Email Marketing RulesOn-Demand Webinar: The Questions to Ask Instead about Email Marketing ROI
Posted on August 11, 2020
Not achieving your email marketing goals is frustrating, but achieving your goals and then not achieving success is devastating. This happens when marketers and executives ask the wrong questions. When that happens, the answer almost doesn’t matter, because it’s likely to cause you to put the wrong strategies in place regardless. A solid email marketing strategy starts by asking the right questions.
In this series of free on-demand webinars, we’re discussing a number of common email marketing questions that brands ask themselves, and then posing some better questions that brands should ask instead. In our earlier webinars, we discussed email performance measurement and email frequency & list building. In this 19-minute webinar, we look at common questions about email marketing ROI, including…
- How can we reduce our email marketing costs?
- How much does it cost?
- How can we increase our email marketing ROI?
In each case, we’ll explain why those questions aren’t likely to help you achieve the email marketing success that you want, and suggest one or more questions that are better. Along the way, we share advice from some of our more than 500 digital marketing consultants, as well as some real-world experiences from our clients.
To watch the free on-demand webinar…
>> Visit Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
On-Demand Webinar: Keep Optimizing Email Marketing Webinar
Posted on August 6, 2020
As a follow-up to my appearance on the Keep Optimizing Podcast, I join host Chloe Thomas and her podcast’s other email marketing expert guests to talk about a wide range of email marketing issues, including:
- How can marketers best prepare themselves for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of the holiday season?
- What do watch out for when running sweepstakes to grow your email list?
- How to think about list hygiene and do it properly?
- How can struggling retailers generate more business with email marketing?
- How has consumer behavior changed this year and how is that impacting your email marketing audience?
- What is email’s role in an omnichannel world?
- What one thing should marketers do to succeed with email marketing this year?
To watch the free on-demand webinar, as well as to access all of the Keep Optimizing podcasts about email marketing…
>> Visit KeepOptimising.com
On-Demand Webinar: Choosing the Best Days to Send Email Campaigns This Holiday Season
Posted on August 5, 2020
This holiday season has the potential to be one of the most turbulent and high stakes in decades. Potential risks include ongoing coronavirus restrictions, a further pullback in consumer spending, disruptions to supply chains and delivery, staffing shortfalls, and more social and political unrest. Preparation and planning are key to overcoming these challenges and protecting your revenue goals. Choosing the right email campaign days this holiday season will be key, and will require the support of other departments across your organization.
In this 37-minute webinar, Clint Kaiser, Danielle Renan, and I share insights into trends during the 2019 holiday season as well as our predictions for the 2020 holiday season. We’ll answer key questions, such as…
- What are the best days to send email during the pre-Thanksgiving period?
- With fewer people likely to travel for Thanksgiving this year, how will Thanksgiving be affected as a potential campaign day?
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday are perennially the top 2 busiest email marketing days of the year. Is sending on Black Friday and Cyber Monday still worth it?
- What are the highest revenue per email days during the holiday season?
- How do campaigns perform on Green Monday?
- Has email volume been trending up or down for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day?
- What happens to unsubscribe rates over the course of the holiday season?
We answer all of those questions and many more, plus we’ll talk about some broader digital marketing trends you should plan for this holiday season. Watch the on-demand webinar to get insights you can use to help plan your holiday marketing campaigns…then download our third quarter Holiday Marketing Quarterly checklist to get even more holiday planning advice.
>> Watch the free webinar on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
The Last Word on July 2020
Posted on August 3, 2020
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Learning from Failure: Stories and Lessons from Members of Only Influencers (Only Influencers)
Email engagement ‘highest in five-year period’ (Digital Intelligence)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
Hey Brand, if you’re not giving me a discount/offer/surprise, don’t send me a happy birthday email.
— 𝔸𝕃𝔼𝕏 (@alexcwilliams) July 1, 2020
We are all being tested currently by consumers. 61 percent claim that how a brand responds during the crisis will have a large impact on whether they continue buying it when the crisis is over.
Build #trust
— Mathew Sweezey (@msweezey) July 20, 2020
launching some workflows is like giving birth. i plan spending the next week watching it like a new mother. #emailgeeks #digitalmarketing
— Joi Tamber-Brooks (@joibrooks) July 22, 2020
First signting of bundles in the @gmail Promotions tab in Gmail web. Are Annotations next? Getting ready for a @PeakInbox announcement. #emailgeeks pic.twitter.com/DpgaXKSl1v
— Brian Sisolak (@bsisolak) July 29, 2020
Noteworthy subject lines
Great Gap Sale, 7/5 – 2 codes, 3 summer deals & a Happy 4th!
