Email Marketing RulesWhy Your Marketing Benchmarks Don’t Mean What You Think
Posted on July 2, 2026
A collection of industry averages, benchmarks can help you evaluate your campaign performance, highlighting where you excel and where improvement is needed. This third-party validation is often used to demonstrate success to internal stakeholders and inform the setting of performance goals.
However, while benchmarks can strengthen your marketing strategy, you should be aware of their many, many limitations so you can avoid using them appropriately, because giving benchmarks meaning they don’t have could cause you to make huge strategic mistakes.
The Last Word on June 2026
Posted on July 1, 2026
A roundup of digital marketing and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Siri Reads Your Email Now: What WWDC 2026 Actually Means for Senders (EmailExpert)
AI Is Not the Skill Email Marketers Need Most (MarTech)
AI in Marketing Job Descriptions: What 1,750 Job Posts Reveal (CXL)
The Human-Centred Approach to AI Adoption (ActionRocket)
Blogs, Traffic, and Google (Seth’s Blog)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
you had me @ email pic.twitter.com/rJq0huR0hm
— Keith Kouzmanoff (@emailmp) June 2, 2026
Noteworthy subject lines
Spirit Halloween, 6/11 – The Flagship Grand Opening is BACK! 🎃🎉
Abercrombie & Fitch, 6/5 – Our SoHo store opens tomorrow →
RH, 6/30 – All Outdoor on Sale. 4th of July Event. Members Save an Extra 30%.
Olive Garden, 6/4 – We LOVE cheese
IKEA Family, 6/12 – Host every match like it’s the final match
Olive Garden, 6/11 – Match day never tasted so good
Pacsun, 6/18 – Extra 30% Off Summer Solstice Sale 🌞
Fendi, 6/16 – Out of Office: The Summer Styling Series
Quiksilver, 6/29 – Summer’s Best
Williams Sonoma, 6/21 – Refrigerator goals starts with these essentials
West Elm, 6/9 – Introducing Pottery Barn Dorm 🎓✨
Nintendo, 6/2 – Crocs x Super Mario Collection Coming 7/15
Dior Couture, 6/9 – Expressions of thanks for Father’s Day
Uncommon Goods, 6/18 – Last-minute Father’s Day gifts that ship quick
Quiksilver, 6/21 – It’s Not too Late to Spoil Dad
Fendi, 6/9 – Beachwear: The Summer Styling Series
Macy’s Friends & Family, 6/9 – Get 15% off new summer beauty icons 💄✨
Macy’s, 6/1 – Your summer wedding style guide 👗👔
Clinique Online, 6/10 – Wedding makeup for sensitive eyes 💍🤍
OMEGA Watches, 6/20 – Evolution of the Dark Side
Magic: The Gathering, 6/30 – Assembling is the Game
Eddie Bauer, 6/29 – What’s Trending At Eddie Bauer
Urban Outfitters, 6/21 – Peanut + Monchhichi: Sleepover Party
YPB By Abercrombie, 6/11 – Active designed with TJ Watt.
Bed Bath & Beyond, 6/30 – Your app-exclusive savings are still here ✨
Allrecipes The Scoop, 6/18 – Stop Storing Butter This Way
Williams Sonoma, 6/18 – Bring Japanese craftsmanship into your kitchen
Zara, 6/9 – ZARA PRE-OWNED
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
The CDP’s New Role in AI-Driven Marketing
Why Loyalty Data Stays Underutilized
France’s CNIL Rules Push Marketers to Use Opens Even Less
Owned Audiences and the Inbox as a Search Platform
Adapting to the Most Active Inbox Provider Environment Ever
The CDP’s New Role in AI-Driven Marketing
Posted on June 29, 2026
The enterprise marketing stack is smarter than ever, but it’s also becoming more fragmented. Predictive models influence targeting, generative systems create content, and agentic workflows are beginning to make autonomous decisions. But as AI moves closer to customer-facing action, the result is often inconsistency at scale.
