Email Marketing RulesMessage Prioritization: How to Emphasize the Right Messages
Posted on October 6, 2022
Which messages should I send this subscriber today? For many brands, the answer to that question is complex, because some of their subscribers are qualified to receive multiple broadcast, segmented, or automated messages because of their preferences or behaviors. However, sending them a bunch of messages in quick succession tends to create noise, not success.
The solution to this problem is to have a clear message prioritization, which involves suppression and send time decisions around your digital marketing campaigns to ensure you’re:
- Not sending so many messages that your subscriber fatigues or opts out
- Sending the highest value message
- Avoiding taking attention away from your high-value messages
Accomplishing that can involve everything from no-tech to high-tech tactics. It also helps to strategize your message prioritization by dividing your campaigns into three buckets:
- Your broadcast campaigns
- Your segmented campaigns
- Your automated campaigns
Let’s look at the tactics you’ll want to consider…
8 Reasons to Pause Your Digital Marketing Campaigns
Posted on October 5, 2022
The Sept. 8 passing of Queen Elizabeth II prompted many UK brands to suspend their email, SMS, social media, and other digital marketing campaigns out of reverence and respect—as well as out of fear of coming across as insensitive if they were to continue with business as usual. Such moves are wise, as they forgo some engagement and revenue in the short-term in order to avoid backlashes that cause brand damage and audience loss that significantly impact long-term performance.
Sadly, brands have faced an increasing number of circumstances in which they’ve decided it was in their best interest to cancel or delay their digital marketing campaigns, either on a national or regional basis. To respond quickly, your company should agree on the circumstances that would typically lead it to take action.
Consider these 8 reasons to halt your marketing campaigns…
The Last Word on September 2022
Posted on October 3, 2022
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Embracing BIMI: Apple Rolls Out Standard In Its iOS16 Release (MediaPost)
Zoom to Soon Bring Its Email Service: Details (Mint)
What’s Going on with Annotations? (PeakInbox)
12 Reasons User-Generated Content Is Important for Brands [Infographic] (MarketingProfs)
The Top 5 Grammar Rules That can be Broken for Winning Email Copy (Email Design Review)
Email and Business In Ukraine: A Conversation With Dmitry Kudrenko of Stripo.email (Campaign Genius)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
Well played, @gmail. Well played. 💌 https://t.co/a5BpDq7azl
— Lauren Meyer (@LaurenEmailGeek) September 14, 2022
I’m no longer impressed when people claim open rates consistently >50%, if they can’t tell me how many of those were attributed to Apple MPP.
— Matthew Vernhout (@EmailKarma) September 20, 2022
Great email find: Sunset/Unegaged Email by Cuisinart
Fave parts:
* Cute and casual
* Clear options (CTAs) – I normally go for one CTA, but in this instance, it makes sense to have two for options.
* That hard-boiled egg is lyf pic.twitter.com/akXxYaJxWc— Kat Garcia 🚢 eCom Email & SMS (@heykatgarcia) September 2, 2022
Gmail’s approach to Dark Mode stinks. Either allow developers to handle it or leave it alone. This happens way too often. pic.twitter.com/n97YtWPCrf
— Alex Williams (@alexcwilliams) September 20, 2022
Noteworthy subject lines
Zales, 9/11 – 4 Essential Styles Worth the Investment
Burlington, 9/21 – We’re hiring!
Gap Labor Day Event, 9/2 – Staying in < GOING OUT
Quiksilver, 9/2 – Cool Woven Shirts For The Long, Hot Weekend
West Elm, 9/7 – Keep patio season going with cold-weather accessories
Gap Warehouse Sale, 9/7 – That ’90s flannel vibe 👇
Williams Sonoma, 9/11 – It’s officially soup season! Make it from scratch with VITAMIX + free shipping on electrics
Neiman Marcus, 9/8 – Hue knew fall looks could be this vibrant?
Subway Restaurants, 9/17 – 🏈 Kick off the season with Subway ® Catering
Wegmans Meals 2GO, 9/24 – Ordering for a Group? We’ve Made it Easy
Williams Sonoma, 9/5 – It’s never too early for festive planning 🎃🦃🎄
Big Lots, 9/7 – Our ghoul? Save ya 25% on Halloween 👻
Williams Sonoma, 9/26 – Thanksgiving at Ina Garten’s + shop her favorite brands
Uncommon Goods, 9/16 – Yes, those are faint jingle bells in the distance
Crate & Barrel, 9/16 – FIRST LOOK | Holiday 2022
Zales, 9/26 – It’s Never Too Early….
Big Lots, 9/6 – NEW! Disney Pop-Up Shop x the LOT is HERE 👏
Nordstrom, 9/17 – Go to new heights with over-the-knee boots
Lane Bryant, 9/17 – THE POWER SUIT IS BACK.
Express, 9/6 – Meet our Styling Community 😍
Uncommon Goods, 9/14 – “Yessssss 👏” – actual social media reaction
Moosejaw, 9/6 – We want to hear from you. Get a free $10.
REI, 9/28 – See What Gear Won Our Editors’ Choice Awards
Spotify, 9/20 – Hear what the country is listening to
Bass Pro Shops, 9/24 – Watch Missouri Thunder Live!
