocks in the Gmail app, as well as other apps that don’t support media queries, such as Outlook.com app and the Yahoo! mail app. You can then add media queries (for those clients that support them) to make the divs 100% of the width of the viewport.

What is a responsive email design?

At one time, email design was built around the content itself. When more devices began making their ways into the hands, homes, and offices of users, email design had to become more responsive.

Platforms, browsers, and apps may render the same content differently if specific measures aren’t taken.

Responsive email design is built around the reader. Wherever they prefer to read the content, the creator (or poster) must optimize accordingly. With responsive design, different views are tested to ensure optimal performance in all instances.

The benefit of this approach is that a user is less likely to encounter common problems. Instead, responsive email design is built around avoiding these issues. They include:

• Optimal Aspect Ratio: Problems with aspect ratios can be frustrating, but responsive designs adapt to whatever dimensions are applicable on their platform.
• Full View of All Elements: Modules and page elements being cut off or warped are common when compatibility issues occur. Responsive designs ensure all your elements, modules, and content are fully viewable, regardless of the device.
• Optimization for Engagement: Contact buttons and links need to be fully usable, regardless of how a person is reading the email. Responsive designs are more conducive to clicks and engagement.

Your email’s best chance of success is to be properly optimized for the viewer. Even a well-crafted email can improve its chances of success with responsive design.

While some email specialists may wonder if it is their content’s style, focus, format, or CTA that need tweaking, in many cases, it’s simply a matter of building a responsive design that can reach users where they are.

Which email clients support media queries?

It’s good to know how to create centered, responsive designs for your emails without media queries. But it’s also good to know which platforms support these queries, just in case. They include: iOS, Android 4.x native client, Kindle Fire native client, Android Outlook.com app, Windows Phone 7.5, and Blackberry OS6, OS7, and Z10.

Source: Campaign Monitor

Whether you’re looking to stick to single-column design or make a mobile responsive creation, queries can be extremely helpful.

Media queries support can be very valuable for certain projects and tasks, as are HTML email templates. Having a good knowledge of how to create centered designs—both with and without queries—is always valuable.

Wrap up

Platform tools and conveniences have made it possible to create great emails and great design. This is possible with or without coding knowledge. We see the process here, and the strategies necessary for making centered designs that deliver great experiences beyond the boundaries of devices.

If you’re lucky enough to be using a client that does support media queries, you may have an easier time. Those situations where queries aren’t an option don’t have to be a worry—you can still achieve responsive design. Remember:

• Not all platforms support queries
• Centered design is possible with a little coding knowledge
• Responsive design is more conducive to engagement

Responsive design doesn’t require the user to zoom, stretch, tilt, or manipulate their device to get the full experience. A responsive email template and design can take your email much further.

Responsive email design delivers the content, the character of the brand, and the call to action, regardless of where users view it.

Learn to craft the expert emails that bring engagement—whether it’s in the form of a purchase or a subscription.

The post Creating a Centered, Responsive Design Without Media Queries appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Building your email list should be a top priority for all marketers. With public trust in Facebook declining and restrictive social media algorithms, email is becoming an increasingly important channel for marketers.

There are a number of different ways you can build your email list, but none more effective than through your website. But what is email capture? An email capture app allows you to grow your subscriber list by collecting email addresses legally.

In this post, we wanted to share with you a couple of different ways you can use your website to build your list, as well as a few tools that can help you make it happen.

Popups and slide-ins

Popups & slide-ins are separate boxes that either pop up or slide in somewhere on your website to collect people’s email addresses.

They are undoubtedly the most effective method of building your email list.

When popular SEO blog Backlinko added an exit-intent popup (a popup that only shows when people leave your site), they doubled their email subscribe rate overnight. They calculated that this little change made them an extra $82,125 in just 1 year.

The key is balancing the results you’ll get from popups with the negative effect they have on the user experience on your site. While we have our own opinions on this balance, it’s really up to each and every business to work out how far they are willing to go here.

