Our Email Marketing & CRM Seminar took place on Thursday 12 February at The Hospital Club in Covent Garden, where experts from Communicator, display block, Adestra and Silverpop, an IBM company took us through everything from responsive email design to automated messaging. Before the event, we caught up with some of our brand delegates to find out what they were hoping to get from the day.

“I want to develop our email plan so that we are targeting customers throughout their booking journey, rather than just contacting them once with sales-led messages. I want to be talking to them throughout the year—asking them if they’re looking forward to their holiday and welcoming them home etc.” (Jessica Lloyd-Hitt, Senior Digital Marketing Executive, Hotelplan UK Ltd)

“We want to keep up to date with best practice and see what else is out there.” (Sarika Sarvia, Digital Marketing, St John Ambulance)

“We’re starting to move onto a new database and we haven’t got any automation in place. We want to learn more about putting an automation plan together.” (Gina Hubbard, Campaign Executive, The NEC)

“The Figaro Digital Email Marketing Seminar is one of my favourite events as it’s great to network with other email and CRM specialists. I always make a to-do list. I’m keen to optimise my emails for mobile, embed video content and continue to develop our automated programs.” (Jennifer Jacobs, Customer Marketing Manager, Freesat)

Here’s what our speakers had to say

Signed, Sealed, Delivered—Engage Subscribers and They’re Yours!

Jenna Tiffany – Digital Marketing Strategist, Communicator

“It’s not about sending more emails, it’s about sending better emails”

2015 will be the year of smarter marketing, says Jenna at Communicator. This will mean putting the customer at the centre of every decision, and making sure you understand (and respect) their every movement. Your email list should be grown organically, as your customers are only going to be happy if they are expecting your messages. Sender reputation is essential to good inbox placement. To get your emails seen, you will need a super-subject line (the copy that sits at the very top of an email) which is personalised and relevant. And to make your emails engaging, you will need to implement real-time optimisation and visual storytelling. In 2015, the quality of your emails is going to matter far more than the volume at which you send them out.

Responsive Email is Not Nice

Mike Parry – C.E.O., display block

“Responsive design is not about you, it’s about your users”

With the single biggest use of tablets being for reading emails, “Why wouldn’t you make your email responsive?” asks Mike at display block. Seventy-five per cent of emails that don’t render properly on a mobile device are deleted, so responsive email is not a nice-to-have but an essential part of your mobile strategy for 2015. Responsive design is about your users, not you. Cut down on unnecessary content and make your copy action-orientated.

Transforming the Customer Lifecycle—Marketing Automation that Gets Results

Chris Clapham – Managing Consultant EMEA, Silverpop, an IBM company

“Your users don’t care how difficult their movements are to track, they want a unified experience”

Automating your marketing messages means that you can spend more time building one-to-one relationships with your customers, says Chris at Silverpop, an IBM company. Marketing automation allows you to listen for live behaviours and tailor your messages accordingly, making them timely and engaging. Your customers expect a unified experience, regardless of the difficulty involved in tracking their behaviour. Any data you collect should be integrated daily so that your communications can be in real time. Timely, personal campaigns like the ‘welcome’ message or the birthday offer are invaluable to customer engagement, and with marketing automation they should be simple too.

Taking Mobile Email to the Next Level in 2015

Katie Evans – Account Manager, Adestra

“Marketers need to make emails more to-the-point and punchy than ever before”

We mobile users are pretty lazy when it comes to reading marketing messages, says Katie at Adestra. We want information to be clear and concise. Keep subject lines short and display a clear call-to-action in order to reduce scrolling. Katie also argues that SMS has been overlooked as a marketing channel and, with 16 per cent of smartphone users making a purchase due to SMS, it’s a channel that brands should consider seriously in 2015.

Key take-away from the seminar: Put the customer at the heart of every decision regarding marketing communications.

Written by Estelle Hakner.