3 Ways Top Brands Create Engaging Year-In-Review Emails

Did you receive any year-in-review emails from the brands you follow? You’re not alone. Year-in-review emails have been picking up steam over the last few years, and it’s easy to understand why.Year-in-review emails give brands the opportunity to surprise and delight loyal customers. They’re a great way to personalize your email campaigns and deepen the relationship between your brand and your customers. But there are a few things you need to know before you create one.#### Best practices for creating year-in-review emails**Create meaningful experiences**Many brands use the year-in-review email as a way to brag about their success. [This isn’t the best idea](http://www.business2community.com/communications/dont-brag-year-review-emails-01416959#zkgBVK5dc5XR8VdX.97). Smart brands use this as an opportunity to engage with their customers through the intelligent use of data.There is a subtle distinction between including vs. alienating subscribers in a year-in-review email. The brands that do this best make their data meaningful to their customers.Texture reframed their customers reading behavior through the lens of trees saves by reading digital issues. Pairing stats with graphics is a powerful way to visualize information.[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog-production/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/23222630/Texture.png)**Spotlight your customers**The best year-in-review emails bring the customer into the conversation. No one did this better than Spotify, who had customers asking how they could RE-SUBSCRIBE to their emails just so they could get this one campaign!It’s so much better to have OTHER people brag about how great of a job your company did than to brag yourself.[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog-production/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/23222800/Spotify1.png)In an act of sheer brilliance, Spotify sent personalized stats to their artists – creating easily sharable content on social accounts. Not only is this data valuable for the artist and fans, it also positions Spotify as the leader in their industry.[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog-production/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/23222802/Spotify2.png)With a number of competitors growing in the music streaming space (Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc.) retention and loyalty marketing is a top priority. I expect to see many more brands creatively use data to retain customers in the coming months.**Make it visual**Pocket did an excellent job of reframing the number of articles I read and quantifying it in terms of books. I was genuinely shocked that I’d read so many articles over the past year and felt compelled to share it with my friends.[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog-production/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/23222643/Pocket.png)Pocket could have improved the user experience by populating the data directly INTO the email instead of relying on a click-through to their website. It’s also possible to personalize data by device, displaying a layout more convenient for taking screenshots on mobile.