📩 Facebook’s outage proves email is key

Essence of Email Weekly‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌ Essence of Email Weekly Read in Browser Essence of Email Weekly Hello there, Looks like you may have missed last week's Essence of Email Weekly newsletter, so we wanted to send it to you in case it got lost in your inbox. Have a great day! ECOMMERCE The holiday season is coming early this year Source: Tenor Autumn has only just arrived but that’s not stopping Amazon from kicking off the holiday shopping season. The eCommerce giant announced that it's unveiling "Black Friday-worthy deals earlier than ever” and its Epic Daily Deals page is already decorated and ready. Deep discounts are offered across toys, seasonal fashions, home entertainment and decor, electronics, tools, and pet products. The bigger picture: Last year, Amazon Prime Day was pushed to October due to the pandemic. And at about the same time, early holiday shoppers started to look for gifts online. Prime Day 2020 turned out to be one of the most successful Prime Days ever, with gross merchandise sales worldwide increasing by $3.23 billion from 2019 to $10.39 billion in 2020. This year, Prime Day took place during the summer once again, but Amazon’s early introduction of holiday shopping will probably make up for it and reap the same benefits. What else is new? This holiday season, Amazon Prime members will be able to send gifts via the mobile app with just the recipient’s mobile number or email. Gifters won’t need recipients’ physical addresses and will be able to send a virtual gift notification before the physical delivery. According to Forbes , digital gift delivery will “help avoid the return backlash that inevitably follows the holiday season. It’s a feature that startups like SmartGift and GiftNow make available to their retail partners through a checkout add-on button’’ . How this shopping season will unfold remains to be seen. But a new holiday forecast reports that 75% of those in the survey expect to start shopping earlier, fearing shortages. So, it does make sense to kick off this shopping season as early as October. Ready for the holiday madness? DIGITAL MARKETING Facebook outage highlights why email matters Source: Tenor Last week , we wrote about the massive Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp outage. Rewind: Dave Gerhardt, Chief Brand Officer at Drift and founder of DGMG, posted the following on LinkedIn: ‘’There is still no better marketing channel than an email list. 100k followers on LinkedIn is cool but I wouldn’t trade it for my email list of 6k people. And yesterday’s Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp outage was a good reminder of the importance of owning your audience vs. renting the attention on social.” He’s right. Kath Pay from Holistic Email Marketing writes about how email marketers saw this opportunity and quickly responded to the situation. Within an hour, they started sending emails like “Here’s a distraction while Instagram/Facebook are down…” ( Mott & Bow ) and “Instagram (Got U) Down?” ( Lulus ). In the Martech article , Kath also detailed three lessons we’ve (hopefully) learned from the outage: Controlling access to your audience pays off Sure, the configuration errors that caused the Facebook-owned platforms outage can happen to anyone. But there’s an important catch: when a social platform is down, you can’t reach your followers. In the case of email marketing, you can still control your database and market to it. Therefore, it’s important to introduce your brand to a wider pool of potential subscribers and get them to sign up to your email list. This way, if a social platform goes down for a longer period of time, you can still contact them. Agile marketing is a must While a bunch of people went to Slack and similar platforms to discuss the issue, agile email teams understood the assignment and started firing out campaigns quickly. They knew the value of their email database and took the opportunity to act smartly while Facebook was down. Email marketing deserves more respect It could be argued that email might not be the most popular marketing channel, as many people consider it to be outdated. But this is far from the truth. The outage reiterated once again that email truly matters. For starters: everyone online has an email address. In addition, email is one of the few push channels, so you don’t need to wait for a user to visit your website, social channel, or perform a search. In addition, nobody owns email except the brand, and it’s one of only two universal digital channels — the other being SMS (if you need inspiration on how to make the two work in unity, check out our Quarterly report ). Finally: Social media is a delightful way to build reach and brand awareness, as well as to grow an email list. But it’s important to keep in mind that social media and email marketing need to be combined and that email’s conversion and revenue advantages can benefit social media, too. For more information and agile email marketing examples, check out Martech’s article . HOLIDAY EMAIL MARKETING Halloween email ideas Source: Tenor Halloween is almost here! Have you thought about spicing your emails up and celebrating a bit? If so, Klaviyo ’s got just the thing! Here are some tried-and-true Halloween ideas to get you inspired and help you spellbind your customers. Play around with the colors of the season Even if your products or services don’t relate to Halloween, you can still find creative ways to celebrate. Do this by playing around with the quintessential colors of the holiday and see how you can incorporate them into your brand’s designs. Put people first and products/services second Holidays and seasonal events offer the perfect opportunity to build and maintain relationships with your audience, simply by creating a shared experience. An enticing offer won’t hurt but try to emphasize conversations instead of conversions. Klaviyo recommends bringing your brand to life by highlighting the people behind it and using Halloween as your bridge of communication to create personal connections. Explain the magical properties of your brand Halloween email campaigns are the perfect way to promote your products’ unique qualities. Try doing this through a witty piece of copy to build brand awareness and promote your products. Bring formerly popular products back from the grave This strategy rocks. Stock up on your past popular products and bring them back from the dead for this occasion. The possibilities are endless here if you know how to spice up your promotions with strong copy and enticing designs. Create a sense of urgency with a one-day sale message Your Halloween email campaigns can also usher your end-of-season products to their retail grave. You can create a sense of urgency by promoting a one-day, get-it-before-it’s-gone sale. Finally, Halloween is the perfect time to build connections with your brand before the BFCM season. Get creative now — it will pay off as you get into the proper holiday season. For examples and additional details, make sure to go through Klaviyo’s blog post . ‘Tis the season to be spooky! EMAIL DESIGN INSPO Spooktacular 🎃 Source: ReallyGoodEmails Speaking of Halloween emails, here’s another spooktacular example. Motif , an app for iOS and macOS that lets customers design and order photo books, calendars, and cards, has come up with an interesting way to promote their service this Halloween. They thought of the scariest thing that could happen to their customers (losing their Halloween photos) and have come up with the perfect way to avoid it. Just look at how the hero image and the copy fit perfectly with the email theme. A Halloween discount with a fun coupon code (BooFor20) is a very nice touch, and the call-to-action at the bottom of the email is just fabulous. Do you dare to download the app? 🧛 Source: ReallyGoodEmails You are welcome to forward this email. If you were forwarded this email, click here to subscribe. EMAIL MARKETING SERVICES BOOK A CALL Copyright © 2021 Essence of Email Essence of Email, 26310 Bolton Trails Ln, Katy, Texas 77494, United States Unsubscribe