how to make your emails go viral

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Page 1: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 2: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

We tend to associate ‘going viral’ with social media—in part because it’s relatively easy to see and measure the noise of

social sharing.

Page 3: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

However, the much quieter email forward is

often a much more powerful influencer.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 4: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 5: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 6: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 7: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 8: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 9: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

The 1-to-1 or 1-to-few nature of email forwards makes them much more

personal and much more trusted—and therefore

more likely to drive action.@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 10: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Chad White @chadswhite• Research Director at Litmus• Author of Email Marketing Rules• Written thousands of posts and

articles on email marketing• Quoted in over 100 publications,

including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today

Page 11: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Justine Jordan @meladorri• Email critic and popular

industry speaker• Directs all things

marketing at Litmus• Recipient of 2015 EEC

Email Marketing Thought Leader of the Year award

• Organizer of The Email Design Conference

Page 12: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 13: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

To better understand the quiet, often invisible influence of email forwards, we used Litmus’ Email Analytics to analyze the forwards generated by more than 400,000 email sends with at least 500 opens between Jan. 2013 and March 2015.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 14: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

To reduce the impact of list size, we normalized forward activity by calculating the forward-to-open rate—that is, what percentage of opens generated a forward.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 15: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

And to understand the drivers of email forwarding, we analyzed more than 200 emails from among the top 1% of viral emails and another 200-plus emails from around the 50th percentile—looking at tactics, topics, and other email elements.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 16: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

You’ll receive a copy of The Viral Email Report, slides, and a recording following the webinar.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 17: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Benchmarks for Forward-to-Open Rates

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The median email (50th percentile) produced a 0.27% forward-to-open rate. Put another way, the middle-of-the-pack email generates 1 forward for every 370 opens.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 19: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

The 99th percentile of viral emails was 17.6 times more viral than the median, generating 1 forward for every 21 opens.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 20: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 21: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral
Page 22: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Tactics that Af -fect

Forward-to-Open Rates

Page 23: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Tactics we’ll explore…• Audience Size• Segmentation & Triggered Emails• Personalization• “Share with Your Network” Calls-to-

Action

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 24: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Audience SizeDoes an email sent to a small audience or a large audience have more viral potential?

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 25: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Small audience! The median email among those with 500 to 50,000 opens was forwarded 90% more than the median email among those with more than 50,000 opens.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 26: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

And it’s even more stark among the most viral emails Small Audience

Forward-to-Open Rate

Large AudienceForward-to-Open

RateSmall vs. Large

99th Percentile 5.04% 1.91% 2.6

95th Percentile 2.29% 0.89% 2.6

90th Percentile 1.49% 0.60% 2.5

75th Percentile 0.71% 0.32% 2.2

50th Percentile 0.30% 0.16% 1.9

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 27: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Segmentation & TriggersAre segmented emails and triggered emails more or less likely to be forwarded?

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

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More likely! The emails in the 99th percentile were 4.3 times more likely to be segmented and 2.9 times more likely to be triggered than emails in the 50th percentile.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 29: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

San Diego Magazine segmented these

event promo emails to attendees of last year’s event and to

attendees of another event they

held. Both were among the top 1%

of viral emails.

Page 30: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

PersonalizationAre personalized emails more or less likely to be forwarded? Note: We ignored first-name merges and other superficial forms of personalization.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

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More likely! Emails in the 99th percentile were 4.5 times more likely than emails in the 50th percentile to include personalization.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 32: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

‘Share with Your Network’ CTAs

Are emails that include SWYN calls-to-action more or less likely to be forwarded?

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 33: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

More likely! Emails in the 99th percentile were 13 times more likely to include a “share with your network” call-to-action than emails in the 50th percentile.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 34: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

This highly viral email from Chevy

Safe & Fun included a photo

taken at an event, as well as prominent “share

with your network” links.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 35: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Recipients of this segmented email from JustGiving

were very happy to spread the

word that they were among the

top 1% of fundraisers during

2014.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 36: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Topics that AffectForward-to-Open

Rates

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Email topics we’ll explore…• Promotions/Deals/Discounts• News/Helpful Content• Events/Webinars• Transactional/Account Change/ Action

Required@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 38: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Promotions/Deals/DiscountsAre emails about promotions, deals, and discounts more or less likely to be forwarded?

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 39: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Less likely! Promotions were the most common topic among emails in the 50th percentile and were 67% less likely to be the topic of the most viral 1% of emails.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 40: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

News/Helpful ContentAre emails about news and helpful content more or less likely to be forwarded?

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 41: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Less likely! Although very common in the 99th percentile of viral emails, news and helpful content was slightly more prevalent among emails in the 50th percentile.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

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Promotions and helpful content are staples of

email marketing, so subscribers are only driven

to forward those that are truly great. @chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 43: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Plan your email content calendar so that you’re occasionally sending an

awesome deal, exclusive news, or similarly

impactful content.@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

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A really good deal—combined

with the announcement of store closings—made this email

from Home Decorators

Collection highly viral.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 45: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Presented as an infographic, news that

GameChanger’s app had tracked

800 million pitches for

amateur teams went viral.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 46: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Events/WebinarsAre emails about events and webinars that require registration or an RSVP more or less likely to be forwarded?

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 47: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

More likely! Emails in the 99th percentile were 3.2 times more likely to be about an event or webinar than emails in the 50th percentile.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 48: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

An exciting, controversial topic and a compelling

speaker propelled this

event email into the top 1% of

most-forwarded emails.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 49: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Transactional/Account ChangeAre emails about transactions, account changes, and required actions more or less likely to be forwarded?

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 50: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

More likely! These emails were 4.6 times more likely to be among the 99th percentile of viral emails than among the 50th percentile.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

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Two Types of Email Forwards…• Social forwards build awareness

and start others down their own funnels toward conversions.

• Advice-seeking forwards help the forwarder decide whether to convert.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 52: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Whereas most forwards raise

awareness and help convince others to

convert, the forwards of this

triggered transactional email from Glo primarily

helped the forwarder convert.

Page 53: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Final Thoughts

Page 54: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

When your subscribers forward your emails, they expand your

reach, increase conversions, and boost your email engagement

metrics—which is good for branding, revenue, and

deliverability.@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

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Forwards are a powerful indicator of the overall health of your email

program; they’re a sign that you are fulfilling your

subscribers’ needs at the highest level.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

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If your monthly forward-to-open rate is in the bottom

quartile (less than 0.11%), then your email program is probably not

delivering experiences that are deeply relevant.

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 58: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

How to track forwards• Litmus Email Analytics detects

‘natural’ forwards—those made by clicking the ‘forward’ button in your email client.

• More insight than using ‘forward to a friend’

@chadswhite @meladorri #ViralEmail

Page 59: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

litmus.com/giftcard + coupon code VIRALEMAIL

Track forwards, prints, and geolocation.

Litmus Email Analytics

Page 60: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

litmus.com/giftcard + coupon code VIRALEMAIL

See how long each subscriber spent reading your message.

Who read, skimmed, or just glanced at your email?

Engagement

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See who opens in mobile, tablet,

desktop, or web-based inboxes.

Device Usage

Page 62: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Works with any ESP

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Page 63: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

Questions?The slides, a recording, and copy of the full report will

be sent via email to everyone who registered.

Submit questions via the Q&A panel

Page 64: How to Make Your Emails Go Viral

litmus.com/giftcardCoupon code: VIRALEMAIL

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