Marketers’ Roundtable: How Four Brands Use Data to Increase Email Open Rates and Engagement

Stand out in the inbox, or get deleted

Stephen Driscoll
Vice President, Marketing
AARP
Brent Christensen
Director, Digital Marketing for Email and Push
Overstock.com
Victoria Vaynberg
CMO
Resy
Harris Beber
CMO
Vimeo

Email is to marketing what peanut butter is to jelly: a low-cost, tested and seemingly timeless combination. Yet the strategies for increasing deliverability, open rates and engagement are changing rapidly, and marketers must evolve—or they'll get lost in the crowd. eMarketer’s Caroline Cakebread spoke with four brand executives about how they use data and other techniques to make their email marketing more effective.

eMarketer:

In a digital environment where channels like social media and video seem to dominate, why has email remained a workhorse for brands?

Stephen Driscoll:

It’s become a kind of modern address. Even though people tend to have multiple addresses, they stick with them for long periods of time, and there’s a real benefit for brands to have that long-term connection. The customer places a high value on their own email address and on the ease and consistency it provides.

Harris Beber :

Social media offers instant gratification; it’s fleeting. And if you don’t engage in that moment, it disappears. But email is still self-managed at the convenience of the user. It's one of the few channels where people still have full control of what’s delivered and when they read it.

Interview conducted on July 12, 2018

"Behind the Numbers" Podcast