Write emails people will read
Wednesday 20 March 2024, 23:30 - 00:45 UTC, Stage 2
Do people read emails anymore? Yes — they do. But not the way you think. Use our templates to make sure your content gets read, guaranteed.
This session is for anyone who writes emails to build relationships with their audiences and get them to take action. Whether you write internal emails to your colleagues and stakeholders or you write mass emails to yoru users or consumers, this session will teach you how to write emails people will read.
Email volume is increasing every year, and that will likely continue. At the same time, email has become the channel we trust with important information from our doctor, the government, and as official record of agreements and purchases. It’s also become a primary work tool. Email isn’t going anywhere — so let’s make it better.
We’ll talk about the three core pillars to build a successful email program based on trust: authenticity, empathy, and logic. Then, we’ll dive in to specific best practices for from lines, subject lines, pre-headers, email content, links, and formatting using a tried-and-true template.
To wrap up, you’ll get a chance to practise with the template tools and create emails people can’t help but read.
A tool to takeaway
We will be sharing two tried and true email templates, created based on industry-accepted (and popular!) web reading patterns. The first template is based on the F-pattern and is optimised for emails with a single action. The second template is based on the Layer Cake pattern, and is optimised for newsletters. No software required.
This session will help you to…
Understand the importance of email as a channel.
Learn best practices for each component of an email.
Know how to craft an email optimised for typical eye scanning patterns.
Meet your session facilitators
Ashley Budd (USA)
Senior Director, Advancement Marketing, Cornell University
Ashley Budd is senior director of advancement marketing at Cornell University and a nonprofit marketing consultant. She is based in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., working remotely for the university as the division's content strategist and campaign project manager. Known for her creative and innovative marketing campaigns, Ashley is one of the most influential voices in education marketing and fundraising.
Before joining Cornell's digital team, Ashley spent over five years at her alma mater, Rochester Institute of Technology, where she led social media strategy for undergraduate admissions. She writes the popular newsletter Ashley in Your Inbox and speaks regularly before international nonprofit groups.
Ashley and Day are serious marketers with a soft spot for email. They first met as colleagues at Cornell and share a love for teaching marketing in a practical and inspiring way. They are co-authoring a book about email, set to come out in 2024!
Languages spoken: English
A global problem they’d love to solve: Receiving terrible emails
Something they can’t be without: My to-do list
Dayana Kibilds (Canada)
Strategy Director, Ologie
Day is strategy director at Ologie, an employee-owned marketing and branding agency built for education. Prior to Ologie, Day led digital innovation work in enrollment and fundraising at Penn State, Cornell and Western (Canada). She regularly speaks about enrollment marketing, email strategy, productivity and stakeholder management to university teams and at conferences worldwide. Day is the host of Enrollify's Talking Tactics podcast, and is co-authoring a book about email to be released in spring 2024.
As a lifelong immigrant who has lived in six different countries, equity and diversity are really important to her. She sees content as a tool for equity, and part of her motivation to work in higher ed is to help students access the educational institutions they deserve to be a part of.
Languages spoken: English, Spanish, German
A global problem they’d love to solve: Complicated language on websites
Something they can’t be without: My son, Romeo