Hyper-Personalisation and Uncluttered Design Seal the Wins in You Mailed It Email Marketing Awards 2024

As South Africa’s largest digital messaging platform, Everlytic created the You Mailed It Email Marketing Awards as a way to celebrate the hard work, gusto, and creative talent that marketers put into their best bulk emails.  

This is because Everlytic recognises it’s not easy to create, send, and track a top-performing email campaign, which continues to be the dominant medium for brand communication. 

Now in its second year, the competition was open to all companies involved in creating successful email campaigns, and entrants could enter two categories, namely Best Marketing Email or Best Internal Email.   

The entries were assessed by five judges, who are experts in the fields of email marketing, advertising, design, and technology. They are Leigh Crymble of BreadCrumbs Linguistics, Sally Acton of Torque Solutions, Charnell Young of Vivid Theory, Hannes Esterhuizen of Sideways10Up, and Andrea Tickner of Everlytic.

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ShopriteX was awarded Best Marketing Email, as the judges found the entry was “in a league of its own” when it came to the use of hyper-personalisation and dynamic content. Crymble said, “Where ShopriteX just blows everyone out of the water is their ability to use existing data.”

The judges also found the content was fun and engaging, and they commended ShopriteX for capitalising on contextual marketing in ways that were relevant to trends and seasonality.

On receiving the award, ShopriteX said, “We continue to work harder for our customers, seamlessly blending technology and personalisation to help our customers save time and money every day. We were honoured to represent the Shoprite Group at the You Mailed It Awards and winning the award for Best Marketing Email.”

Machine_ won Best Internal Email for its Sanlam Group email campaign, which the judges commended for its captivating and uncluttered design. They added it was clear the email added value to the employees for whom it was intended, and they said it was easy to navigate and read. They also applauded the use of questions to drive engagement and pique interest

Samantha Page, content officer at Machine_, said, “Machine_ and Sanlam are delighted with this win. This is the magic we all hope to achieve in the content marketing space. You pitch an idea, add considered, meaningful and relevant content, supported by your clients, and the result is genuine engagement. This is content marketing in its purest form and I am privileged to be part of this collaboration.”

We often hear the saying “Looks aren’t everything”, but when it comes to email marketing, how your content looks could make or break the impact of your communication. Learn award-winning email layout strategies to design your next marketing mailer. 

The judges found the following aspects made an impact when evaluating the email campaigns in this year’s awards:

• Fun and engaging content  
• Uncluttered designs that make the content easy to read 
• Image to text ratio 
• Elements of personalisation  
• Use of dynamic content  
• Powerful calls to action that encourage recipients to act 
• Behavioural intent – with so much cognitive overload, how are breadcrumb devices and visuals used to help recipients navigate the communication? 
• Mobile responsive designs   
• Impactful subject lines 

The judges also made the following recommendations for brands to consider when compiling their next mailers:

• Establish the intention of the email with a clear opening to manage recipients’ expectations. 
• Set one clear and focused intention for each mailer by asking what you want the email to achieve. Don’t flood your recipients with multiple messages in one mailer.   
• Use A/B split testing to learn what your audience responds to best. This is especially important when you’re not sure whether to play it safe to ensure deliverability or shoot the lights out in a bid to achieve higher engagement. 
• Pay attention to how recipients are engaging with your mailers to learn where you can improve.  
• Embrace the use of GIFs. 
• Think about the images you are using and ensure they are representative and enticing. 
• Be careful not to clutter your email with information you could link to instead, for example terms and conditions.  

The biggest goal for email marketers this year? Ensuring email deliverability. Get your email deliverability survival guide here. 

Everlytic is proud to have wrapped up another successful edition of the awards and to use the learnings to help marketers optimise their email campaigns going forward.