5 Email Questions with SendGrid’s Carly Brantz, Director of Revenue Marketing

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Carly Brantz, Director of Revenue Marketing for SendGrid, recently and generously sat down to answer 5 questions about today’s popular email trends and strategies. Carly is an email deliverability veteran who has helped grow SendGrid from a company of 30 employees to a global presence that now sends billions of emails every month! To see more of Carly’s work, be sure to visit the SendGrid blog.

1.) What is the number one trend in email right now that people are talking about?

The rise of mobile is not only the number one trend people are talking about; it is one that cannot be ignored. Statistics show that mobile is the most popular environment for a first time interaction with your email, and close to 90% of people now check their email on their mobile phone. Businesses must keep mobile top of mind as they design their email and as they consider their call to action. Emails should be clean, simple, and easy on the thumbs in order to maximize return on your email campaigns. 

2.) What is a trend or facet of email strategy that people should be talking about?

I believe that marketers can take better advantage of their transactional email messages and incorporate a relevant marketing message and call to action when sending those purchase receipts, shipping notifications, or reminders. While making the primary focus on the transactional message, use the data you have on the buyer and offer an upsell item to go with what they already purchased or ask them to sign up for your blog. Encouraging further interaction with your customers is always valuable and sending transactional messages out without taking advantage of the heightened attention they receive, is a missed opportunity. We’ve offered a few examples on how to accomplish this in our free Transactional and Marketing Email guide.

3.) What is your best piece of advice for someone looking to improve their email effectiveness?

You must send targeted messages! The days of blasting one email to your entire list of subscribers is over. Sending targeted emails is proven to increase engagement and conversion rates. Craft your emails looking at the behavioral and demographic information that matters to your business. Then, use the information you have collected on gender, location, previous buying history, etc., to target your users in a unique and meaningful way. Subscribers expect that you respect their time and you will dramatically improve the return on your email program when you show them you do.  

4.) What is your favorite type of SPAM email?

Thanks to improved filtering techniques used by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) along with blacklists and advanced spam filters, I rarely see spam in my inbox anymore. 

5.) What is the most overrated and the most underrated email strategy or tactic?

Overrated: Decision making based on instinct: I recently heard that “Marketing results are really just determined by the way the wind blows, you put your flag in the air and just see which way it goes.” I could not disagree with this statement more. In today’s marketing, we have a wealth of data from a large array of testing and tracking programs. There is absolutely no reason not to be constantly monitoring, testing, and tweaking the elements of your email program to make informed decisions. When you find a winner, continue testing it against a new version. I have had opinions that were proven wrong based on tests we have run and I welcome the opportunity to be shown a better solution based on data.

Underrated: Reactivation campaigns

Fall is a great time to clean your lists and prepare for the holidays. While it may seem counterintuitive to remove subscribers from a list you have worked hard to build, sending to uninterested subscribers can cause your spam complaints to rise and can be detrimental to your sending reputation. To run a reactivation campaign, you should identify subscribers who have not opened, clicked, shared, or interacted with your emails. Send an email to those inactive users encouraging them to remain on your list or to opt out. In the end, remove all who didn’t choose to remain on your list. In addition, during the holidays, you can segment your “extra-engaged” users. Your most dedicated customers will tolerate more email coming from you and will appreciate special offers created just for them. 

Thanks again to Carly Brantz for taking the time give some great insight on email deliverability!

Jonathon Mahon is a content marketer, writer and designer based in Boston. He writes for various digital publications and blogs specializing in the cloud, email automation, software, and technology.