Once you’ve decided that, you can use the following tools to implement popups and slide-ins on your website:

1. Sleeknote

Sleeknote is a great tool for adding popups & slide-ins to your website for collecting email addresses legally. Their visual popup builder is one of the best around and makes it really easy to create a customized design that suits your brand.

As an email capture app, Sleeknote also has some great targeting abilities that let you determine where and when your popup or slide-in appears. It works with any website and includes built-in analytics along with Google Analytics integration for more advanced analysis. They recently launched A/B testing as well, which makes it easy to optimize your popup or slide-in for best results.

Sleeknote integrates directly with Campaign Monitor, so you can simply pick what list you want to add your subscribers to, and they’ll automatically be added. It’s on the more expensive side with plans starting at $69 per month, but worth it if you’re serious about building your email list.

2. List Builder by SumoMe.

List Builder is a free tool for adding popups to your website and is part of the broader SumoMe set of tools.

It’s super easy to get started and allows you to do basic customization of the popup, including text, font, and colors.

While the free version works great, if you’re willing to pay a little extra, then the paid version also features A/B testing and advanced targeting rules that enable you to create different popups for different people (like those coming from Twitter for instance).

List Builder integrates directly with Campaign Monitor, so you can simply pick what list you want to add your subscribers to, and they’ll automatically be added.

3. Pippity

Pippity is a WordPress plugin that enables you to add popups to your WordPress-based website to collect email addresses legally.

It has a number of advanced customization options that allow you to change almost everything about the popup, including text, fonts, colors, layout, background images and more.

The Pippity email capture app also includes a number of highly advanced options for controlling the behavior of the popup. You can determine the time or number of page views before it appears, show only on certain pages, show only to people from specific sources like social networks or search engines, or show only as visitors exit your site. You can also create powerful filters that combine all these different elements to ensure your popup only shows to the right people and doesn’t sacrifice the user experience of your website.

Pippity integrates directly with Campaign Monitor so any new subscribers you capture can be added to your list and you can easily send them autoresponders, newsletter & campaigns. Pippity is offered as a one-time purchase rather than a recurring monthly subscription and starts at $49.

4. Opt-in Popup by Elegant Themes

Opt-in Popup is part of the Bloom plugin from Elegant Themes. It’s exclusive to WordPress and enables you to add popups to your website.

This email capture app comes pre-loaded with a range of templates that you can choose from, and then you can customize colors, text, and fonts from there.

It has all the basic targeting functionality, as well as some advanced options we haven’t seen anywhere else, like only showing when a visitor reaches the end of a post or after they’ve left a comment.

It integrates directly with Campaign Monitor, so you can simply pick what list you want to add your subscribers to, and they’ll automatically be added. The plugin is available as part of a subscription to Elegant Themes (which also includes WordPress themes and other plugins) and will cost you around $89 per year.

5. Optin Monster

Optin Monster is one of the most powerful options when it comes to creating popups and slide-ins on your website for collecting email addresses legally

It comes pre-loaded with a number of different themes you can customize, or you can use their intuitive builder to design your popup or slide-in from scratch with Custom HTML and CSS.

Optin Monster also has advanced targeting features, enabling you to show your popup whenever and wherever you choose. You can also add various animations to your popups & slide-ins that grab people’s attention and increase conversions.

The Optin Monster email capture app integrates directly with Campaign Monitor, so your subscribers are automatically added to your chosen list. Prices for Optin Monster start at $9 per month for the basic version and go up to $29 per month for the premium version with all the features.

6. Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads offers some sweet advanced features that help it stand out from a lot of other standard pop-ups for collecting email addresses legally.

For one thing, Thrive Leads allows you to customize your pop-ups with relevant, targeted content based on categories, specific posts, tags, and more. With this feature, you can ensure your readers are viewing a pop-up that’s most relevant to them.

Thrive Leads also includes a built-in A/B testing feature so you can test directly within the plugin to optimize your conversion rate.

