Email Marketing RulesThe AI ROI Killer Lurking in Your Architecture: Data Access Charges
Posted on July 15, 2025
Even when you have a first-rate artificial intelligence solution, so much of your success with it comes down to the data you have to fuel it.
- Do you have quality data to drive the AI solution?
- Do you have the necessary depth of quality data to drive the AI solution?
- Do you have all the necessary data consolidated to drive the AI solution?
- Have you transformed the data so it’s interoperable?
- Is the data available in a timely fashion?
We’ve found that those are a few of the most common reasons why AI solutions fail. However, there’s another major pitfall to look out for that won’t cause your AI solution to not work, but will cause it to underdeliver on its return on investment. That pitfall is the cost structure to access all the data your AI solution needs.
How One Button Can Reduce Email Unsubscribes by 80%
Posted on July 10, 2025
Is email marketing’s return on investment too difficult to calculate? I join Email After Hours Podcast hosts Guy Hanson and Danielle Gallant to tackle that question and many others surrounding performance measurement. In fact, we tackled so many questions that the conversation was split into two episodes.
In part 2 of our conversation, we discuss:
- If ROI is too hard to measure, what other metrics should email marketers use instead?
- Why a 120:1 ROI is huge red flag
- What happens when marketers fail to demonstrate ROI?
- Huge opportunities during the signup process and unsubscribe process
- Whether high email marketing budgets correlate to higher performance
- Why have some marketing budgets shifted to advertising
- How can B2B companies prove out email ROI?
- The one bit of marketing jargon I would banish into oblivion
Listen to the Email After Hours Podcast wherever you get your podcasts or…
The Last Word on June 2025
Posted on July 7, 2025
A roundup of digital and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
The Toughest Love Letter Ever to Marketing Leaders (CMSWire)
The CMO’s Comeback: Aligning the C-suite to Drive Customer-Centric Growth (McKinsey & Co.)
AI Is Making a Major Impact on Email Marketing Teams, Report Finds (MarTech)
Inbox Evolution: 10 Must-Know Trends from the 2025 RGE Survey Thingy (Really Good Emails)
The 3 Big Factors in Subscriber Growth (Andy Crestodina)
ChatGPT “Absolutely Wrecked” at Chess by Atari 2600 Console From 1977 (Futurism)
How to Use Generative AI For Analytics (Trust Insights)
How AI-Driven Sentiment Analysis Improves Email Copy (Benchmark Email)
Yahoo Mail Rolls Out New ‘Catch Up’ Feature to Help Users Tackle Inbox Overload (Yahoo)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
Need y’all’s help.
Been running a guerrilla campaign to get the acronym GEO associated with Goose Egg Omelets.
It’s a fun, easy project: whenever you see GEO appear on the Internet, just leave a comment about Goose Egg Omelets. Soon enough, the AI models will get it 😎
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish.bsky.social) Jun 12, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Noteworthy subject lines
IKEA Family, 6/9 – 5 ways to make your home safer for National Safety Month
Redbubble, 6/9 – 25% Off Sitewide: Support LGBTQIA+ Artists 🏳️🌈
REI, 6/18 – Outside with Pride collection—ft. artist Lisa Congdon 🏳️🌈
Urban Outfitters, 6/27 – UO Celebrates Pride: Exclusive Vinyl Drop 🏳️🌈
Art.com, 6/1 – 30% Off to Celebrate the Art of Pride
Goldbelly, 6/23 – 🇺🇸🥩July 4th Grill Sale: Wagyu Steaks, Pacific Salmon + Wisconsin Brats!
Williams Sonoma, 6/20 – Red, white & SAVE! Up to 75% Off + Extra 20% Off Clearance
Staples, 6/29 – STARTS NOW: 30% back on your school supply list ✅✅✅
West Elm, 6/11 – 🎓 Head off to college in style with Pottery Barn Dorm
IKEA Family, 6/18 – Your college list, all packed up.
Bass Pro Shops, 6/14 – Celebrating Our U.S. Army’s 250th Birthday
J.Crew, 6/23 – Three new outfits that say ”I’m on vacation”
kate spade, 6/9 – Three ways to wear the Duo bag
REI, 6/6 – Earn a bonus when you buy a gift card of $100+
Art.com, 6/23 – A Solstice Celebration – 25% Off Sitewide
Duluth | Heat Dome Deal, 6/24 – $29.50 BBQ Shirts To Beat The Heat Dome
Patagonia, 6/9 – All-day sun protection for any activity
Chubbies, 6/25 – Chafe Season? Never Heard of Her
kate spade, 6/27 – No such thing as too many sundresses
Clinique Online, 6/14 – The new bronzed neutral = elevated summer glow.
Macy’s, 6/26 – 40-50% off sandals we ❤️ for every occasion
Urban Outfitters, 6/9 – 🦞 it’s (coastal) summer 🦞
kate spade, 6/6 – ➿ Meet the Loop bag ➿
Gap, 6/8 – Playtime, curated by us + email bonus 20% off
Nintendo, 6/5 – Power up with Nintendo Switch 2, available now!
