Email Marketing RulesMessaging & Content Strategies for Long-Lifespan Products
Posted on May 19, 2025
For B2B and B2C brands that sell products with lifespans that stretch into multiple years like machinery and cars, devising a digital marketing content strategy can be difficult. They know they need to keep their customers engaged, but they often struggle with how to keep the conversation and relationship going between product replacement cycles.
For permission-based channels like email and SMS, it can be dangerous to not reach out to subscribers on at least a monthly basis. Less frequent messaging can zero out your email sender reputation, for instance. More broadly—and perhaps counterintuitively—it can be much, much harder to maintain permission when you message, say, every other month than twice a month, because you’re easier to forget. Plus, when your customer is back in the market to buy again, you want your brand to be top of mind.
Given those realities and those needs, brands need to have messaging frequencies of at least once a month, if not more frequent. But then there’s the struggle about what kind of content to send that acknowledges and respects long product replacement cycles.
Microsoft’s New Email Deliverability Rules Make DMARC Essential
Posted on May 12, 2025
Ever since Google and Yahoo jointly announced new deliverability requirements in late 2023, rumors have swirled that Microsoft would eventually join them. At long last, Microsoft announced new deliverability requirements, but only endorsed one of the four pillars of the Google-Yahoo announcement.
Let’s look at what Microsoft is requiring of senders and what impact it will have on marketers, bearing in mind that these changes will have an outsized impact on B2B marketers, which have much higher exposure to Microsoft as a mailbox provider.
Gmail’s Email ‘Upgrades’ Are Actually a Step Backward
Posted on May 8, 2025
Just like the saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” when you’re the biggest online advertising company in the world, everything starts to look like an ad. This thinking appears to be behind more and more of Google’s recent changes at Gmail.
Let’s examine three programs, starting with an older one that’s undergone big changes and ending with a brand new program.
Understanding Email Deliverability: Key Factors & Key Issues
Posted on May 7, 2025
Many marketers don’t give email deliverability much attention—that is, until they have a crisis on their hands that’s tanking their email marketing results. Still others have simply accepted their average or even below-average inbox placement rates because they think it’s normal or feel they can’t change it.
Across the email marketing industry, deliverability rates average 85%, according to Validity. However, the Oracle Digital Experience Agency clients who work with our Email Deliverability Services team have an average deliverability rate of 97%. For an email marketing program that generates $10 million in revenue annually, boosting its deliverability rate from 85% to 97% can mean up to $1.4 million in additional revenue.
How do we help our clients attain such high inbox placement rates? We do it by paying attention to…
The Last Word on March & April 2025
Posted on May 2, 2025
A roundup of digital and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Strengthening Email Ecosystem: Outlook’s New Requirements for High‐Volume Senders (Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Blog)
Segmentation Isn’t Just Strategy—It’s Empathy (Only Influencers)
The Tariff Theater: Commerce’s New Dark Pattern (Future Commerce)
OpenAI Is Building a Social Network (The Verge)
Into the Inbox: Email Statistics Report for 2025 (ZeroBounce)
20 Design Psychology Principles Every UX/UI Designer Should Know (Bootcamp)
Getting Email And Revenue On One Page: The Metrics Are Not Always Easy (MediaPost)
AI Won’t Replace These Skills: What Makes Email Marketers Irreplaceable? (Only Influencers)
Advertisers Urge GOP To Support Opt-Out Privacy Law (MediaPost)
Goodbye Clicks, Hello AI: Zero-Click Search Redefines Marketing (Bain & Co.)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
When is the last time you checked your unsubscribe link(s) ? pic.twitter.com/i1OE2DsspN
— Keith Kouzmanoff (@emailmp) March 11, 2025
As bad as Apple Intelligence is, if they released a built-in agent that automatically hit “Delete & Junk” for every political text I get, all would be forgiven.
— Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) March 9, 2025
Noteworthy subject lines
Guitar Center, 4/23 – Lock in up to 30% off before tariffs hit
Michaels, 4/22 – Design an on-trend tumbler for a lot less. ☀️ 🥤
Goldbelly, 3/10 – ☘️🌈 Eat Me, I’m Irish! ☘️🌈
Macy’s, 4/26 – The best Mother’s Day gifts for every budget 🌸
Eddie Bauer, 4/17 – Gifts For Here 🌼🎁🌷🛍️
Neiman Marcus, 4/28 – Make this Mother’s Day extra sparkly
Uncommon Goods, 4/12 – Don’t forget to check out our Mother’s Day gift guide 👀
Priceline, 4/17 – Your app savings + Momcation mode now loading!
