Essence of Email Weekly - Should Netflix step up its email marketing game?

Before we dive in… The COVID-19 crisis has had an enormous impact on the TV and film industry, halting film production and closing cinemas across the globe. After several months of complete shutdowns, production is slowly resuming in certain countries. But for the time being, people are getting most of their entertainment from streaming services, and these companies are thriving. With huge numbers of people streaming shows and movies, services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime have become even more popular.

The question is – can they effectively use all of their channels to provide their customers with the best possible experience?

For Netflix, this might be a problem. Joel Hruska recently unmasked the company’s problematic email marketing strategy in a hilariously relatable article. In his blog post, Hruska focuses on how Netflix spams its subscribers with unnecessary emails on a daily basis.

He complains that Netflix went from sending 4-7 emails per month to emailing him every day and a half. Reminders, suggestions, recaps, rewatches, new shows, old shows… the list is endless. Tired of “neurotic reminders”, Hruska decided to block Netflix, and his frustration is completely understandable.

This is a perfect example of just how important a good email marketing strategy is for any business, and how all channels employed by brands are interdependent. If you’re not careful, you’ll probably end up with an angry customer. They might not only unsubscribe from your emails, but from your services too.

Takeaway: Netflix should reconsider how often they email their subscribers in order to save their email list and avoid high spam complaint rates. What they (and basically every brand) need for this is a serious email sending frequency strategy. Luckily, our experts at Essence of Email have a solution: a tactical frequency model which helps fine-tune the sending frequency and keeps spam complaint rates within the industry standards.

What about your business? Have you checked your complaint rates recently?

As email marketing has been around for a relatively long time, some may regard it as an outdated promotion channel. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Even now, email is still one of the most effective marketing channels, and email technology just keeps improving. There’s a variety of tools and tactics you can use to improve your email strategy, and Associations Now is bringing you some of the latest and greatest.

These image previews are displayed under an email entry in the Gmail Promotions tab and will help you display the most vibrant part of your email. The images work well with subject lines, as they create an informative and enticing preview, which increases the chances of people opening your emails.

AI can help you with both creating emails and analyzing metrics, enabling you to figure out what works best for your email program. Based on this, you’ll be able to optimize your emails for better outreach. What’s more, AI can pinpoint what type of content is most effective and create enticing subject lines and copy for your brand – possibly (or probably?) to the extent of replacing copywriters in the future. For extra information on how AI can boost your eCommerce email marketing, head to Essence of Email’s blog post.

Often overlooked, email signatures can be a great way of getting more visibility – so don’t make them an afterthought. Instead, create a simple, effective, clean signature that includes your company’s logo and use it consistently. You’ll spark interest in you and your business, and get some instant brand recognition.

Dark mode is having a moment. It makes reading easier, it looks cool and sleek, and it reduces the display power draw. So, it’s no wonder that it’s becoming increasingly popular. Many apps and platforms have been scrambling to use this functionality – and now it’s email’s turn. But that’s where things get tricky. It seems that certain email service platforms are turning dark mode on automatically, which might mess up your email design.

Our take: “When email clients change the theme to dark mode, they invert the colors of all the elements except your images. This proves to be a challenge for designers because we have to think of creative ways to make an image asset work on a dark and bright background at the same time. The most common technique for this is to add white strokes around your dark elements; however, as dark mode becomes more accessible, I am sure we will see better and more efficient solutions”, says Armin Avdic, Graphic Designer at Essence of Email.

Be sure to keep an eye on email technology trends, as these innovations could mean lots of exciting opportunities for your business. For more information, check out this article.

It seems that everything is coming up roses for Walmart. As a result of the pandemic, consumers relied even more on this retail giant and its online sales soared during Q1, leading to a 74% jump in eCommerce revenue.

This upwards trend hasn’t stopped since.