Hey, you. Yeah, you! Let's get on a first name basis, stat, and converse as if we go back like big crayons and coloring books. At the risk of weirding out a few customers, that's the tone brands should take in their marketing and transactional emails, according to Matt Byrd, Senior Email Marketing Manager at WeddingWire. "Get personal," Byrd told attendees at OMMA's Email Insider Summit on Friday. It's about "mimicking" the one-on-one exchanges that we all have with friends and family via email, he said. And, it works. Such efforts have resulted in click rates increasing by as much …

"No pinching," said Matt Byrd, senior email marketing manager at WeddingWire, in his presentation at the Email Insider on designing email for mobile. Byrd's point is that mobile email should be designed for the phone itself and consumers shouldn't have to pinch just to read an email on their phone. Byrd also pointed out that consumers check their email on their phones right when they wake up, something to consider when deciding when to send emails.

When designing emails, marketers should remember that there is a human on the other end, said Wacarra Yeomans, director of creative services at Responsys on the panel "Content is King" at the Email Insider Summit today. On the panel, Yeomans pointed out that brands should take the time to craft strong content and said that this investment is better than sending lots of coupons.

It's the big question at OMMA's Email Insider Summit on Friday: Is Gmail Tabs making marketers' lives better or worse? (Released by Google in May, the inbox-sorting tool removes marketing messages from users' primary inboxes, and files them in a distinct "Promotions" tab.) On a late morning panel, Dianna Dilworth, editor of MediaPost's of Email Marketing Daily, noted that Groupon recently blamed Tabs for its poor Q3 earnings. Well, "How very convenient for them," joked Jordan Cohen, VP of Marketing at Movable Ink. [Cue crowd laughter] "Yeah, because [Groupon's] stock was just in great shape before that!" added Ryan Phelan, …

Contrary to some initial industry reactions, a change to Gmail this week will not impact marketers' ability to measure open rates within Google's email product. So The Switch's Andrea Peterson insists. Rather, changes to the way Google is implementing its image caching system could actually lead to "more accurate" measurement of unique open rates, according to Peterson. That's "because under the previous system the subscribers who opened emails without displaying images were effectively invisible to marketers," she contends. "That's because previously, Gmail wouldn't display an image until users clicked a 'show images' button ... Because its image-caching system reduces the …

The airline business ain't pretty. No, as Warren Buffett once wrote in a letter to shareholders, "[I]f a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down." It's that legacy which makes American Airlines' ongoing reinvention so impressive. What's the airline's approach? Well, "When you're going through a transformation, you can either dress it up [i.e., bullshit, bullshit, bullshit] or you can do it right," according to Rick Elieson, Managing Director of Digital for AA.com and American Airlines. Also, "having a clear line of sight on your economics …

Rick Elieson, Managing Director of Digital/AA.com, American Airlines, revealed the secret to American Airlines' rebrand today at the Email Insider Summit and the airline's approach was from the inside out. The company bought new planes, updated its menu, trained and hired new flight attendants, and given them new uniforms. In addition, the pilots now have iPads. The company has also revamped their clubs and their airport check in areas. The company also revamped its online booking experience and added a matrix with a product line that explains the differences between flights and the options that come with them.

Speaking at the Email Insider Summit, Brad Nash, marketing director of email & life cycle for GameStop, cautioned attendees not to get “too bogged down in finding the exact answer”, especially when it comes to creating loyalty programs. “Too many people spend to much time trying to get their numbers to align,” he said. Data should be used directionally. He says sometimes data yield results that are off 3% to 8%. But that’s okay. Though there can be pressures from a finance team or chief financial officers, Nash believes people should focus on building …

For Gamestop email subscribers, the more a customer buys and the more information they share about themselves, the more emails they will receive. The company looks at member data, which is combined with transaction data, which is then combined with web analytics and device type. The company sends highly targeted emails based on purchases. For instance, if a consumer is a PlayStation buyer, they will place relevant content based on this knowledge and not show games that don't apply. If they have preordered a game in advance, they may get an upsell in a subsequent email. Gamestop's marketing director Brad …

Jennifer Tattenbaum, interactive services director at Shubert Ticketing, said that her company does a lot of segmentation based on an event they are going to attend. They do a series leading up to the event to help promote sales for restaurants and parking, and then a follow up email after the event reminding them to share their experience with their friends.