This whitepaper, produced by the Customer Data Alliance and CDP Institute in partnership with Zeta Global, makes the case for expanding the role of the modern CDP from a data unification and activation platform into a customer-intelligence control plane for the enterprise.
Why Loyalty Data Stays Underutilized
Posted on June 24, 2026
Georgia Gkolfinopoulou and I join Loyalty TV to discuss new research from Forrester (commissioned by Zeta Global) that explains why marketers are underusing loyalty data and how brands can overcome those barriers. With host Bridget Blaise-Shamai, we talk about:
- The major findings of the survey of more than 300 loyalty professionals
- The execution gap that exists with loyalty data
- How brands are measuring loyalty success
- How to unlock the full value of loyalty data across channels
- What loyalty marketing looks like a year from now
Or listen to the podcast version on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
France’s CNIL Rules Push Marketers to Use Opens Even Less
Posted on June 22, 2026
New privacy rules in Europe are placing fresh limits on the use of tracking pixel data, which has already seen its usefulness decline dramatically in the wake of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection. In the latest move, the French data protection authority CNIL has published its final recommendations on the use of email tracking pixels, which extends the consent requirements of the ePrivacy Directive of 2003 to also cover pixels in emails. Going into effect in mid July 2026, the rules require senders to get explicit permission from subscribers in France for some tracking pixel use cases. The same rules will apply to subscribers in Italy in October.
In general, it’s not the collection of open data that runs afoul of these rules, but rather the use of tracking pixel-derived information for particular uses without permission from the subscriber.
Owned Audiences and the Inbox as a Search Platform
Posted on June 16, 2026
Google has become the world’s largest publisher—and for brands that relied on organic search, that’s a crisis. In this episode of the Beyond the Search Bar podcast, I chat with host Russ Macumber about how search is changing and the role that email marketing can play as the Google Search monolith crumbles.
Here’s a breakdown of our conversation:
2:47 – My hot take on search marketing today
3:36 – The five ways brands can be more visible
6:50 – How I got into email and digital marketing
10:20 – Tech changes in the email industry on two fronts
12:42 – How search has fractured into an environment that looks like the inbox environment
15:03 – Why it’s dangerous to replicate your email strategy across mobile channels
17:57 – How consumers expect brands to recognize their cross-channel activity
19:23 – How owned channels support SEO (and why I don’t like to refer to email marketing as “owned media”)
20:20 – Optimizing your email messages for inbox search, and for AI summaries
20:53 – How Google and Microsoft are big email inbox providers and big AI players
24:35 – What Google is doing in the AI commerce space related to email
26:54 – Why Google’s Personal Intelligence program is super smart
33:00 – Marketing to machines who act on behalf of your customers
34:40 – My preferred term for optimizing for search done by AI engines
37:01 – What I think is the most underrating marketing tactic right now
Listen wherever you get your podcasts or …
Adapting to the Most Active Inbox Provider Environment Ever
Posted on June 5, 2026
The launch of Mail Privacy Protection by Apple in 2021 kicked off the largest wave of inbox changes in more than a decade. Hide My Email, Link Tracking Protection, Deal Annotations, Deal Cards, AI Summaries, Brand Message Groupings, Branded Mail … It’s a wave of innovation that continues strong to this day. However, much of this innovation has created serious challenges for marketers.
Join us as we break down the biggest and latest changes made by inbox providers and share concrete to-dos for how to adjust. We’ll also steer you away from actions that might seem wise, but will actually make things worse for you.
Which Email Marketing Trends Are Truly Worth It?
Posted on June 4, 2026
Is the juice worth the squeeze? That was the central question in the session by Scott Cohen and Ryan Phelan at the ANA’s The Next Chapter of Email Evolution event in Chicago last month. The duo asked the audience to give a variety of trends a thumbs up or thumbs down, and then called on people to defend their views.
