Email Marketing RulesEmail Marketing Trends for 2020: Unproven Opportunities
Posted on February 4, 2020
In the ever-changing world of email marketing, it can be difficult to know where to invest your time and energy. To help you prioritize your email marketing efforts this year, we surveyed Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts, asking them to rate the current adoption of a range of email marketing technologies and tactics as well as their predicted impact during 2020. We then mapped the results into adoption-impact quadrants.
Today, we’re going to look at the Unproven Opportunities, which are those tactics and technologies in the low adoption–low impact quadrant. The technologies and tactics in this quadrant are not fully vetted and may not generate the adoption or impact necessary to be broadly worthwhile. If all goes well, they offer a sizable competitive advantage to the pioneering companies who embrace them at this stage.
However, there are significant risks that could undermine your investment in part or entirely—including rejection by consumers, inadequate inbox provider support, inadequate digital marketing platform support, the passage of legislative impediments, and other issues. Because of that, big investments of time and energy in these trends should be made cautiously. And for most brands, the best strategy is likely to wait…and let others work out all the details, uncover the best practices, and stress-test the technology.
Of the 26 trends we surveyed our digital marketing consultants about, they put four of them in the low adoption–low impact quadrant for 2020. Let’s talk about each of them in turn…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Webinar: The Highest Impact Email Marketing Trends of 2020
Posted on January 29, 2020
In the ever-changing world of email marketing, it can be difficult to know where to invest your time and energy. To help you prioritize your email marketing efforts this year, we surveyed Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts, asking them to rate the current adoption of 26 email marketing technologies and tactics as well as their predicted impact during 2020. We then mapped the results into adoption-impact quadrants.
In this 45-minute webinar, we’ll share the overall results of our survey, telling you which email marketing trends our consultants think are Unproven Opportunities, Competitive Differentiators, Proven Essentials, and Established Commodities. We’ll also focus in on four of the highest impact tactics and technologies and discuss how Oracle helps our customers make the most of these trends.
The Highest Impact Email Marketing Trends of 2020
Tuesday, Feb. 25
1pm ET/10am PT
Duration: 45 minutes
Your Presenters:
Chad S. White, Head of Research at Oracle CX Marketing and author of Email Marketing Rules
Todd Smith, Senior Director of Solution Engineering, NAA CX Marketing Sales SE Field
>> Register for the free webinar
How Marketers Should Adapt to Dark Mode for Email
Posted on January 28, 2020
Dark mode is a major trend in user interface experiences across a wide range of apps, including email clients. As support for dark mode continues to grow, the question that our clients are asking us is: Should my company change its designs and code to be compatible for dark mode for email and, if so, exactly what changes should we make?
In this post, we answer the following questions…
- What is dark mode?
- What’s driving dark mode’s popularity?
- Where is dark mode supported?
- Do you need to worry about dark mode for email?
- How can you adapt to dark mode for email?
In answering that final question, we share 8 tactics that you can potentially use to improve your email rendering in dark mode for email. Along the way, we also share examples from our dark mode-optimization efforts on the Oracle CX Marketing Consulting newsletter.
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Bringing More of Your Data Together for B2B Audience Building and Segmentation
Posted on January 27, 2020
Digital marketing success requires constant improvement, but it’s not always easy to determine best next step toward achieving that improvement. That’s why Oracle developed the Marketing Maturity Model, which helps you determine where your organization is in developing its various capabilities and what should be done to enhance those capabilities.
In this post, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s Otilia Antipa discusses B2B audience building and segmentation capabilities and how to move from a siloed/departmental approach to a cross-channel approach.
For B2B audience building, she talks about how to achieve cross-channel data aggregation and how to reinforce your data acquisition by collecting communication preferences and profile data, doing progressive profiling, and taking other steps. For B2B segmentation, she discusses how to make more data-driven decisions and how to optimize and test on an ongoing basis.