This plugin also offers advanced yet very user-friendly analytics, so you’re always in control of your data.

Source: Thrive Themes

7. Layered Popups

Most plugins and other email captures give you some level of customization control. However, you’re usually limited to color, copy, and a few other standard factors.

Layered Popup has completely changed the game. With this plugin, you can create beautiful popups to capture email that flow with the rest of your website’s branding and imagery.

The real treat you get with Layered Popups is the visual editor where you can view live changes as you create your design similar to WordPress’s live customization feature.

The Layered Popups email capture app integrates with Campaign Monitor and includes built-in A/B testing as well as detailed analytics tracking for collecting email addresses legally.

Source: Layered Popups

Header bars

If you’re looking for something that’s still super effective but perhaps a little less intrusive, then header bars may be the way to go.

Header bars are small bars that sit at the top of your website. As users scroll down the page, they often remain ‘stuck’ to the top of the browser window to ensure they are always in sight.

Buffer, the social media scheduling app that runs a popular blog, uses both a Header Bar and Slide-in on their blog to capture email addresses on a website. The header bar accounts for around 33.5% of their 1000+ new subscribers each week, just a little behind the slide-in which accounts for 36.7% of new subscribers.

If you think a header bar might be the right choice for your site, you can use the following tools to implement popups and slide-ins on your website:

8. Hello Bar

Hello Bar is a tool for adding scrolling header bars to your website. It works with any website regardless of the content management system behind it and is highly customizable, with the admin interface allowing you to change the text, colors & placement of the bar. It even has advanced targeting options so you can only show the bar to certain visitors.

Hello Bar integrates directly with Campaign Monitor, so when a person subscribes through the bar, they are automatically added to your chosen email list.

Hello Bar is free for websites with less than 25,000 views per month (though it will show a small logo in the top left corner). If you want some of the advanced functionality like A/B testing, targeting, and no branding, then paid plans start at $15 per month.

9. Smart Bar by SumoMe

Smart Bar is another tool for adding scrolling header bars to your website and is part of the broader SumoMe set of tools.

It’s free to use and works on any website regardless of the technology behind it. The bar is optimized for display on mobile devices as well as a desktop but has limited customization options.

Smart Bar integrates directly with Campaign Monitor, so when a person subscribes through the bar, they are automatically added to your chosen email list.

Smart Bar is free to use, though it will show a small logo SumoMe logo on the top left corner of the bar when it’s live on your site.

Widgets and in-page options

Email capture app widgets and in-page email captures are a nice option when you don’t want to overwhelm your readers with popups or anything that blocks a large portion of the screen.

A lot of readers have developed an instinct for automatically closing any popup they see. In these cases, widgets can give them a second option to subscribe if readers decide they enjoy your content after some reading.

10. Opt-In Widget by Bloom

Opt-in Widget is a tool that makes it easy to add a beautifully designed subscribe box to the sidebar of your WordPress-based website for collecting email addresses legally.

It comes pre-loaded with a range of templates that you can choose from, and then you can customize colors, text, and fonts from there.

It integrates directly with Campaign Monitor, so you can simply pick what list you want to add your subscribers to, and they’ll automatically be added. The plugin is available as part of a subscription to Elegant Themes (which also includes WordPress themes and other plugins) and will cost you around $89 per year.

11. Plugmatter

Plugmatter is a tool that allows you to add a Feature Box to your WordPress-based website to capture email addresses on a website from site visitors.

The tool is highly customizable and can be tweaked to match the design and branding of your website. It also includes advanced targeting functionality so you can show different content on the different pages of your site or to different types of visitors, such as returning users or visitors from different sources.

It also includes A/B testing functionality so you can split test different creative or copy and maximize your subscriber rates.

Plugmatter integrates directly with Campaign Monitor, so any email addresses captured are automatically added to your email list.

Plugmatter is sold as a one-time purchase and starts at $37 for a single-site license. It also includes a 30-day money-back guarantee if you are unhappy with it.