Of course, the majority of the trends they asked about fall in between a simple yay or nay—because there are circumstances when they’re not worthwhile, developments that are undermining their effectiveness, or other caveats.
Let’s dive into some of them. I’ll share some pros and cons, plus my verdict.
The Last Word on May 2026
Posted on June 1, 2026
A roundup of digital marketing and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
A DMARC Record Is Only a Suggestion (Spamtacular)
Why Customer Identity is Moving to the Enterprise Data Layer (Email Vendor Selection)
Accessibility Report 2026 (Email Markup Consortium)
Meta Is Dying. It’s About Time. (The New York Times)(gift article)
The Generation That Grew Up With A.I. Hates It (The New York Times)(gift article)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
Noteworthy subject lines
Fanatics, 5/21 – Gear Up for the Global Game
Gap, 5/29 – Introducing FIFA Classics
Redbubble, 5/12 – Stickers for Class of 2026 🥳 Relatable, Motivational
Urban Outfitters, 5/30 – Get the dorm of your dreams (now 30% Off)
Fanatics, 5/8 – NFL x YETI Soft Coolers–Perfect for Dad 🏈
Goldbelly, 5/2 – 🍰 Mother’s Day Dessert Guide 💝 Ina Garten + Martha Stewart + More!
Michaels, 5/8 – Mother’s Day is Sunday! ⏰ Get up to 60% off at our Mother’s Day Sale.
Macy’s, 5/10 – Up to 40% off handbag gifts for Mother’s Day
ECCO, 5/10 – Mother’s Day: Find Her Perfect Pair For Summer
kate spade, 5/2 – Little bag, big summer energy
IKEA Family, 5/12 – New must-haves for endless summer fun 🏄🏻♀️😎
Urban Outfitters, 5/23 – This season’s star baseball graphics ⚾ →
Bed Bath & Beyond, 5/19 – Need a patio refresh for less? ☀️
IKEA Family, 5/17 – Summer party planning? ☀️ You need to see this. 👀
Wayfair, 5/4 – Your apartment balcony 🤝 these outdoor picks
Huckberry, 5/29 – Art of the Summer Sneaker
Goldbelly, 5/30 – 🍑 It’s Peak Georgia Peach Season! 🍑
Lane Bryant, 5/29 – 10/$39.50 panties 🍑cut for every butt
Macy’s, 5/20 – Spotlight on: the polo shirt 👕
Clinique Online, 5/23 – Just for you, get this exclusive train case.
Bass Pro Shops, 5/10 – Vote For America’s Best Aquarium 🐋
Clinique Online, 5/29 – ✨ 5 shortcuts to glowing skin.
Williams Sonoma, 5/4 – The essentials for crisp, beautiful salads
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
The Underutilized Superpower Hidden in Loyalty Data
The Gap between Modern and Legacy ESPs Is Widening
Designing for Impact: Our Top Digital Marketing Creative Tips
Email Marketing Underperforming? Let’s Troubleshoot It
The Underutilized Superpower Hidden in Loyalty Data
Posted on May 29, 2026
Customer loyalty data is one of the most strategic assets in the enterprise today—yet only 17% of surveyed marketers feel “very confident” in their ability to use the data. That gap between what loyalty data could do and what it actually does is the focus of new research from Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Zeta.
The study surveyed 310 customer loyalty and marketing decision-makers and high-level practitioners to understand how organizations are collecting, integrating, and acting on loyalty data, and where the opportunities for growth are hiding. The study dives into:
- The barriers to using loyalty data effectively, and how to overcome them
- Why only 26% of respondents rate their customer loyalty programs as “very effective”
- The behavioral metrics worth tracking alongside CLV and retention
- How to unlock the full potential of your customer loyalty data
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
GVP of CRM Strategy
Zeta Global
Author of Email Marketing Rules and nearly 4,000 articles about digital and email marketing