YETI, 6/29 – New Smaller Sizes Of The Easy Access Rachero™ Backpack
Gap, 6/6 – The Gap × Malbon Collection
Crate & Barrel, 6/24 – This acclaimed chef’s new collection just dropped 👀
Overstock, 6/17 – Introducing the EFFY collection 💎
Allrecipes Dinner Tonight, 6/15 – This One Butter Brand Isn’t Worth Your Money
Everlane, 6/2 – “The Most Comfortable Pants I Own”
Crate & Kids, 6/8 – “I love this bed in their room!”
Burlington | Loyalty, 6/25 – You’re invited! Join our FREE loyalty program!
IKEA Family, 6/16 – Chad, have you unlocked your first reward yet?
LinkedIn, 6/25 – The Path to Agentic AI: A Collaborative Approach is starting soon. Joshua Ballantine and 2703 others will be there.
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
The Million-Dollar Opportunity You’re Missing
Lead Nurture Campaigns Every B2B Brand Needs
An Email ‘Newsletter’ Can Be Almost Anything. That’s a Good Thing.
Why Your AI Solutions May Not Be Working as Expected
How Tariff Messaging Can Make or Break Brand Loyalty
The Unsubscribe Experience Is Part of CX. Treat It That Way.
Posted on July 2, 2025
Clicking the Unsubscribe link in marketing emails has been maligned for decades—and not entirely for bad reasons. When no longer wanting to get emails you signed up for, clicking the Unsubscribe link can lead to confusing multi-click processes, which sometimes include double-negative question-and-option selections. In the worst cases, you have to log in just to access the unsubscribe page.
When no longer wanting to receive unsolicited emails, clicking the Unsubscribe link “just confirms that your email address is active and you’ll get even more spam,” we’ve been endlessly told, which is a legit concern considering the open buying and selling of lists. Making matters worse, The Wall Street Journal reported that 1 in 644 unsubscribe clicks leads to potentially malicious websites, according to DNSFilter. While that doesn’t sound like much of a risk, no one wants to end up on a malicious site that compromises their device or personal information.
Of course, an alternative to the sender-provided Unsubscribe link is the Spam button (unless you’re using Microsoft Outlook—more on that later). Clicking the Spam button is safe, takes just one click, and always works. However, it’s been such an easy and frequently used alternative to unsubscribing that Gmail and Yahoo Mail launched new requirements and made changes to their interfaces to try to get clearer signals on whether their users are clicking the Spam button out of convenience or because a sender’s emails are actually spam. They’ve done this by requiring senders to include list-unsubscribe headers in their emails, which support native Unsubscribe links that appear next to the sender’s name in the inbox.
Here’s my advice on when to use each of these three opt-out mechanisms, and what it means for marketers.
The Million-Dollar Opportunity You’re Missing
Posted on June 27, 2025
Is email marketing’s return on investment as good as many claim or is it a myth? I join Email After Hours Podcast hosts Guy Hanson and Danielle Gallant to tackle that question and many others surrounding performance measurement. In fact, we tackled so many questions that the conversation was split into two episodes.
In part 1 of our conversation, we discuss:
- Why the famous “36:1 ROI” metric might be misleading—and how to create more accurate measurements
- What keeps brands from pursuing higher returns
- How to tailor ROI calculations based on your program type: revenue-focused, lead-focused, engagement-focused, or retention-focused
- Why traditional attribution models fail to capture email’s full impact—especially for multi-channel retailers
- Why marketers need to become more comfortable with proxies and less-precise forms of measurement
- The hidden impact of deliverability on ROI—and why 85% inbox placement could mean leaving significant revenue on the table
- How inclusive design and accessibility improvements drive long-term ROI benefits beyond serving permanently disabled users
Listen to the Email After Hours Podcast wherever you get your podcasts or…
Lead Nurture Campaigns Every B2B Brand Needs
Posted on June 20, 2025
Lead nurture campaigns are automated digital marketing flows that are designed to respond to interest by prospects by delivering content that educates, persuades, or otherwise nudges them farther down the funnel and closer to conversion. Because of that goal of movement down the funnel, different nurture campaigns are aligned with different stages of the funnel and are generally triggered by the transition from one funnel stage to another.
Let’s talk about four nurture campaigns that every B2B brand needs to efficiently move prospects through the sales funnel.
An Email ‘Newsletter’ Can Be Almost Anything. That’s a Good Thing.
Posted on June 18, 2025
What is an email newsletter? That’s a serious question. Think about it for a minute. What is an email newsletter?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and here’s what I came up with:
An email newsletter is a message format that mostly contains non-promotional content that’s of interest to a particular audience.
That’s as specific as I could get—and I fully acknowledge there’s a mostly in there. That’s because newsletters generally do include overtly promotional content (such as ads) at least occasionally, if not regularly. That’s fine, but the defining characteristic of a newsletter is that a strong majority of the content isn’t overtly selling.
Since that’s the defining characteristic, let’s talk first about what that content is doing.
