Litmus Live is well underway and we’re loving it. With sessions from 36 industry thought leaders to over 6,000 registrants, this might just be our best conference yet.
If you aren’t familiar, Litmus Live is an annual email conference dedicated to all things email. This year’s event puts the spotlight on lifecycle marketing—and it’s where some of the brightest minds in email connect each year to get insights, gather inspiration, and connect with fellow email geeks.
We’re compiling key takeaways and feedback from each session directly in this article. Stop back every day to check them out, and make sure to grab your spot for the remainder of the conference if you haven’t already.
Also, a huge shout out to our incredible sponsors: Oracle, Salesforce, Constant Contact, OneSignal, ZeroBounce.
Litmus Live Day 1 Recap—October 28, 2024
This is my first Litmus Live and all I can say is wow! The speakers on day one knocked it out of the park. While I scribbled down notes for this recap, I took even more for myself and I can’t wait to read back through them and rewatch a session or two.
This highlight videos sums up the energy and enthusiasm of the day perfectly.
Return on Real: A New Model for the Modern Marketer
The incredible Ann Handley kicked off Litmus Live with a keynote focused on modern marketing. Highlights:
- Ann wore an Evermore (Wednesday Adams) uniform that was absolute perfection.
- An astounding 58% of marketers consider their content strategy to be “moderately” effective.
- RoR means Return on Real. 95% of buyers are not actively in the market, so you must make meaningful (AKA real) connections with them until they are.
Creating Remarkable Email Experiences: 20 Years of Learnings & Examples
Chad S. White from Oracle shared tactics for creating remarkable emails from 20 years in email marketing. Takeaways include:
- An great overview of the hierarchy of subscriber needs.
- 20 email examples from the past 20 years.
- In 2011, Helzberg Diamonds created 60,000 animated GIFs so they had one for each unique name on their subscriber list. 🤯
Live Email Optimization
Everyone’s favorite session returned with a bang! Litmus’ own Carin Slater and Angie Weyman worked on optimizing four different emails.
- Always add your ALT text. ALT text is still important, especially for email accessibility.
- Goals of emails vary! Don’t assume you should monitor the same metrics for each.
- 40% of emails are viewed in Dark Mode, so proper optimization is more important than ever.
Foundations of Online Marketing Success: Review-Plan-Execute
Dave Charest guided us through yoga-inspired tips to ignite word-of-mouth buzz, boost productivity, and create a winning online marketing strategy.
- Engagement marketing is when you provide a “wow” experience every time you have contact with a customer.
- Mobile responsive homepages should answer four questions immediately:
- What is it?
- Who is it for?
- So what?
- What should they do next?
- Consistent marketing is the key to changing your business.
Well said, Dave!
Decoding Churn: Strategies for Subscription Retention
Anna Levitin shared how to decode churn and boost retention using B2C tactics repurposed for B2B. We especially loved these key takeaways:
- Churn = [lost customers/customers at the beginning of the month] x100
- Choose long-term over short-term loyalty goals
- Short-term: instant gratification, special offers, customer engagement.
- Long-term: community building, customization and flexibility, value-added benefits.
Advanced Interactive Coding: Building a Product Rec Engine
Email geeks couldn’t stop talking about Zac Eckstein’s session on planning and coding an advanced interactive email concept. Notable takeaways:
- Zac walked us through how to code an interactive module, including great tips and tricks along the way.
- Apple, Yahoo, Outlook.com, Samsung, and AOL inboxes provide good coverage for interactive email. Gmail and Outlook on Windows lack full support.
- Interactive emails slightly reduce click rates (by 10-20%), but they boost conversion rates by the same margin.
4 Steps to Write Emails Worth Sending (While Being Utterly Ruthless)
Copywriting + humor = Lianna Patch. She walked us through her best tips for writing to REAL readers and editing your email copy from structure down to the word level. Takeaways include:
- Use VoC (voice of the customer) data to really get to know the audience you’re writing for.
- Broad → structure → specific: Edit for only one area at a time, working your way from broad to detailed.
- Consider testing “call to values” instead of a “call to actions.”
The Future of Email: AI, Automation, and Lifecycle Marketing
This panel was not one to miss! Cynthia Price, Chad S. White, Lauren Meyer, and Drew Price explored the latest trends and innovations shaping the next generation of email marketing. Highlights include:
- Over time, brands focusing on managing quality and frequency at scale will gain more engaged subscribers because they’ve built stronger relationships.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) should be seen as a junior assistant that can help with ideas, but it’s not ready to take over completely.
- Chad S. White predicts that AI-enforced brand guidelines will become common in the future.
Slack conversations were flowing
We heard from dozens of attendees in the Litmus Live Slack channel. Conversations included how we got into email marketing, email personalization tips, content and marketing team synergy, and even book recommendations.
And that’s a wrap for Day 1 of Litmus Live! Day 2 starts on Tuesday, October 29th at 9am ET with a live panel featuring our sponsors.
It’s not too late to claim your spot
Join your fellow email geeks for the rest of Litmus Live and gain access to recordings of all the sessions you missed (or want to watch again).