3 Tips: Craft an Eye-Catching Entry for the Email First Awards

We’ve all heard the saying: We didn’t find email, email found us. This quirky but crucial marketing channel made its way into our lives, and along with it a laundry list of tasks to keep in mind for every send. We pore over campaign briefs to guide strategy and help set goals, work with creative teams and other stakeholders to find just the right visuals, craft copy that converts, strategically use interactive elements to make the message easy to engage with and stand out in the inbox–all leading up to clicking the Schedule button. Afterward, we then get to switch our brains to reviewing the analytics and engagement, agonize over unsubscribes…and then start the process over again for the next campaign (or, more often than not, balance all of these items over multiple campaigns happening at the same time!).

The world of the email marketer can be all at once invigorating, task-driven, and  frustrating, and made up of moments of prediction on how something will turn out, or  scrapping everything and starting over for the Nth time. But when we get it right? No greater feeling of accomplishment and elation. When we do a tiny thing to make the lives of our subscribers better or easier in some way AND help tick the performance to our goal up a bit? That’s why we’re here.

And it’s with all of that in mind that we want to celebrate YOU.

We’re excited to give you, your teams, your co-workers, and the email marketers in your life the chance to be recognized and celebrated for your campaigns over the past year with the inaugural Email First Awards. We’re bringing this idea to life and celebrating everything email, as a part of Litmus Live Everywhere.

It can be a bit daunting to look back over a full year’s worth of sends to find the right ones. To help you put together the best set of entries, we’ve got three things to keep in mind to find your best performers and representatives of your brand.

Before you hit that submit button, make sure your entry…

1. Shows off the best of your email marketing program. There’s a good chance you sent hundreds of campaigns to your subscribers in 2019. When looking back through these sends, make note of which helped you perform best to its goal, presented your brand in a cohesive way through each campaign touchpoint, offered new elements that made it easier for your subscribers to engage, or effectively used visuals to assist with conversion. Reviewing your sends to see what really helped meet your business or marketing goals will help make the decision of what category (or categories!) to enter a lot easier.
2. Tells a story within your story. You’ll notice that there aren’t many questions to answer when submitting your entry, and that’s by design. We want you to approach the entry like you’re creating a new campaign, and a big part of that is the narrative itself. A good story will tell the judges the ideas behind your email, your goals, and how your team approached decisions and strategies to bring the campaign to life. Think of how you could theoretically include the panel as part of your marketing team, bringing them through the creation and deployment of the final product.
3. Includes a public link to a sample of your email. Depending on the category you’re submitting for, there may be a requirement to include a link to the message for the judges to review. You can provide this using either Litmus Scope, or even the link pulled from the “View in Browser” option of your email. Whichever method you choose, make sure it’s a public link so the panel can review your entry without issue!

Don’t forget that amongst the categories for specific campaigns, we also have two set aside to recognize your marketing leaders that are advocates of email in your organization, as well as a fun category for you to show off how you live that email life 24/7–yes, we’re talking to you, people with email-themed tattoos. Make sure to set aside some time to review both of these categories and send in entries to help recognize the individuals that make email happen and such a cool industry to work in.

Ready to submit?

Our panel of judges is anxiously awaiting your entries! You have until 12:00am ET on August 15th to fill out the entry form for each submission you have. We’ll review all submissions in mid-August and announce the winners and honorable mentions in each category at the end of Litmus Live Week in September.

Submit your entry →

If you have additional questions or would like to review the list of categories, head over to the Awards page on the Litmus Live Everywhere site for more information.

We’re so excited to see your entries, and cannot wait to celebrate your excellent work!