#LitmusLive Day #1

We’re back in Boston for another year of the Litmus Email Design Conference. #emailgeeks from around the world are at the Westin Boston Waterfront to stay on the cutting edge of modern email design and development.

Here are some key takeaways that we got from day #1:

Build Newsletter Subscription List

Try using a large pop-up to convert your web visitors to subscribe to your communications and newsletter. Here is a good example:

Use Psychology to Your Advantage

People are more likely to buy from you if you provide them something of value first. Try offering your audience something that is a nice gesture or favor. They will likely be more open to buying from you afterwards.

Authority helps you sell or get the click as well. If your staff could be considered experts or authoritative figures in your space, consider adding a ‘Staff Picks’. People are automatically more inclined to listen.

Use scarcity and urgency to your advantage. Showing how few are left, or how quickly something might be gone are old tactics that we are hard-wired to listen and react to.

Click-here is a terrible CTA – stop it.

If you’re still using click here in emails, it’s okay – we’re guilty of it too, then try and remove it from your system all-together. Not only is it not applicable to half of your audience who are on mobile and don’t even have a mouse, but there are so many more descriptive and compelling CTAs you can use that would be much better and more effective.

Interactive Emails – Check Yourself before you Wreck Yourself

Basically interactive emails are supported on iOS. So, if you have a big audience using iOS then perhaps this is a great area to investigate to try out. If your audience is not heavy on iOS it may be a lot of effort for not a lot of reward. If you’re not sure, we’d recommend using Litmus’ analytics capabilities to figure out what clients/devices your audience is on.

Live Twitter Feed in Email

Yes, we know Litmus officially did this for the first time last year, but its a really cool/unique thing that can be accomplished in an email.

Animation – CSS3 or Animated GIF?

There are two options for animation in email. CSS3 or Animated GIFs. There is very poor support for CSS3, although it produces smaller file sizes. Animated GIFs are larger file sizes but work almost everywhere and can have a fallback initial image for those clients that do not support it.

Why do animation? It adds a little extra touch to your emails. Better not to be obnoxious with its use but instead use it to add the final piece of flair.

Nest has 3 full-time employees to do email QA

Think about that for a minute. Testing. It’s important.

Litmus announces historic partnership with… Microsoft!

Arguably every #emailgeeks most hated client has forged a relationship with Litmus to ‘make email awesome’. This is a huge announcement that will hopefully help marketers everywhere deliver better looking emails to Microsoft Outlook recipients.

Day #1 is in the books. All that is left is to party at Coppersmith and get ready for day #2!