Email Marketing RulesThe Newest Automation Trigger: Internet-Connected Devices
Posted on January 13, 2023
Automated messages can be triggered by a vast range of behaviors and events. In our Oracle Consulting Checklist of Automated Campaign Ideas to Explore (free, no-form download), we identify more than 110 triggered campaigns—and that’s independent from the channel you’d use for your message, any segmentation you’d do, and how you’d treat your automations differently across your lines of business.
We organize this incredible variety of triggers into four groups based on whether they’re triggered by…
- An action taken by the subscriber or customer or by the brand
- Inaction over a period of time by the subscriber or customer
- A date that’s important to the individual subscriber or customer
- A signal from an internet-connected device owned by the customer or user
Chances are you’re familiar with those first three trigger types, but that last bucket is the newest and least developed. However, these machine-triggered messages have a lot of potential, especially as more and more products become connected to the internet.
Visual Branding in Email Marketing: 7 Elements to Optimize
Posted on January 11, 2023
Wherever your customer is, in whatever channel they’re engaging with your brand, you want that experience to feel consistent and unified. Visual branding is the critical first step in creating that feel, as consumers will immediately perceive major disconnects. In your email marketing program, visual branding is important for two strategic reasons.
First, you want your emails to look consistent with your brand and therefore immediately feel legitimate, so your customers and subscribers are confident that your emails are definitely coming from your brand. If you don’t achieve that, then subscribers may become concerned that the email is spoofed or otherwise feel unsafe about engaging with the email. That can lead to disengagement and spam complaints.
And second, you want the transition from the email to landing page to be comfortable and as seamless as possible, as if they’re part of the same experience. This provides assurances that they’ve indeed arrived at your website and that it’s safe to proceed. It also simplifies the user experience if icons, menu buttons, and other elements are consistent in appearance and placement.
However, with all of that said, the visual branding of your emails doesn’t need to be exactly the same as your website’s. It only needs to be harmonious. That’s a good thing because the email channel has some limitations that force brands to make compromises.
Let’s look at seven aspects of visual branding in email marketing and what the best practices are…
The Last Word on December 2022
Posted on January 9, 2023
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Black Friday Email Breakdown: What Happened and What it Means for Senders in 2023 (Validity)
Email Marketers Seek New Standards for Authentication (AdWeek)
Privacy Scofflaws: Few Firms Are Complying With CCPA And GDPR (MediaPost)
The Biggest Obstacles to Succeeding With Data-Driven B2B Marketing (MarketingProfs)
8 Email Marketing Trends For 2023 (iPost)
Announcing: 2022 Litmus Email Excellence Award Winners (Litmus)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
— Kent McGovern (@KentMcGovern) December 13, 2022
I created https://t.co/J9mRpvsqRG that has a big list of the words that trigger your emails to go into the junk folder/have deliverability issues. #EmailMarketing #EmailGeeks – sources listed.
— EmailJay (@emailjay_) December 1, 2022
Look what you made me do!
Are you ready for it?
Don’t blame me.We bring you email subject lines written by Taylor Swift.
Comment your favorite one. #emailgeeks pic.twitter.com/EOLOI5LC3z— Aquibur | Mailmodo (@AR_Bits) December 5, 2022
🤯 I think @pompeii79 might have some real competition here #emailgeeks pic.twitter.com/SeELLN41WJ
— Cosmin Popovici (@cossssmin) December 6, 2022
Who can relate? 😂#emailgeeks #marketingtwitter #emailmarketing pic.twitter.com/KkXDGkrNlt
— Jimmy | Redhead Marketing Group (@JimmyTheRedhead) December 7, 2022
🤣☠️📨 pic.twitter.com/Pi72XovV4H
— Julio Medina (@JulioMedina) December 13, 2022
Noteworthy subject lines
Neiman Marcus, 12/22 – What will you wear this NYE?
