Jessica Best will be presenting "Getting Jiggy with Animation & Video for Email Marketing" at this year's Email Innovations Summit, April 19-21st in Las Vegas.

The Big Lebowski

Google recently announced that they will be supporting media queries within their Gmail platform which is great news for the email community. I was ecstatic when I heard the news and I can only imagine the cheers (and tears) of joy when other email developers around the world were notified as well. Although this update has not been released just yet, Google has hinted that it will be in place by the end of 2016.

There were great minds, quality content, and inspiring discussions at the Email Innovations Summit in Las Vegas (May 17–19, 2016). Big kudos to Bill McCloskey and the Only Influencers community for creating a new space where trends, challenges, and opportunities in the email marketing world can openly be discussed.

OI Survey Results: Do you use links in email copy and how do you style them.

Selling chocolate eggs to the general public at Easter isn’t exactly selling ice to the Eskimos. However, for the businesses who don’t have this delicious advantage, there are other ways of creating effective and fun campaigns to leverage this annual marketing opportunity. Fresh Relevance has collected a few great examples of chocolate-free brands who’ve been creative with their marketing in the last few years.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill

Subject lines… the easiest thing to write, the hardest thing to get right. There is just no single best practice, rule or tactic that works every time.

If my six different inboxes are any indication, retailers and businesses of any type don’t use Halloween as the awesome opportunity it is. I received all of two Halloween inspired emails, which is rather pathetic. It’s a playful, fun, and joyously spooky time of year – why would retailers shy away from such a great opportunity? Are they worried they’ll offend? Seriously?

Welcome to the soft-launch of the Autumn season, hard launching September 23^rd. Also known to yanks as Fall, it’s not simply a change of seasons, it marks the beginning of many things - The beginning of the end as Winter approaches. (This feeling is especially strong in Chicagoans.) For pagans and ghouls, the launch into the Samhain/Halloween/Harvest season and a spookfest for any reason. For others, likely who happen to be (suddlenly overjoyed) parents, it’s back to school for the kids (hoorah!). Then, there’s the Email Marketer. Back to School marks another sales season which makes us happy and provides an opportunity to send MORE EMAIL!

A Collection of the Best Email Design Style Guides and HTML/CSS Coding Guides

I'm looking for inspiration to up all of our lifecycle triggered emails this spring, as well as inspire our teams to try something new. Which Pinterest email marketing boards do you follow or curate?

One of the Influencers was interested in sharpening their HTML skills and was looking for some formal training on Responsive Coding for email. Here are some of the suggestion:

"The reaction to, and response of, an email message has the same power to conjure up an emotional response as does the spoken word, and the response or behavior we influence is the action, or lack-there-of, seen in our customers. But how do you know what to say to create this emotional reaction, specifically in your email marketing communications?"

After a consumer opts into receiving your emails, I assume they’ll be somewhat active. During the initial weeks they’ll open, click, browse your website, and maybe even convert. However, it probably won’t take long for them to lose interest. They’ll delete without pause or filter into a subfolder for a rainy day. They may come back briefly when a compelling event motivates them to find your most recent offer or a reactivation campaign lures them in once again, but the pattern will repeat itself. They’ll get bored and disengage all over again.

An often overlooked aspect of Email Design Practices is designing for failure: images failing to render on the client's browser. Using some basic email design techniques, you can insure that your customers experience the best possible visual email in their inbox. Below are a series of tutorals and resources to teach you these basic technigues: Some of the techniques you will learn include using Web Text, using stylized Alt Tags, coding background colors, and creating pixel art.

A collection of some of the best April Fools Email campaigns from 2014

"I am 6 months into my new job and new role as Marketing Director at WorkCompass, A B2B SaaS firm selling Performance management and appraisal software. I am the first marketing hire coming fast on the heels of the first sales hire Colm. So what’s the perfect pitch for our audience? I had no idea!"

“Words matter very much Ms. Barnes, you should care more about them given your profession.”- Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey of House of Cards)

In the profession of digital marketing, our words matter very much. Words are the pinnacle point of persuasion that drive our consumers to either take an action or ignore our advances. Therefore, our pitches, or messages, warrant much more attention and affection than currently rewarded to them.

It’s that time again…. I dread it each year. The hearts everywhere in every color, sequin and bobble, Cupid with his stinging arrows, the flowers – don’t get me started on the flowers! Every year since pretty much my tween’s, I’ve hated Valentine’s Day. Don’t get me wrong, the idea of it is lovely – Romance, love, and all that, it’s, well, a beautiful thing. But, I really don’t enjoy the constant barrage of pink and red love with every breath and every turn.

Not in the business of hearts, perfume or roses? No biggie, you can still crush it with your V-Day campaign.

Did you know that people are willing to spend on average $130.97 on Valentine’s Day for their significant other (US National Retail Federation)? Heck, 3% of pet owners will even give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets! That’s why you are missing out on some big bucks if you aren’t crafting killer V-Day email campaigns, even if you aren’t a jewelry store or chocolate shop. Here are 7 tips on creating an incredible Valentine’s Day email, for ANY company or product.

By sticking to a few key fundamental design practices, you can create beautiful and compatible emails that will delight and captivate your audience. Courtesy of LiveIntent.