12. Inline Opt-In Forms by Bloom

Inline Opt-In Forms is another tool in the Bloom suite that enables you to add a pre-designed subscribe form wherever you’d like on your site.

You design the subscribe form using Bloom’s built-in templates and editing functionality, and then insert a special piece of code wherever you need the form to appear, such as in blog posts, on pages, etc.

Inline opt-in forms integrate directly with Campaign Monitor and allow you to easily pick what list you want to add your subscribers to, and they’ll automatically be added. Like the rest of the tools in the Bloom suite, the plugin is available as part of a subscription to Elegant Themes and will cost you around $89 per year.

13. Leadpages

Leadpages is a vast plugin that allows you to easily collect emails with beautiful opt-in form widgets. The great thing about this plugin is that it integrates well across several platforms and other campaign tools including Facebook.

Leadpages also gives you the option to design your own unlimited amount of mobile-responsive landing pages and check-out pages—even if you don’t have a website. Their Facebook ad builder is an especially cool feature that makes it easy to instantly create compelling posts and choose your target audience.

The Standard version of Leadpages starts at $25 per month, but serious marketers may want to opt for the $48 per month Pro version.

Source: Lead Pages

Contact forms

All of the above options make it easy for you to add new, dedicated email subscribe forms to your website that people can use to opt-in to your emails.

But what about collecting email addresses on your website from existing forms? Forms like quote requests, demo requests, and even generic contact forms are a great way to build your email list.

You need to be careful with permission and make sure there is a specific tickbox in the form that allows people to manually opt-in to your emails, but beyond that, it’s pretty straight forward.

Here are a few tools that can help you:

14. Leadin

If you’re using WordPress and already have various contact forms set up on your site, then Leadin is an awesome WordPress plugin that can add some extra functionality to those forms.

Leadin tracks the actions of visitors to your website & sends you a detailed report on the person’s activity once they complete a form. The reports include details like where they came from, what pages of your site they visited and more. It even queries social media networks and other databases to include extra information about the person, such as their Twitter and LinkedIn profiles and company information.

It then pushes all this information over to your Campaign Monitor account via a simple integration, meaning you can have all the leads & contacts from your website automatically added to your chosen list.

Leadin is completely free to use but only works on WordPress for the time being.

15. Gravity Forms

If your website runs on WordPress and you don’t yet have a series of forms set up, then Gravity Forms is worth checking out. It’s one of the most advanced WordPress form builders on the market and integrates with Campaign Monitor so that new leads & contacts are automatically added to your chosen list.

Gravity Forms is sold on a yearly license system and starts at $99 per year for the version that includes integration with Campaign Monitor.

16. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms makes it easy to design custom forms to capture email addresses on your website. This plugin includes tons of cool features you can integrate across your website such as instant estimate calculators and front-end posting.

When it comes to capturing email addresses through a contact form, you can use the drag-and-drop editor to create beautiful custom forms that match the design of your website.

With Formidable Forms, you can also collect data and save it in your WordPress account to easily filter and sort through as needed.

Formidable Forms starts at $49 for the Personal package and offers a 14-day money back guarantee.

Source: Formidable Forms

Wrap up

Your website is a great place to focus your email list building efforts and the tools above make it easy to design, build and implement beautiful email subscribe forms that get results.

So, check out the marketing sites of some of the tools above to learn more about them, and start adding some well-designed subscribe forms to your website today.

Do you need an email service provider that plays nice with your email capture and other lead generating plugins? Check out our app store to see our full range of integration partners.

The post 16 Tools to Help You Capture More Email Addresses on Your Website appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

But have you ever wondered what elements of an email invite compel people to convert?

In this post, we’ve pulled a few invite emails taken from our email marketing templates library and analyzed them for conversion.

We’ve outlined what they did well and offered some advice on how they could be improved, with the goal of giving you some ideas you can apply to your next event invite email to increase ticket sales and attendance.

