Team Taxi flew to Boston for the second #LitmusLive of the year, and it didn't disappoint! It also coincided with World Mental Health Day, a subject which weaved in with a lot of the talks. We learnt to be kinder to ourselves, our customers and to always act with good intent.

We sat down in the studio to discuss some of the key themes we took away from Boston. Some of the main topics addressed working on ourselves; being kinder to ourselves, embracing change, learning from our mistakes and looking forward not back.

The others focussed around our conscience and not tricking our customers, how to inject good intentions into all aspects of our work and be non-biased in our decision making. As marketers, we are responsible for being genuine to our customers, genuine in how we communicate to them, and genuine in how we advertise our products.

Here are a few of the main themes we picked up on from this years #LitmusLive Boston.

Don't be creepy with data

A concurrent theme running through a lot of talks was around data responsibility. Post-GDPR especially, having access to our customers data is a privilege, and we need to use it responsibly. We can create some really great relationships with our subscribers by showing what we know about them. Personalising your content to actively engage with your customers can be tricky when you are mass sending emails. But this doesn't mean it can't be done.

By identifying the information we have, we can then sit down and figure out how best to weave it into our campaigns and achieve some really awesome results! Oh and remember, our audience are human who want to receive personalised and relevant content, so let's give our subscribers what they want! Robin Curran, Bernie 2020, advised doing this by using a mix of dynamic content, personalisation and segmentation throughout your email content and imagery.

Ask the right questions

If we have tunnel vision on one thing it can be really hard to see the bigger picture. In email, this means if we ask the wrong questions or focus on one thing, it can be difficult to come up with the right strategy. Instead of asking "how much money did we generate from this email?" ask "how much lifetime value did we generate from this email?" (Chas S. White, Oracle).

Email shouldn't be pinned down to statistics only (open rate, clicks and converters), we need to remember our audience are also human! If we want people's time we need to generate value but also embrace simplicity. For example, removing all the distractions from the email (such as low value CTAs, flashy GIFs and animations) means we can drive them to engage the way we want them to. Authenticity is key, remember if you wouldn't send this to a friend you shouldn't send this to a subscriber!

Be Accessible

We have all heard the phrase "too many cooks spoil the broth". This can also be applied to the "email kitchen". Decentralised email teams mean it can be tricky to sustain one visual identity. Also, our audience are likely to be opening emails on different devices, which won't render the same or all be responsive (Bri Loesch, The Ohio State University).

This can be solved in two ways. Firstly, if we use best practice as a starting point and look for inspiration from sources like really good emails it means we can adopt a more streamlined email process. Secondly, emails won't look the same everywhere, and thats okay! As long as we know that we can always learn, adapt and innovate along the way.

And finally...

A little motivation for all #EmailGeeks making great email today. Making email can be really hard and there's always something new to learn along the way. Remember you are all awesome!

If you haven't already, check out our latest blog post on 5 ways to create kick ass email in Taxi.