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Design Analytic: Identify and Solve Actual Problems
Posted on January 22, 2020
Marketers have access to innovative technologies and massive amounts of data to enable connected customer experiences, but time and time again we see our clients struggling to activate it all. Marketers are defining their strategies, selecting key performance indicators, and determining the customer experiences they need to drive those KPIs. Then they’re working with their data scientists and analytics experts to get the reports and models they need.
And that’s the source of the problem.
To understand why, let’s compare marketing to the evolution of car engineering. As automotive technology advanced, the industry recognized the need for a new kind of worker, engineers, who became critical to the design and innovation phases of product development. While modern marketing has acknowledged the need for engineers to execute as our technology and capabilities have advanced, we’ve left our data and analytics teams on the production line.
We’ve siloed our analytics team members, so even though they’re doing what we’re asking them to do, we’re often not driving the results we want. The problem isn’t in the execution, but in the design phase. We’re strategizing and building solutions without one of the key engineers in the room—the analyst.
In this post, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s Kaiti Gary and Jennifer Key argue that design analytics is the solution to this disconnect. They explain who needs to be involved to make design analytics work and what steps are involved. Then they share an example scenario so you can see how design analytics works in action.
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Take the First Step Toward One-to-One Marketing
Posted on January 21, 2020
Ask any marketer how they plan to accomplish their goal of improving customer retention and loyalty and almost without exception they will say, “Better personalization and automation.” That’s code for “We’re not treating our customers like we know them.”
In today’s world where personal curation of products is so high—Design your own tennis shoes! Watch anything, anytime, anywhere! Get vitamins personalized to your gene profile!—expectations of brands to seamlessly communicate with customers is at an all-time high. Missteps can be costly. Just search #[YourBrandName]Fail for a quick sampler.
So how do you systematically get better at personalization and automation? How can you create your first one-to-one marketing experiences? Where do you start to ensure the basic building blocks are in place in order to get to what feels like a personally curated experience across channels?
In this post, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’ Head of Strategic Services, Clint Kaiser, explains that it starts with responding to behaviors. He then recommends five customer actions that you can use to power your automated and personalized campaigns as you start to build one-to-one marketing experiences.
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Is Mobile-Only Email Design Appropriate for My Brand?
Posted on January 7, 2020
The growth of mobile email reading upended email design a decade ago and gave rise to responsive email design, which is now the dominant approach to crafting emails. However, some brands now see so many mobile opens that they’re considering adopting mobile-only email design. Some pioneering brands already have.
This approach is a throwback to a simpler time. Just like email marketers used to create a single email design optimized for desktops, those who have embraced mobile-only design are creating a single email design optimized for mobile devices.
In this post, members of Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s Creative Services team discuss:
- What mobile-only email design looks like and how it’s different from responsive email design
- The 4 key advantages of using this design approach
- How to determine is adopting a mobile-only design is appropriate for your brand given your audience
- The 3 primary best practices of mobile-only email design
For the full discussion…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
The Last Word on December 2019
Posted on January 3, 2020
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Email Mergers and Acquisitions 2019 (EmailExpert)
Interactive emails are a top trend, but is anyone using them? (Litmus)
The Loyalty Economy (Harvard Business Review)
Email Personalization & Design: What, How, & Why? (Featuring 10+ Email Experts) (Chamaileon)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
For all my #dev and #emailgeek friends out there! 🎉🥳 pic.twitter.com/dw4JGcc9QW
— Ali ‘Roarin 20s’ Fuller (@thealifuller) December 31, 2019
Here’s a resolution for 2019: Secure your ESP! Use a complex password and enable 2FA if your ESP offers it. Please don’t use [companyName]123 as your password – I have seen that way too many times! Think how much customer data you hold in there that’s easily stolen.