1. Big Sea Breakfast Club

What they did well

• Design & imagery – The design of the email is pleasant and inviting. The font and imagery at the top of email are inviting, and compel the reader to continue reading the rest of the email for more information.
• Opening Copy – The use of the words ‘and other Tampa Bay area leaders’ is a nice touch. Assuming this email only went to businesses in the Tampa Bay area, it addresses the reader directly and lets them know this event is highly relevant to them.
• Invite-only event – The invite-only nature of the event creates a sense of exclusivity around it and compels people to attend and see what sort of exclusive insights and education they can get that will help them stand out above their competitors.
• Map – The inclusion of the nicely-designed map at the bottom of the email helps people understand where the event is, and saves them from having to do the mental calculations around how long it will take to get there and how long it will take them to get back to work after the event.

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Improve email structure – Although they have separated the header area from the rest of the email, the body copy is quite a large text block and can be quite overwhelming. Given that most people will only scan your email campaigns, it would be worth breaking the email up into several smaller sections that address who the speaker is, what she will be discussing, the timetable of the event and the breakfast options being offered. This will enable people to better digest these different bits of information and get excited about what’s on offer.
• Tell reader’s more about the speaker – The organizer has lined up a great speaker who is an expert in the field of PR, however, they haven’t done much to tell readers that. It would be worth including a bit more information about the speaker and her accomplishments to help establish her credibility and trust. Outlining clients she has worked with and results she has achieved will increase people’s desire for the knowledge and information she possesses and increase the chances they will attend the event.
• Include a prominent call to action – The call to action in this email is a small text link to reply to the organizer and RSVP. It would be worth testing including a more prominent call to action button in the email, and linking it through to an event landing page. Tools like Eventbrite and Unbounce make this easy to setup, and doing so makes it easier for people to RSVP to the event and increases their chances of attending.

2. Working Three

What they did well

• Nice Design – The design of the campaign is visually appealing and instills a sense of trust and authority in the event organizer. This helps ensure people that the information they get from the event will be authoritative and useful, and increases their desire to attend.
• Series Banner – The use of the banner informs readers that this ‘Discussion Series’ is something that has been going on for some time. This instills authority in the event and relieves anxiety the reader may have around the value they will get from attending.

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Improve the value proposition – As you can see from the screenshot, the primary value proposition of this email is ‘Social Strategy and Sushi’. While this is a somewhat punchy headline, it isn’t clear what the reader is going to get from the event and why they should attend. It would be worth rewriting the value proposition to incorporate the 3 key elements of an effective value proposition, and testing to see if the revised value proposition compels people to take action.
• Add a testimonial to the email – Given that this event is part of a larger series, it could be worth displaying a testimonial from someone who has attended a previous event. This will help alleviate reader’s fears that the event won’t be valuable and encourage them to attend.
• Include a more prominent call to action – Like the previous email, the call to action in this email is a small text link to reply to the organizer via email. By making this call to action a button that leads to a landing page, it makes it much easier for people to respond to the invite and will help increase attendance on the day.
• Remove Twitter & Facebook buttons – The Twitter & Facebook buttons at the bottom of the email are potentially distracting people from the core action W3 wants people to take, which is responding and attending the event. It could be worth removing those to reduce distractions and keep people focused on the main conversion action.

Get our guide to Designing High-Performing Email Campaigns and make every email you send a success. 

3. Hidden Dinner

What they did well

• Unique, on brand design – The design of the email is unique and perfectly in line with their website and larger brand. This creates a cohesive experience for customers that continues to build loyalty for their brand.
• Great use of curiosity – You’ll notice that this email contains a lot less information about the event than the others featured on this list. Hidden Dinner create a sense of curiosity by holding back information on the menu, entertainment, etc. that compels readers to click on the ‘See the menu and & reserve your seats’ link to learn more. While this is a great play by Hidden Dinner, be careful about using it in your own campaigns. Hidden Dinner have built a great brand and are only sending this to people who know how great their events are, so it works for them. However, if the people on your list aren’t familiar with your events then you’ll need to ‘sell’ the event more by including information on food, entertainment, speakers, etc.
• Great CTA microcopy – The call to action copy they use in the email is great. ‘See the menu and reserve your seats’ is highly descriptive and leaves the reader with no doubt what is going to happen when they click it.
• Great RSVP flow – Clicking on the call to action link at the bottom of the email takes readers to a branded landing page. Once they enter the password, they can see the menu and reserve seats for the event. This frictionless flow allows people to respond and book their tickets with ease, and helps increase ticket sales and event attendance.

