Agenda 2021

Email Innovations Summit North America

Causing major shifts in consumer behaviors and business goals, the pandemic has reshaped email marketers’ priorities. In this session, Oracle Marketing Consulting Head of Research Chad S. White will share survey results that point to where businesses are focusing their email marketing efforts—and where they’re not. Chad will also highlight where he sees disconnects in those priorities, which represent untapped opportunities for companies.

Leading a successful email marketing program was tough before, and it certainly has not gotten any easier as businesses invest even more in digital programs, creating more noise and competition than ever. Chances are your team has significant resource restraints and more priorities to juggle, while your customers are expecting more engaging, meaningful, targeted content.

How do you help your teams (or yourself!) manage those challenges while still delivering emails that give value to your customers, keep them engaged, and give you the returns you need?

Your emails can, and should, be driving more customer engagement, and ultimately more conversions. Ryan Breen and Allison Vernerey (respectively CTO and Senior Product Manager at Creator by Zmags) will share with us some key learnings gathered while bringing the Creator Interactive Email product from imagination to reality.

The oft repeated sporting mantra that “a good big boxer will always beat a good small boxer” is also true for marketing, all things being equal the bigger the audience the better the results. This is particularly true of your Email Active File. Engaged customers spend 2.5 – 7 times more than disengaged.

Even in normal times the Holiday Season can be make or break time for many businesses – never more so than this year. With just over 90 days to go Alchemy Worx CIO and Industry Veteran Dela Quist will share how they used Audience Management Techniques  to help one business reactivate over. Growing the active file by an amazing 69%, just in time for the holiday season!

Join Paul Airy and Ali Fuller as they talk accessibility. Starting by explaining why accessibility matters in the first place, they’ll then take you through ten easy ways to make your emails more accessible for everyone, including those with visual, auditory, and cognitive disabilities and the assistive technology they use to read or listen to them.

Every marketer has figured out that data is key to getting messaging right and enabling great experiences for customers, but many don’t have a full understanding of where the data comes from, how it’s stored, why they can (or often can’t) use it effectively. In this session, Will Devlin talks about the evolution of the modern marketer and why removing data friction has to be the number one priority to enable success in 2021 and beyond.

When first revealed, Annotations raised a lot of questions, and there were very few answers. What is needed to get into the top bundle? When does my image show up? Who sees my image? How will this work with my ESP? Does the Annotation image create a lift? What about this new catalog cards?

There are still many unknowns (not the least of which is when or whether Annotations will reach Gmail Desktop. . . ). And yet, we do know a lot! We can begin to assess the usefulness of Annotations, and its implications on the future of the Inbox.

Join us to discuss the data, results of early A/B Image tests, how to ensure you are using the tool correctly and lessons we have learned about how Annotations behave in the wild.

In this session, Ada, Lauren and Luke, members of the OI Metrics Project Committee, will highlight innovative (and often overlooked) tactics for making the most of your email program. We’ll discuss a mix of tracking the right metrics, asking the right questions, and applying email strategies which surprise and delight your email recipients. The methods that we’ll share can lead to an increase in brand loyalty and profits — instead of a poor user experience, deliverability issues and marketing dollars being left on the table.

In this session, attendees will learn:

• The best email metrics for monitoring the health and success of an email program
• What questions marketers should be asking themselves in order to create a winning strategy
• Smarter strategies for optimizing recipient engagement with email

“Making poor decisions in the name of so-called innovation isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Emails that actually sell as they should.”

Admittedly, reworking the line famously read by Justin Timberlake (while portraying Sean Parker in The Social Network) takes most of the venom out of it. Unfortunately, some ‘innovations’ in email marketing seem to have taken the venom out of email itself. By getting back to basics – by studying basic sales and marketing fundamentals, by understanding how they apply to modern methods of advertising and messaging, and by writing messages that people are actually interested in reading – you can level up your email marketing program by doing what everyone else isn’t: creating emails that stand on their own.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• why – even though, yes, of course, we now have computers – marketing and advertising hasn’t changed that much from the Early 20th Century;
• the reason whatever it is that you’re offering needs to have some value in it on its own, with or without the help of copy or email design;
• a quick and painless way of telling – within three seconds – if the copy you’ve written is at all persuasive (Note: Identifying whether or not your email copy is persuasive won’t be painless – editing your email copy to become more persuasive might be significantly more painful);
• and why the best copy doesn’t make you stop and shout “WOW, that’s great copy!” 

Innovation is great, but you can’t take your email marketing to the next level until you have a strong foundation of industry knowledge. You want to be building on what’s been done previously, not unknowingly recreating the wheel. This is as true for those who’ve been in the industry a while as it is for newcomers. But often newcomers are better at knowing what they don’t know, and looking for answers.  

Join Tom, Jenna, and Yanna-Torry, founders of the soon-to-be-launched Next Gen EmailGeeks group, as they share their favorite go-to industry resources for information, ideas, and inspiration. Bonus! Many of them are free!

More marketers are getting involved with privacy programs, compliance with regulations and frameworks, and consent management. All must consider baseline compliance tactics. 

But what’s next? How can marketers leverage an investment in consent compliance to benefit their audience, prospects and customers? 

In this session, attendees will learn:  

– Consent requirements for email marketers  

– Strategies to retain your audience and reduce unsubscribes  

– How evolving consumer expectations should impact your processes

Brand Indicators for Message Identification is the new branding exercise for email marketers. Learn more about BIMI and how it supports your domain’s reputation and user experience. In this quick hitting session, you will learn what is required to add branding to your emails.

Takeaways include:

What is BIMI?

What you need to configure to implement BIMI?

Common roadblocks to implementation and how to overcome them

It’s said necessity is the mother of invention . . . but as the events of the past year have shown, necessity is also the mother of innovation! That’s been especially true for the email channel, with 5 or even 10 years of new development fast-tracked into just 15 months. As senders adapted program strategies to reflect a more online world with greater emphasis on personal touch, it’s remarkable how many of their key trends and tactics start with an “A” – Adaptable! Affinity! Authentic! In his presentation, Guy Hanson, VP of Customer engagement at Validity, will review more entries from the opening pages of the revised email playbook, and showcase some best-in-class examples of how they’re being applied.

For the last 10 years Marketing Clouds have dominated the ESP landscape; before they came along the MSPs were the dominant players. With the rise of the “next gen” ESPs and the tremendous interest they have generated in the marketplace, are we beginning to see the email vendor landscape undergo another massive transformation with a shakeup of the key players? Or is the interest in “next gen” platforms just a phase?

Join us as we look at the roots of the first massive shift to see if there are parallels to what is happening today. And if there is going to be a re-ordering of the vendor landscape, who are going to be the winners and who might be the losers. Bronto customers, this will be especially informative for you, as you face your platform’s ‘end of life’ in less than a year.

Key Takeaways:

1. Learn how priorities are changing and what innovations you should be looking for in your next vendor.
2. Understand why other organizations are starting RFPs or otherwise evaluating their vendors, and why you should too.
3. Get a handle on the key drivers you should be looking at for vendor selection in 2021 and beyond
4. Find out how to define a “next gen” ESP and whether or not this category is right for you.

Join Jeanne and Brian to better understand Apple’s New Mail Privacy Protection initiative and learn how to position your email program for success once it’s put in place. Brian is one of the few in the industry who has eyes-on how Apple will be implementing this. Jeanne is actively working on strategies for her clients to thrive once it’s in place. Bring your questions!

You’ll learn:

How Apple will implement this

Why people are concerned about its impact on open rates

What broader impact it will have (think live content)

How to position your program to thrive after the change