Patagonia, 9/23 – Watch our new film “The Scale of Hope”
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Webbula: What Are the Top 3 Skills for a Successful Email Marketer in 2023?
Digital Marketers Are Afraid to Make Mistakes: 4 Negative Repercussions
Good Taxonomy Leads to Great Digital Marketing Optimization Opportunities
Email Marketing in Flux: The Biggest Changes Impacting the Channel
Dyspatch: Interview with Chad S. White
Email Deliverability Warning Signs Heading into Holiday Season
10 Common Email Marketing Mistakes that Are *Fairly* Easy to Fix
Webbula: What Are the Top 3 Skills for a Successful Email Marketer in 2023?
Posted on September 27, 2022
Along with 9 other email experts, I share what I think are the top 3 skills that an email marketers need to have to be successful. For me, they need to have:
- Curiosity…about consumer behavior, new platform developments, and more
- A comfort with numbers, as the art and science of email marketing increasingly skews toward the science
- Solid communication skills, as email marketing desilos and becomes an integral part of an omnichannel marketing strategy
To see my full answers, and to see everyone else’s too…
Digital Marketers Are Afraid to Make Mistakes: 4 Negative Repercussions
Posted on September 26, 2022
Basketball hall of famer and greatest of all time Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
While athletes, entrepreneurs, and many other professionals have a healthy perspective on failure as a route to success, that’s not always the case with digital marketing professionals. For instance, Oracle Marketing Consulting ran a poll last year asking if digital marketers were hesitant to admit to mistakes for fear of being fired or suffering other repercussions and a shockingly high 78% said yes.
That’s roughly in line with a 2017 poll by Litmus where only 32% of respondents said that email marketing was a failure-friendly channel. In a separate 2016 poll by Litmus, more than 11% of respondents said that they personally knew someone who’d been fired for making an email marketing mistake.
Having a zero tolerance for mistakes in digital marketing is an unrealistic standard that no team can live up to for very long. Such a policy shows an unfamiliarity with the reality of how these channels operate and how digital campaigns are crafted and launched. But more than that, it creates anxiety, secrecy, and risk-aversion that hold digital marketing programs back long-term in four ways…
Good Taxonomy Leads to Great Digital Marketing Optimization Opportunities
Posted on September 22, 2022
Digital marketing is flush with optimization opportunities, but only if you have a highly organized program. A central key to that is having a solid taxonomy, where you use tagging to keep track of various program elements. This kind of tagging system is key to easily and regularly optimizing your:
- Audience acquisition sources
- Calls-to-actions
- Content types
- Campaign performance
Let’s talk about how tagging helps with each of those…
Email Marketing in Flux: The Biggest Changes Impacting the Channel
Posted on September 14, 2022
Email marketing is more powerful than ever, but the strategies and tactics needed to succeed are changing because of 3 mega-trends:
- The sunsetting of third-party cookies driving an increased focus on customer identification and the collection of zero- and first-party data
- Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection forcing marketers to take a holistic, cross-channel approach to measuring performance and selecting safe mailable audiences
- The pandemic-driven consumers behavior changes that reinforce the need for personalization, nimble build systems, and smooth, well-orchestrated omnichannel experiences
For a look at each of those mega-trends…
Dyspatch: Interview with Chad S. White
Posted on September 12, 2022
- What will email marketing look like in 2023, 2024, and beyond?
- Do you think other inbox providers will adopt Mail Privacy Protection?
- Should marketers pay attention to what subscribers say or do?
- Will AMP for Email be a centerpiece of email marketing in 10 years?
Sepy Bazzazi, Growth Marketing Manager at Dyspatch, asked me those questions and more in an interview for the Dyspatch Blog. To see all of my answers…
Email Deliverability Warning Signs Heading into Holiday Season
Posted on September 8, 2022
The last thing email marketers want during the critical holiday season is deliverability problems, which is why many dedicate considerable time during the third quarter to getting their sender reputations and inbox placement rates as healthy as they can get them. However, marketers are facing two unique challenges this year that may foreshadow greater than usual deliverability risks during the all-important fourth quarter.
- The 1-year anniversary of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection
- A ‘tidal wave’ of listings from the world’s largest blocklist operator, Spamhaus
For a full breakdown of both of those issues by Oracle Marketing Consulting’s Heather Goff…
10 Common Email Marketing Mistakes that Are *Fairly* Easy to Fix
Posted on September 7, 2022
Email marketing is a complicated interplay of tactics and strategies, and it’s easy to make mistakes. I recently wrote about 10 common email marketing mistakes that are easy to fix, and now I’d like to share another 10 common mistakes with fixes that are slightly more involved, but still very much worth your attention.
- Allowing errors to slip through
- Not setting default values for personalization
- Using a no-reply email address
- Not using responsive email design
- Using a one-size-fits-all send time
- Only A/B testing your broadcast campaigns
- Ignoring the natural rate of return
- Not sending your welcome email immediately
- Sending your email in the wrong language
- Not optimizing for dark mode
For a discussion of each of those mistakes and how to fix them…
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