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Add a prominent value proposition – The beginning of the email features their logo beautifully, but then just dives straight into the body copy. Although the copy is tight, the email should include a prominent value proposition that defines the offer and the benefits for the reader, such as ‘Enjoy a Southern Cali BBQ under the stars’. This catches people’s attention and compels them to continue reading the rest of the email to learn more.
• Test adding a testimonial to the email – Hidden Dinner is a recurring event that has occurred several times before, so it would be worth including a testimonial from someone who has attended a previous event. This will help reassure readers it’s an enjoyable evening and worth their time attending.
• Include a more prominent call to action – Although well written, the call to action in this email is a still a small text link hidden at the bottom of the email. By making this call to action a button with a contrasting color, it becomes more obvious to people who are scanning your campaigns what the next step is, and encourages more people to take it.

4. Steadfast Creative

What they did well

• Beautiful design & imagery – The email itself is beautifully designed. The animation behind the header image is clever and the use of beautiful imagery behind each square makes this email really impressive. Each one of those images links through to their RSVP page as well, which helps to increase conversions.
• Big call to action button – The use of the large call to action button at the bottom of the email is great, and makes it clear to readers exactly what the next step is.
• Great RSVP flow – The CTA button and images link through to a simple RSVP form hosted on their website, making it easy for people to RSVP to the event.

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Add a value proposition – The current value proposition of this email is ‘Open House, Friday May 3rd at 7pm’. Whilst this does a good job of telling me when the event is, I’m not yet sold enough on attending the event to need to know when it is. Adding a value proposition that succinctly outlines what the event is about and what the benefit of attending is could help in grab the reader’s attention, get them to read the rest of the email and convince them to convert.
• More event details – Although the email is beautifully designed, it lacks a lot of detail about the event itself. What happens at the event? Who am I going to meet? Is there a speaker or some sort of entertainment? As a reader, I’m left with a lot of questions about the event, and that would prevent me from committing to attend. Unless this is a regular occurrence and everybody on the list knows what the event is, it could be beneficial to include more content that spells out to the reader the schedule for the evening and the benefits they will get for attending.

5. Havaianas

Image: Really Good Emails

What they did well

• This event invitation nods to event posters—We imagine this branding is used across all mediums (At least, we hope so!).
• It speaks to a specific location and culture and the color palette is completely welcoming. We can tell this is going to be an experience to remember, just from the artwork alone!

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Try out different variations or placement of this artwork. Are people more likely to click when they see the image first or when it’s placed after copy about the event?

6. Google Science Fair

Image: Really Good Emails

What they did well

• The organization and cleanliness of this email is pristine, speaking to science lovers everywhere.
• It stays on-brand with everything Google. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel just because you’re introducing a new event.

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Add more or less information about the conference sessions and see how subscribers respond.

7. Meetup

Image: Really Good Emails

What they did well

• This is a great example of a multi-event invitation. It cuts each event down to the important details: Logistics and call-to-action.

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Try different colors for the CTA buttons.
• Experiment with more or fewer event listings.

8. BVE

Image: Really Good Emails

What they did well

• Speaker features—It’s always helpful to put a face with a name!
• Use of color to organize copy and information.

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Try various speaker line-ups and order of copy.
• Send to various segments based on geographic location.

9. Stylist Live

Image: Really Good Emails

What they did well

• Fun pops of color that maintains visual interest throughout the email

Suggestions for A/B Testing

• Try different color palettes or an email with fewer visuals and more text and vice versa.