Belk, 12/31 – Staying in for the ball drop? 🎊 Get cozy with 55% off sleepwear
Office Depot, 12/10 – 2023 Calendars & Planners starting at $5
Nordstrom Rack, 12/11 – Party styles up to 60% off
Williams Sonoma, 12/31 – Ring in the new year with festive cocktails & more
Nordstrom, 12/9 – Your mic drop moment is here
Fandango, 12/7 – Your 2022 At The Movies
Petco Love, 12/14 – Discover Your Impact in 2022 🐶🐱
Bass Pro Shops, 12/6 – Food Processing Holiday Wishlist
MoMA Design Store, 12/6 – Our Art Director’s Gift Picks (Plus, 20% Off)
Express, 12/10 – Holiday must-haves c/o style icon Rocky Barnes
Everlane, 12/10 – Consciously Curated by Lorenzo Posocco
Burlington, 12/7 – 🚨Tons under $10🚨
Nordstrom, 12/8 – Gifts for every budget 🙌
Uncommon Goods, 12/11 – Two weeks. 14 days. 42 Xmas cookies.
Target, 12/20 – Last-minute video games deals 🎮
YETI, 12/20 – Check Yourself Off Your List
Crate & Barrel, 12/6 – In-stock guest-ready essentials →
Crate & Barrel, 12/13 – 6 tips for hosting a stress-free holiday.
Wegmans, 12/5 – We have Holiday Entertaining Covered
West Elm, 12/4 – The secret to an uncluttered living room
Williams Sonoma, 12/14 – It’s cookie season! Get inspired with our recipe collection from Joy the Baker
JCPenney, 12/17 – Super Saturday Sale 🎄 Up to 50% Off
The Container Store, 12/16 – STARTS NOW: 15% OFF Pickup Orders
Redbubble, 12/21 – Cutting it close? It’s gift card time.
Moosejaw, 12/23 – Level up your last-minute gifting with an eGift Card.
DICK’S Sporting Goods, 12/24 – Order by 2PM for same-day delivery or 4PM for curbside or in-store pickup! ⏰
Uncommon Goods, 12/24 – No wrapping (or shipping!!) required
Applebee’s Grill & Bar, 12/14 – Open until 7pm on Christmas Eve 🎄
Sears, 12/25 – No PS5 Under the Tree? They’re in-stock and ship for free…
Neiman Marcus, 12/26 – 75% off in sale: Did Santa miss something?
West Elm Design Studio, 12/29 – Got lots of great gifts? Let’s figure out how to put them away!
Crate & Barrel, 12/7 – Everything for a beautiful Hanukkah →
Gap Email Exclusive, 12/4 – R.S.Velvet.P.
Gap, 12/22 – SNUGGLE GAME STRONG
Quiksilver, 12/14 – New: QUIK X STAB. We like to surf.
Eddie Bauer, 12/17 – The Forecast Calls For POWDER! ⛷️🏂
Michaels, 12/5 – Kids Club Winter Workshop is here! ❄️ Sign Up for 12 FREE creative classes.
Columbia Sportswear, 12/20 – They’ll never outgrow snow days.
Princess Cruises, 12/20 – Hey Massachusetts, get exclusive fares to sunny destinations!
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Happy Holidays from My Family to Yours!
Picking the Right Sender Name: Brand or Person?
Halon: Email Trend Report 2023
Imagining an Amazon Email Client: Prime Mail
4 Ways to Maximize Double Opt-In Confirmations
4 Major Factors Impacting Email Marketing Performance This Holiday Season
Content Calendar Assistant 2023
Posted on January 5, 2023
Everybody can use a little help coming up with content ideas. And everybody can use a heads up to make sure they don’t look foolish or insensitive by launching campaigns that clash with US or international holidays, occasions, or events. Oracle Marketing Consulting’s Content Calendar Assistant provides that help.
To aid you with your content planning, our Content Calendar Assistant is organized by quarter, month, and week. By quarter because that’s how big themes and seasons are planned. By month because that’s how we tend to think about content creation. And by week because that’s how we plan out our campaign creation. In total, it contains nearly 1,000 ideas to enhance your content planning, plus insights and advice from some of our nearly 500 digital marketing experts.
