Email Best Practices: Optimizing Your Message for Recipient Engagement

In a time where technology is constantly changing, the morning panel discussion focused on how best to reach your audience through email messaging as well as other mediums. The panel members included:

• Doug Broujos, CEO, Blue Sky Factory
• Tommi Marsans, Senior Director, Email Marketing & Customer Communications, Sallie Mae
• Jason Nelson, Group Publisher, FierceMarkets,Inc.
• Kenan Pollack, Lead Consultant, Strategic Services, Convio

Jason Nelson emphasized the importance of understanding your audience and industry you are trying to reach. Not only do you need to know who they are, but you also need to be familiar with how they receive their emails and at what time. "Email is not rocket science," said Doug Broujos, but it does require some thought and planning. Kenan Pollack supported that by contributing the fact that good emails only have a 19% success rate, so you may have more success than you realize. Tommi Marsans clarified that you need to "look at email as one part of your overall marketing." You should use it as one tool in support of your other tools and efforts; it does not have to be the first and only thing you utilize to reach out to people. The panelists concluded that testing and re-testing your messages and subject lines is a helpful way to observe your open rates and overall success rate. Email is one of the easiest ways to communicate with your audience, but if you don’t use it the right way, it can also be detrimental for your marketing efforts.