Made it to some of the live virtual GURU 2023 email marketing conference sessions last week, yet somehow missed my former boss Martha Stewart’s talk. I’m sure she had many good things (ha!) to say about clear, actionable messaging when sending out emails. One time we got an all-staff email letting us know she would be arriving by helicopter shortly with eggs from her farm and to assemble quickly with something to transport them home in if we wanted to claim our portion. I grabbed some tissue paper pom-poms from the crafts department and all my eggs made it home safely.
When we are working in DAM - or across the digital marketing world - we need to channel some of that clarity into our communications too. The GURU Conference was big on tips for how to have people actually open and read your emails (short subject lines, maybe adding an emoji) and then do what you’d like them to do (include buttons with links directly to your ask to minimize clicks) while sharing the best times/days (beware the holiday weeks of doom) to send them. All registered attendees can download the full set of decks full of insight from speakers from Marigold, Adobe, Constant Contact, Knak, and many more leaders in the B2B and B2C fields.
Key themes for me:
Using AI to scale your message
Keep it modular and on-brand
Huge increases in content demand
Email design has moved away from formula to personalization and humanity
Your email has to be about what the recipient gets out of it, not you
Measure everything
As we’ve seen in DAM, we have moved from a fixed media - email or asset libraries - into an omnichannel marketing stack. We can no longer work in our silos. Even on large teams where there are both DAM and content marketers working together, the roles overlap and we will be responsible for at least partnering on the wording, design, and build for communication if we are not already. In a way, it’s another sign of doing more (more quickly) with less, but I also think it makes sense to train people across the team to know how to do both functions - along with content management, editing, and writing - to have people own their projects from design to delivery. Then even if you have separate functions, you can understand the steps involved, respect the timelines needed, and do your portion of the project in a way that makes their jobs easier. How though?
Tips from the GURU sessions I’m bringing to DAM comms:
Naming assets to clearly mark those sized/tagged for responsively designed email
Thinking through the UI of the pages the email is directing the recipient to be user-friendly and accessible
Giving image options for A/B testing, not just relying on the language or order to drive the test
Discussing the goal of the email - monetizing, lead gen, event sign-ups - to know more about the why behind the creative brief
When sending internal emails about DAM updates, pair with an email lead to find ways of communicating more effectively
Knak Knowledge
I’ve worked directly in Knak and Constant Contact and really enjoy how both have been improving how they help marketers stay on brand with components that mean we can get our messages out faster, clearer, and with more purpose. As Knak co-founder, CEO, and speaker Pierce Ujjainwalla shared - people are getting more and more emails so you have to learn through data how to reach them.
I saved this slide since it feels applicable to a lot of what we have been talking about when it comes to people, process, and technology in DAM in a time of content overload. Tools have been successful at what they do best - delivering the message - but people are still needed when it comes to designing engaging content to increase the open rate and click-through rates and keep unsubscribe rates down - the actions that the people who receive the message have agency over. The next time we start freaking out over AI, remember this slide and that those last 3 have improved while delivery has dropped this year. People are driving that improvement.
I plan to incorporate some of the tips from GURU 2023 in my personal, volunteer, Spark Focus consulting, and business emails. Better communication in a world full of unclear and boring messaging is definitely worth sharing.