Why Your AI Solutions May Not Be Working as Expected
Posted on June 10, 2025
Every organization is excited about the potential of AI to improve their operations, but many are finding it difficult to make AI at scale a reality. If your brand is struggling to achieve what they expected with AI, answering these questions can help you identify common reasons for AI failures.
How Tariff Messaging Can Make or Break Brand Loyalty
Posted on June 4, 2025
Chaotic tariff policies have disrupted businesses and cratered consumer confidence. According to The Conference Board, consumer expectations for the future are at a 13-year low, having fallen for the fifth consecutive month as of April. Separately, the preliminary reading of consumer sentiment in May dropped to the second-lowest on record since the survey began in 1960, according to the University of Michigan. Both called out consumers’ tariff concerns as the primary driver of those low readings. That has translated into spending and GDP growth projections being revised lower.
Brands clearly recognize the risks that tariffs pose to not only their business operations but their relationships with their customers. That’s why some brands have already started using their marketing programs to position themselves with their customers to try to minimize the impact of tariffs on their customer relationships—with more messaging to come in the months ahead.
And, of course, for brands that have minimal or no exposure to tariffs, there’s a huge opportunity to trumpet the stability of their prices during the months ahead when some of their competitors will be struggling.
The Last Word on May 2025
Posted on June 3, 2025
A roundup of digital and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
The 7 Stages of AI Proficiency (Andy Crestodina)
How Geopolitical Tensions Are Impacting B2B Marketing Spend (MarketingProfs)
I’m a LinkedIn Executive. I See the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Breaking. (The New York Times)
Alphabet shares sink 8% after Apple’s Cue says AI will replace search engines (CNBC)
Google’s AI Adventure – One Year On (SEO for Google News)
Welcome to the Zero-Click Marketing Era! (Holistic Email Marketing)
What Repeat Behavior Really Means for Customer Loyalty (CMSWire)
The Art of Asking Smarter Questions (Harvard Business Review)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
You know what sucks?
Signing up for a “newsletter” that’s actually a sales promo sequence in disguise.
Don’t do this.
— Dylan @ GC⚡ (@growthcurrency.net) May 2, 2025 at 1:55 PM
The environmental cost of inference by hammering LLMs with thousands of terms to try and gauge brand visibility maddenly outweighs the value gleaned from it in my opinion.
There is a whole industry spinning up to do this right now and it makes me a bit sad.
— Mark Williams-Cook (@markwilliamscook.com) May 8, 2025 at 6:09 AM
On dating apps, when an email developer tells you she codes emails, for the love of god, do not ask her if she’s a spammer. EVERYONE says that, trying to be cute, and it’s actually kinda offensive. #emailgeeks #emailpeeps #emailmarketing #htmleemail #emailcode
— Anne Tomlin (@pompeii79) May 28, 2025
Noteworthy subject lines
Vuori, 5/5 – Our Top 5 Mother’s Day Gifts
Bass Pro Shops, 5/30 – Save 10% On Special Father’s Day Gift Cards!
Gap Email 5/31 – Announcing Father’s Day gifts: 50% off
Huckberry, 5/28 – Gift For: Rich ’90s Dads
Uncommon Goods, 5/26 – How to customize Dad’s gift without going to the hardware store
BARK, 5/30 – This Pride Walk Kit is SERVING!
5/31 – Just Launched: 2025 Pride Month Collection
Fanatics.com, 5/17 – Celebrate Armed Forces Day in the Official MLB Collection!
IKEA Family, 5/1 – 📚College students, get a 20% off coupon two days only! 📚
Ann Douglas from Lonely Planet, 5/17 – The right way to pack for a trip
Victoria’s Secret, 5/8 – New Summer Color Drop—Bras of Summer
Urban Outfitters, 5/17 – summer fit check: jorts + graphic tees
Wayfair, 5/30 – PATIO TABLES – our top picks.
Everlane, 5/19 – A Little Ruching Goes a Luxe Way
Everlane, 5/10 – You Want Square Necklines
Duluth Trading, 5/28 – Room to Breathe In Ballroom Jeans
Adidas, 5/19 – Inspiring individuality in every step
MoMA Design Store, 5/28 – Bring Out Your Inner Kidult
Eddie Bauer, 5/10 – Looks That Go From Work To Play
Eddie Bauer, 5/30 – We Did A Little Shopping For You – See Your Picks!
Neiman Marcus, 5/8 – Tod’s woven tote in beautiful blue
Allrecipes Recall Alert, 5/5 – Recall Alert: Fresh Tomatoes
Levi’s®, 5/28 – Levii’s jeans, meet Levii’s tees
Lane Bryant, 5/28 – Last splash 💦 $35 SWIM (final hours)
Clinique Online, 5/28 – Our best summer body care 💦☀️
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
What Microsoft’s New Email Deliverability Rules Means for B2B Brands
Messaging & Content Strategies for Long-Lifespan Products
Microsoft’s New Email Deliverability Rules Make DMARC Essential
Gmail’s Email ‘Upgrades’ Are Actually a Step Backward
Understanding Email Deliverability: Key Factors & Key Issues
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