Walmart, 7/22 – Check off your school shopping list for less ✔️ 💰
Big Lots, 7/22 – Big deals on back-to-class checklist items
Belk, 7/22 – Extra 50% off back to school cuteness 📚
Michaels, 7/18 – Dear parents: Your kids are invited to Camp Creativity online + coupon inside!
Zales, 7/29 – 🤗 Wearable Optimism | Gemstones
Omaha Steaks, 7/15 – Stay prepared with a full freezer – and get Free Shipping.
Bass Pro Shops, 7/28 – Now shipping delicious Mr. Steak meats to your door
REI, 7/26 – Turn Your Backyard into the Ultimate Outdoor Kitchen
Bed Bath & Beyond, 7/30 – Grilling gear starting at $7.99 🍢 Buy online and use contactless Curbside or Store Pickup. ** Redeem you 20% or $20 coupon.
Williams Sonoma, 7/24 – Make Flour Shop’s pop-up cakes at home
Crate & Barrel, 7/22 – Better than the ice cream truck.
Williams Sonoma, 7/14 – What makes a complete kitchen?
Target, 7/30 – Get a move on your furniture sale 🚗
Big Lots, 7/27 – Home beauty begins with Broyhill furniture
West Elm, 7/18 – Maximize your small space with our FREE Design Crew
Staples, 7/22 – Deals to stay safe and productive.
Banana Republic, 7/14 –Learn About Face Masks
Petco, 7/15 – Dog friendly workout ideas! 😅
Target, 7/29 – Comfy, stylish sneakers for everyone 👟
Bonobos, 7/11 – Summer Shirts > Bummer Shirts
Underground Cellar, 7/28 – Here’s a $26 Wine Credit! 🎉
Michaels, 7/30 – Mark Your Planner: National Planner Day is August 1st 🙌
Anthropologie, 7/28 – Seen in the Hamptons: TIE DYE
MoMA Design Store, 7/15 – UNIQLO’s New Text Message T-Shirts
ModCloth, 7/13 – We’re all about @MissAlexLaRosa!
Neiman Marcus, 7/26 – Leading with love
Zales, 7/18 – Celebrate Bold, Confident and Strong Women With Our Favorite Collections
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
On-Demand Webinar: Understanding the Mailbox Provider Landscape
Planning for a Hard-to-Plan-for 2020 Holiday Season
UNSPAM Conference: Work & Industry Trends
Keep Optimising Podcast: Chad S. White, Author of ‘Email Marketing Rules’
Email List Churn: How to Reduce Both Passive & Active Opt-Outs
Webinar on Aug. 4: Keep Optimizing Email Marketing Expert Panel
Posted on July 30, 2020
As a follow-up to my appearance on the Keep Optimizing Podcast, I’ll be joining host Chloe Thomas on Aug. 4 and July’s other guests to talk about email marketing and answer the question: What should be on your to-do list right now?
We’ll be discussing the hot email marketing topics AND answering your email marketing questions, including:
- How do we capitalize on a lockdown-driven surge in orders?
- How do we recover if our sales have tanked?
- What should we be planning now to have success on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and during the rest of the holiday season?
Keep Optimising Expert Panel Q&A Webinar
Date: Aug. 4, 2020
Time: Noon ET/5pm in UK
Duration: 1 hour
Your Presenters:
Chloe Thomas, host of Keep Optimizing
Chad S. White, Head of Research at Oracle CX Marketing Consulting
Gavin Laugenie, dotdigital
Joe McCarthy, Klaviyo
Kate Barrett, author of bestseller “E-telligence: Email marketing isn’t dead, the way you’re using it is”
Kurt Elster, Unofficial Shopify Podcast
>> Register for this free webinar
On-Demand Webinar: Understanding the Mailbox Provider Landscape
Posted on July 28, 2020
The mailbox provider landscape continues to be dynamic, with ongoing unannounced changes to email filtering and reputation algorithms. That means ongoing headaches for email marketers.
During this 43-minute on-demand webinar, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s Clea Moore helps lessen the pain of these changes by catching you up on what the major mailbox providers have been up to so you can take action appropriately. She discusses the market share of the major mailbox providers in the US: Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Outlook.com and Hotmail, and Verizon Media Group’s AOL, Yahoo Mail, and Verizon.net. And then the talks about recent changes at those mailbox providers, including:
- Gmail’s rollout of Email Annotations
- Gmail’s filtering changes last fall that dropped unique open rates 2-3 percentage points
- How Gmail miscategorizing emails earlier this year demonstrate the dangers of having promotional emails appear in the Primary tab
- Early results from Yahoo’s test of BIMI
- How Yahoo’s early retirement of abandoned email accounts has caused a spike in bounces
- Verizon Media Group’s goal of monetizing promotional emails by selling view time optimization (VTO) and deliverability and performance feeds to marketers
- The migration of Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live.com accounts to Office365’s backend infrastructure
- The recent difficulties in warming up new sender IPs and domains with Microsoft’s mailboxes
- And much, much more.