Huckberry, 4/6 – Wedding Season Mode: Activated
Adidas, 3/21 – WHERE STARS MEET ⚽🇺🇸
Diesel, 4/22 – Festival Looks Celebs Can’t Stop Wearing
Williams Sonoma, 4/28 – Host the ultimate derby day with cocktails & more 🐎🍹
Airbirds, 4/3 – Spring Days Require Airy Shoes 🌳
Everlane, 4/14 – New Styles for Spring
CHANEL, 3/14 – The CHANEL Spring-Summer 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection
Duluth Trading, 3/25 – Nor’Wester Collection Tames Spring Spray
Neiman Marcus, 3/1 – Great Pairings: raffia bucket bags + sandals
Chubbies, 4/7 – Say goodbye to sunburns FOREVER
Adidas, 4/3 – Don’t Be a Fan later – adidas x Overtime collection
Gap, 3/22 – The Peter Rabbit Collection
Williams Sonoma, 4/26 – The spiral mixer your dough’s been waiting for
West Elm, 4/23 – Your home office transformation
Neiman Marcus, 3/29 – A fitted Balmain gown in pale pink
VS PINK, 3/21 – $25 Tees with Over 3,100 5-⭐ Reviews
VS PINK, 3/26 – “Where’d You Get That Dress?” -Everyone
Franky @ Tumblr, 4/30 – Let’s read a silly marketing email with mama
BARK, 3/21 – No Narcs Allowed In This Email 🌿
Macy’s, 4/23 – 15% off beauty EARLY ACCESS, in the app only
Fanatics.com, 3/21 – Score 30% Off When You Check out with Paze!
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Subject Line Writing: 6 Trends that Are Driving Strategy Changes
The Unintended Consequences of Inbox Providers Ignoring Email Marketers
AI’s Impact on Digital Marketing Jobs: The Highest ROI Opportunity
Critical Apple Mail Changes & When They’ll Impact Marketers
Inbox Tabs Become Standard: What Marketers Need to Know
Email Marketing Trends for 2025: Proven Essentials
Is This the Beginning of the End of Big Social Media?
Subject Line Writing: 6 Trends that Are Driving Strategy Changes
Posted on April 29, 2025
Have your subject line writing strategies and tactics kept up with the times? Check and see if you’re accounting for these six changes in subject line writing:
1. Subject lines need to stand on their own.
2. Supplement your subject lines with solid preview text.
3. Subject lines should show contextuality, when it exists.
4. AI can help write subject lines.
5. Subject lines can include visual elements.
6. Subject lines should be voice-friendly.
For advice on how to adapt to each of these trends…
The Unintended Consequences of Inbox Providers Ignoring Email Marketers
Posted on April 22, 2025
It’s not that inbox providers sit between brands and their subscribers, but rather that brands need to satisfy both their subscribers and inbox providers. Just like brands have their own goals and desires, so do subscribers and so do inbox providers.
For example, subscribers want content that’s valuable to them, doesn’t arrive too often, and that’s easy to read and engage with on whatever device they’re using. Meanwhile, inbox providers want brands to authenticate their emails, link to reputable sites, send content their users want to engage with, avoid high spam complaint rates and hard bounce rates, and exercise good list hygiene and inactivity management, among other things.
There’s overlap between these two constituents, but there’s plenty that subscribers want that inbox providers don’t care about and plenty that inbox providers want that subscribers don’t care about. The point is that marketers can’t focus solely on balancing their business needs with their subscribers’ needs. They also have to consider inbox providers.
AI’s Impact on Digital Marketing Jobs: The Highest ROI Opportunity
Posted on April 21, 2025
Many headline-grabbing predictions have been made about the potential impact of AI on jobs. One of the first warnings was from Goldman Sachs, which predicted that “roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work.”
More recently, the World Economic Forum predicted that 92 million jobs will be lost over the next 5 years, while another 170 million new jobs will be created. That net increase of 78 million jobs sounds great, but that number glosses over the incredible difficulty of retraining what will likely be a variety of displaced clerical workers to be farmworkers, software developers, and trades workers, among other in-demand roles. That number also glosses over the potential for wage decreases in fields where humans and AI compete.
While the World Economic Forum attributes those labor market shifts to “technological development, the green transition, economic, and demographic shifts,” a big chunk of it will be from generative AI. And it’s important to recognize that as being different from classic AI and machine learning, both of which mostly do tasks that are time-prohibitive for humans. On the other hand, GenAI is engineered almost exclusively to do jobs currently performed by humans.
Critical Apple Mail Changes & When They’ll Impact Marketers
Posted on April 18, 2025
Apple’s iOS 18 update includes the most impactful changes to Apple Mail since their 2021 rollout of Mail Privacy Protection. However, the adoption of these features are on two very distinct and separate timelines. The timeline for Apple Mail app changes will be fairly quick, while the timeline for Apple Intelligence and its impact on the Apple Mail experience will be quite slow.
Let’s look at both of those timelines and the specific features involved.
Inbox Tabs Become Standard: What Marketers Need to Know
Posted on March 13, 2025
More than a decade after Gmail pioneered tabbed inbox interfaces, and many years after other major inbox providers add tabs to their inboxes, Apple Mail has followed suit in its iOS 18 release. Although the introduction of tabs isn’t exactly novel, the fact that roughly half of all emails are opened in Apple Mail means that tabs will suddenly affect many more marketing emails.
Let’s talk about what’s different about Apple Mail’s tabs, why trying to game tab placement is a bad idea, and how you can measure the impact of tabs on your email program. But first, let’s dispel some common misconceptions about email tabs.
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