Email Marketing Font Stacks: Defining Your Font-Family
Posted on January 3, 2023
Picking fonts for the HTML or live text in your marketing emails isn’t like picking fonts for a direct mail piece, which allows for nearly infinite choices. The spectrum of inboxes across which your emails are viewed by your subscribers place limitations on your font options. At the same time, the richness of the email channel provides vastly more choices than social media, push, and SMS channels—which tend not to give you any font choices at all.
How do you make the most of email’s font options? How do you avoid problems? Let’s start to answer those questions by understanding the 5 kinds of email fonts.
Happy Holidays from My Family to Yours!
Posted on December 25, 2022
Wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, my family and I wish you all the best this holiday season. See you in the New Year, EmailGeeks!
Halon: Email Trend Report 2023
Posted on December 14, 2022
2023 will continue a string of challenging years that has seen us transition from pandemic to recovery to high inflation and now to an expected global recession. The pressures that come with that are evident in the predictions assembled by Halon from 19 email marketing experts, including me.
In particular, Matthew Dunn of Campaign Genius captured the stresses that a recession will place on email marketing, as well as on other channels. Beata Linz of Beat Linz Consultancy conveyed the urgency that exists for email marketing and other marketing channels to work together much more closely than ever before because of the sunsetting of third-party cookies.
Matthew Stith of Spamhaus talks about how deteriorating sending practices have led the blocklist operator to issue 9,734 informational listings during the first 11 months of this year. And Guy Hanson of Validity explains how deteriorating list hygiene caused by Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, more business pressure on the email channel, and more aggressive policing by Spamhaus and mailbox providers will make deliverability extra tough in the coming year.
For my part, my predictions centered on the growing role of customer data platforms (CDPs) to help brands treat their customers consistently across channels and the new opportunity presented by BIMI now that Apple is supporting it.
Imagining an Amazon Email Client: Prime Mail
Posted on December 12, 2022
Gmail is getting old. What’s the next hot email app?
That was the gist of a tweet I saw early this year. At the time, the question made me reflect on the different features and capabilities of all of the major inbox providers, and what those differences said about inbox providers’ attitudes and beliefs about email. It was that reflection that led me to write What’s Wrong with Email Marketing?
But the question still remains: What’s the next hot email app?
While there have been several new email inbox apps since Gmail launched nearly two decades ago in 2004, these apps have generally had very narrow appeal around niche concerns. Convinced that the next hot email app doesn’t currently exist, I wondered:
- What company has the ability to build it?
- What company has the justification to build it?
- What company has the ability to scale adoption?
Only one company came to mind…Amazon.
4 Ways to Maximize Double Opt-In Confirmations
Posted on December 8, 2022
One of the many impacts of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection is that it’s now significantly more difficult to determine whether a subscriber is active or inactive. This challenge has led to a decline in deliverability rates and contributed to a spike in Spamhaus listings, with many marketers feeling forced to take greater risks as they lose visibility into the engagement of their Apple Mail users. In the not-too-distant future, growing deliverability problems will compel marketers to find ways to reduce these risks.
One such way is to make broader use of double opt-in (DOI). A DOI confirmation process is a valuable tool for protecting your sender reputation and email deliverability, especially when used for offline sign-ups, open sign-up forms, highly incentivized sign-ups, co-registrations, and other subscriber acquisition sources that tend to generate high bounce and complaint rates.
However, many brands hesitate to use DOI because they feel requiring people to confirm their subscription by clicking a link in their sign-up confirmation request email causes fewer people to complete the subscription process. Of course, that’s absolutely true. After all, the primary purpose of a double opt-in process is to screen out risky sign-ups, so you’d expect some addresses to go unconfirmed.
In an ideal world, all email addresses that aren’t confirmed would be spam traps, email bots, malicious sign-ups, and people who aren’t really interested in receiving your emails and will likely unsubscribe or report your emails as spam. However, we know that some truly interested people never confirm their subscription for a variety of reasons.
To minimize that as much as possible, follow these four best practices.
The Last Word on November 2022
Posted on December 6, 2022
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
2023 Will Break All Email Records – Here’s Why (Only Influencers)
Even The Experts Make Mistakes. (DanOshinsky.com)
Zoom Launches New Email Service (Spam Resource)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
for every time I’ve heard reassurances that email is not dead, I think #emailgeeks are entitled to declare that another platform is dead. At least once in a while.