What you can learn from these emails

Across these 9 event invite emails, we’ve seen a number of things done well and a number of areas for improvement. Here are the common themes that you can learn from to help increase the conversion rate of your next event invite campaign:

• Make it beautiful – All of the event invite emails seen here are well-designed and feature nice imagery and compelling visuals. This attention to detail reflects positively on your event and gives people confidence that it is going to be well run, informative and ultimately worth attending.
• Have a clear value proposition – Make sure you start your event invite campaign with a succinct value proposition that makes it clear to the reader what is going to happen at the event and what benefit they will get from attending. By doing so, you catch the reader’s attention and draw them in to learn more about the event and ultimately convert into an attendee.
• Sell the event – Even if your event is free, people are still paying with their time and you need to sell the event just like you would a product. Include detail about what will happen at the event and the benefits they will get from attending to compel people to attend.
• Structure your email for scanners – People receive an average of 121 emails per day, and they don’t have time to read each one word for word. Instead, they scan your email campaigns looking for parts that interest them. So instead of writing a big, daunting block of body text to get all the information across, considering breaking it down into various sections with supporting images and visuals. This makes it much easier for people to scan your email and will result in more people receiving the key message of your campaign and taking action.
• Use a call to action button – When we tested using a button vs. a text link as a call to action in our own email campaigns, we got a 28% increase in conversions. Buttons help your call to action stand out above the rest of the content in your email, making it clear to readers what the next step is and compelling them to take your desired conversion action.
• Think about the entire flow – There are many steps between sending your event invite and people walking in the front door, which means there are plenty of opportunities for people to drop off. By creating a simple, effective RSVP flow like Hidden Dinner and Steadfast Creative have done, you can get more RSVP’s for your event and ultimately more attendees on the day.

Start creating your own event email from a free email template here.

Wrap Up

Event invite campaigns are an incredibly important part of your event promotion and planning. They are a great way to get the word out about your event to customers, leads & contacts and can help drive ticket sales and get attendees through the door.

So take these tips on creating a great event invite email, apply them to your next campaign and let us know how it goes!

The post 9 Event Invitation Email Examples You Can Learn From appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Your team is depending on you to produce some remarkable results, and you’ve been tasked with boosting open rates. You know the 8 formulas for getting your emails opened, and you’ve heard all about using the EMV Index, and you may even know about using power words in email subject lines. But it’s the end of the year and your creativity is running low, so here are a few creative suggestions to get your mental wheels turning (since holiday brain is hard to combat.)

We’ve assembled tips to creating the best New Year’s Eve subject lines sure to help you tap into proven, successful tactics for increasing the results from your end of year email campaigns.

Leverage a sense of urgency

Humans have an innate fear of missing out (FOMO) that often compels them to act. Have you ever seen an ad that says you only have a few hours left to take advantage of a crazy discount and immediately ran for your wallet? If so, you understand that urgency can be a powerful motivator when it comes to acting quickly.

Within an email context, creating a sense of urgency has been proven to work. One study tested using urgency in an email subject line by stressing the limited number of seats for an event–and saw a 15% increase in their open rate.

So how can you write email subject lines that leverage urgency for your end-of-year campaigns? Here are a few ideas:

1. Countdown the few hours left to get 30% off!

2. Midnight deadline for your tax-deductible donation

3. ONE MORE DAY to shop our holiday sale

4. Starting NOW: $2019 off!

5. Save 40% before the ball drops!

6. Last chance for a calmer year

7. 3 more days to save on a stress-free resolution

Takeaway: Give your readers a reason to act right now by creating a strong sense of urgency in your email subject line.

Bonus: You can also extend your offer to get a bit more mileage out of it and let people who didn’t open—or those customers who opened but didn’t click through to your website—get another shot at your offer.

See how Legacy Box does it in this email example:

Create an information gap

Curiosity can also help boost your email open rate. How? Researchers found that creating an information gap was highly effective at motivating humans to act because it cognitively induces a feeling of deprivation. If you’ve ever clicked on a BuzzFeed article, it’s probably thanks to this same tactic. You just had to know what that unexpected person’s reaction was, right? We all do it.

