• 4 seconds: how long you have to grab an email reader’s attention.
• Pay attention to the conversations your audience is already having and put your own spin on it. Google trends, Reddit, etc.
• Subject line grabber words that work: alert, breaking, bad news, affiliates, limited, new.
• Grabbers that don’t work: urgent, report, trial, free, last chance, discount.
• Write in a tone you would use having a cup of coffee.

Holy cow, you guys. Dustin Matthews has a video introduction, like he’s the Rolling Stones. Everyone that let the event organizers introduce them is now officially a chump. Ok fine, y’all were still great. However, that. was. awesome.

Dustin’s presentation features video in addition to slides. So much more engaging. Not hard to see why video emails would engage more too.

The Blueprint:

1. Intro
2. Story
3. Offer
4. Body
5. Close

Case studies are more effective than testimonials.

This is an unscheduled appearance. So far, the biggest takeaway is that the woman doing his introduction said he’s worked with Bill Shatner. Bill! Roland also does a decent Shatner impression as well.

3 Step to Success:

1. Design Your Marketing Funnel
2. Create Your Funnel Content
3. Build Out the Funnel

John hearts Email Marketing because:

• It’s targeted
• It’s engaging
• It’s relevant
• It’s cost effective
• It’s quick and easy to deploy
• It drives revenue
• It’s the profitable component of everything else he does online
• It’s been around a long time and isn’t going anywhere soon

Or at least that’s the theory, he says. Have we been duped? Not if you’re doing it right.

Problems with Monthly Newsletters:

• Too much content.
• Not enough quality content
• Bad timing

5 Alternatives to the email newsletter

1. A genuine, targeted offer
2. A customer testimonial
3. An event invitation
4. A quality piece of though leadership/strategy
5. A single, timely news article

A point that’s easy to forget: real people get your email

Another presenter using video. It really sets the presentation above the rest.

Apologies on the midday delay. We took a lunch break and then there was a brief Q&A with organizers before Daniel took the stage. I’m very excited to hear Jim Ducharme now. He was one of the email marketers I learned from when I first came to Benchmark.

• 72% of people say they’re never more than 5ft away from their phone.
• Keep your promises, but change up the experience.
• Be the digital water cooler.
• Your main competition: Grumpy Cat … and every other piece of viral content online.

• The name of a sender/brand is 7x more influential when an email is opened on mobile.
• Less content is more on mobile.
• The “West Coast Offense” for email: short strikes
• Mobile friendly destinations are a must.

• Revenue per email grew 8% from $0.13 in 2011 to $0.14 in Q4 2012
• 82% of people open email from “companies”
• 64% of decision makers read email via mobile
• People scan … put your best stuff early on

While I was tweeting at Jay Jhun, who happens to be sitting four spots over from me at the table, Michael Halper has been sharing the pillars of your sales approach. Yes, I’m tweeting at Jay and not speaking out loud. I didn’t want to speak over Michael’s presentation.

Jim Ducharme just came to thank me for the kind words in this Live Blog. Thank you, Jim. If I hadn’t learned from guys like you early on, there would never be an Ask Andy today.

The crazy Italian guy (his words) told us A/B testing is like flossing:

• Takes additional time
• Pain in the neck
• …but it’s worth it

Clearly, he’s never tried Benchmark’s A/B Testing tool.

The preheater is your new friend. Figure out how it works, then optimize it.

• A continuation of the subject line
• Place it at the top of the message, hidden with CSS, if need be
• Customize text version