The First Email Innovation Summit: 3 Things You Need to Know

If you’ve been involved in the email marketing industry for even a brief period of time, you’ve probably noticed it’s a tight-knit community. Whether you’re a modern business seeking new products or tools to assist you in growing and engaging your customer base, or you’re an email technology partner seeking to improve the way businesses communicate with their audience, attend any industry event and you’re liable to see plenty of familiar faces. Last week’s inaugural Email Innovation Summit was no exception.

The conference, hosted by one of our favorite industry thought leaders and founder of Only Influencers, Bill McCloskey, was a meet-up of some of the greatest thinkers in the email space. (Plus, it was held in conjunction with the Conversion Conference, so there was no shortage of industry expertise.)

Here’s the thing: Even as someone who eats, sleeps and breathes email technology, I still found myself inspired.

Whether you missed last week’s Las Vegas conference, or you just want to relive the highlights, I’m going to share what I believe were the three most important takeaways.

1. Bringing the Landing Page to the Inbox

If you’re like most businesses, you probably use email marketing to share offers with your customers and prospects. Generally, you share a few details about your offer and invite the reader to learn more or take advantage of the offer on a customized landing page. But what if you could eliminate that step? That’s exactly what Mark Robbins at RebelMail shared during his keynote address.

Robbins explained how, using email templates, subscribers can convert within the email. Instead of clicking out of the message-a step that sometimes results in a lost opportunity-interested prospects can complete purchases and other actions within the message.

Check out RebelMail email templates to learn more.

2. Big Data and Real-Time Targeting

For many businesses, targeting each piece of their audience with different messaging sounds arduous. Without proper technology, it is arduous. But when marketers transition from broad-stroke email campaigns to segmented email, great things happen. For example, by taking advantage of data already within the company’s database, Western Union‘s Assistant Marketing Manager Michael Reese and his team were able to achieve what Reese called a “massive impact” that yielded significant engagement.

For businesses already segmenting using the data within their CRM, the next logical step is to use third-party data to ramp up targeting and achieve unprecedented levels of personalization. Which brings me to my third major takeaway.

3. Identity Matching is Email’s Next Frontier

You know we love data. (It’s in our name, after all.) And we’ve talked quite a bit about the power of using customer data to create unique customer experiences. Nicholas Einstein of the Relevancy Group and Ali Swerdlow of LiveIntent moderated an excellent panel on this very topic-and people are excited. Hearst, Allrecipes and Progressive all chimed in on the concept of “people-based marketing” and how the more you know your audience-their wants, needs and behaviors-the better you can connect with them on a personal level, and the stronger the loyalty.

All in all, the overarching message of the Email Innovations Summit is clear: The email community is strong, technology is evolving and the importance of data in reaching your audience has never been clearer.

Leverage the customer data you have to gain even more insight into your subscribers. Try InstantData free today to easily create the personalized messaging your prospects expect.