You can create an information gap in your email subject lines by making readers curious, like in these examples:

8. We increased new customers by 50% in 2018 with this simple switch

9. Invitation for you: Join our Secret Sale

10. Wait…you missed this?

11. New year, new {organized} you

12. Free what?

13. Can’t go wrong with this New Year’s resolution

14. The best of 2018 (and a hint at what’s to come)

Takeaway: Curiosity created by an information gap encourages readers to open your email and find that missing piece that’s itching at their brains.

Offer an email exclusive preview

You can build excitement and anticipation with an email subject line that teases something coming to your business in the new year. Giving your email subscribers first access to new content means they’re getting access to exclusive material–and reminds them that they are part of a limited group of people who get special, members-only benefits.

Psychologists have proven that when humans recognize scarcity, they place a higher value on the limited resource. So when you write an email subject line that reminds them they’re part of a special group of people who get early access to things like new items coming in the new year, they’ll see more value in opening your email.

Some examples that tout exclusive previews for the new year:

15. Coming Soon: A Preview of Our 2019 Collection

16. Get the First Look! Subscriber-Only Sneak Peek

17. $75 annual plan: Stock up on Premium!

18. Start the year with style! Check out 2019’s top salons

19. Our New Year’s resolution to you

This email from Headspace clearly communicates that their subscriber is running out of time to lock in the special deal for the upcoming year:

Source: Really Good Emails

Takeaway: Make your subscribers feel like VIPs by writing email subject lines that remind them why they’re on your list in the first place.

Year in review: Your best work

Subject lines that tout your best promotions, content, products, etc. from the past year inform subscribers that you’ve cherry-picked the best of the best for them. And, by removing the legwork for the reader and showcasing your best work, you tap into a very basic psychological principle: Avoid pain, seek pleasure.

Here are a few ideas for subject lines that look back on the year in review (and promote your best content):

20. Top 10 Chicago Hot Spots in 2018

21. Thank you for an amazing year! 2018 Year in Review

22. Let the celebration begin! ?

23. The most popular blog post we wrote in 2018: Read now

24. The year in stats: Our favorite data from 2018

This email from Yes Lifecycle Marketing uses their year in review email to update their subscribers about all the great work they’ve accomplished with their clients:

Source: Really Good Emails

Takeaway: Let your year-end email subject line make life easier for readers by showing them your best material from the whole year.

Planning for the new year

The dawn of a new year is probably one of the few times when people become more open to change or trying new things. It’s a hard stop to the previous year and a fresh slate for new beginnings. People get gym memberships. They make resolutions. They plan for a better, more successful year.

Check out this email from Paper & Stitch that combines curated content highlighting top trends for the next year with the options to shop new arrivals:

Source: Really Good Emails

You can tap into that positive frame of mind by writing an email subject line that showcases your own insight for a successful new year–whether that’s through your best tips, an insightful case study, or a strategy you’ve created.

Think along the lines of:

25. 5 Tips for Growing Your eCommerce Business in 2019

26. Want to double your business in 2019? Start here…

27. Everything your business needs for 2019

Takeaway: Help readers plan for the year ahead by writing an email subject line that tells them exactly how they can be more impactful in 2019.

Wrap up

You have endless opportunities when sending year-end campaigns, but you need your subscribers to actually open your email if you’re going to bring in that last bit of revenue before the ball drops. And to get your subscribers to open your email, you need a clever—and timely—subject line to grab their attention.

In order to bring in last minute revenue and connect personally with your biggest fans, take advantage of the opportunities presented at the end of the year when your subscribers are looking forward to great things to come. With these clever subject lines on your side, your audience is sure top open, click-through, and engage with your final email campaigns of 2018.

The post 27 Email Subject Lines to Celebrate this New Year’s Eve appeared first on Campaign Monitor.