— Becs Rivett-Kemm (@becskr) December 17, 2019
This is really all one can hope for. Genius quote by @elaineyav #emailgeeks 📧🤓https://t.co/awnyfslNHx pic.twitter.com/2fDu68wixL
— Bri Loesch (@BriLoesch) December 13, 2019
Noteworthy subject lines
ModCloth, 12/31 – Count down 2019’s best looks.
Foot Locker, 12/31 —Say buh-bye to 2019 in the flyest kicks 🥳
Belk, 12/31 – Pop some bubbly, then save an extra 25%
Walgreens, 12/28 – FSA PSA: 25% off FSA-eligible items NOW!
Williams Sonoma, 12/28 – 5 essentials for a healthy 2020
Everlane, 12/26 – Choose What You Pay Is Here
Big Lots, 12/26 – Buy More, Save More: Post-Xmas edition!
Burlington, 12/25 – Wishing you the merriest of Christmases
Express, 12/25 – All is calm. All is bright. It’s ALL 50% off.
Banana Republic, 12/25 – The merriest day of the year is here ✨
MoMA Design Store, 12/19 – Self-Gifting is Self Love
Burlington, 12/22 — 🎅 ‘Tis the season to give…to yourself
Dick’s Sporting Goods, 12/22 – up to 50% Off Gifts for Them, Easy One Hour Pick Up for YOU!
Walmart, 12/23 — 🎁 That’s a wrap—LAST CHANCE for pickup orders!
Moosejaw, 12/23 – Order by 2pm EST to get it 12/24 🎄
Target, 12/22 – Need last-minute gifts today? Just use Order Pickup or Drive Up.
Quiksilver, 12/22 – Alright Procrastinators – We See You!
Saks Fifth Avenue, 12/12 – Our short list of gift picks (for when you’re short on time)
Nordstrom, 12/22 – Happy Hanukkah!
Bass Pro Shops, 12/14 – Stop by Santa’s Wonderland today!
REI, 12/12 – Shop Now & Be Done Sale: Up to 40% Off
Office Depot, 12/8 – Open For Early Green Monday Deals 💚
Lowe’s Home Improvement, 12/6 – 12 DAYS of CRAFTSMAN is HERE!
Everlane, 12/3 – Regifting? Bad. ReNew? Good.
Zales, 12/5 — 💋 Give Her the Gift That Says “You Are My Icon”
Michaels, 12/12 – Holly ✔️ Jolly ✔️ Throw a Christmas Party That Checks Every Box!
Williams Sonoma, 12/5 – Everything you need to be guest ready + 20% off one item
Neiman Marcus, 12/22 – For winter weddings
Applebee’s Grill + Bar, 12/12 – Win $500 Gift Card for your Ugly Sweater!
Macy’s, 12/6 – Today only: your letter to Santa has double the impact on kids in need!
Quiksilver, 12/6 – Men Who Ride Mountains
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
From My Family to Yours, Happy Holidays!
Doing an Email Marketing Holiday Post-Mortem
Holiday Marketing Quarterly: First Quarter 2020 Checklist
Email Deliverability Quarterly: Gmail Spam Filter Changes, SparkPost Acquires eDataSource, and More
From My Family to Yours, Happy Holidays!
Posted on December 25, 2019
Doing an Email Marketing Holiday Post-Mortem
Posted on December 20, 2019
With the New Year shining brightly and full of promise ahead of us, most B2C marketers would love nothing more than to put the holiday season behind them and look ahead to Valentine’s Day and the spring season. We urge you to resist the temptation. Ensure that you learn the lessons of your Christmas Past so your Christmas Future is even better.
Here are several areas to explore as part of your holiday post-mortem, which you can not only review when you kick off the next holiday season campaign planning cycle, but will give you insights and action items that you can use right now:
- Analyze the performance of your holiday email campaigns
- Identify your successful campaigns
- Identify your unsuccessful campaigns
- Map the performance of your email campaigns by day
- Document any workflow issues that impacted email production
- Document any quality control and PR issues
For a full discussion of each of those holiday post-mortem action-items…
>> Read the full 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