Moore concludes by talking about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on email deliverability and her four recommendations for how marketers can adapt to the ever-changing mailbox provider landscape.
>> Watch the free on-demand webinar on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Planning for a Hard-to-Plan-for 2020 Holiday Season
Posted on July 21, 2020
Most major B2C brands and retailers will start planning for the 2020 holiday season soon, if they haven’t started already. Under normal circumstances, it’s challenging to accurately forecast, diligently plan, and effectively execute your holiday marketing campaigns. This year, with expectations of a second wave of coronavirus outbreaks and restrictions, most countries around the world slipping into recession, and global supply chains disrupted, it will be extra challenging.
Regardless, this year’s holiday marketing goal is the same as any other year: Every company must do their best to plan based on the information they have and then remain as flexible as possible to make adjustments along the way so they can maximize their holiday sales.
Based on research and analysis performed by Oracle CX Marketing Consulting, Head of Strategic & Analytic Services Clint Kaiser expects the following the 2020 holiday season:
- Significant risks to the customer experience
- Mobile will continue to grow in importance
- Communication will be even more important
For each of these anticipated challenges, Clint provides three to five action items to help you overcome them. For a full exploration of each of these…
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
UNSPAM Conference: Work & Industry Trends
Posted on July 16, 2020
I had the honor of presenting at Really Good Emails’ UNSPAM conference in March. It was special in part because the RGE team asked me to present the results of their annual industry survey. More than 1,500 email marketers completed the survey, which asked them about their time and experiences in the industry, how their companies do email marketing, and much more. The findings paint a picture of a growing and maturing industry, but one with plenty of growth pains and challenges.
To help illustrate some of those challenges, as well as the opportunities, I wove in the findings of a survey we did of Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts. In that survey, we asked our consultants to rate 26 email marketing tactics and technologies in terms of current adoption and the impact they expected it to have during 2020.
My presentation is now available for non-attendees to watch, which I highly recommend. You’ll learn a lot about how your company’s email operations compare to others in the industry, how your email experience compares to your peers, and the challenges faced by marketers across the industry—just to name a few of the topics covered in this 42-minute presentation.
If you don’t have time to watch the presentation, Really Good Emails provides a thorough transcription of the presentation, too.
>> View the UNSPAM presentation on Really Good Emails’ blog
Keep Optimising Podcast: Chad S. White, Author of ‘Email Marketing Rules’
Posted on July 15, 2020
I am excited to be the first guest on Chloe Thomas’ new podcast series, Keep Optimizing. The series will look at a different marketing channel each month, starting with email marketing.
During the 51-minute episode, we discuss a wide range of issues, including:
- How I got my start in email marketing
- Why email marketing is a good long-term career, and how it teaches you the skills you need to graduate up into marketing leadership positions
- Why I wrote the first edition of “Email Marketing Rules”
- What best practices are and how they can help marketers
- How to align business goals and email marketing goals
- Having a campaign-centric vs. subscriber-centric approach to email marketing
- Whether benchmarks are useful or not
- The importance of managing inactive subscribers
- The best places to attract high-quality subscribers and where you tend to only be able to attract low-quality subscribers
- The two things that new email marketers should learn about
- What to test to make your emails better
- What are the best email key performance indicators
- What does the next 6-12 months hold for email marketing
For the full conversation…
>> Listen to the podcast
Email List Churn: How to Reduce Both Passive & Active Opt-Outs
Posted on July 14, 2020
It’s cheaper to keep a customer than find a new one. The same holds true for email subscribers—which also happen to be many of your best customers. That’s why it’s important for all businesses to minimize their email list churn, which can be a major drag on growing your email marketing audience and growing your business.
In this post, our email marketing consultants talk about:
- The 2 kinds of email list churn: passive opt-outs and active opt-outs
- 17 reasons why subscribers opt-out, recognizing that some are out of your control while others can be mitigated
- 8 strategies for reducing email list churn—early on, in the middle, and at the end of the email relationship
For a full discussion of all of that…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Welcome! Email Marketing Rules is your guide to understanding the best practices of this complex, often misunderstood channel as you craft the best executions for your brand. Every week, we’ll explore strategies and tactics, discuss tips and inspiration, and dig into industry news and trends.
Chad S. White
Head of Research
Oracle Digital Experience Agency
Author of Email Marketing Rules and nearly 4,000 articles about digital and email marketing
