Recap: The Email Design Conference 2013 - Boston
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This past Wednesday evening, I flew out to Boston for a two-day conference: The Email Design Conference (TEDC), presented by Litmus. I was incredibly lucky to have my ticket to the conference provided by the awesome team at Postmark (thanks so much, Natalie, et al.)! The conference, which was held at the beautiful Seaport World Trade Center, was attended by somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 people. The Boston conference was the third and final conference in a set of three this year, the first two being held in San Francisco and London. A conference dedicated solely to email design is something previously unheard of; given the good turnouts at all three locations, however, I suspect it won’t be the last.
Key Themes
Unsurprisingly, a recurring topic in each speaker’s slide deck was the emergence of mobile as a major factor in the world of email design. In Litmus’ own tracking data, mobile opens now account for 48% of all opens, while certain brands (particularly B2C-focused companies) have seen the overwhelming majority of their opens on mobile devices for over a year now. While I expect most of the conference attendees were already fervent supporters of responsive design (for both web and email), a little reinforcement never hurt anyone.
Another common message from several presenters was that of putting yourself in the shoes of your users when you ask them to do something which benefits you. My favorite example of this was from Brendan Schwartz of Wistia. When Wistia wanted to collect user feedback, they didn’t simply send out an email asking their users to click a link and take a survey. Instead, they made this fun video, entertaining the user in return for giving Wistia valuable feedback.
What Was Awesome
- Strictly educational - no sales pitches
- Format encouraged casual networking
- Participants could have their designs peer-reviewed
What I Feel Could Be Improved
- No breakout sessions for areas of interest
- No conferences in the Midwest *hint hint*
- The material was on the basic side for a professional
Overall, TEDC13 was an enjoyable and educational experience for me. It was obvious to anyone in attendance that Litmus worked extremely hard to put on a fun, useful, and meaningful event, and in my mind, they succeeded.