— Martin Yoakum (@yomartin) November 16, 2022
General reminder that a “click” does not necessarily mean that a human clicked a link.#emailgeeks https://t.co/lx2BBog7J1
— Jacques Corby-Tuech (@iamacyborg) November 16, 2022
Noteworthy subject lines
Macy’s, 11/2 – It’s officially the holiday season & we’ve got the gifts to prove it
Panera Bread, 11/11 – Get thru the holiday with FREE DRINKS 🥤🎁
Lane Bryant, 11/2 – OK, but you’re missing it.
Uncommon Goods, 11/2 – How to get *into* the holiday spirit
Burlington, 11/2 – Holiday décor is HERE!
Venmo, 11/19 – Like shopping on Amazon?
Kopari Beauty, 11/21 – Don’t buy anything today!
JCPenney Black Friday, 11/11 – Gifts ↓$10 ↓$20 ↓$50…
JCPenney Black Friday, 11/22 – BLACK FRIDAY ⬇️$10 ⬇️$15 ⬇️$20…
Uncommon Goods, 11/22 – You probably know a lot of people
Uncommon Goods, 11/11 – We stuffed the 22 bestsellers of 2022 in this email
Home Depot, 11/11 – Join Us in Thanking Veterans, Today & Every Day
Office Depot, 11/11 – Saluting Veterans Today and Every Day
Applebee’s Grill + Bar, 11/11 – Today, let us serve you!
Bass Pro Shops, 11/11 – A Veterans Day Message
Gap Email Exclusive, 11/11 – Happy 11/11! Your exclusive code & 50% off inside –>
Kohl’s Dashing Deals, 11/11 – Start your weekend with Dashing Deals 🎉 Take 30% off!
Moosejaw, 11/24 – Happy Thanksgiving! Shop 30% off right now 🍗
Zales, 11/22 – 🎁BLACK FRIDAY Is ON! Take Up to 50% Off Black Friday Specials
Lowe’s Home Improvement, 11/24 – Time to shop! Black Friday Deals up to 50% OFF.
Sephora, 11/21 – THEY’RE HERE 💻 Cyber Week deals!
Patagonia, 11/26 – Support small businesses
Lane Bryant, 11/27 – Cyber *Sunday* your way to 10 for $35 panties!
Crate & Barrel, 11/29 – Let’s end hunger together this Giving Tuesday.
Burlington, 11/21 – Get 10% off when you donate a coat to Burlington’s Coat Drive!
Williams Sonoma, 11/2 – Holiday hosting guide from the table to the bar cart
The Container Store, 11/16 – Party Prep: From The Pros To You
Burlington | Holiday, 11/18 – Don’t show up to Thanksgiving empty-handed!
Wegmans, 11/20 – Thanksgiving Turkey 101
Macy’s, 11/22 – Thanksgiving Day Parade alert: major deets below!
NORDSTROM RACK, 11/21 – Women’s sweaters, because holiday dinners
Express, 11/18 – We found the perfect +1 for your next night out…
Gap Email Exclusive, 11/11 – PJs with vacay feels
Neiman Marcus, 11/22 – Gear up: Ski season is approaching
Quiksilver, 11/23 – Light Up The Season With Snoopy And Friends.
Gap Early Black Friday, 11/18 – Now Open: The Character Shop
Banana Republic, 11/2 – Introducing The Gift Shop
Eddie Bauer, 11/7 – Introducing the BC Adaptor Ski Jacket
Eddie Bauer, 11/11 – Introducing Eddie Bauer X Homme + Femme
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Litmus: 10 Email Marketing Predictions from the Experts
Key International Loyalty Regulations for Global Brands to Know
4 Ways Brands Go Wrong With Digital Marketing Metrics
Loyalty: KPIs that Go Beyond the Transaction
Webbula: What Are the Top Email Marketing Resources for Beginners?
Hard Truths about B2B Personalization, Its Effectiveness, and Its Future
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
